No Stereotypes, No Substitutes [The Master]

[Opium (DELETED 7294)]

Blue eyes let their gaze shift from the glistening obsidian jewel that was Grant, and to the lack-lustre gems that were in his hand. Like a spoilt child being offered candy after a tantrum, she wanted to snatch those studs and instantly deposit them on the counter behind her. She didn’t want them anymore, but she would receive them out of spite to discard them. Of course, Elijah had been determined to make sure the items were returned to their owner at the start of this whole thing, but now she was feeling rather bored and aggravated by it all. She didn’t want to put a label on the anger bubbling up inside her, the kind that made her stomach feel like it was going to explode like a grenade – spilling acid shrapnel into her body. She didn’t move, however, stood stubbornly in place with rage fixing her eyebrows ever so slightly higher in her features. It was as if a single movement could pull the trigger and set her off, but then his subsequent grin and charm-oozing words were tugging at that pin regardless.

“Good,” Elijah interjected, once his vague compliment was put out there – the trigger slept at last.

Grant paused to look at her and Elijah arched a brow. When he leant toward her, every impulse and every instinct told her to move away or smack the **** out of him. Instead, her already frosty disposition turned a degree colder and she was again captured by this inability to move a muscle. He took her wrist, and she felt like she’d been touched by winter all over again. The frown in her features deepened, those tiny fissures in her brow now looking more like chasms. She had expected his touch to feel… different. The thought of him, the way his eyes smouldered and the way his smile seemed to leave her fiery, was a lot different to the texture of him. Grant wasn’t supposed to be like unlit charcoal – as dark as he was – and Elijah wondered if all the heat she expected was used up in his appearances. Her fingers curled inward like a withdrawn clam when he’d touched her, but as he twisted her hand upward, he’d somehow made those rigid digits relax. She felt the studs slip into her hand, stony and hard as the day those gems were dug out of the earth, and then the closing of his hand over hers reminded her instantly of a mud slide. The miners had dug too deeply and the world had collapsed on them.

Elijah was so thoroughly distracted by the sensations gripping her hand that she blinked at him like a lost lamb when he made a mention of the next challenge, dismissing the possibility entirely. It took her about half a second to lose that demure expression and drag that hard, punishing glare back. She snatched her hand away just as she’d wanted to and put those studs on the counter behind her, ignoring them completely even as they rolled along the wood. Grant made a mention of reconvening upstairs, a private boardroom just for the two of them, and she wanted to laugh; a slither of her amusement showed nonetheless. Maybe she was just a pervert, but that suggestion of his definitely sounded more like a proposition than anything else. She’d agreed to tell him her story though, let him have that intimate glance into her life that few ever got to see, and it was far less risky than throwing her legs around his waist. True, she could do with the privacy – she was strange like that – and so, in the end, Elijah found herself sighing over her shoulder and faintly bobbing her head.

“Fine,” she grumbled, slowly letting her eyes sink over the outline of him – black as soot against the party that fizzled as golden as champagne. “Lead the way then.”

She was going to follow him. She was actually going to go upstairs – alone – with a tall, dark and handsome stranger who apparently had no moral objections to stealing. What if he was a psychopath or murderer or some sick weirdo? Did she even care? Was she remotely concerned for her safety? Maybe they were right all along when they’d told her she was insane…