Page 69 of Prelude To You

“That’s because you’re watching a business transaction and not a love story,” I said evenly.

A shadow slipped over her smile. “Say what now?”

“This is a marriage to merge two conglomerates,” I told her. “And it was arranged in a boardroom between two tycoons whose children were still in school. Usually, when one only hasa daughter to carry the legacy, the deal is that a merger forms a bigger corporation.”

Isabel looked back at the newlyweds. “Are you serious? This is the 21stcentury. Why would people do that?”

“What do you think people with power want?” I asked. “More power, of course.”

“And the bride and groom have no choice in this at all?”

“They are groomed from a very age early to do whatever benefits the empire. By the time they’re supposed to marry, they’re so used to the idea they don’t give it a second thought. Their only obligation is to produce children and guarantee the line of succession. These days they don’t even have to be in the same room to do that. Once the kids are born, the marriage will maintain appearances in public, but the couple will be free to pursue whatever romantic affairs they choose in private.”

“But what if they refused, what if they didn’t want to?”

I chose my words carefully because no matter how you sliced it, to someone as pure as Isabel, all of this had to seem terribly outrageous and warped.

“They are never made to believe they have a choice. And they never have the power to choose. The machine that made them can as easily crush them. As long as they’re able to create their own illusion of what contentment really is, they’ll be fine. That’s to say someone doesn’t come along and throw their carefully constructed life off the rails.”

I watched Isabel, the look on her face a pantomime of horror and surprise. She viewed the spectacular wedding with this new knowledge, and something like pity kindling in her eyes. “Oh my God, that’s so incredibly fucked up,” she said softly.

“I couldn’t have said it more eloquently myself,” I replied.

There was more I wanted to tell her, so much more. But I stopped myself. Now was not the time. Because after tonight, it simply wouldn’t matter.

When a waltz rose up from below, I held my hand out to her. “If nobody else wants to dance, why don’t we?”

Her face lit up into this exquisite vision of bliss, and my God if it didn’t make me want to abandon all my obligations as a responsible son and heir. “You can dance?” she asked, floating into my arms with breathtaking grace.

I pulled her close against me. “Compliments of my Swiss school education,” I said, “learning to waltz between calculus and economics.” We stepped into a flawless cadence, our bodies perfectly attuned.

Like everything else, I thought.

Her hand landed delicately against the back of my neck, her fingertips twining through my hair and scorching the fringes of my mind. Her lips parted and a small sigh escaped, laced with satisfaction.

The things I was willing to do if only I could hear her sigh like that again and again. I brushed her forehead with my lips and she buried her face in my neck, her warm breath on my skin. “And he dances,” she said, her heartbeat drumming against my chest.

She was light as a summer breeze on her feet, a nymph gliding on water. Everything remotely unpleasant bled away, leaving us on the molten periphery of paradise. Long after the melody faded, we continued swaying to an imaginary tune.

“Look at me,” I whispered. And she did, a tremble tiptoeing along her spine and settling under the palm of my hand. I held her closer, our eyes locked and our lips mere inches apart. We stayed like that for an endless moment.

Her eyes fluttered closed as she breathed out a shuddering sigh and dipped her head back, her fingers curling into my hair. A wordless invitation I accepted. I plundered her next breath, my mouth capturing hers, my thumb tracing her jaw in that softplace below her ear, then finding the hollow in her throat where her pulse throbbed as fervently as mine.

She whimpered faintly when my tongue entangled with hers, and I felt her body press against me. I inhaled her taste and I kissed her until the world and all its petty problems blurred into nothingness, leaving just the two of us.

And then came the inevitable moment when she severed herself from me in an instant of blistering realization. She stepped back until she was out of my reach. A storm of emotions erupted on her beautiful features, her lips quivering and those green eyes reflecting confusion.

I wanted to draw her back to me, fold her into my arms and make all that anguish melt away. But somehow I knew the last thing she needed right now was me telling her that everything would all be all right when we both knew it wouldn’t.

All I could do was watch her gather herself as she tried to reverse the damage done to her soul by those few minutes of euphoria. I, on the other hand, was mentally filing every nanosecond of that kiss into a memory vault I could revisit until the end of time.

It took a while before I could trust my voice again. “Is everything okay, my sweet?”

She winced, and it wasn’t clear whether calling hermy sweetwas the culprit. I had to tread on eggshells, and my fear that she would leave was unprecedented.

But she nodded yes, her gaze still holding mine.

“All of this sweeping me off my feet is wasted on me, you know,” she said breathlessly. “It’s still early in the evening and I’m sure you have a few women on your contact list who’d be more than willing to go to the penthouse with you.”

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