Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 9

Chapter 009

Chapter 009

CELESTE

My legs felt like lead.

I made myself walk. One foot, then the other, across a floor that had gone silent and a spotlight that would not let go of me. The whole room watched. I had never been looked at by this many people in my life and the weight of it pressed on my chest like a hand.

Do not fall, I told myself. Whatever you do, do not fall before you reach him.

I reached the foot of the stage.

Dominic put out his hand.

I looked at it. And then I put mine in it and let him draw me up the steps, like he had done it a hundred times in his head before he did it here.

The applause started ringing when I climbed the podium, a hollow sound coming from somewhere far away. My hands found the edges and gripped. The wood was cold under my palms. The red dress, bare at the shoulders, the neckline dipping just enough to be a dare, the slit running up my thigh almost to my hip, felt like a costume I just finally understood.

Dominic stood beside me.

Dominic. The chairman of the largest company in the country.

My lab. My small, underfunded, overlooked lab. He had chosen it. Five billion dollars. And I had found out the same way the room had, with the spotlights blinding me and hundreds of faces turned up at the two of us.

I was still trying to make my mind catch up to my body when a voice cut up out of the crowd.

“Celeste?”

I knew that voice the way you know a sound you have stopped wanting to hear. I found him in the crowd. He had finally seen me. His face had gone through three expressions in two seconds and landed on

none of them.

“Celeste.”

Julian. Confusion and something darker fighting in his eyes. He started pushing toward the stage, through the clusters of suits and glittering gowns.

He did not get far.

Bodies moved out of the dark at the edges of the platform. Men in black who had clearly been standing there the whole time, waiting to be needed. They stepped into Julian’s path without hurry and without apology, and the message was plain. No one came up here who was not called. And Julian had not been called.

I watched my husband stopped by a wall of shoulders, his mouth still shaping my name

Then a hand closed around mine. Warm. Sure, Familiar in a way it had no right to be after only a handfu of hours of secrecy.

I turned. Dominic’s eyes were locked on me. He did not say a word. He turned and he walked, and he took me with him, off the back of the stage, away from the lights, and my heart went so fast I could feed in in my throat. The adrenaline came up under everything else and made the room blur

I kept my eyes on him. The back of his head. The line of his shoulders in that black suit. The red tie. The applause faded into a murmur and I did not hear it. I heard only the blood in my ears and the click of my heels as he led me past the curtains, down a hallway I had not noticed,

I did not look back at Julian.

People stared. Their faces blurred past. But his grip did not loosen.

He stopped at a plain black door at the end of the hall. He pressed his thumb to a panel. It clicked open.

He pulled me inside and locked it behind us.

The walls were glass.

All of them. Floor to ceiling. I could see the whole party out there, the lights, the moving bodies, a waiter with a tray, and somewhere in it the two people who had spent six months making a fool of me.

I pulled back on instinct.

“The glass,” I said.

“Is one way.” He said it for me, finishing the thought before I could finish the fear. “Translucent from the outside. My private room. I can see all of them. None of them can see us.”

I stood there in the middle of it with the party laid out around me like an aquarium and I looked at him.

“You’re the chairman of Veil Holdings,” I whispered. “The chairman. You’re him.”

He raised a finger and pressed it to my lips. His skin was warm. I caught his cologne, the one that had haunted me all night.

“Pleasure now,” he said softly. “Words later.”

He leaned in. I felt his breath on my lips and my eyes fluttered shut. But he stopped.

“Too bad,” he murmured. “I can’t afford to ruin your lipstick.”

Before I could answer, before the disappointment could even finish lancing through me, his mouth was on my neck.

I gasped His lips were hot against the skin below my jaw and my knees went weak. His hand let go of mine and slid around my waist, pulling me into him. I could feel how hard he was through his trousers, pressing against my hip.

“Dominic,” I breathed, but it came out a moan.

“Shh,” he whispered against my throat, his teeth grazing me. “Let me take care of you, Celeste.”

His mouth moved lower, hot open-mouthed kisses down my neck. I tilted my head back and gave him more and he took it. His tongue traced my collarbone and I shivered, my hands coming up to grip his shoulders.

He pulled at the neckline of my dress and the fabric slid down. My breasts were bare to the cool air and I saw his eyes darken.

“Beautiful,” he said, his voice rough. “Goddamn beautiful. I could never get enough of these.”

e bent his head and took my nipple into his mouth.

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