“Right,” she said briskly, sitting much too straight on the cushion next to his. “I could do with lessgazing, if you don’t mind. It’s not really productive.”
That curve in his mouth deepened, a lot like he wastastingthis moment—another unnecessary thought. “I have certainly never been accused of being productive.”
She pulled out her phone, opened the screen, and handed it over to him when she pulled up the phone pad. “Call yourself,” she ordered him.
Brusquely.
“I live to serve,” he replied merrily, though she could hear that sardonic undertone.
She decided she didn’t care about his undertones. Just as long as he did what was necessary. For a moment, she wasn’t sure that he would—
But after a pause, Giaco took the phone from her. And he also let their fingers brush as he did it. Maybe they simply brushed against each other because they were close. She wasn’t sure she should ascribe that much intention to the things he did, no matter what she thought she saw when she was this close to him.
Either way, she felt the spark of that touch race through her body. It was alarming.
It felt a great deal like the way she’d had narcotics explained to her. A wild burst of euphoria followed by heat.
It took everything she had not to jerk back as if she’d received an electric shock. When she was pretty certain she had.
He poked in a number, then hit the call button, and they both sat there as if waiting for another mobile to ring. But there was no sound.
Ivy felt as if she was holding her breath. That was likely because she was, in fact, holding it.
“I think we both know that I don’t have any pockets,” Giaco said after his factory-set voicemail message could be heard in the tinny distance of her mobile. He waved lazily at his bare torso and his boxers, and Ivy did her best not to stare at the ridges in that absurdly perfect abdomen of his, golden and gorgeous. “But as we can both hear, it certainly rang somewhere in this castle. Assuming I left the ringer on.”
She had the strangest urge to ask him about his phone habits, and why he left his mobile lying about when surely he must have acolytes forever trailing around behind him in search of intimacies, but that all seemed…like the sort of conversation a person would have with someone they actually wanted to get to know.
Ivy already knew all she needed to about Giaco Tavian.
“Fantastic,” she managed to say in place of any pointless questions. And she did feel that her throat was a little too dry for this moment of pure business and self-interest—on both sides, as far she could tell. Maybe it was that her tongue wasn’t working the way it should. She did not care to examine why that was. “I’ll text you my email. I’ll look forward to your response.”
But Giaco didn’t hand her back her mobile. Instead, he swiped through to something else and when she frowned at him, he leaned in closer.
As he no doubt meant it to do, his suddenly beingright theregot her attention. Completely. Ivy almost flinched away from him, but that would be telling and she did not wish totellhim anything she didn’t have to. It took everything she had to stay still as he came closer, and then closer still. He lifted his head from his hand and let that hand move in a dreamy sort of arc until he was…touching her.
Not a brush of hands this time. Giaco was actuallytouchingher.
She froze the way she had at that window. And this time there was no pretending she couldn’t feel that inside, she burned bright.
He traced the outer edge of her ear with a fingertip and then slid his hand to hold the nape of her neck in his palm. She felt her lips part of their own accord, which she was sure she would be horrified by later, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it now.
Giaco leaned closer still. And then she heard the shutter sound of the camera on her mobile, a sound she often wondered if the youths these days even recognized. Since it had no relation to any machine they were familiar with.
But a random thought like that was her trying to put distance between herself and Giaco when there was precious little of it physically.
She should object. She should leap away. It wasn’t as if he was holding her still.Shewas the one doing that.
But on the other hand, she felt as if she was wrapped up in that hand of his exactly the same way she’d imagined earlier. She couldn’t breathe. His hand on her nape seemed to be directly connected to parts of her body she’d never spent any time thinking about too much, aside from their basic functions.
Ivy knew how to dress for her figure, but she couldn’t think of the last time—or any time—that she’d ever felt the curves of her own breasts as if they were plugged in to some kind of wildfire current. She didn’t understand how the faintest motion of his fingers against the tender skin beneath her ponytail could seem to flow down from that single point of contact to pool between her legs. Just as she didn’t understand how she could feel golden and molten at once. Or how she could find herself captured completely by the look in his eyes.
Eyes that were much closer to her now.All of himwas closer than he’d ever been to her before.
His gaze dropped to her mouth and seemed to hold there. And all of that molten gold inside her seemed to spin into something hotter, thicker—
But all Giaco did was sit back. Then he looked away, though he didn’t move his hand, and she had to work not to give in to that trembling sensation she could feel deep inside her as he flipped through the photos that he’d taken. He looked back at her, and tossed the mobile onto the cushion between them.
“It looks like chemistry to me,” he said. “Thank goodness. I hope you’re ready for your tabloid debut, little saint.”
