DAWNING POINT (AgeTabooRomance)

Chapter 14

Oh, dear God.

Shit.

My throat constricted against words that gathered and lodged in my passageway, making it all the more difficult for my lungs to take in enough oxygen. I tried to remain unmoving as I heaved in a slow breath, my chest tight and painful with pressure, my heartbeat like a snare drum.

He was here, of course he was here, in front of me.

With a woman.

The party outside continued on without knowledge of the new guests' arrival, the music not quite loud enough to distort the awkward tension emulating throughout the room, chiefly from myself.

"Sir– Manning... Mr. Manning, I mean–," was all I could manage as I stuttered, sounding like a ripe moron as the sting of uneasiness sank deeper into my bones.

Manning stood firm, dressed all in black – as usual – looking more impressive than was Christ worthy with one hand hanging loosely from his trouser pocket, the other disappearing behind the second present body. To his side, Manning's date was casually set in her tight-ass dress, hooker heels and far-too-made-up face as her upper lip curled in distaste, her hip jutted out as she sized me up from head-to-toe. Rich condescension played across her eyes as I realised my attire.

Cursing myself for leaving my clothes in the bathroom behind me, I too became conscious of my body, half naked in a bikini I was almost falling out of, and cursed myself again.

If there were ever a time I wanted the Lord to come and strike me down, now was that time.

Kill. Me. Now.

Instinct took hold as I awkwardly crossed my arms over my bulging chest, attempting to hide my burning flesh and fought the shiver that ripped down my legs. My knees went weak as I leant my weight from foot to foot, itching to run away. To leave the goddamn house that seemed to have switched from blessed to cursed, from once a pleasure to now a pain.

Fresh beads of perspiration gathered in the hollow of my neck and at the small of my back. What the hell was he doing here? My mind raced in the sprint for reason.

Manning was still living here, that much I knew already. But somehow I had trusted I'd be so lucky as to miss him entirely tonight, the same way I'd so easily avoided him at work in the weeks gone past.

Was it just my bad luck? Or did fate merely have it in for me?

These thoughts rode the train of my mind, passing through stations of anxious anticipation, embarrassment, false pride and idling achingly long at the platform in dread.

"What's going on here?" Manning deep, gravelly voice demanded after a moment. His strikingly black pools of ire seared my cheeks. Branding them, as if they could leave moulds in the memory foam of my skin.

One would think after our previous encounters that I'd been seasoned to the way he burned me. But I wasn't.

I wasn't seasoned at all.

Every encounter, every moment in his presence was like a new split in my skin. A heavy sinking in my gut. A stab at my heart.

Manning's smouldering grimace was as cold and hard on my face as ever, pressing me to speak as if I were some untrained mutt, his unspoken command squeezing me in the quiet.

Why was it always too quiet when he was close? Why did everything else seem to melt away into a distant, inconspicuous blur whenever he was near...?

"I... Um..." I stammered until my voice faded to nothing. I appreciated that the room was dim and mostly shadowed with the lights off with only the reflective glow from the patio lights shining in through the glass. Otherwise, I would be even more exposed.