The interaction had lasted less than a minute, but that was enough to make me feel like I was coated in a layer of grime I could never scrub off.
“What’s wrong?” Christian picked up on my discomfort the instant I returned to his side.
He’d had his back turned, so he hadn’t seen what happened. The man he’d been talking to had also wandered off, leaving us alone.
“Nothing.” I shifted beneath his skeptical gaze before I admitted, “Someone groped me on my way back from the restroom.”
Christian stilled.
“Who?” His tone was calm, almost pleasant, but it contained something that evoked an arctic chill beneath my skin.
My body betrayed the small voice warning me not to tell him.
I instinctively flicked my eyes toward the bar, where the man who’d groped me was hitting on an uninterested-looking woman.
Christian followed my gaze.
“I see.” His inflection didn’t change, but foreboding slithered down my spine like the cool, scaly skin of a snake.
Some people burned hot when they were angry, but Christian ran cold. The quieter he got, the more people needed to worry.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said anxiously. I didn’t want him doing anything that might get him into trouble or that he might regret later. “It was only a passing grab. Not worth making a scene over.”
“I won’t make a scene.” Christian set his empty champagne glass on a nearby table, his face unreadable. “In fact, I’m done here. Are you ready to leave?”
I nodded and breathed a silent sigh of relief. Thank God.
Between the mind-numbing conversations and the jerk who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, I was ready to put the night behind me.
Still, when we exited the building and walked to Christian’s car, I couldn’t shake the sense that whoever had raised my inner alarms earlier hadn’t been the man who groped me, but someone else entirely.