Page 63 of Don't Be in Love

He was flushed. It was comical. Dorian Blackwood wasembarrassed.

“I don’t remember asking for your opinion but thanks for that. And also, I didn’t plan on coming,” I defended myself.

“Yet here you are.”

“I’m not happy about it either.”

“I’m glad we can agree on something.”

“Me too,” I responded firmly.

The violins plucked fast notes. I inhaled sharply as I was released and pulled back, my spine against his chest. I stared straight ahead, for something, someone to focus on that wasn’t Dorian’s face beside mine.

I caught James’s face in the crowd talking with Mia and Sabrina.

“Did James tell you I was here?” I asked.

“What?” He turned me back around.

“James—is that how you knew where to find me?”

“I didn’t need anyone to tell me how to find you,” he clarified. “I saw you leaning against the balcony. Your back is practically painted in my brain.”

Looking at him was a mistake.

I swallowed the emotions. Or at least I tried to. But my emotions were stubborn. Unwilling to go down. Because one look and I was falling back into our trysts. Into last night’s kiss. Into August’s night. Into every dream that had spoiled my thoughts.

The urge to kiss him was so potent that I had to look to the ceiling.

It’ll passwas the only thing I could tell myself to alleviate the yearning in my gut.

Once the music finished, I was unraveling myself from his grasp and taking quick steps away. His focus on my back was blazing.

21

Don’t Get Jealous Around Her — Dorian

One moment I was fetching James’s mother’s speech and the next I was finding Adelaide Adorno’s body wrapped in another man’s hands and her lips enveloped in his.

There was a mask shielding the top half of her face. It didn’t matter though. I could spot her from a mile away. I could see it in the curve of her jaw and the freckle at the bottom of her back.

Jesus Christ, that dress was low.

She was pressed up against the railing of the balcony. And she was kissing him back.

She was kissing him back.

I couldn’t watch. But I couldn’t stop either. It was making all of the muscles in my back stiffen and trapping my focus on her. On him. On her. On himtouchingher. On herkissinghim. Kissing him the same way she had kissed—

I took strides across the ballroom.

What is she doing?What am I doing? What the bloody hell I am doing?

Well, it looked like I was pulling her off of him and forcing her into the ballroom so that she couldn’t scream at me.

The air from the balcony pushed at my suit jacket. Instinctively, I grabbed her arm and his grasp on her released.For a dazed moment, she followed my footsteps into the center of the ballroom without a word.

Not the original plan but frustration was running the show and there was no going back now.