The lounge was shrouded in shadows, with dim light filtering from the lamps casting long silhouettes everywhere. Caspian closed the door on us, and for a moment silence absorbed the sound. Heart pounding, I faced him.
“What you did out there…” his eyes breezed over the last words, and they were fixed towards me through that piercing blue gaze.
“I was trying to help,” I said with chin tilted back defiantly, while my inward nerves whispered against my stomach.
“You could have made things worse,” he said-in-edge, but not mercifully.
“But I didn’t,” I replied, my voice stronger than I felt.
He shook his breath hard, heavy with frustration: “You took a risk.”
“I took a risk because I care,” I shot back, words quick and heated. “And because someone had to.”
And in that instant those words escaped my lips, the air changed everything between us.
“Why do you care?” His tone was soft but the words cut through the tension in the air like a knife.
A very real punch In the gut, because it was: Why do I care? That was because he was much more than the cold, ruthless businessman most thought him to be. I had even seen the man behind that mask who brought my morning coffee, stood up for me when I couldn’t stand up for myself, looked at me like he had never learned to handle me, and would rather not let go.
Towards the end, I whispered, “Because I do,” both soft and steady. “Because I see you, Caspian, the real you. And I know you’re worth fighting for.”
His expression changed, barriers that he always kept so carefully placed faltered for just a moment. He stepped up, then stepped again, before he halted because there wasn’t any distance left between us.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he muttered with a low strain in his voice.
“Yes, I do,” I snapped, my gaze glued to him. “You think you have to do this alone, but you don’t. Let me in, Caspian. Let me help you.”
For a moment, it almost looked like he might. His hand lifted as if to touch me, stopped short, and curled into a fist at his side.
“I can’t,” he said, regretfully low. “I don’t know how.”
“You don’t have to know how,” I said softly. “You just have to try.”
The silence was thick between us with all unspoken words and feelings left unresolved. He stepped toward me as if he heard my call to him and crashed his lips against mine, sucking my breath away.
It was everything I didn’t know I needed; raw and consuming, searing him into my skin with his touch. He held my waist close, drawing me in almost as if he meant for me to escape never.
I neither fought back nor could I.
We finally came up for air, our foreheads pressed together, breaths heavy with exertion, his hands still cradled on my waist, grounding me in a way that I really didn’t understand yet.
“That wasn’t professional,” I stated, although I felt a little shaky; it came laced just with the right touch of jest.
“No,” he said, lips quirking into the faintest of smiles. “It wasn’t.”
Neither of the two of us moved away from each other.
“Caspian,” I whispered.
“What?” he asks, soft but guarded.
“I meant what I said,” I told him, eyes locked. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Something turned within his features, the ice in his eyes warming somehow, becoming more vulnerable. For a split second, it even seemed, as if he might speak, but he shook his head and stepped back, purposely maintaining a serious gap between us.
“This is a mistake,” he said, quiet voice pained.
“Why?” I demanded, stepping forward. “Because you’re scared?”
He didn’t answer, but his gaze said everything.
“You’re not doing this alone,” I said again, a quiver in my voice. “You do not have to be alone.”
“Lily,” he said, voice cracking a little.
“What?” I said because my heart was nearly hurt by the look he gave me as if I were both his savior and his undoing.
“I can’t be anything else,” he said, confessing.
Just for that instant before this, I was speechless. This man was not the Caspian Grey that the world saw; this was a raw and vulnerable man whose mask was shattered. I knew then as I do right now just how much I care about him.
“You don’t have to have all the answers,” I said gently. “You just have to let me in.”
He remained silent, but the softening of his gaze declared that for the first time he was considering it.
The whole night became a haze beyond that. We would return to the party, at which point he would turn back into the cold, untouchable man, but many cracks would show in the armor.
Hour grasped by hour, and still, I didn’t see anything from across the room but stared at him, re-running our earlier conversation in my mind. There was nothing certain here at the end about where we were going, but I already knew for sure that I wasn’t giving up on him.
And judging by the way he looked at me when he thought I was not paying attention, he was not finished with letting me go, either.
Much later that night, after the charity evening had ended and the applause and flashing of cameras had faded into silence, I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed, running my mind over all the happenings. The kiss, his admission, the way he looked at me-not as the cold, unreachable businessman, but as a man slowly unraveling in my presence.
I put my hands through my hair, yanking on the braids as if all of this I sensed would unravel. Why did it have to be that I was so complicated with him? Was this not a business deal? A rational, deliberate choice?
And now, of course, I stood alone in this dark room, my chest constricted and pounding in my ears like some demented high school student.
The reality could no longer be avoided—I was falling in love with Caspian Grey.
It was frightening and exhilarating. He’d warned me from the beginning: no emotions. And yet with each glance, each brush of his hand against mine, each sentence that poured between us seemed to override that edict.
I recalled his words that evening. “I don’t know how to be anything else.” The husk of his voice had resonated in the recesses of me. For all his placidity and fortitude, he was no more than a man who had been broken somewhere along the line, a man who appeared incapable of learning how to let his guard down.
And yet he had kissed me.
I pressed my fingers to my lips, the memory near and real. It hadn’t been a staged kiss or something performed for effect. It had been desperate and hot and wild, and met with desperation on my part.
And then, just as quickly, he’d pulled back behind his walls.
I breathed around me, forcing myself further into the headboard. My emotions were confusion, anger, and something much, much worse: hope.
Why should he be so cruel to make it harder for him? Why can’t he ever reward himself with a moment of letting his guard down?
I tightened my eyes shut, trying to shake out tension. But his face—his broken blue eyes, his burning fingers spread across mine—would be kept at bay only so far.
At the back of my mind, I already had an idea that it was dangerous to fall for Caspian. He was a fire: beautiful, alluring, but deadly. But somehow in my twisted mind, I could not help but be drawn to him even though it was I who would be the one to be burned.
The soft knock at my door interrupted my daydreaming. My heart jumped into my throat, though I knew who it was.
“Lily?” Caspian had spoken gently and inquiringly, in contrast to the commanding tone for which he had hitherto been so well trained.
I was fighting, my own hand trembling over the bedside. I half wished to say get out, mind your own business in my own daydreaming. But half of that half itself already forever lost to unalterable desire could not hold back.
“Come on in,” I invited with nonchalance over the storm raging around in the inner vortex of my own chest.
The door squeaked open, and there he stood, his heavy shoulders standing out against the dim light from the corridor. He’d undone his tie and undone the top button of his shirt, and for the first time in an eternity, he looked. Human.
He walked In, his gaze meeting mine. “I just wanted to check on you,” he said abruptly, his tone gentle with a softness I had not previously observed.
I looked at him with shock at the concession. “I’m fine,” I lied, the bitter flavor left on my lips.
“Really?” He leaned in, one eyebrow raised.
I swallowed the lump of emotion, tension charged between us. “What did you really come here for, Caspian?”
“I don’t know,” he growled savagely. “I just… I couldn’t help but think of you.”
My heart skipped a beat, the earnestness in his voice like a semi-truck to the chest.
“Caspian,” I began, but him, he cut off.
“I’m sorry,” he panted, his voice husky but adamant. “For before. For backing away. I just. I don’t know how to do this, Lily. I don’t know how to be what you need me to be.”
I smoothed the hair at the nape of my ears, charred by the amazement in his tone. “I’m not asking you to be somebody else,” I panted in his face. “I just want you to let me in.”
He regarded me, the look in his eyes being a mixture of lust and fear. And for an instant, I thought that he was going to say something—say something which would rewrite everything.
But he just nodded, his shoulders creaking under the weight of something unspoken. “Goodnight, Lily,” he breathed, and departed.
The door slid quietly shut behind him, and I turned over in bed, my emotions swirling around like a tornado.
Whatever had begun between us, it was a long, long way from being over. And for better or worse, I knew that I could not go away—not now, not ever.