I awoke to chaos.
The equipoise that had ever danced upon Caspian's precision-tight bubble of existence was shattered, the ruin stark and apparent. TV news scrolled through the suite's living room, crawling tickers aplenty to make me sick.
"Grey Industries CEO At Center Of Controversy: Leaked Records Show Dodgy Business."
I didn't know what the story was—something involving insider trading and backroom politics—but the media spectacle was already in full swing. Photos of Caspian, so calm and serene, flashed on the screen, interspersed with headlines screaming betrayal, corruption, and fraud.
"Turn it off."
His voice cut through the fear building inside me. I hadn't even realized he was standing behind me, lingering by the door in his suit, tie loosely around his neck, his face empty.
I whirled and shut off the TV, the silence suddenly between us only thicker.
"Is it true?" I breathed.
Captive ice-blue eyes met mine, and I was sure for an instant that he'd strike. But again the same unreadable mask I was accustomed to seeing him wear so easily fell into place all too easily.
"It's done," he growled, coming in.
"That doesn't say anything," I told him, steeling myself even as the air in the room vibrated with the strength of him standing there, flattening and compelling in equal degrees.
"It's the one you're getting today," he growled, his voice cutting through sharply enough that I jumped.
I resented the facility he had in being able to do it—make me an intruder where I could have no cause to complain. And I resented, too, the shift in my mind at blaming him for such, so heavily burdened with a thousand things he was not going to tell me.
You can't shut me out like this, Caspian," I continued, trying to keep my voice level. "Not when I'm here to help."
His face relaxed for an instant, so brief I would have imagined it. And he looks away from me, to the bar and he is getting a drink. "This isn't your fight, Lily."
"Isn't it?" I moved closer to him. "Because I am sure the tabloids are not reporting this. 'Caspian Grey and his girlfriend.' That is what they've called me, don't they?"
He stopped, glass halfway to his lips, and when he turned to look at me, his eyes flared like a tempest about to unleash its fury. "Gotta leave?" he snarled, voice coarse and threatening. "Because if this is gonna be too much for you, nobody's gonna prevent you.".
My breath was baited, and I succumbed to it for a moment. I turned around and walked away, washing my hands of the entire thing before I was in over my head. But the thing was, I didn't want to leave. Not even when he made it so very hard.
"I'm not leaving," I whispered, and the admission hung heavier than I had meant.
His gaze caught mine, something passing in their depths—something bare and unadorned. But before it had burned, it was gone, giving me space for the cold detachment that annoyed me so.
"You're playing with fire," he breathed gravely.
"Perhaps I want to be burned," I replied before I was wise.
The first concessions in Caspian's carefully built empire were made later that day.
We drove up to a charity press conference, a planned appearance to deflect the attention that was building around the scandal. Flash after flash of light bulbs burst as we exited the car, the bellowing of reporters running together in a chant-like chorus of accusation.
Caspian's firm grip on the back of my shirt led me through the crowd of reporters and camera crew, his grip not painful but not slack either. I could feel the wariness emanating from him, even as his face did not change.
"Mr. Grey! Do you have any response to the charges leveled against you?"
"Do you deny insider trading?"
"Miss Carter, are you aware of your boyfriend's illicit business transactions?
I was frozen at the question, my heart pounding as cameras turned towards me. I had not anticipated that—not the way they huddled around me like I possessed the solutions they so desperately wanted.
Caspian's grip on my shoulder tightened, a quiet reminder that I was not here alone. And then he did something that caught me off guard—he talked.
"Enough," he said, his flat voice unwavering, cutting through the turmoil like a knife.
The photographers faltered, cameras still snapping but questions at bay.
"I have stood on my record and on my integrity," he continued, his voice itself rock steady but unyielding. "And Lily Carter has nothing to do with it. Leave her alone."
His declaration was a break in the crowd, the words a shock and not of one who stood outside human. And for the first time that day, I dared hope.
In the suite, the silence between us was heavy and suffocating. I had to be grateful that he'd defended me, and yet I wanted to shout at him for the duplicity.
"You didn't have to do that," I finally said, breaking the silence.
"Blow you off?" he asked, low and even as he unsnagged his tie and resocked his glass.
"Whatever," I shrugged, folding my arms across my chest and backing up against the counter. "You could have just blown them off like you always do."
His lips curled back into a grin, at least, if not quite so far as his eyes. "You think I'd let them get you into trouble like this?"
"I suspect you like keeping me at arm's length," I snapped back, my tone more staccato than I had intended. "So why does it matter now?
He said nothing, his eyes fixed on the amber of his glass. When he finally looked at me, his were dark and empty. "Because you don't belong in this world," he whispered. "And I am not going to sit back and watch it destroy you."
I stepped closer to him, my chest pounding with my heartbeat. "Maybe I'm stronger than you think."
He smiled faintly, the atmosphere not a celebratory one. "Or maybe I don't want to game."
A tense atmosphere between us, thick with pent-up tension and anger. And then, before I knew it, I stood one step closer to him, bridging the gap between our bodies.
"Caspian," I breathed, my breath hardly audible.
He attacked me in full strength, his mask of a face but his eyes burning with some feeling I was trying to figure out. "What do you think you're doing, Lily?" he growled, his voice coarse and gristly.
"Trying to catch you," I admitted, my breath catching when his gaze dropped to mine.
"You don't want to catch me," he told me, his voice half warning and half desperation.
"Perhaps I do," I said to him, my lips trembling as I closed the remaining inches between us.
The rest of it occurred too quickly. We were there in one moment, the air between us as heavy as a summer mist, and the next his lips on mine, hungry and insistent.
It wasn't sweet, and It wasn't gentle. It was a blast of all of what we'd been holding in—something other, frustration, need, and it was like we'd snapped at once.
As he pulled away from me, he was panting, his eyes wildly searching mine as though he couldn't understand what had happened. "This doesn't change anything," he said to me, his voice restricted.
We both knew that he was lying.
Because everything was already happening.