Page 86 of Duke, Actually

She understood that she couldn’t simply disappear for the rest of the evening, and really, she didn’t want to. She wanted to celebrate Leo’s wedding. She just needed a break. So as the servers started bringing the first course, she got up and headed toward the exit. There was a parlor outside the ballroom set up for the wedding party to use as a green room. It had comfy chairs, beverages, and, most critically, a door that closed. She would sit for a few minutes, get her shit together, and shake off this mix of Max-inspired attraction and annoyance. Then she would go back into the ballroom, and hopefully whatever weirdness was going on between Max and her would be gone. Because, honestly, they were supposed to go to Austria tomorrow.

Maybe he wanted to take Lavinia instead.

Well, whatever. Dani was going to Austria with Leo and Marie. Max could do what he wanted with whomever he wanted. It was no concern of—

Just as she escaped the ballroom, a hand came down on her shoulder. Oh, shit. She knew who it was. She couldfeelwho it was.

“Wait.” His voice confirmed it.

Damn it. “I just need to step out for a moment.” Her own voice was less familiar. It was too high. It sounded like it belonged to someone playing her in a movie. It felt like that, too, like she was reciting a line.I just need to step out for a moment.Itwasa line. It was alie. What she needed to step away from washim. And she’d almost made it.

“You looked at me first.”

“What?” What was he— Oh.Oh.She gasped as goosebumps rose on her skin.

He remembered.

She was frozen in place, shivering with his hand on her bare shoulder, his skin on her skin. She was his prey, and she could no sooner move than if he’d literally caught her in a trap.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He sounded angry, which was such an uncharacteristic emotion from Max, at least when it came to her.

She needed to turn around and face him. She’d pulled up her big-girl pants and gotten through that toast, and she could do this, too.

She pivoted in place. He didn’t take his hand off her shoulder, just let it rest lightly against her skin as she turned and settled it more heavily on the ball of her shoulder when she finished her rotation.

She had compared Max’s eyes before to the cool blue center of a flame, but now, despite the fact that his body was calm, that his palm on her shoulder was still and dry, his eyes were a wildfire raging out of control. She had always thought of Max as funny and breezy and easygoing with a hidden center of deeply felt emotion. But now he looked like he’d been turned inside out, like all the tender, emotional stuff was on the outside, plainly visible for anyone to see.

“I did look at you,” she said slowly, relieved that her voice came out sounding like her again. “But thenyoustopped looking atme.” And for some reason she couldn’t articulate, that loss of his attention had hurt.

“Because Icouldn’tlook at you anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you would see everything.” He moved his hand from her shoulder across her suddenly tender skin until the heel of his palm rested lightly over the notch in her collarbone and his fingers radiated up her throat. She had the sudden, absurd notion that maybe hewason fire, inside. His hand, though it was barely touching her, hovering almost, brought heat as it traced a path through her cold-pebbled skin.

“Which isn’t, in itself, a bad thing,” he added, “but we had a wedding to get through.” He smiled, a little half smile, and he looked more like his usual self, even if it was asadhalf smile. “That’s done now.”

“So now it’s okay for me to see everything?” she whispered.

“You already saw almost everything. So what’s another inch? What’s the last little bit?” The sad smile turned almost unbearably fond, and even though it was him saying he was showing her everything,shefelt almost painfully vulnerable, like she was made of new skin forming under a bandage that someone had ripped off too soon.

She knew what they were talking about. Even though they were speaking in strangely cryptic terms, she knew what “everything”meant. But she wanted explicit, verbal confirmation. “‘Everything’ being that you want to have sex. With me.”

He did not hesitate before saying, simply, “Yes.”

Yes.She wanted that, too. Hadn’t she always? Or at least for a long time? Hadn’t she wanted him to the exclusion of others—hence her Tinder problem?

“Yes,” he said again, taking his palm from her and laying it on his chest. He sounded... devastated.

Yes.The word rose through her consciousness every time he said it.

“I guess now that I’m not married, I’m eligible under your rules of engagement.”

There was a pause before he said, “That’s true.”

“And I’m certainly not trying to entrap you.” She tried to laugh but found she couldn’t get the sound around a lump rising in her throat. What was the matter with her? Max had propositioned her a bunch of times, early in their acquaintance. This wasn’t new. What was new was that she was going to say yes.

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