Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 309

Chapter 309

CELESTE

The floor-to-ceiling mirror in Dominic’s dressing room had no business being that flattering, and yet there I stood, smoothing the charcoal pencil skirt over my hips with a quiet satisfaction.

The skirt ended just below the knee, tailored so precisely that it moved with my body rather than against it, and I had paired it with a cream silk blouse that buttoned up the front and a fitted blazer the color of dark/merlot, the kind of ensemble that said I am here to run a billion-dollar laboratory and also, incidentally, to make you forget

your own name.

My heels were black stilettos, sharp enough to leave a mark on wood if I wasn’t careful, and I had learned a long time ago that the right pair of shoes could change the way a woman walked, the way she breathed, the way the entire room recalibrated itself around her the moment she stepped through the door.

I uncapped my lipstick, a deep berry shade that I had bought on a whim three years ago and never worn because Julian had once told me bold colors made women look desperate, and I leaned toward the mirror, parting my lips with the practiced precision of someone who had been applying her own makeup since she was old enough to steal her mother’s cosmetics from the bathroom drawer.

The color glided on smooth and creamy, settling into the curves of my mouth like it had been waiting for me all this time, and I pressed my lips together once, twice, before pulling back to examine the result. It was perfect. Not desperate. Just a woman in a beautiful suit with lips the color of crushed berries and a man in the doorway behind her who had been staring at her for the past ten minutes without saying a single word.

Dominic leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest, his posture a study in casual ownership, the kind of stance that suggested he had all the time in the world and intended to spend every second of it looking at me.

He was dressed in a navy three-piece suit that fit him so well it might have been stitched directly onto his body by a team of artisans who had dedicated their entire lives to the singular pursuit of making Dominic Ford look devastating, and his tie was a deep burgundy that matched, I realized with a small jolt of pleasure, the exact shade of my blazer. He had not coordinated that on purpose. Or perhaps he had. With Dominic, it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell where coincidence ended and intention began.

I turned back to the mirror and gathered my hair into a low twist, securing it with a clip, ignoring the weight of his gaze on the back of my neck the way a cat ignores the canary that has been placed directly within pouncing distance. A few loose tendrils fell around my face, softening the sharp lines of my jaw, and I tucked one behind my ear before finally meeting his eyes in the reflection.

“You have been staring at me since I started my makeup,” I said, twisting the final strand into place. “Is something wrong with the makeup on my face?”

Dominic tilted his head, the corner of his mouth lifting in that particular way that made him look like he was enjoying a private joke that I was not yet in on. “I have no idea.”

I furrowed my brows, my hands pausing mid-air. “What is that supposed to mean? You have no idea if something is wrong with the makeup on my face?”

He pushed himself off the doorframe and walked toward me with the unhurried stride of a man who had never been rushed in his life, his shoes making soft sounds against the polished floor, each movement measured, and when he finally stopped in front of me, close enough that I could count the individual threads in his lapel, he reached out and tucked the very same strand of hair I had just tucked behind my ear, grazing the shell of my ear with his knuckles in a way that sent a shiver cascading down the length of my spine.

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“What I mean,” he said, his voice dropping to something lower, “is that it makes no difference to me whether you wear makeup or not. Because in my eyes, you are the most beautiful woman in the world, and that is not a fact that can be disputed by anyone, least of all by you.”

I smiled before I could stop myself, the expression breaking across my face with the involuntary ease of a reflex, and I watched his own smile widen in response, watched the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, watched the way his entire demeanor softened into something that looked almost boyish despite the three-piece suit and the billion-dollar empire and the reputation that preceded him into every room he entered.

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