Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 111

Chapter 111

CELESTE

“I have to go.” I told Pat, already grabbing my bag.

Pat looked at me in surprise. “Now? We were just getting to the…”

“The CEO invited me, remember? I cannot be late.” I squeezed her arm briefly as I passed.

She called something after me but I was already walking fast toward the exit, telling myself the speed had nothing to do with the fact that my heart was beating slightly faster than normal.

It had everything to do with it.

I pushed through the front doors of Helix Research, stepped out into the evening air and stopped.

The car was parked directly outside the entrance.

I had seen expensive cars before. I had been in Dominic’s cars, bulletproof, tinted, luxurious in the understated way of things that did not need to announce themselves. But this was something else entirely. A Pagani Huayra Roadster, one of perhaps three in the entire country, its body a deep midnight blue that caught the evening light and threw it back in shifting shades of silver. The lines of it were almost architectural, sculpted and precise, and even standing still it looked like it was moving. The kind of car that cost close to a billion dollars and existed in the world in quantities small enough that most people would never see one in their lifetime.

Every single person within eyeline had stopped to look at it.

I swallowed.

Among them, standing just outside the Helix entrance with a folder in one hand and his eyes fixed on the car, was Dr. Kingsley Duke. He must have been heading in as I was heading out. He did not even notice. me. His attention was entirely on the car, the way everyone’s attention was entirely on the car.

I could not understand what Dominic was thinking. His previous cars had been luxury, certainly, but they had been the kind of luxury that blended into a certain type of city backdrop. This was a spectacle. This was the kind of car that made people take out their phones.

As if to confirm that thought, a woman across the street raised her phone.

The back door opened.

Dominic sat inside in an imposing black suit that fit him the way his suits always fit him, like it had been made for this specific version of him on this specific evening. He looked impossibly put together and entirely at ease and so handsome that for a half second I just stood there looking at him like I had forgotten what I was supposed to be doing.

Then I remembered and moved.

1/3

I crossed to the car quickly, got in, and pulled the door shut behind me.

+15 Bonus

The interior closed around me like a room. Cream leather that was warm to the touch, stitched with

something that looked like it had taken someone a very long time to do properly. A center console that was more control panel than dashboard, its displays glowing softly in the dimming light. The whole space smelled of leather and cedar and something else underneath that I recognized as Dominic.

I settled into the seat and became immediately, acutely aware that he was looking at me.

Not at anything, anywhere or anyone else. At me.

He was just looking at me, his expression unreadable in the way his expressions were usually unreadable, and I felt the self-consciousness move through me in a warm wave that started at my chest

and worked its way upward.

I held it for as long as I could.

Then I smiled.

He smiled back. It was the quiet one, the one that did not take over his whole face but meant more than the ones that did.

“You look beautiful,” he murmured, his eyes moving over me slowly. “That dress.”

“Thank you,” I managed. “You look rather devastating yourself.”

“You smell incredible.”

“You always smell like something that should be illegal.”

The corner of his mouth moved. He turned to the driver. “Move.”

The car pulled away from the curb with the silent power of something built at a different standard from ordinary machines. I watched the Helix building recede through the tinted window and caught one last glimpse of Kingsley Duke still standing outside, still staring at the car with his mouth slightly open.

Then Dominic reached across, took my hand and hooked it with his.

I looked down at our intertwined fingers. His hand was warm, his grip easy but certain, and he was not looking at me anymore. He was looking straight ahead with that expression that gave nothing away, like holding my hand in the back of a car was the most natural thing in the world and required no comment.

I looked at our hands for a moment longer.

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