A man has taken up a conversation with Malcolm on one side, while a woman is completely telling me the story of her marriage to the man sitting beside her. She’s at the part about how the ex-wife and her actually became good friends, when Malcolm whispers, “Let’s get away for a bit, Rachel.” He looks at me as though it’s not even a question. “If I can borrow her for a bit, Julie,” he apologizes.
I’m aware of us drawing a few glances when we stand, his friends raising their eyebrows as he takes me by the arm and helps me to my feet.
He puts his hand on the small of my back and I feel it rush through me until I feel it in the tips of my breasts, between my toes, as we head out of the room to a set of elevators.
I notice that a couple of groups of young ladies in the room pause what they’re doing to watch us head to the elevators. They clearly don’t like him leaving with me.
“Your girlfriends weren’t too happy about you stealing away with me.”
His lips curve in amusement. “They’re not my girlfriends.”
“So what do you call all those girls who strip for you and cater to your whims for a day or two . . . or four?”
He stares at me, laughing, his smile like a bolt of light. “They’re just girls.”
We reach the top of the building, and he leads me out onto the roof terrace. “Come look at this.”
I turn with him and head to the very edge of the building’s roof, by the railing, with a breathtaking view of the lake. A sliver of moonlight dances in the middle of the water tonight. As he looks at it, I watch him in my peripheral. I have a thousand pictures of him but none like this. Pensive. Raw. The face I see right now isn’t for any camera, it’s for nobody to see.
“Won’t your friends miss you downstairs?” I ask, my voice whispery.
“They know I’m a busy man. They also know I enjoy my privacy when I feel like being private.” He studies me with the moonlight gleaming in his eyes. “I have a date with that blue dress of yours.”
“No you don’t.” But my stomach dips in excited contradiction. “I have no intention of letting it get acquainted with your tuxedo.”
“Yes, you do.”
He takes my hand, his warm fingers closing around mine. “I feel like being private right now.”
There’s a swooping pull in my insides as he reels me closer.
He’s the first to move, his hand lifting only a fraction to rest on my face as he curls me in his arm so we both face the lake.
I hadn’t ever grown accustomed to being held like this, the few months we were together. I stand here and just absorb the feeling of being close to someone who’s so much bigger and harder than I am.
We stay like that. The very air over the water seems electrified. He runs his hand through my hair and the sensation is so sweet and so intoxicating, I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
He obviously knows he affects me. But he looks affected too, his body stone-like and buzzing with tension. “I wanted to show you this. You see that lake?”
The wind brings his scent toward me and I swallow and almost taste it.
“I don’t ever want to leave Chicago simply because I love being near that lake. My mother used to take me out there—the Pearl was her yacht,” he says. “She’d never let me get in the water. After I was sick, she became paranoid. So I had to test my limits in private.”
“She took you out there just to look at what you couldn’t touch?” He shrugs. “And now you test your limits all the time.”
“I do. Sometimes to feel immortal, and sometimes to remind myself that I’m not.”
His eyes are mesmerizing right now.
“She was a good mother?”
“She was a good mother; I was a bad kid.” He smirks.
“No,” I say, instantly.
He smiles.
God, my stomach moves every time he smiles at me.
“I’m telling you, Rachel.”
“No. I don’t believe you were a bad boy.”
He laughs. “I’m still a bad boy, only I’m a man, with the ambitions of a man. The desires of a man.”
As he investigates my reaction with a quiet but penetrating look at my face, I remember his father. The things I’ve seen and read online. In every video of them together I’ve seen, Saint is chill and controlled, admirably diplomatic even when the father is aggressive and full of venom. If Saint had been a “good” boy, though, he’d never have become who he is. His father would have kept his “good” boy under control, but instead, he became Malcolm Saint, and now the shadow Saint casts is so much grander than his father’s ever was.
“You know,” I hear myself offer, my voice showing my admiration for him, “my mother worked too much. Day and night. Maybe that’s why my imagination flourished, it was sometimes the only company I had. We didn’t really get to spend a lot of time together. Which makes me always want to give back, but it never seems like I can make it up to her.”
“I know what you mean. I can never say goodbye to mine.”
I’ve never been more aware of him as a human being.
Malcolm stands with his legs spread apart, staring out at the city, his profile mysterious and unreadable. I can tell by the sound of his deep breath he’s trying to remain unaffected. By the conversation. Maybe by me. But when I brush my body against his and he looks at me, his eyes turn to fire.
“Come home tonight, with me.”
One second I’m opening my mouth, trying to come up with an explanation why maybe we should take it slow, the next he brushes his mouth to mine.
“What are you doing?” I laugh nervously. “I’m going to end up with no lipstick at all.”
My skin breaks out in goose bumps when his reply is merely a curve of his lips. “Tell me you want to talk about Interface,” he whispers in my ear. That used to be our code for kissing . . . making out. “Tell me you left something at my place.” He rubs his nose against my ear. “Tell me you want me tonight.”
“I . . . I want to talk about Interface,” I say, not able to hold back a small laugh.
He strokes a finger up my arm, watching me. “My goal is complete domination of the market . . .” he murmurs as he lowers his dark head, his lips soft and warm as they press on my throat. “Elimination of all competition . . .”
He ducks his head and I feel his mouth brushing, almost like air, over the tip of one breast. I can’t breathe.