Page 17 of How to Bang a Billionaire

Cigar leaves? I took another gulp. No cigar leaves.

Which was surely a good thing?

I wished Caspian was still with me. I could have shown him, and he would have…well, he wouldn’t have laughed, but his mouth, his stern, beautiful mouth, would have promised mirth the way some promised kisses.

This was getting silly—lingering by the drinks like a wallflower, pining after a man who’d taken my absence for granted. I tossed back my drink and defiantly helped myself to a second glass. He had been so sure of me, so sure of being obeyed, I half expected (hoped?) to feel the heat of his body behind me, the pressure of his fingers on mine. I said have one.

Except no.

I spotted some of the students I’d got to know during the telethon and insinuated myself into their conversation. Nobody ever talked about anything real or interesting during these sorts of events, but it was important to look part of something. I thought I caught Caspian’s voice sometimes, no words, just the tone or the timbre of it, woven through the blur of other people’s. It was all I could do to stop my head turning, seeking him. An iron filing jumping to a magnet.

His presence was everywhere. Filling up the room. I could feel the attention of people who didn’t even know who he was straining toward him. Sometimes I’d catch their eyes when I was doggedly not looking at him.

Whatever he had, it wasn’t charm exactly. He made no effort to engage anyone, but he drew them regardless, like planets to the sun. I didn’t know what else to call it but…mastery. That unyielding certainty of power.

It wasn’t…nice. It was a feral thing, perhaps a cruel one.

But I wanted it anyway. I wanted him. All his ice and strength and darkness.

His rare smiles.

Though he probably didn’t think about me at all. Or if he did, it was likely only as a diversion, a curiosity. Someone it amused him to temporarily indulge.

“Arden St. Ives?”

I cringed. It was the junior dean. Or Bad Cop as she was known. I’d spent most of my first and second years being nonsexily castigated by her for various negligible infractions.

Probably because she suspected I was involved in the Bog Sheet, St. Sebastian’s most informal student newspaper. Which was fair because I did run the thing. Not one for the CV, really, but it did mean I got to cast her as a deranged Space Nazi in the weekly cartoon. It was pretty accurate.

I pasted a smile on my face. “Uh, hi, Tash.”

“Did you not read the invitation properly?” She glowered at me from behind thick, black-framed spectacles. She was in a tuxedo herself, doing the full Dietrich, and I would have normally thought it was cool. But she was Dr. Tash Vijayendran and she ate fun for breakfast and I refused to think anything good about her. “You do know there’s a dress code? Why aren’t you in black tie?”

I opened my mouth to answer. But I had nothing. What was I supposed to say? Because Caspian Hart told me not to?

“Well?”

I felt like a kid who had come to school without his uniform. “Um…”

“Because”—Caspian hadn’t even raised his voice but the room fell quiet around him anyway—“he doesn’t like it.” All that determined not-looking for him and he’d been close enough to hear me speak.

Tash blinked. “Oh. Well. All right, then.”

Of course, it wasn’t a real explanation for what I was wearing. If I’d tried to say something like that…God, my mind flinched from imagining it. Best-case scenario—everyone would have laughed at how fucking ridiculous it was. As if two hundred years of Britishness were just going to roll over for the sake of my comfort. I’d never have been able to get away with it. Not in a million years.

But Caspian could.

And he’d done it for me.

I tried to catch his eye as conversation resumed, but, actually, it didn’t matter if he looked at me or not. It was enough that he was aware of me. Watching out for me. I liked it. It made me feel sort of…his.

As though he could claim me again without a glance or a word, simply by willing it. Like that G.K. Chesterton thing about the unseen hook and the invisible line.

The rest of the evening went pretty much the way these things always did. We milled around for a while in Melmoth, there was a brief (well, brief in the Oxford sense, meaning under an hour) welcome from the Master, and then we trooped along to hall for a fairly decent three-course meal. With great poise and finesse, I managed to use all the right cutlery and I didn’t put my elbow in my bread roll once. But, as the hours trickled past, boredom seeped into me like drizzle.

I was too far away from Caspian to be able to steal secret glances at him or listen to his conversation. And by the time we were herded back to Melmoth for yet more booze and speeches, he was nowhere to be seen.

He’d probably already gone. I should have expected it, but somehow I hadn’t. And I wasn’t quite prepared to be disappointed. To be hurt. I wasn’t exactly picking out wedding crockery but the least he could have done was say goodbye.

---