Chapter Twenty-Five
Dorian
I told Esme I’d pick her up at five thirty, but I showed up early, not wanting to rush seeing Cinderella all dressed up for the ball. Truth be told, I’d already seen her in a series of dresses for the event, and none looked as good as the one I’d grabbed for her. Now I’d get to see it in person.
She opened the door shortly after I knocked, and I smirked. She wasn’t ready yet.
“You’re early!” She left the door open for me and ran back into the bathroom to finish dolling herself up.
I hope she didn’t use that foundation shit. Her freckled skin was perfect without it.
After closing the door, I went to sit on her couch and wait for her to finish getting ready.
Not for the first time in the past hour, I started questioning what I was doing here, and what I was doing with her.
She didn’t know everything, none of them did.
I’d underestimated her feelings, thinking she would push me away, but she hadn’t. I could tell she was struggling with the person I was, and what I was planning to do, but she was still holding on for some reason. That was a lie in my head, and I knew it. There was a reason.
Love.
Love ruined lives. I’d seen it many times in my life.
It would most likely ruin her as well. But I was selfish and wasn’t letting her go.
“Okay, I need you to zip me up! And don’t get any ideas…I’m not messing anything up for your cock tonight,” she called out from the bathroom, breaking through my thoughts enough to bring a chuckle from my lips.
I stood and walked toward the room and felt my steps slow when I saw her bare back against the soft fabric. She looked like a goddess, standing in that small bathroom.
Instead of doing what she asked right away, my fingers reached out to touch her skin, moving up her spine and across her shoulders, then caressing her back down to the zipper.
“You could have given Aphrodite a run for her money,” I leaned in and whispered against her ear. Goose bumps rose on her flesh, making me grin. Aphrodite had been beautiful, but her personality dimmed her beauty. Esme was beautiful on the outside and the inside. I shook my head, thinking to when I thought she wasn’t worth a quick fuck.
So much time I’d wasted, when I could have been touching her, feeling her against my skin.
Once she was zipped, she turned to face me, and I frowned.
She looked divine, just as I knew she would. But there was something missing.
Without another word I flashed out of her apartment and appeared in my bedroom at my penthouse. There were three visions where I saw her wearing the necklace I’d bought her. Two of them were fine, but there was one that made me pause in giving it to her. It had a very low percentage of occurring, but even that small amount stopped me for reasons I dared not give thought to.
The memory of Jasmine’s broken body came barreling through my head, and then anger replaced whatever I had started to feel with Esme’s future.
She’d be fine; I had nothing to worry about because I wouldn’t fail this time around. I gripped the box tighter and flashed back into her bathroom, but she wasn’t standing there.
“I’m in here.”
She was in her room, putting on those sparkling shoes when I came around the corner. When she looked up at me, there was no sadness or turmoil in those beautiful eyes. And she didn’t question where I’d gone, which I found odd.
“You needed something else.” I walked over and held the box out to her.
“You’re not going to Pretty Woman me, right?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I gestured for her to open it, which she did gingerly.
“Oh God, Dorian,” she gasped and was shaking her head no.
Without asking for permission to do so, I lightly held the heavy necklace and placed it around her neck, quickly fastening it.
