Page 27 of Lair

“Please,” I whine. “Just leave me here. Just leave me here...” And darkness comes.

When I come to, he’s carrying me again. Jesus, I like being carried by him. I could get used to this. Then my stomach lurches. “I’m not feeling so great,” I pontificate, as if this is just occurring to me, and Voper snorts. He lays me on the bed and I sink into it. It’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt. I love you, bed.

Voper pulls the covers over me and I push at him. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Hush. Drink this.” He’s holding a water bottle to my lips. I shake my head, but he ignores me and I gulp it down. Fine.

Exhaustion settles on me like a warm blanket. My eyelids droop as I regard him leaning over me. “You’re not here,” I state sleepily.

“Okay, you win. I’m not here,” he replies. There’s a smile in his voice.

I take that smile with me into my dreams.

I’m vomiting. Adrian Voper is holding a champagne bucket under my face, my loosened hair gathered back in his fist. I squeeze my eyes shut. “This is so embarrassing,” I manage between convulsions. “How are you not—”

“Hush,” he replies and I drift off, shuddering and slick with sweat, while he presses something cold and damp to my face.

When I wake, I jerk to see a figure leaning over me in the dimness. “Shh,” Voper says. “It’s me.” His suit jacket is gone, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. All in all, he looks disturbingly comfortable perched on the edge of my bed.

Before I can form some kind of protest, he lifts my head and places two pills on my tongue, waits for me to swallow water before lowering me back. Then he places a hand on my forehead. It’s blissfully cool. “Here. Let’s check that temperature.”

“I’m such an idiot,” I try to say, but it comes out garbled around the thermometer he’s put in my mouth. “I can’t believe I let Emmie force me into eating that oyster.”

Voper’s face is grim, the muscles dancing in his jaw. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to eat the thermometer too,” he admonishes quietly.

When he takes it out and checks it, I ask, “This is over, isn’t it?” My chest is hard and tight. “You’re going to fire me. I can’t work. I’m useless to you now—”

His eyes flash. “Don’t be silly.”

The brusqueness, the almost considerate dismissive tone, silences me for a moment. But only a moment. It’s not enough. I need more.

“Why don’t you have one of the stews doing this? Why are you—”

“The doctor should be here soon,” he says, almost a growl, and fusses with the covers. “You should get some rest.” He sweeps a thumb across my brow, gently, and I wonder how that’s supposed to check my temperature. His eyes don’t belong to the Voper I know.

“You never get tucked in, do you?” I say at last. I sound like a child.

He scowls. Not a favorite subject. “I don’t think you want to know about my sleeping habits,” he warns.

“So we’re both insomniacs? That sounds promising.”

“Does it?” He is amused.

I nod, lift a finger and touch his nose. “It does.”

He looks at me, eyes jerking in surprise. As if no one, as long as he has been Adrian Voper, billionaire entrepreneur, has ever done this. And probably no one has. The corner of his mouth curls. A vein throbs on his brow. There’s a swelling girth to his neck, as if he is holding something in. When it comes, I am not ready for it. It beats into my face like a wind. Into my face, my head, pulling everything to rags.

Adrian Voper’s laughter.

It is as if light is piercing out of him. That smooth, pale face breaks into smile lines I want to dive into and live in forever. He is glowing. That tortured, tragic air about him has vanished, blown away by the breath coming out of him in huge, husky gusts of air. He cannot hold it in, the cabin echoes with it. I am dazzled by his smile. By the person that has been hiding behind that cold mask all this time.

How have I never heard this before? How can I live now without hearing it?

And I know. I know I have never seen anything so beautiful as Adrian Voper’s happiness. I know I have become instantly and irrevocably addicted to it.

This I also know: that I have passed through a gate and it has clanged shut behind me, cutting off all that has come before. And here I am, gliding on, smooth and intact, and sparkling with possibility.

When he is done, when that lovely rumbling has passed, Adrian Voper wipes at his eyes and says, “Well. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”

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