It Hurts When It's True (Affaire de Coeur, #1)

Chapter 17: Worry about her

Maggie could feel the scorching heat of Damian's palm on her nape. His usual blue eyes had grown a shade darker as he gazed directly at her. She felt herself swallow hard at the intensity of the look that he was giving her.  If her head was not going haywire, she could easily count the number of heartbeats she was having per minute. Well, she was sure she was tachycardic at the moment. 

Distracted as she was, she could clearly hear her rapid and ragged breathing in the silence of his bachelor's pad. She felt goose bumps run down her arms as his other hand crept inch by inch up her arm to her neck then to her warmed cheek. 

Damian slowly leaned in - or it could have been her - his piercing blue eyes glazed with something she could not point a finger at. It could be desire, but she was not entirely sure. Maggie could not think straight with the sound of blood rushing in her ears. And she somehow thought that if it were desire then she would melt down anytime. 

She could feel the warmth of his breath against her flushed skin. And this sensation had made her pause a beat, and she thought she heard a voice at the back of her head. It was telling her repeatedly that what was going to happen was trouble - messing with this blue-eyed man would mar her perfectly peaceful life. Yet somewhere in a small recess of her mind she wanted to give in and have a taste of this man's kiss. 

It has been a long time, after all.

And just when the distance between their lips had been extremely narrow did they hear the door to his apartment being unlocked. They froze as they heard the door opening and closing a little too loudly.

"Damian!" a woman's voice had resounded in the stillness of the vicinity.

Damian's hands unhurriedly slid away from her burning skin while their eyes still held each other's gaze. Blinking their eyes, the magic in the air had been dispelled.

Half an hour earlier

Quietly, Damian had led Maggie into his spacious bachelor's pad. Maggie noticed the lack of unnecessary furniture in his living room. There was a black leather-upholstered couch by the large window that overlooked the busy streets of the city. On the far right corner of the room was a glossy black grand piano. 

"I didn't know that you play." Maggie commented as she walked towards the instrument.

"I don't." Damian replied simply as he flopped down the sofa.

"Then why do you have one?" she asked, sliding her fingers gently against the smooth surface of the piano's closed lid.

"Aesthetic purposes." 

"Such a waste of a beautiful instrument." She ran her hand on the piano as she walked around it.

"You sound nostalgic, Margaret. Do you play?" he inquired, eyeing her from where he was comfortably seated.

Thinking for a moment, she remembered when she was seven and was just starting to learn how to play the piano. She had really been eager at first, but lessons had become much harder with every passing session. Then there came a time when she had been at the verge of giving up if not for the enormous amount of money her parents were shelling out for her piano lessons. Hence, Maggie continued taking lessons from the strict Miss Marilyn until the latter had decided to migrate to another country.