Page 90 of Shades of Grey & Gold

Cal watches me eat with the expression of someone absolutely giddy to share one of his favorite things.

“Good?”

“If you ever lock me up in the penthouse again and this restaurant stops being an option,” I point my fork in his direction, “I will need a transition plan.”

He laughs. The real one, the one that comes from somewhere behind his careful composure and lands in the air around us, warm and bright.

“I’ll make sure the transition is managed,” he laughs again. “But we can come here whenever you want. It’s safe.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Max

Calstopsmeinthe elevator on the way back up to the penthouse after dinner.

Not dramatically. Just—his hand finds mine, and he keeps it. When the elevator stops at our floor, the doors open. Neither of us moves for a moment.

“Thank you,” he says with reverence, cupping my cheek with his hand as he turns me towards him. “For tonight.”

“You’re thanking me for letting you take me to dinner?”

“For putting up with—” he starts.

“Cal.” Ipull away from his hand and move myself between the elevator doors, slowly backing into the penthouse. “Stop apologizing for what your life is. You told me on the plane what I was walking into; you told me you were a morally grey book daddy, Calogero Renzetti—”

He wears a mock-serious expression and points a finger at me. “I did no such thing.”

I beam as he takes a step towards me and I take another back.

“This is me. This is what I’m offering. I’m not putting up with anything,” I say pointedly, trying to aim the words wherever he might believe them the most. “I’m choosing it. Choosing you.”

Cal’s expression darkens and before I can blink, he takes two large strides backing me up against the foyer wall before I can move.

He leans his forearms on either side of my head, and gazes down into my eyes, close enough that I can smell leather and cedar and that metallic, burnt salt scent that always hangs around him.

“I’ve loved you,” he replies, and his voice is different—not the courtroom voice, not the boss voice, not even the careful private voice he uses when it’s just us. Something underneath all of those. Something that sounds like the library at midnight and snow falling outside and years of a story finally arriving at its own beginning. “For a very long time, Max. I didn’t say it before because the timing was never—” He stops; starts again, “I’m saying it now. Right here, because I refuse to wait for the right moment. I’ll never wait again to take a chance on you, with you. I’m done waiting for the right moment.”

The city is thirty-one floors below us and the river is out there somewhere. I can hear my own heartbeat. Heat floods my veins, and I think this feels like a high I might be chasing for the rest of forever.

“I love you, too,” I whisper, my eyes flicking down to his lips briefly. “I think I always have, but I just needed to catch up.”

One hand finds my jaw, and he caresses me there with his thumb. My eyes flutter shut, and I lean my head into his hand.

His other hand trails down one arm finding both of my hands that are pressed side by side into his chest.

He wraps his rough fingers around both of my hands, one of his dwarfing both of mine.

Slowly—because I open my eyes to watch it happen in slow motion, tracking his hand—he lifts both of my hands above my head, pinning them there. Electricity zings from my toes into my cheeks that are already flushed.

Then he kisses me—not the careful, deliberate kisses he’s been giving me in the mornings; not the first kiss on the balcony with the city sprawled below us; not even the searing kisses on the desk. This is something different. Something that feels like relief and arrival simultaneously.

Like a door finally opening from both sides at once.

Somewhere behind him, the elevator dings. The doors close. But he keeps me there.

I melt into his kiss and he deepens it, his tongue sliding across my lips. His hips press into mine and my face flushes because he’s already hard and I know if he reached under this dress, he’d find me wet, too.

But he doesn’t lift my dress. He holds my hands above my head gently as he says everything with his mouth. On my lips. Against my neck. His teeth grazing the shell of my ear. His tongue burning a path down the exposed skin near my collarbone.