Chapter One-Hundred-and-Sixty-Five; Hot-Blooded
"You know, not even my father the President makes me wait for over an hour."
Stephanie whirled around, already knowing. And sure enough there he was.
Seneca Crane poised in a chair nearby, long legs crossed casually; the picture of ease.
I'm going to bloody kill Ellen…Stephanie thought murderously.
Seneca's piercing sapphire gaze pinned her down as Stephanie swallowed nervously.
Finding herself undeniably alone with the blue-eyed Gamemaker was doing strange things to her. Her pulse had begun to race, her breathing shortening, her blood pumping hot and heavy through her veins.
The strange sensations almost terrified Stephanie as she quickly grappled for the reasonable part of her brain.
"Seneca, you shouldn't be here," Stephanie stated firmly, already turning away from him, reaching for the door again.
She couldn't face him, couldn't bear to be so agonizingly close to him, in such private settings. Not after what she had admitted to herself so recently that she was starting to have feelings for him. Not after the party and public apology she had just endured with him, where a constant fission of tension sparked between them that even her alliance partners were beginning to notice it. And most definitely not after she had resolved, that things between her and Haymitch were finally healing.
"Stephanie!" Seneca called sharply.
Suddenly his languid posture from before was gone in a split second. He had got to his feet fluidly and abruptly, stalking across the room to her side and grasping her wrist to stop her from reaching for the door anymore – and all before she could even so much as blink.
Stephanie's gaze flitted helplessly up to Seneca, her lips trembling. His long fingers curled tightly around her wrist felt like fire against her skin. And he was close, far too close…She could feel his warm breath ghost across the burning skin of her cheek as he looked down at her.
The suffocating tension was still there like it had been during their public apology; simmering excruciatingly below the surface.
Stephanie fleetingly remembered Electra complaining about all the tension Stephanie had generated at one party alone. And she envisioned Electra suddenly taking on the role of dispelling the tension-wrought atmosphere, by first forcing Stephanie into a car with Haymitch, and now tricking her into a room with Seneca. I'm going to kill her – very slowly and painfully, Stephanie revised her previous thoughts, regarding the blue-haired woman. For Stephanie imagined that if she were to resolve the tension that ensnared her and Seneca, it would raise more problems than it would solve.
"Wait," Seneca commanded, his voice low and irrefutable. But Stephanie thought she saw something softer in the blue of his eyes that was almost pleading with her. She realised that Seneca as the President's son wasn't used to having to ask people to listen to his orders.
Stephanie flexed the fingers of her hand Seneca still held prisoner within his grasp. Without looking Seneca seemed to sense her movement and discomfiture. He lessened his unyielding hold by a fraction, but he didn't make any move to release her, or to step back so she could breathe properly. Every rapid inhale she took brought with it a wave of his unmistakable scent, invading her senses and scattering her thoughts.
Angered indignation flooded through Stephanie as her thoughts sharpened suddenly to focus in a fleeting moment of clarity.
What the hell was Seneca doing at the tributes penthouses; perhaps one of the most monitored and guarded buildings in the entire Capitol? Was he damn well insane? She snapped her wrist forcibly from his hold, almost staggering back with the effort.
But then this was just like the blue-eyed Gamemaker, her thoughts muttered bitterly, as the anger continued to hiss through her…
Seneca thinks he's invincible afterall. He can just turn up wherever he wants, untouchable. It doesn't matter that everytime he does appear it completely turns my world upside down! Of course that wouldn't matter to him!
"You can't be here," Stephanie restated, her voice firm and unyielding as she took a conscious step back from the Gamemaker.
A rapid slideshow of faces had just fired before Stephanie's mind's eye. Suspicious faces with wary eyes. Astara, Prall, Seneca's secretary Selwa…It was too risky. Hadn't Stephanie said herself to Electra she would have to avoid Seneca from now on – at all costs!
Seneca's blue eyes hardened to ice shards as he swiftly reclaimed the distance Stephanie had put between them. He pointedly slammed his hand against the door Stephanie was eyeing desperately, fingers splayed as he eyed her meaningfully.
"You have no idea what I have endured for you tonight, so the least you could do is listen to me," he said, voice edged with dangerous steel sending a shiver up Stephanie's spine.
Her racing pulse and thumping heart tore into an erratic rhythm so fast, Stephanie feared for a few moments she was just going to drop into a dead faint right there.
Then Seneca's words registered and swift agitation rose in Stephanie at the Gamemaker.
"What you have endured tonight," Stephanie echoed scathingly, eyes narrowing as she lanced Seneca with a building look of fury.
The desperate anger ricocheted through Stephanie's tensed limbs, urging her to knock the Gamemaker aside. She had done it once before at the racetracks, hadn't she? She could do it again. She could push him away, tear open the door and race out of the room, through this maze of studios and as far away from those blue eyes that were haunting her. She had to. She had to get away before she did something stupid, something completely idiotic that she could never take back, something like damn well dealing the Gamemaker a stinging slap or…or kissing him.
Why did Seneca just have to turn up now?! Now, while she was still struggling to comprehend the fact that she was attracted to him. Now, after she had just resolved that things between her and Haymitch were healing!
"Why the hell are you here for Seneca?! What conversation do we need to have now – damn well unnecessary or necessary, I don't bloody care anymore!" Stephanie practically shouted, tone livid, eyes wide, desperate and pleading. She needed to get away from him.
Seneca felt the words as acutely as though she had slapped him. He had spent the entire night thinking that he had lost her, spent hours at a tedious party needing nothing but to be near her to convince himself that she was alive; and yet it was the one damn thing he couldn't have because of the suspicious gazes he had been attracting all night with his erratic behaviour. He had waited in painfully, exhausted silence knowing every second he stayed increased the risk of him being discovered here at the tributes' penthouses, and yet he couldn't leave. Not without seeing her first.
And now he was seeing her, and it was as if they had taken two steps back in their complex relationship; back to how every encounter used to be between them. The blistering anger in Stephanie's voice, how she couldn't bear to have him touch her, and her every second thought would be concerned with trying to escape from him as her eyes flitted about searchingly.
Seneca almost felt a bitter smirk curve his lips, but the gesture was just too damn hollow and cost too much effort. What had he really expected? For her to listen in awe as he told her how he spent agonising hours searching for a cure to her fainting? Seneca almost scoffed angrily at himself, but instead he gathered his resolve, fixing Stephanie with a fierce look.
"Apologies, Miss Trindlesworth. I'm sure your schedule is packed too full to be able to squeeze in a necessary or otherwise conversation with the President's Head Gamemaker son," Seneca shot with burning sarcasm, eyes like brilliant ice. "But this conversation could have been had a lot sooner, had you actually bothered to bring the phone with you to the party, instead of hiding it under your bed like a damn child would!"
Stephanie gasped indignantly at Seneca's cutting tone, feeling an embarrassed blush flush her cheeks red.
"And how the hell did you know – " Stephanie began to demand angrily before Seneca had interrupted her.
"Well," Seneca began in that icy tone of clipped sarcasm, "When you didn't answer after the first ten times or so, it occurred to me that not even you would be that idiotically stubborn, and that you may have done something even more stupid, like forget the phone!"
"I didn't forget the phone! I hid it under my bed!" Stephanie protested vehemently, feeling her blush deepen.
Seneca scoffed arrogantly at Stephanie's childish denial, as he stood tall in his pristine Capitol suit. He stepped deliberately closer and Stephanie raised her chin defiantly, feeling the metal points of the necklace collar dig into the taunt stretch of her neck. She swallowed thickly, her heart beating a desperate tattoo against her chest.
Seneca's burning blue eyes fleetingly reminded Stephanie of the blowtorch flames she used in the factory back home in District 3, to melt down malleable metal. And just like the metal turned to pools of liquid beneath the blazing blue flame, she too was melting under Seneca's demanding, cobalt gaze.
"You're damn well lucky Electra Hocol was the one to find and answer it, when she returned to the penthouse and heard it ringing," Seneca enforced disdainfully.
Stephanie felt unexplainable tears prick at her eyes before she pushed them back angrily as Seneca continued speaking in that scornful tone, ever physically nearing with his words.
"Of course, I could ask why it was Miss Hocol that discovered the phone ringing first. Afterall, you were meant to be back at the penthouses over an hour ago, isn't that correct?" Seneca's gaze was like a flame on her skin. His hips checked hers as he stepped closer and Stephanie stumbled back a step.
She felt too vulnerable and exposed to be defiant this time. She had to step away from him while she still had the presence of mind to do so. She fervently wished she had of gotten changed out of her party dress before she had come down to this unexpected confrontation with the Gamemaker.
The dress was too tight, especially now when it felt like she was clawing at the air for each desperate breath. Her vision blurred slightly until all she could see were his brilliant blue eyes. I'm not going to faint…! Stephanie thought fiercely, straightening to stand to her full height. She was barefoot, not a scrap of make-up on her face and hair cascading freely over her shoulders, but her eyes shone brightly with determination.
"If you've spoken to Miss Hocol then I've no doubt you already know where I was," Stephanie said defiantly as she stared up at Seneca, and felt the cold of the wall pressing into her bare shoulders. She purposefully ignored when she saw his heated gaze slip lower past her eyes for a heart-stopping second.
Seneca's lips twisted into a brilliant smirk but his eyes remained cold. "It must be nice for Abernathy to be able to take midnight drives with the woman he loves," Seneca drawled casually, sarcasm dripping from his every syllable.
Stephanie gritted her teeth tightly. "As opposed to what you do, turning up unexpectedly without warning?!" she fired back furiously. She bit back a sharp gasp as Seneca's palm connected with the wall at the side of her head. There was barely a hand's breadth between them anymore; only a narrowing fissure. They were like two live wires, snapping sparks ricocheting off one another, eyes afire.
"If you had of carried your damn phone with you then this little pleasant visit wouldn't be so unexpected!" That smug sarcasm that drove Stephanie insane was heavy in his voice.
"It's not even my phone!" Stephanie argued back. "You forced Ellen to give me it!" Stephanie's hand shot out to shove Seneca away, but her hand only connected with a steel-wrought torso that wouldn't budge an inch, and she found her fingers curling viciously around the silken material of Seneca's blazer front instead.
Seneca scoffed incredulously, "If you are so damn feeling about Miss Hocol being denied her phone, I'll buy the woman ten new ones in the morning!" Seneca's other hand was on the opposite side of her now; so she was unwittingly, essentially trapped within the cage of his arms.
"It's not about Ellen not having a phone; it's the fact that you forced Ellen to give me her phone. It's the damn principle of it!"
They were close enough now that every other breath meant a light brush of contact. The silk lapel of his blazer caressed her bare shoulder for a second and Stephanie barely resisted shuddering.
"And what is that supposed to mean?!" Seneca demanded icily.
"That just because you're the Head Gamemaker and President's son you can do whatever you want, take whatever you want and anything you want you get– "
"Well clearly not, seeing as Abernathy is the one enjoying intimate midnight drives with the woman he loves while I am relegated to waiting in back-rooms for hours on her," Seneca shot back, eyes flashing.
"Don't bring Haymitch into this! The point was about Ellen's phone!"
"Why the hell are we still arguing about Electra Hocol's damn phone?!"
Stephanie felt foolishly angry tears sting her eyes, and she found she couldn't honestly say what or who she felt angry for. "I don't know! You brought it up!" Stephanie shouted back accusingly, because it felt like the sort of thing to do in an argument.
Seneca gave a low, throaty growl of frustration and suddenly without warning his lips were on hers.
And as always thanks to girlworthfightingfor for the review. I'm glad to be updating again too!