Page 50 of The Scandal You Started
For a moment, it seemed as if she were going to argue, but then she pressed her lips together and gulped down those words. “Can you turn the lamp off, please? I want to sleep.”
Dominic obeyed her wish and draped the room in darkness.
The rustle of her turning over whispered through her voice as she said, “Stay on your side of the bed.”
“I will,” he promised. “Good night.”
“G’night.”
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Dominic listened to Rayna shift into a comfortable position until she fell still and her soft breaths became the sound his pulse beat to.
But as he etched her silhouette into the treasure trove of his memory, he realised something promising. Something that flowered a vine of hope between the rungs of his ribs.
Rayna hadn’t said his persistence bothered her because she didn’t like him.
She hadn’t said his feelings weren’t reciprocated. Neither had she put it down to discomfort.
She’d only said she feared losing her job.
Did that mean…was there a possibility that perhaps she too…the issue wasn’t him.
He’d known she didn’t hate his flirtation. With a powerful character like hers, she would have put him in his place like she had in the lab if she did. But she hadn’t. Rather, it seemed to entertain her.
But it hadn’t occurred to him that in the moments he pushed her a little too far, her confusion and frustration might have been down to confliction.
What if she wanted him too, but worried about the consequences?
The more he thought about it, the more it felt like a plausible conclusion, turning the single vine into a dense, moving, breathing bush that manipulated the thrum of his heart until the anticipation left him dreaming of a world where she was his.
Oh, sweetheart…what have you done?
Chapter 15
Rayna
Letting Dominic sleep in her bed had only meant to be a onetime thing. Just Friday night because he’d been there, and she’d been too tired to care about kicking him out. But considering he hadn’t exactly followed all the normal rules for a Study anyway, it was no surprise he didn’t follow that one either.
On Saturday evening, when Rayna was swiping on her phone in bed, Dominic knocked on her door and crawled under theduvet like a big bull in a porcelain shop, trying to be as quiet and unassuming as possible. And on Sunday evening, he was already in her bed, reading through the welcome manual binder, when she came out from her ensuite.
But he behaved. As much as his persistence arse could, at least.
He flirted during his lessons, and except for a few sneaky caresses across her fingers and wrists, he kept his hands to himself.
At night, he stuck to his side of the bed and made no attempt to touch her, being the respectful gentleman he claimed he was. Nor did he push through the imaginary wall of pillows that divided their spaces. So, in the end, she stopped grumbling at him to go back to his own room.
Rayna woke up beside Dominic on Monday morning too, then after breakfast and showing him how to use the equipment in the makeshift basement gym, they gathered in the library-cum-office room at the front of the house.
“Is it similar to the video call you can make on a phone?” Dominic asked when she explained they were going to talk to head historian, Monty, from the lab through the computer.
“Yeah, essentially,” she said and did her best to answer his questions on how video calls actually worked.
Dominic’s eyes were bright with intrigue when Monty first appeared on the computer screen. He peered around it as if he might find the man standing behind the screen. But Monty quickly recaptured Dominic’s attention as he questioned him on his experience of the future so far, with the usual cheeriness Rayna hadn’t seen on the black man’s face a week ago.
But as the meeting went on, Rayna dominated more of the conversation with Monty as the older man detailed the case study report she had to work on with Dominic, as well as generic reports and checkups that had to be conducted with every Study.
“So, yes, as for your question,” Monty said, rolling a hand to gesture through the screen, “focus significantly more on the large socio impacts of Dominic’s direct actions as part of the nobility, but who he speaks of and their doings can be included in a subsection. Is that clear?”
The keys on the keyboard clicked under Rayna’s fast fingers as she made a note of what Monty had explained in a document while his face took up the rest of the screen.
