Page 60 of An Enchanted Moment on Ever After Street
The laugh cuts through the weird tension between us since he mentioned the word ‘friends’ when I’m almost positive we’rebothfeeling something a lot more than that.
One hand has remained behind his back, and now he holds it out, offering me a single stem red rose.
It’s a beautiful, multi-layered flower with petals that are a bright rich red in the centre and almost burgundy on the outer edges, and my fingers brush against his fur-covered ones as I let my hand cup the huge flower and bring it to my nose to inhale the timeless scent.
‘This is from the first rose bush my dad ever grew. An old cultivar that he imported from France decades ago. Hypothetically speaking, if there ever was a Beast, growing roses in his castle gardens in eighteenth-century France, this would likely have been one of them.’
To say my knees go weak is an understatement. I’m so touched that he hasn’t just brought me a rose, butthisrose, one that obviously means a lot to him and he knew would mean something to me too. ‘You’ve put so much thought into this.’
‘I wanted to give you a fairy-tale moment. You deserve to feel as special as you are, and I don’t think many people make you feel like that.’
‘I don’t think many people make you feel like that either.’
‘I don’t des—’ He abandons the sentence when I frown at him.
Instead, he takes the rose gently from my hand. At first he goes to tuck it behind my ear, but that would disturb the clips Scarlett’s put in my hair, then he looks for somewhere on the dress to stash it, but short of shoving it down my cleavage, there’s nowhere for it.
He laughs with embarrassment, because when a man looks at your body so intently, it’s not usually because he’s trying to work out where to put a rose. ‘Well, this is awkward.’
It makes me laugh too. A bit of normality in an otherwise unreal night.
‘I’ll just put it over here.’ He inclines his head and walks towards the grand piano at one side of the ballroom. He gets his phone out of an inside pocket in the Beast’s blue suit jacket and fiddles with it before putting it down on the lid of the antique piano. ‘Unlike inBeauty and the Beast, I can’t stretch to getting the piano to magically play itself. A playlist will have to do.’
There’s a nervous energy that beingsoclose to Darcy brings with it, a mixture of excitement and anticipation. He’s going to ask me to dance, and it’s the strangest mix of joy that he’s literally tried to recreate a moment from a fairy tale for me, and maybe… disappointment, because, even though it’s a fantastic mask, he’s stillwearinga mask, and if tonight really was a fairy tale, I’d be dancing with Darcy as he really is.
‘Would the Belle of the ball give me the honour of sharing a dance with the Beast?’ He comes back with one arm outstretched, holding his fur-covered hand open for mine as ‘Beauty and the Beast’ starts playing from his phone.
It is, without doubt, the most romantic moment of my life. ‘I’d be honoured.’
I’m beaming at him and Iknowhe’s beaming back at me, and I’d giveanythingto see the smile I can sense in his demeanour,the lightness in the steps he takes as he lowers his head in a bow again.
My breath catches as my hand slides into his and his fingers curl around mine. His right hand touches the side of my waist, fitting perfectly into my curves, warm through the lining of my satin bodice. I have to force myself to breathe again as he steps back carefully, slowly, waiting for me to follow his lead as the song that I’ve always thought was one of the most beautiful songs of all time plays softly. I feel like I’m caught up in a swirling storm of butterflies, fluttering all around me, making me feel like I’m fluttering inside too. My skin is tingling with anticipation of his next move, the promise of our bodies getting closer, and every one of my senses has been taken over by him. Every atom in my entire body is centred on Darcy.
The waltz we dance is something straight out of a movie, and I’m half convinced this is a dream and I’ll wake up at any minute, because moments like this don’t happen when you’re awake.
As we glide across the glittering ballroom floor, Darcy is the perfect gentleman. A real prince in disguise, tall, chivalrous, and strong. He’s wearing an autumnal aftershave and I keep turning my head and taking a big inhale of the scent of spicy pumpkins and cloves and cinnamon and everything else that is this time of year personified. The swish of my dress makes me feel like I’m soaring, spinning in his arms, fizzing every time he twirls me around and pulls me back against him, and the respectful distance between our bodies diminishes each time. I get shivers every time we touch, every little brush as we move around each other feels special, and throughout it all, I don’t take my eyes off the blue glass eyes of the Beast mask.
Rain patters on the roof above us, and he doesn’t say a word as we dance, but I can sense him smiling at me as we spin faster, sending rose petals swirling in our wake. Happiness is glistening in the air all around us. Life might not be perfect, but for rightnow, itis, and there is nowhere I’d rather be than in the arms of this most beautiful man.
As a second version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ finishes, and the anticipation of getting close to him tingles again, he spins me around and tugs me back with a delicious little bit more force. I bump into his chest and my hand tightens on the sinewy muscle between his neck and left shoulder, and it feels like he’s feeling that same sense of anticipation.
Instead of twirling me again, his hand slips from my waist and round to my lower back and his head tilts questioningly, asking permission to touch me so intimately, and I nod without a second thought.
I can’t see him smile, but Iknowhe does as those fingers press into my lower back and he pulls my body tighter against his. My hand is still on his shoulder and my fingers curl into the fur-covered folds of the hood where it covers every inch of his neck and disappears under his shirt. The butterflies that were swirling around earlier feel like they’ve settled all over me, their wings beating a thousand times a minute, like there’s magic sparkling all around the room.
Both his arms slide around my back and hold me tight, and my other hand lays on the curve of his chest. I slip my hand under his blue jacket and it comes to rest right over his heart. The Beast head doesn’t extend that far down, and there is nothing but the thin layer of his shirt between my fingers and his skin, and my fingertips feel like five glowing spots, burning at every point they make contact.
He lets out an extended breath and my other hand slips up to stroke through the long brown fur held in a ponytail by a blue bow at the back of the mask, and he lets out a sigh and lowers his Beast head to rest against mine.
It feels like I could slide my hands up and peel his mask off centimetre by centimetre and he’d let me. I want to, buthe’s never been this unguarded before, and he deserves to know that hecanbe without me trying to push him into revealing something he isn’t ready to reveal yet.
The playlist Darcy put on his phone has moved into playing a selection of older Disney classics, but to be honest, it could be playing ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm’ and I’d still be happy, just so long as I don’t have to move more than a millimetre away from him yet.
His arms tighten and his foam-padded chin moves against the top of my head, being careful not to displace any of Scarlett’s meticulous styling. ‘You okay?’ he murmurs through the mask, sounding blissfully far away and like it’s taken a Herculean effort to form two simple words.
I feel it too, lost in the joy of moving around the ballroom with him, no longer dancing, just holding each other. ‘Best evening of my life.’
His breath catches. ‘Mine too.’
