‘Not France?’ he queried, probing for more details.
‘No, my fa—My parents wanted me to go to “the best of schools”,’ she said, adopting her father’s imperious tone. She cast a glance to Loukis, and if he noticed the slip, he was kind enough not to press.
He placed his arm on the table again, but this time face down. She hesitated again, then steeled herself for the impact, knowing what to expect this time. She placed her hand over his, smoothing her way up over his wrist and forearm, her fingers dipping beneath the rolled-up shirtsleeves, all the while braced against the sensations that drenched her.
Questions came and answers went, each time eliciting a touch here, there, an elbow, a little finger hooked around another, a thumb, a hand held, and a palm kissed gently. Loukis had moved his chair next to hers, so that the table no longer lay between them. Small plates of delicious food went ignored as the awareness and knowledge of each other deepened.
‘What three things would you save in a fire?’ Célia finally asked.
‘Annabelle.’
Célia smiled. ‘That’s just one thing,’ she chided.
‘I don’t need anything else.’
His answer struck her more deeply, more viscerally than any other from that night. And suddenly she feared him asking her the same question. Feared that she wouldn’t be able to answer it because she didn’t have anyone to take with her like that. Anyone who was enough. Belongings seemed insipid in comparison to his answer, the items in her apartment only five years old, nothing from before. Nothing from her childhood. Because in the last five years, she realised, she’d made herself an island. New, shiny, determined, but unanchored, untethered.
Loukis seemed not to realise that she hadn’t taken her due, hadn’t touched him in turn, because he pressed on with his next question.
‘Why do you dress the way you do? What are you hiding from?’
His head was bent towards her as if listening to her unspoken response. Everything, she mentally replied, shocking herself. Inexplicably as thoughts of her father’s betrayal, of Marc’s desertion, of the absence of her mother from her present life rose up around her and she felt the hot press of tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.
Loukis reached up a thumb and gently swept away a tear that had escaped. The warmth and comfort of his palm against her cheek, this time so much more familiar, so much more wanted than earlier in the evening. His face was so close, the lips that had pressed into her hand, her wrist to answered questions, tempting her, teasing her, making her want them, making her want him.
Her heart pounded, crying and demanding for what he was so clearly willing to offer.
Breath left her lungs in defeat as she closed the distance between them, giving up the fight, which she had known would only end one way. Her supplication and his dominance.
The moment his lips met hers, her mind stopped. Thoughts were lost beneath the heady indulgent sensations of his mouth across hers, his tongue gently sweeping, asking and gaining entrance.
A need, shocking in its intensity, reared in her breast. More. She wanted more. Her hands rose to either side of his face, needing to touch, to explore. Her fingers threaded through the fine strands of his hair, relishing the softness, at the same time as riding a wave of something inexplainable, something almost euph
oric.
A bright white flash cut through her closed eyes, startling her. Again and again it popped, causing her to rear back in shock.
* * *
Her eyes wide, her mouth thoroughly kissed, Loukis had never seen anything so beautiful, before something like fear covered Célia’s features. Even though he’d known it was coming, he’d still felt the intrusion of the paparazzi’s flashbulb. The photographs he’d assured would be taken, now unwanted and frustrating.
It was then that he realised that his bright idea, the one that would cement their engagement publicly and assuredly, was a mistake. He saw it as Célia would see it. A betrayal. But as his conscience lashed at him, his need to win, his need to secure custody of Annabelle over Meredith rose hard and fast.
He swiped his lower lip with the pad of his thumb, sure that some of her lipstick had transferred from her mouth to his. As he looked down at the red mark on his skin, he wondered just how badly he had wounded her this evening.
He pushed up out of his chair, ignoring the way that Célia stared out into the distance trying to find the invisible photographer who had caught them in such an intimate, private moment.
‘What do we do?’ she asked, her voice trembling in the same way that her body had beneath his.
‘We leave.’
He placed a guiding arm around her and ushered her from the rooftop, back into the dimly lit interior of the busy restaurant. It seemed impossible to him that there had been upwards of one hundred people on the other side of the glass. He guided her through the tables, noticing the way her skin had become cold, goosebumps pebbled her arms, where previously soft warmth had been all he could feel.
As he stopped by the small desk to the right of the entrance, passing over his credit card, the manager looked up. ‘Did you get what you need?’
‘Nai,’ Loukis said, swiftly cutting off anything further the man might give away. He felt, from where his arm was still placed around Célia, her body stiffen.
As he stalked from the restaurant towards the bank of elevators in the hallway, her footsteps slowed, her face transforming from confusion to disgust.