SWNOVELS : Chapter 49
Fiona
The warm touch of Alexander’s hand lightly stroking my cheek brought me out of a deep sleep, and I blinked my eyes open to find him sitting beside me on the bed.
“I hate to wake you,” he said softly. “But you need to eat something.” He ran his fingers through my hair, his rough fingertips grazing my skin as he did so, sending pulses of warmth into me everywhere he touched. “Are you up for joining me in the dining room, or should I have something brought in here?”
I sat up and found that my energy had improved. “I’ll go with you. I just need a few minutes to change my clothes.”
Alexander’s hand came to rest on my thigh. It was a small touch, but it lit my body up enough to have me thinking about taking his hand and moving it further up my leg. I breathed in his smell as our bodies came closer, and he looked deep into my eyes.
But when I met his gaze, my desire subsided immediately, giving way to tense discomfort.
Alexander was looking at me much too seriously, and something about his energy did not feel right.
Something had changed. In the short time that I had been here resting and he had been out of the palace, something had happened.
I slid out of bed, indifferently allowing his hand to slide off my leg as I stood and walked away. Then I set about the business of making myself presentable, trying to use the activity to press some uncomfortable thoughts out of my mind.
Alexander’s affect softened during dinner. The intense, worrisome look in his eyes disappeared without a trace. But returning to our room afterward, he did seem eager to attend to some task in his office with marked eagerness.
Hours later, I was back in bed and reading a
magazine when Alexander emerged from the bathroom half naked in a cloud of fragrant steam, like he always did after his evening showers. My eyes flicked up unconsciously to take in the sight. He caught me looking and smiled smugly.
I forced my eyes back to my magazine article, but I hardly saw the words on the page.
Alexander finished his routine and began turning out lights on his way to bed. I followed his lead, setting my magazine aside. The bed warmed the moment he slid down into the gold silk sheets and started inching his way closer to me.
In the dark, my body took over. I turned toward Alexander and put a hand on his hard chest. He had one of his arms around my waist a second later, pulling my body close to his. I ran my other hand up his scar-covered back. Every inch of it was a reminder
of that cruel night when he was whipped bloody after coming to my defense before the queen. The night when he kissed me.
“Will you look at me?” Alexander asked, his voice a whisper.
I did as he asked, pulling away from his chest and meeting his eyes. I saw in them right away that he was thinking about the kiss, as well. There was no doubt about it. His gaze dropped from my eyes to my mouth, and I licked my lips unconsciously.
He stroked my throat with a feather-light touch, then ran his thumb along my bottom lip. My eyes closed. I could not help but start falling into the good feeling.
Feeling his hot breath coming close, I turned my face to the side. His soft lips landed on my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.
But then he sighed and started to pull away.
Whatever had just been getting started, it was suddenly over. Alexander shifted to lie flat on his back. I relaxed my body beside him, with my head on his chest and our limbs partly entwined. The heat pulsing from his body into mine had me melting back down into a heavy, much-needed slumber just minutes later.
“One month.” Conrad handed me a slender file.
“That’s our target for reaching profitability. One month from launch.”
My boss had just given me a long presentation on a complicated and seemingly high-stakes project that he wanted me to lead up. I was already feeling nervous about taking it on, even before he added this final detail.
He raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Can you do it?”
I felt my head bobbing up and down reflexively before I could fully process what I was agreeing to. “I can do it,” I said.
“Great.” Conrad clapped his hands loudly, giving me a slight startle. “Any questions?”
“Oh, I’m sure I will have many questions. But I’ll see which I can answer on my own before bringing any back to you.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at me. “I need to take this.” He pressed his finger to his ear, picking up a call, and started arguing loudly with some anonymous entity without skipping a beat, cueing me to leave.
I returned to my office and opened the folder to review
the proposal again. The scale of the project was like nothing I’d worked with before, with an operating budget that made my eyes widen when I saw the number on the page.
“Knock, knock.” A colleague stood in my doorway, pantomiming knocking on the open door.
“Hello.” I waved him in. “What can I do for you, Gerald?”
“Well, I was…” His thought trailed off when he spied the proposal in my hands. “Oh, a new project. Is that what you’ve been doing all morning in Conrad’s office?”
I closed the folder and answered, simply, “Indeed, it is.”
“Nice,” Gerald said idly. “New account?”
I sighed. There was nothing secret about this project, but I was still processing the enormity of it. “Not exactly,” I started to answer. “It’s an expansion of an existing account.”
“Wait.” Gerald’s head dropped suddenly, like an invisible puppeteer cut a string that’d been holding it up. “Is that… that’s not the expansion project, is it?
The one they’ve been talking about for years?
Conrad… gave you the expansion project?”
I hardly knew how to respond. It seemed full disclosure on my behalf was the only way forward in the conversation, so I opened the file and pivoted it toward my nosy coworker. “I don’t know what you all have been discussing for years, but here is the project proposal. All I know is that Conrad is making it my full-time job to get it off the ground.”
Gerald leaned forward, propping his chin in his hand and his elbow on his knee. “Huh,” he said quietly, his eyes flicking back and forth as he skimmed the first page. “Wow. Yeah, well, that’s the expansion project.
That is a big deal, Fiona.” Now he shifted his gaze up to my face, which he began to examine in a way that made me feel uneasy.
“I take it you’re surprised such an important project was assigned to a newcomer?” I asked pointedly, my tone direct but professional.
“Well, I’m surprised they’re moving forward with this project at all. And to tell you the truth, Fiona, this might not be something you, or anyone, can reasonably expect to get off the ground anytime soon.” He squinted at me, looking like he was trying to solve a difficult math problem.
“Conrad seems to think that I can.” I shrugged. “I
suppose we will see how it turns out next month.”
Gerald’s eyebrows shot up. “Next month?”
“Yes. That’s my target and I plan to meet it.”
A dry laugh caught in Gerald’s throat. He made a lazy attempt to pass it off as a cough, covering his mouth with a balled fist until he could compose himself. “I better let you get to it, then,” he said, standing to leave and trying, poorly, to hold back a mocking smile.