“Letting go,” Crystal says solemnly, then immediately ruins it with another laugh. “She slipped before she even got to the edge of the pool. We had to help her upstairs.”
“And this was amusing?”
“Obviously. I mean, not at the time. But the next morning? Hilarious.” She grins. “You should have seen her mascara.”
I try to picture it, but my brain won’t bring anything up.
Crystal tilts her head. “You don’t party much, do you?”
“No,” I say simply.
“Oh, come on. You must do something. You’re too intense not to blow off steam.”
I consider that. My version of blowing off steam involves boxing at six a.m. or acquiring a competitor’s assets.
She studies me like I’m an interesting challenge rather than an incompatible human being.
“Well,” she says slowly. “We’ll have to fix that.”
There it is. The assumption that I require correction because I don’t think embarrassing myself in public is a fun time. Crystal takes a sip of her wine, her lipstick adding another smudged red crescent on the glass.
“You need fun in your life, Mr. Axel Rhodes,” she says with mock severity. “Balance. Spontaneity. You can’t just work all of the time.”
“I don’t,” I say.
“Oh?” Her brows lift. “What do you do for fun then?”
I pause. To engage or not to engage? “I assess risk.”
She stares at me. Then she laughs, assuming it’s wit. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s not fun.”
“It is if you win.”
She shakes her head, smiling like I’ve said something adorably strange. “You’re different. I like that.”
Blithely, she dives back into the Mykonos saga, detailing outfits, DJs, a minor feud over who got tagged in which photo. Names blur. Anecdotes tangle. Every story she tells ends in a crescendo of laughter. But internally, I am withdrawing. Each anecdote is weightless. Each observation is surface-level. No depth. There is no curiosity about the world beyond how it appears on an Instagram page.
I study her clinically. She is very easy on the eye, with symmetrical features. Clear skin. Nice teeth. Healthy, by all visible metrics, and she would probably produce an aesthetically pleasing offspring, but she is entirely unsuited to keeping around long-term. Unless I can buy the baby off her and send her packing, she is no good for what I need.
She has been chattering about her upcoming shoots, the latest campaign she’s booked, and the magazine spread she’s been promised, and I have been nodding at the appropriate moments, but none of it has reached me. My mind refuses to engage with her.
Because – and here it is - she is not Jo. In my mind, I can still see her walking in the foyer, little brown specks of varnishpeppered across her cheeks like freckles, and a rogue smattering of blue paint chips in her hair. Her eyes are sharp and alive with intelligence.
If she were here, God knows I would be reacting to her in a totally different way. It’s not that she is wildly beautiful. In fact, there is nothing about her that screams ‘look at me’. I even suspect she goes out of her way to tone it down. Her hair is locked away in a no-nonsense bun, her clothes are conservative and understated, her make-up is almost non-existent, she only speaks when spoken to, and she smells of chemicals and rabbit glue. And yet, as soon as she walks into a room, she makes every other female in it look colorless and undesirable. Her beauty is quiet, but unmistakable. It is as if there is an unquenchable fire burning inside her, and every time I look at her that fire reaches out and burns me too.
It’s not a polite desire. What I have for her is… something I’ve never experienced. Definitely not a passing fancy. It’s something darker, something primal. I want to take her, feel her against me, make her gasp, make her curse me, make her mine even for a moment. I want to make her lose control. I want to hear her scream my name. Again and again.
All fucking night long.
But I hate it. I hate that she has this effect on me. How is it that the one woman who makes me feel something is the one woman I actively dislike? And I am under no illusions that she’s the one who has ruined this night for me. I mean, yeah, Crystal is shockingly shallow, but she didn’t stand a chance compared to Jo.
The meal drags on...
I sip my whiskey and let her chatter flow over me while my mind conjures lustful scenarios and fantasies of Jo that I would never admit aloud. I feel a low heat start to simmer in my chest, a restrained desire that pulses with the memory of her violet eyes,the way she moved that day with such natural authority in front of centuries-old and priceless things. She commands them. Hell, she commands me… without even trying.