Page 2 of Falling
The lamb frowned, turning her head to the side as if she’d sensed something behind her, someone speaking in her ear. But then, to his utter disbelief, she turned forward again.
Can you not hear me?he said to her. If a heart still beat in his chest, it would be pounding in anticipation.I said turn around, little lamb. Look at me.
This time she did turn, confused, and peering all the way over her shoulder to where he stood at the wall behind her.
Their eyes met again, and her brow creased in confusion. Her expression spoke of uncertainty, thinking perhaps that she couldn’t possibly have heard a man whispering to herfrom all the way across the room. When she tore her gaze from his, returning her attention to the group of humans before her, he pushed from the wall, his entire body vibrating with thrill.
She’d heard his command but been unaffected by it.
How?
He needed to get her alone.
He studied the other humans gathered in the living room. The man she’d come with had yet to return. What kind of idiot brought the most beautiful girl to a tawdry, cacophonous party like this and deserted her? If only he knew there were monsters out there, waiting for their turn.
Chapter Two
The brownstone belonged to Harry’s father, a man douchily named Royal, who Cat vaguely remembered Jake telling her was an asshole but seriously loaded. What Harry apparently lacked in parental love he had in spades when it came to housing. Cat had moved to the city for graduate school only a few months ago, but she knew living here for even a decade she’d be unlikely to meet another twentysomething with a house like this all to himself. The party was on the ground floor—mostly contained to the common living spaces—but there were three levels to the place, and Cat was tempted to escape the party to explore them all.
But first: a restroom.
The one on the first floor was occupied, so she peeked into the empty bedrooms, ducking through the doorway of one with an en suite. With a sigh of relief, she crossed the room and closed the bathroom door behind her, sealing herself up inside.
At the mirror, Cat studied her reflection and exhaled a slow, annoyed breath. When Jake suggested the coordinated costumes, his idea that she be the lamb to his shepherd struck her as vaguely patronizing and overtly patriarchal—not to mention the unspoken expectation that she somehow manageto be asexylamb. But she’d agreed because, frankly, she was lazy about Halloween and happy for once to not be asked to be a sexy Cat. That Jake hadn’t even remembered the plan felt like salt rubbed into a paper cut. She wore all white—white leggings, white sneakers, and a fluffy, cropped white sweater. Her woolly hat had soft lamb ears, and she’d drawn a circle of black over the tip of her own nose.
“You’re dressed like a toddler,” she told her reflection, swiping off the hat. She turned on the sink, washing the sticky, dried beer from the back of her hand before wiping the black makeup from her nose.
Drying her hands and then leaning back against the counter, Cat ran through in her mind how and when she would end things tonight. She’d been the dumper and the dumped enough times to know that this breakup was unlikely to come as a surprise to Jake, but she still dreaded it, in part because there could be no brunch with girlfriends tomorrow to process it all. Everyone she knew and loved was hundreds of miles away.
Can’t I just text him?her mind whined, before deciding:Yes.A text was exactly the level of engagement this three-month mistake deserved. Pulling out her phone, she typed the simple ending:
I don’t think this is working. We have fun together, but I think friends-only is the right vibe for us.
She waited, staring at her phone, and in only a few seconds, her text was decorated with the blandest of reactions: a thumbs-up.
To be fair, it’s the correct reaction to a breakup text,she thought.
With a laugh-groan, she pushed off the counter and walked to the door, intending to put on her big-girl-lamb pants and return to the party, unwilling to let Jake be her only tether to other people. But the door to the hallway was no longer open. And when her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw, too, that the room was no longer empty. A man—thatman—tall as a tree and just as broad, leaned against the wall near the closed door, casually scrolling on his phone.
He looked up when she stepped out, and from behind his ornate black-feathered mask, his eyes went wide in the way she knew hers had too—as if they’d each been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to.
“Oh.” She hooked a thumb behind her, saying, “The bathroom in the hall was occupied,” just as he said, “I needed a spot of quiet.”
His voice was low and rich, a melted confection, the words curled with a proper British accent. His clothes were all black, and something about himfeltattractive, even though she couldn’t make his features out in the darkness, behind his mask.
“Okay, good,” she said, exhaling. “So I haven’t been caught sneaking around your room.”
His eyes drifted to the enormous blue-and-orange Knicks banner over the bed, and he uttered a sardonic “No.”
Cat was stunned into silence when he stepped forward into a bit of streetlight slanting in through the window and lifted his mask. She revised her thought that he must be attractive; in fact, she’d never seen a more gorgeous person in her life. His features were severe and aristocratic: thick, dark brows, intense brown eyes, strong cheekbones and jaw, and a mouth she was positive was equally skilled at kissing and mockery. And then he smiled, becoming devastatingly more beautiful. Deep smile lines carved into his cheeks, hiseyes lit with mischief, crinkling at the corners. Cat felt her rib cage shove a shaking breath out and suck another back in, hungrily.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away. Time stretched, and the walls of the room seemed to shrink down to a shoebox. A weight in her chest heaved forward, the desire to move toward him, but she fought it, frowning in concentration as her hands reached back and curled around the edge of the windowsill.
He was frowning too, confused. Silence pulsed between them, a force compelling her forward, growing heavily in the air, and then she heard it, a softYes, darling, stay there, in that deep, luxurious voice she swore she’d heard back in the living room, like an invisible man’s voice had whispered directly into her ear. The tension snapped, freeing her to blink, to breathe, to retreat a step and feel the wood of the windowsill dig into the backs of her thighs.
She shook her head. “What did you say?” she asked.
He frowned, his “What do you mean?” coming too slow, like a clunky lie.
