Trainor greets us when the elevator door springs open to life—he looks terribly nervous, for some strange reason, and it must be because of Christopher's electric presence. I'm not really focused on Trainor anymore, since Christopher is in my immediate vicinity and eyesight.
Holy birds and a bucket of crap! He's wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, and gray flannel pants that grab from his hips at every which way. I know I noticed it like last chapter, but to me his appearance changes every time I focus in on his intoxicating, Christopher-like appearance. My mouth goes dry looking at him – he's so freaking hot, even though his mouth moves ridiculously fast and furiously out of something that remotely resembles anger, despite his usually impassive face.
At least I'm no longer wishing I could get back into that elevator, amazing piece of magic that it is. They're talking in low, urgent murmurs; Christopher's voice sounding like melted honey and velvet and the clinking of Veuve Clicquot champagne in bone china glass, and Trainor just sounds like a gruff buzz-cut. After a while, their voices become less urgent, less low, and I'm no longer distracted by it all. I look up at Christopher expectantly, through my lashes, trying to look as seductive as my Inner Goddess, looking all sexy in her lingerie on her chaise lounge, would want me to look. She doesn't look very sexy at the moment, since she's in a heated debate with my Subconscious. I'm glad Unconscious isn't in this fight at the moment; she's simply out of it, my best friend in armor, my lone Titan.
When Trainor vanishes from my eyes without a glance, Christopher turns to face me, his absurdly handsome eyebrow raised in a line of confusion.
"What is it about elevators?" he mutters, and I look away from it finally, blushing crimson scarlet with embarrassment.
I surreptitiously gaze up at him from beneath my lashes again—my lashes, which are nowhere near as Adonis-like as Christopher's Greek God ones. Once or twice, he runs his long, Clair de Lune playing fingers throughout his dazzling, magnificent bronze-gray hair, and I murmur unintelligibly to myself, and from Christopher's way, his luscious lips emit a low, intelligent laugh. I bite my lip and stare down at my forgettable fingers, not liking where my thoughts are headed.
"You shouldn't bite your lips until I tell you," Christopher says, smirking his Jesus-Christ-he's-so-hot smirk. It's deceptively dark.
I go even more crimson than even, I can't even remember what my regular skin color is. Not ivory, definitely, that would make me memorable. Not dark, since I would look like Jason or Jose or Jeremiah. Something, something…
"You're a mystery, Miss Swan-Steele," he murmurs, deftly placing me into a state of inexorable shock. My knowledge of synonyms are all over the joint.
"You…unnerve me," I mutter, at a loss for words, even more so than usual.
"You should find me unnerving," his whispers, nodding his head like a Beagle. "You're honest, I like that. Don't blush as often, Annabelle," he warns. "I like to see your face. You're a mystery to me."
"Mystery?"
"I think you're very vacant and barren."
I blush again, almost turning from red into a shade of gray. "Oh, thank you."
"Don't thank me," he warns again, his voice lower than low again, like with Trainor. "You should be thanking your friend…Rosie, is it?"
He rubs a hand through his hand vigorously, his eyebrows knitted into something resembling anger, and yet again, I wish I could decipher his mood. It's unbearable, especially when he seems to know everything about me!
"Is that what you were talking about before?" I whisper leaning closer to him, but he flinches, annoyance briefly crossing his gorgeous features, making him look all the more breathtaking and unbelievably Adonis.
He smirks. No one else watches me the way he does. I'm utterly chagrined.
"There's a party in an hour," he finally admits. "Trainor's telling me Kavanale has been texting and calling you ever since we left the parking lot."
"Do you have a multiple personality disorder?" I ask dumbly as a way of lightening the humor.
"You're blushing again, Annabelle," he murmurs, but an indecipherable sound in his voice seems to have provoked him out of the ballpark. "Your graduation party?"
"Oh, my," I murmur, opening my mouth in an 'O' of shock. "I completely forgot. Rosie's going to hate me irrevocably."
He grabs my hand urgently, seductively until I'm all but his. I stare into his ocher, hazel, gray, gray eyes, and I'm completely mesmerized. I've known nothing except Christopher my whole life, for nothing else matters, especially not Rosie Kavanale.
Christopher looks away from me, a deep urgency appearing in his eyes.
"We have to go, don't we?" I ask, fear clenching and tightening deep into my throat. I don't want to go. Please don't make me go. I feel like the toddler that I must inexorably be, forced into a party I never ever wanted, needed, to go to.
I don't see it, but my Subconscious, quick from her fight, notices his quick, tight nod. I'm appeased, relieved, pardoned, but only temporarily.
His eyes shine again, every color of the rainbow—but for the purposes of this story,every color of the rainbow if it was a gray Christopher Gray-Grey colored rainbow—and I'm his.
"Oh, fuck the party!" he growls to the heavens, and then his mouth is on mine, the mouth of a thousand Christopher Gray-Grey's, since his mouth is on mine and Oh, My, there's no way I can think in any decent, non-erotic way now.
Oh, my. Holy crap, he's mine! To be literal, his lips are on mine, soft, velvet puddles of Adonis glory on me, and my inexperienced lips don't know a thing about kissing, but they do now.
He lunges at me, wrapping his hands around me as if I were a graduation present. I have never been kissed like this. I have never been kissed.
Our lips merge in an erotic dance, slow and tentative, building to the O-Word my mother and Bob and Phil used to say they were building to when they hung out together in their meadow; my meadow.
This is my meadow. I feel a thousand sparkles emanate from his lips and meet mine like a disco ball or a vampire from a sparkly rom-com.
"Oh, Annabelle Swan-Steele, what am I going to do with you?"
He's now leading me back into the elevator as we continue to kiss but moving; what's that?
"What is it about elevators?" he repeats. He glides, basically super-speeds us back down the elevator and out of the Christopher.
We're heading to the party, but I'm all but a goner now. I've always been.