Page 5 of The Aether

A slight frown tugged at Alastair’s dark-blond brows, and with an elegance not usually reserved for men, he rose to his feet and set his glass on the table.

“Miss Stephens, I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced, and however rude it seems, I’m afraid I don’t have time to correct that unfortunate oversight. I must return home at once.” After bowing his head in acknowledgment of her, he cast a wry smile at Damian, then teleported away in a shower of golden light.

And then she was alone with the man who sent her heart into overdrive from their first meeting.

What had she done?

“Why don’t you have a seat and tell me what the problem is, Miss Stephens?” Damian suggested with a wave of his hand toward a leather sofa on the far side of the room.

“This was a mistake,” she blurted. “I… I… This was definitely a mistake.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, hmm? Now, tell me why you’re distraught.”

“Distraught?” She touched a hand to her cheek, and the dampness reminded her that she’d been crying as she fled the Drakes’ maze. “Oh.”

“Are you quite all right, my dear?”

He sounded like a kindly grandfather. Someone, somewhere, had told her he was close to two hundred years old. Yet he appeared no older than her thirty years, and hands down, he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen. His features were perfectly symmetrical, and his firm jaw held not an ounce of softness. Black hair fell over one of his perfectly groomed brows in a cavalier style. Penetrating almond-shaped eyes, obsidian in color with silver slivers, seemed to see to the depths of her soul. Knowing, they called eyes like his. And they were. All knowing.

“Yes,” she said on a breathy exhale, her attention caught by the V of his white button-down dress shirt and the exposed skin of his throat.

“Why are you here, Vivian?”

Caught by the smooth cadence of his voice, she glanced up, meeting his mesmerizing gaze. How could he produce a sound so soothing and seductive at the same time?

“You.”

The lightly tanned skin at the corner of his exquisite, dark-as-sin eyes crinkled, the only sign of his forming amusement. Had she glimpsed a brief flare of satisfaction?

She was such a ninny.

Gathering her courage, she lifted her chin and asked, “When we met by the garden… Did you, um,feelanything?”

His brows shot up, and for an unguarded second, his expression showed she’d surprised him. Her stomach dropped.

He hadn’t experienced the same connection.

Self-conscious and convinced she’d imagined everything, she jumped up and rushed for the door. “Never mind. I’ve got… to go… a thing… to do.”

Stop babbling, Viv!

“Wait.”

His commanding tone halted her in her tracks, but she didn’t dare turn around. Attuned to his every movement, Vivian felt him close in behind her. Her breathing bordered on panicked, and every inhale or exhale resembled a racehorse crossing a finish line, the sound harsh to her ears, competing only with her pounding pulse.

Damian hadn’t touched her, but his encompassing presence surrounded and pressed into her.

“I did,” he said in a low, sinful voice that triggered the fine hair on her neck to lift.

“Oh, thank the Goddess!” Shoulders dropping in relief, she faced him. “I, uh, broke it off with Sebastian.”

His grin set off a thousand butterflies in her belly.

“Excellent,” Damian murmured. “You had no business marrying him. You’re out of his league.”

She wanted to protest on Baz’s behalf, but two of her three sisters had said the same, and a tiny part of her knew their relationship didn’t have the fire she’d secretly longed for.

Lifting a hand, he asked, “May I?”

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