The Billionaire Darkness

Chapter Thirty-Three

I heard a hush fall over the people to my right, a silence so profound I briefly debated if I'd suddenly become deaf. Then I saw why. There in a blue dress the colour of the midnight layer of the ocean was five foot seven grace personified with coils of thick mocha hair and a face of an angel one I was certain was just as breathtaking without the excessive amount of makeup on her face. Yet she was familiar somehow

"Who's that?" Hunter perked up and I turned my eyes away from the girl to him, he looked uncertain for once, and seeing it on the notorious playboys face brought the briefest smile to my lips.

"She's certainly getting attention," Ava says, coming up beside Riley who as usual only had eyes for her at all times that they were beside one another. It was sickening, even if I held the faintest inkling of pleasure that at least one of us had a chance at happiness.

Then I saw the look on the girl's face, eyes big, and hands unable to find a comfortable way to rest beside her. It irked me that panicked look on her face, and before I'd given it any thought I silently moved through the crowd watching as the boys in the room eyed her like she was a doe about to be pounced on by predators.

Honestly have any of you any fucking social awareness.

Their looks only pissed me off more, and with all the ease I could muster I stepped up behind her and cleared my throat softly.

"Excuse me, may I dance with you?" that was something I never did, I didn't ask anyone for permission for anything, had never needed to. But the way she was looking around merely made me want to wrap my arm around her and hold her to me as if I could shield her from their leering.

Bright green grey eyes peered up at me, and I practically lost all will to remain stoically polite.

"Uh... sure, I mean yes, of course," she said looking like she didn't know what to do, and I once more moved into action taking her small waist and wrapping my arm around her with my hand against the small of her back with my other hand on her shoulder.

"What brings you here tonight?" I ask sending a glare to the fucks still standing around and staring. I'd have punched them had I not been consumed by the immediacy of protecting this girl. I wanted her safe, and I wanted her to never question her safety as I held her.

What the fuck?

"I needed to get away," her response was breathy, distant, and I immediately could hear the note of desperation in her voice, like she required consolation, and fuck if I wasn't going to give it to her. I was many things, moody, emotionally arrogant, sarcastic, and a vast extension of all of the worst possible traits I could have as the heir to a multi billion dollar fortune. But I wasn't just the genius son who hated people for existing given that none of them seemed to possess so much as a quark for a brain at the worst times, and a singular brain cell firing at the speed of light in the wrong fucking direction at best.

Yet I was none of those things at this moment; and it terrified me.

"You don't need to tell me, but I'll listen if you do," I said the words barely above a whisper, hadn't even bothered to look away because she hadn't either. She was staring at me like she knew me, and yet that was entirely impossible. I was just as much a phantom on the internet and in news articles as I was in person.

"It would be boring to you, why did you even approach me to dance?" she countered skirting the question, and though I'd let her get away with depriving me of an answer, I wasn't going to ignore it.

"It wouldn't be boring to me. As for your second question, well lets just say I didn't like how the boys in this room were looking at you. You're far too ethereal for their neanderthalic thoughts," I say and she chuckled softly, a blush rising to her cheeks.