Page 41 of A Diamond Deal
He didn’t stop until he was ready. She’d followed him until he was. Until he’d taken her hand.Kissed it.And he’d let all those below them, clicking their long lenses as they stood on the wide steps, know that she was back.
She washis.
She wasn’t.
No one was watching them now.
There was no one here to fool.
‘Until we’re back outside,’ she said tightly. Slowly,carefully, Poppy reached for him in the darkness. She pressed her fingers into his wrist, her fingers barely enclosing its thickness. She lifted it. Moved it. Dropped it into his own lap. ‘You can stop touching me.’
Her body rebelled. Because already her body missed it. The warmth of his fingers. The promise of them.
She curled her nails into her palms.
A piercing voice filled the auditorium. An operatic shrill that dug beneath her skin. The stage burst to life with figures dressed in fire reds and sunset oranges. And on their backs, broken black wings.
The full orchestra positioned beneath the stage flared to life, with every twist and turn of the ballet dancers on stage.
She’d been told tonight’s performance would be different. A first for the Palais Garnier. A performance written and directed by an unknown who was a fast-rising star.Their début.It was a mash-up of classical allegro movements serenaded by the hum only a full orchestra could create with the modernist twist of hip-hop speech accompanied by an opera singer’s voice.
It should have been too busy. Too many sounds. Too many different styles…
But it did something inside her.
It…moved her.But however much the colourful display on the stage held her eyes, the uniqueness of what she was seeing demanding it hold her attention…
Hispresence never faded.
He only watchedher.
And his stare, it was too intense.Too intimate.
‘You’re missing it,’ she husked.
‘Am I?’
He didn’t touch her again, but his eyes, they did. They swept over her. Made her aware of every inch of flesh exposed to the dip of his gaze. His eyes travelled down her throat, to her chest, rising too slowly.
Her traitorous body shivered.
‘You’re still tense,’ he stated.
She didn’t respond. Tension was threaded in her every muscle. It was bone-deep.
‘I can help,’ he offered.
‘Help?’ she mocked.
‘I can give you what you need.’
Her stomach tensed. ‘What I need?’
‘You need to be touched,agape.’ His voice was silk, but it scraped against her skin, waking every fine hair, and called them to stand.
‘And I’m offering to give you release from the tension holding your shoulders too high, and your back too stiff. A reprieve from—’ he swallowed heavily, and she almost felt it, the drag of his Adam’s apple, the tension in his corded neck ‘—what is to come when the lights go back on.’
‘No,’ she said, because suddenly the darkness felt too tempting—too inviting.‘No, thank you.’
