Perhaps he was being a little sentimental, which was surprising, for I’d never thought of Kai as the sentimental type, but there was also something very earnest about the way he spoke about this place. To see the Inside through his eyes was like observing the world through a fuzzy, sepia-hued camera lens, where the veneer of clarity was wiped away, leaving only the softer, richer underlayer of it all.
“No, it’s nice to see this side of you,” I said, bending to reclaim my glass of wine. “At the office you’re always so…”
He glanced at me, intrigued. “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” I exhaled.
Kai stepped in the space in front of me, his free hand reaching out to grab the railing next to my waist, not really caging me in, but as though he wanted to. As though he were resisting the urge to do it.
“No, I want to know,” he insisted, daring me almost.
I gave him a small, self-effacing smile. “And you always get what you want, right?”
“Ineverget what I want,” he argued.
“Yeah, I have a hard time believing that, Kai,” I said.
Just then, the wind blew my hair over my face, and he transferred his cigarette from his right hand to his left so he could help me tuck the flying strands behind my ears. A kind of aching sensation braced me at his touch, a feeling like struggling to maintain control over my body. His fingers were warm and lingering, but his eyes betrayed nothing as he asked, “And why exactly do you think that?”
I had no idea what kind of expression I was making, only that, unlike his, it was soft and revealing. “Because,” I said, “you’re you. You’re… I don’t know. Perfect.”
To my surprise, he laughed, the sound rich and strangely soothing. “Perfect? Oh Anya, believe me, I’m far from perfect. In fact, I’ve been consistently imperfect my entire life.”
“Well,” I hummed, holding back a laugh of my own, “I do like consistency.”
With the cigarette hanging between his lips, he squinted at me. Pleased. Triumphant. “Did you just admit that you like something about me?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Maybe,” he echoed.
He stirred closer, or perhaps we both did, our breaths mingling in a white fog between us, his eyes on mine, then my eyes on his lips, contemplating the tantalizing possibility of them. My mind was filled with images of him kissing me, of him pulling me to his body with one arm and dropping the cigarette so he could thread his fingers through my hair. His beautiful, well-defined hands I thought of, and shivered in my coat.
I could not remember the last time I’d noticed a man’s hands, the last time I felt attraction or showed interest in anything other than my own selfish existence. I wasn’t sure what that said about the way Kai was making me feel, only that it was a lot like riding a bicycle at full speed with no need to pedal, just to realize you were racing downhill, accelerating so fast it was no longer possible to stop. Easy but dangerous.
“Hey, Kai?”
“Yes, Anya.”
“How come we’ve never done this before?”
“Because you’ve never wanted to do this before.”
Dryly, with arched brows and a complacent little smile, I asked, “And since when do you read minds?”
Kai cast his eyes skyward, feigning indignation, which he always did so gorgeously well. “I do not read minds, Anya. You just happen to look intimidatingly content being by yourself. At the office and at events. And even when I catch you outside of work, you’re always on your own. Reading, doing your thing, perfectly happy. Above us all, somehow. I guess I was waiting for you to come to me.”
I felt myself wince, my smile dropping. “Is this a polite way of calling me unapproachable?”
“No, not unapproachable,” he amended. “Just… solitary, perhaps.”
“So that’s how you see me. Cold and solitary.”
He raised the cigarette to his mouth again, his crooked smile parting, the flash of his tongue passing over his teeth, all so sensual somehow. “Again, I never said cold.”
“It’s okay if you think that. People have said it to me before.”
Something shifted in his gaze, a line slowly forming between his brows. “Who said that?”
