Chapter 17

I blinked, realizing he hadn’t made room for any other option, and was about to beg off when a shadow fell over the both of us and I gazed up to find Elijah standing with his hands in his pocket and a tic in his jaw.

“None,” he answered smoothly for me. “Aurora is on a very tight schedule.”

Vincent’s expression went from warm, to nonplussed, and then cold in an instant. He fixed on a thin smile and stood to his feet, holding out a hand.

“Wilder,” he said, “I didn’t even notice you.”

Elijah looked from his face to the proffered hand but made no move to take it, and after a few moments of tense inaction Vincent let the limb drop uselessly to his side. His smile had turned strained, and I stood shakily to my feet so that all three of us were standing.

“Aurora and I met up earlier, before I got called up,” Vincent explained, gesturing towards me in one easy motion. “I was just asking her to lunch. Didn’t know the two of you came together, on a first name basis even.” A pause. “You could join us, Wilder. If that’s something you’re up for.”

Elijah did not answer. Instead, he cast a dismissive glance down his wristwatch before sending me an indecipherable glance.

“Come,” he said briskly, “we’re running late.”

With that he turned on his heels and began to stride away, leaving me rooted to the spot, red-faced from secondhand embarrassment at watching how casually he’d undermined Vincent. Even to a stranger like me it was as clear as daylight that these two had a long running history of bad blood between them, but Elijah hadn’t even made an effort at civility.

I considered giving an apology on his behalf, but one look at Vincent’s face, pale with rage, made me think better of it and I said nothing. I hated confrontations and it definitely wasn’t my place to try poking into whatever they had going between them, so with a muttered goodbye I scrambled after Elijah.

•

Five minutes of pin drop silence passed before Elijah spoke his first real words of the afternoon to me.

“I’ll talk to someone” he said, looking out his side of the window as our BMW crawled at a leisure pace through the paved roads of Paris. “Have them move you to a different seat. One closer to me, perhaps.”

I cast him a glance, but he refused to meet my eyes and after a moment I let out a tired sigh.

“You’re the boss, right?” I asked, and something in my voice must have been enough to drag his attention away from the view his window offered as he peered over at me, assessing.

“I don’t want to see you around him, Aurora.”

He spoke softly, but the threat in his words was evident and after a moment I scoffed.

“So what happens if he walks up to me and strikes up a conversation?” I asked, throwing my hands up in the air in surrender. “I run for dear life?”

“Preferably, yes,” Elijah answered without missing a beat.

I stared wide-eyed at him, as slowly it filtered into my consciousness that he meant every word of what he’d said.

“And if I don’t?” I pressed, pushed on by the same insatiable curiosity that killed the cat.

Good thing I wasn’t a fucking cat, then.

“You don’t want to know,” Elijah said cryptically, staring at me for a second longer before dismissively looking away.

Two things crossed my mind in that moment—the first: An impossible thought that he might be jealous and probably didn’t even realize it. The second, how he had absolutely no right to dictate who I could and could not see. His control over my life remained restricted to work-related affairs, and I would not put up with his sudden possessive boyfriend act even if it came from a place of ignorance.

“With all due respect, sir,” I started, letting the ice creep into my voice. “I don’t think I appreciate that you think your authority extends so far.”

“Duly noted,” he answered distractedly, pulling his phone from an inner pocket of his suit.

In other words: I don’t care.

I shook my head disbelievingly, half disgusted with how even now when he was being a chauvinistic pig I still found him so heartbreakingly sexy. We were seated barely a hairsbreadth away from each other with hardly any space to spare, a space that contracted painfully as pinpricks of electricity started up beneath my skin as I noticed for the first time our proximity from each other.

I wanted—no needed—to get away from him.

Pushing on a button on the panel beside me, the glass partition between our side and the driver’s lowered and I leaned forward.

“Stop the car,” I said, noticing how high-pitched, how panicked I sounded.

Almost immediately, the pace started to slow until Elijah leaned forward to counteract my request, making me swallow.

He reached over to push on the button I had and slowly the glass partition crept up until a firm wall of translucent glass demarcated the two sides of the car, then he looked at me and his brows furrowed slightly.

“You’re trembling,” he observed, and I realized that he was correct.

I was trembling, and my heart had begun to race—but no tingling sensation or nausea, or even chest pain accompanied these symptoms, which baffled me for a moment as I’d been in lesser situations that triggered a panic attack. Then it dawned on me that what I felt had nothing to do with fear, or even panic. That it was simpler, really. That I was angry.

“You have no right,” I repeated through clenched teeth. “Absolutely none, to tell me who I can and cannot see. You have no right to… to control me.”

Elijah considered me for a lengthy moment that was interrupted only by the sounds of our (well, my) heavy breathing; one second we were seating on opposite ends of the car, and in the next I was straddling his lap as we kissed, swept up in a sudden haze of lust that only escalated violently.

A far-off part of my subconscious screamed, fainting off in horror, but all thoughts of boundaries and impropriety fled as soon as Elijah deepened our kiss, taking hold of my ass as I settled down on him and giving it a firm, almost painful squeeze, which elicited a gasp of surprise from me.

He broke the kiss, pulling back to help me out of my blazer, which I relieved myself of easily enough, and my head thumped dully against the roof of the car as I helped him out of his. Together, our jackets pooled uselessly around us, and I unbuttoned his vest, diving back into him and not giving a single flying fuck if the people outside noticed us through the slightly tinted car windows.

Elijah let out a pained sounding groan when I lowered my pelvis down on his, positioning my hands on either side of his head to steady myself, and he pulled away again to place feather-soft, almost reverent kisses on my exposed neck and collarbones while his hands ran over my ass, my thighs, my lower back, as we ground on each other even through the barriers our clothes presented.

In that moment I wanted him to a point of insanity, wanted him to a point that presented with the option, I would’ve crawled inside his heart to live in it if he let me.

I don’t know where the bizarre thought came from, but with every kiss and muffled groan, with how one of his palms came to rest at the base of my neck and how the other slipped beneath my shirt to dance over naked skin—Elijah drew closer to tossing me like a rag doll into a ring with an animal hunger that would only tear me to shreds.

My desire was relentless, and I shifted, threading my fingers in through his hair, pulling on it in a way that I hoped would convey to him the extent of his effect on me.

Without warning he shoved me away brutally and I yelped, landing in a limp heap in my side of the car.

I looked up to see that for the first time in as long as I’d known him, Elijah’s face was stripped clear of every mask, and looking up at him breathing raggedly, I saw there was an almost crazed light in his eyes. My expression mirrored his, of that I was sure, and slowly the reality of what we’d just done filtered into my consciousness and I froze, mouth falling open in horror as a wad of bile settled in my throat, making me nauseous.

I acted without thinking, pressing the button so the glass partition lowered—and to his credit the chauffer did not even throw a glance at us through the rear-view mirror though I was sure he’d caught every dirty little detail.

“Stop the car,” I said, grabbing my jacket, and when he didn’t reply I repeated myself, agitated. “Stop this god damned vehicle or I swear I’ll jump out of it!”

A beat passed where I thought Elijah would counteract me, and I shot him a look to let him see how unhinged I felt in that moment. To let him know I wasn’t even sure that I would not jump out of the car if he didn’t stop it.

He held my gaze for a second longer, and then parroted my words. Immediately the car came to a halt and with jerky movements I let myself out, squinting under the harsh glare of midafternoon sunlight.

I had no idea of my destination, nothing beyond how I just wanted to be away from him as I slammed the door behind me and began to march determinedly forward. Within moments Elijah’s hands had wrapped around my arm and I wrenched myself savagely away from him, not caring about how I looked in my rumpled blazer, how he looked in his untucked shirt with lipstick stains over his face.

When it was clear that he’d gotten the message that I wanted him nowhere around me, I whirled around, continuing blindly forward.

This time he did not follow.