Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
“You haven’t been eating breakfast.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You arrive every morning at 8:47. You go directly to your desk. You begin working immediately. You don’t eat until noon, and even then, it’s...” He paused, as if the words caused him physical discomfort. “Onigiri.”
Two things struck me at once.
First: the Prince of Atlantis knew what I ate for lunch.
Second: the Prince of Atlantis was offended by what I ate for lunch.
“Onigiri is a perfectly balanced—”
“There will be breakfast delivered to your desk each morning beginning tomorrow. And lunch.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Zia.”
There it was again. My name in his mouth. Two syllables that shouldn’t have the power to make my knees unreliable, but did, because nothing about this situation followed any rules I understood.
And then he kissed me.
Right there in the corridor. 8:52 in the morning. The amber light falling around us like something out of a scene I’d read in one of the paperbacks on my windowsill, except in the books the heroine always did something empowered like push him away or demand answers, and what I did was make a small, startled sound against his lips and then stand very still while his mouth moved over mine with that same thorough patience, that same gentle restraint that whispered I have all the time in the world and I’m willing to spend every minute of it convincing you.
When he pulled back, I was gripping the edge of my tablet so hard the case was creaking.
“Breakfast,” he murmured, as if the kiss had been a punctuation mark and the sentence was about nutrition. “Tomorrow.”
And he walked away.
He just walked away, back straight, stride even, disappearing around the corner like a man who had not just short-circuited every neuron in my body with a kiss that lasted approximately four seconds and ruined me for at least the next four years.
I stood in the corridor for a long time.
The amber light was very pretty.
I was very, very confused.
But also, and this is the part I keep circling back to, the part that won’t let me sleep, I was something else. Something I haven’t been in seven months.
I was wanted.
Not secretly. Not shamefully. Not in the dark, in whispered phone calls after midnight, in a relationship that a boy kept hidden because acknowledging it would cost him something he wasn’t willing to pay. Alexei kissed me in a corridor at 8:52 in the morning where anyone could see, and then he announced breakfast deliveries like he was reorganizing the laws of physics to account for the fact that I skip meals.
The difference between that and what I had with Billy is so vast it makes me dizzy.
Which brings me to the other thing that’s happened this week: everything.
Everything has happened.
The office is different. Not in a bad way, exactly, but it makes me feel like I’ve been moved to a different planet that looks identical to my old one but operates under entirely different rules. People hold doors for me now. Not just polite-holding, but that particular attentive door-holding that says I’m aware that you are connected to someone powerful and I’m adjusting my behavior accordingly. My coworkers in the design wing, who were friendly before but in a normal, unremarkable way, now look at me with this mixture of curiosity and caution, like I’m a weather system they can’t predict.
Kirsten came back to work on Tuesday, took one look at me, and pulled me into the supply closet.
“Are you okay?” she asked, in the direct, no-nonsense way that I love about her.
“I honestly don’t know,” I told her, which was the most truthful thing I’d managed to anyone all week.
“Is he pressuring you?”
I thought about the corridor kiss. The breakfast announcement. How my name sounded in his voice, like it was something he’d been waiting to say.
“Not...exactly.”
Kirsten studied me for a long moment. Then she nodded. “If that changes, you come to me. I don’t care who he is.”
I almost cried. I didn’t, because I was standing in a supply closet surrounded by printer cartridges and that felt like an undignified place for an emotional breakdown, but the impulse was there. Because Kirsten meant it. She would take on the Prince of Atlantis for me, and she’s five-foot-three and human and probably couldn’t take on a moderately aggressive squirrel, but she would try, and that mattered.
My mom calls every day now instead of just Sundays. She has opinions about wedding colors. She has sent me fourteen articles about preter-human marriages from various lifestyle magazines. She has started a group chat with three of her friends called “Zia’s Royal Wedding Planning Committee” that I was added to without my consent and still can’t figure out how to leave, no matter how many times I mute it.
I haven’t told her I haven’t actually said yes.
And that brings us to kiss number four, which happened approximately two hours ago, which is why I’m currently sitting in a bathroom stall on the sixteenth floor texting Trish and begging for tips on how to resist a guy who’s irresistible in every way.