Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE : Almost

~Zella's POV~

I should have told him to stop.

Every sensible part of me knew that. The part that remembered Brynn sleeping ten feet down the hall. The part that remembered the agreement we had made in this exact room less than twenty-four hours ago. The part that had watched him shake my hand in a hotel lobby and say 'nice to meet you' like a man with complete control over every part of himself, which was apparently not as true as it had seemed.

I knew I should tell him to stop.

I didn't tell him to stop.

He kissed me again and I kissed him back and my hands found the front of his shirt he had pulled one on somewhere between the pool and the hallway, which I was now regretting and his hands were in my hair and the agreement was completely, thoroughly finished and I had stopped caring about that approximately thirty seconds ago.

Then his hand slid from my hair to my jaw to my throat and down, slow and deliberate, and when he cupped my breast through the thin fabric of my swimming top I stopped thinking about the agreement entirely and made a sound that I immediately tried to swallow back.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. His mouth curved against mine and he did it again and I grabbed the front of his shirt tighter and pressed closer and my body was doing everything my brain was trying to tell it not to do and I had completely lost the argument.

"Please," I said, against his mouth, before I had decided to say anything.

He pulled back just enough to look at me. His eyes were dark and his breathing had changed and he looked... he looked like a man who had been keeping something on a very tight leash for several days and had just decided to stop.

"Please what?" he asked. His voice was lower than usual.

"I.... I don't...." I couldn't finish the sentence. I didn't know how to finish the sentence.

"Tell me what you want, Zella."

"I don't know." It came out breathless and embarrassing and completely true.

Something moved in his expression, not quite a smile, something warmer than that. He leaned in and his mouth found my throat and I tipped my head back and grabbed his hair without meaning to and he made a low sound against my skin that went straight through me.

When his mouth moved lower I stopped being capable of silence entirely. The sound that came out of me was something I had never made before in my life and I buried my hand in his hair and held on and stopped pretending I wanted him to stop.

He took his time. That was the thing about him, he did everything without rushing, without urgency, like he had decided how this was going to go and was completely comfortable taking however long it needed. He learned what made me pull at his hair and then did exactly that, repeatedly, until I was breathing like I had been running and my swimming shorts felt like far too much fabric and my thoughts had reduced down to a single point of focus which was him and what he was doing and more of it.

His hands moved. Down my sides, to the waistband of my shorts, fingers slipping underneath the fabric of my underwear just enough to make the point without committing to it yet — just enough to find how wet I was and stay there, just enough to make me inhale sharply and grip his shoulder.

"Evander..."

"I know," he said, which wasn't an answer to anything I had said but somehow was.

His mouth came back to mine and the kissing went from deliberate to something less patient and I matched it because I had completely stopped having opinions about what I should and shouldn't be doing and my bra had come loose and my underwear was halfway down my hip and his hands were everywhere and I was warm in a way that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the fact that this man knew exactly what he was doing and had been apparently thinking about doing it since sometime around the agreement scene and possibly before.

He reached for the waistband of his own shorts.

My heart was going too fast. My whole body felt like a question that was about to be answered.

His phone rang.

He went completely still.

It rang again.

The sound he made was quiet and extremely specific and I felt it against my collarbone where his forehead had dropped.

He reached for the phone with the energy of a man identifying a target. Looked at the screen. Then answered it, and I heard the shift in his voice, back to level, back to controlled, like a switch had been flipped.

"What."

A pause. His driver's voice, tinny through the speaker, asking whether he should resume work or continue celebrating with his family since he hadn't heard back.

Another pause.

"If I had wanted you to resume," Evander said, in a voice that was completely even and somehow more frightening for it, "wouldn't I have notified you myself. How could you interrupt me at this particular moment."

It wasn't a question. He ended the call.

The room was quiet again.

I had already moved. While he was on the phone I had found my bra and put it back on and straightened my underwear and pulled my swimming top back into position and put approximately two feet of distance between us and was now standing near the window looking at the Paris lights with my arms crossed and my face approximately the temperature of the sun.

The realization that had been waiting politely on the edge of my awareness while the rest of me was otherwise occupied had arrived in full. Brynn was down the hall. Brynn, who was my best friend, who was sleeping with a bandage on her head, who had no idea that her father and her best friend had just spent the last however-many minutes — I didn't look at the time, I refused to look at the time, completely dismantling an agreement that had lasted less than a day.

"I should go to my room," I said. My voice came out steadier than I deserved.

He looked at me for a moment. Something in his expression that I couldn't read and didn't try to. He didn't argue, didn't reach for me, didn't say anything that would have made leaving harder than it already was.

"Okay," he said.

I walked to the hallway door. Then I stopped because he was behind me, following, and my heart did something stupid.

I turned around. "Where are you going?"

He looked at me. Then past me, down the hall. "To check on Brynn."

Oh.

Of course.

"Right." I stepped aside. "Obviously."

He walked past me without touching me and I stood in the hallway and watched him disappear into Brynn's room and then I went to my own room and closed the door and stood in the dark and had a very serious conversation with myself about the last forty minutes of my life.

I was supposed to be on my honeymoon right now. That was the thing I kept coming back to. Eight days ago I had been planning table settings and trying to decide between two versions of the same wedding song and Cole had been proposing on one knee saying 'I want to give you the day you've always dreamed about.' Eight days ago I had a job and a fiancé and a future that looked exactly like the one I had been building toward since I was old enough to want anything.

And now I was standing in a Paris penthouse at midnight in my swimming things with my heart still going too fast and my body still buzzing from a man who was twenty years older than me and my best friend's father and the person I had accidentally slept with on Christmas night in a dark hotel room and the person who had put me to bed when I was drunk and bought me clothes I didn't ask for and stood in the London rain so I wouldn't get wet and then shaken my hand like a stranger in a hotel lobby without blinking.

'I should be on my honeymoon,' I thought. 'Instead I am whatever this is.'

I got into bed and stared at the ceiling and did not sleep for a very long time.

---

Brynn knocked at seven thirty like she had not hit her head on the side of a pool less than twelve hours ago.

"Get up," she said, opening my door without knocking first, which she always did. "Dad's cooking."

I looked at her from the pillow. The small dressing on the side of her head was the only evidence that anything had happened. Her hair was up, her eyes were bright, her energy was completely and aggressively morning.

"How is your head?" I asked.

"Fine. Get up, he's making eggs."

"Brynn. You hit your head yesterday."

"And today it's fine. Get up, Zella, he doesn't cook often and when he does it's actually good and I refuse to let you miss it."

I got up because there was no version of this conversation that ended differently.

---

The kitchen smelled like coffee and something with butter and Brynn was already at the counter stealing pieces of whatever was in the pan while Evander moved her hand away without looking up from what he was doing, the automatic reflex of a father who had been doing this for years. I sat at the table and accepted the coffee that appeared in front of me and told myself to behave like a normal person.

Brynn talked. She always talked at breakfast, loud and cheerful and requiring very little input from anyone else, which was convenient because I was not capable of significant input this morning. I watched the coffee and contributed the minimum necessary and did not look at Evander more than was required.

Except I did look at him. I couldn't stop looking at him. His hands on the pan, the way he moved in a kitchen like he had been doing it his whole life, the line of his jaw when he turned to say something to Brynn. Every time I looked I felt the echo of last night in my chest and I looked away and looked back and looked away again and told myself I was being obvious and needed to stop.

He didn't look at me once.

Not when he set the plates down. Not when he sat across from Brynn and ate and listened to her talk. Not when I said thank you for the food and he nodded in the way that could have been directed at anyone. He moved through the whole breakfast like I was simply another person at the table, like last night had been a thing that happened to someone else entirely, like there was absolutely nothing between us that required acknowledgment or avoidance or any particular management at all.

I didn't know if that made things better or worse. I decided it made things worse.

Brynn was telling him something about a friend in Paris she wanted to visit that afternoon and he was listening and I was looking at my eggs and thinking about absolutely nothing when he set his coffee down and looked across the table.

Not at Brynn.

At me.

"How long are you staying with us, Zella?"