”Must’ve been luck,” Juliette agreed, although somewhat distractedly. If she was being honest, she hadn’t really been listening to his explanation, despite the fact that she’d been the one to ask for it. Just another way that she was letting herself and everyone else down simply by being in that room.

How much longer would she be able to stand there, eyes locked on that painting? How much longer could she pretend? Would she be able to forgive herself if she did anything else, though? Would she regret it if she just left and never found out exactly what would happen, even if she knew nothing good could come of it?

Soon enough, she was no longer alone beside that painting. Booker had closed the distance between them, meaning that Juliette’s heart was beating faster with every step he took closer to her. They seemed to be entirely alone in that large room, despite the fact that it was a very public space. There was still distance between them, but it didn’t seem to stop her from smelling him, or finding herself once again trapped in his gaze.

She interrupted with a question, which seemed to make him a little flustered. It seemed that she wasn’t the only distracted one between the two of them.

>>”Oh! Um, we are hosting the Paradise Ball: An… ’A-An Evening for Lovers…’”

”Oh,” she said meekly.

The answer, however, was not one that helped the situation any. She’d tried to bring up a safe topic, but had only managed to resurface the talk of romance and poetry. Her lip quivered a little bit, and she looked back at the painting, unsure of what else to say. There was no way to continue that discussion without digging themselves further into that deep, dark hole. There seemed to be no way out.

The architecture was no longer enough of a distraction, it seemed. She stuck her hands in her pockets and tried to keep looking at anything else. Somehow, he was closer to her than he had been before. She didn’t remember either of them moving, and yet there they were. Before it could happen again, he’d taken a step back. Without a doubt for the best.

>>”Sorry.”

She waved him off, removing a hand from her pocket. ”Don’t be,” she replied with the hint of a sigh. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, other that continuing to be both himself and a perfect gentleman. In any other scenario, there would be absolutely nothing wrong.

Besides, it was her fault. She was the one who had instigated the meeting, the one who was still standing in the way of danger, and the one who continued to dangle the carrot. So, if she knew that, why couldn’t she bring herself to leave?

>>”Um…q-questions?”

”No, no questions,” she shook her head. She really wasn’t even paying very much attention by that point, and she couldn’t think of a question to ask. Even if she had one, it likely wouldn’t be very deep by that point.

She looked back at him, and suddenly the step back he’d taken hadn’t made a difference. Again, she had no memory of either of them moving, yet there they were. Close enough to touch. Had her lungs stopped working? It felt like they’d stopped working.

The Paradise Ball. Booker remembered it was coming up. He remembered everything, after all. And yet, still, somehow it had managed to escape his attention. Truth was that Juliette provided far too much of a distraction for him. Her presence was all-together inspiring to him, giving him thoughts that the man knew that he shouldn’t be having. Add to that the fact that there would be a ball soon held in the very spot where they were standing that would exemplify love, romance, and passion, and the man found himself utterly beguiled once.

God this was a long day.

As the man answered his question, stumbling a little over his usually articulate words, he found himself a little at a loss now. He could feel his cheeks shading in color and his eyes struggling to stay low and away from her own gaze. He didn’t mean to, but thoughts of a slow dance, under low lights in this very room, with the woman in front of him began to overtake his mind. It was a fool’s errand, but while he logically knew that, it still shouted pretty loudly in his ear.

>> ”Oh,”

It seemed that she too was going through a struggle. Deep down he knew what the probable issue was, but still he was refusing to believe it. Booker wasn’t the type of man to interfere with another person’s relationship. He liked to think he at least had that much of a high ground, but damned if this woman wasn’t making it difficult. The shy look on her fact, the clear internal struggle, Booker only wanted to make her stop feeling so bad, but it seemed that whatever he did, whatever distractions he utilized, it was only serving to make things worse.

He sighed. He apologized. He tried to step back. He could stop this, at any time. He could just walk away, head back down the stairs and back to the reference desk and bury himself in his work. Sure it would seem rude, but wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? To completely deter the woman who pulled at him like a siren? It was the right thing to do. He would do it…

>> ”Don’t be.”

Dammit. He could feel his resolve was already failing him. He tried to stammer out a final line, asking if she had any further questions, hoping to segue that into either continuing the tour to some public place or doing as he said he would do and just leave. And yet, still, he found himself unable to separate himself from neither her, nor this moment. There was a clear fork in the road, two definitive paths that he could take, but either way, his legs wouldn’t move. All he could hope for was time, time in the form of questions she may have that he could utilize to distract himself.

>> ”No, no questions,”

Double dammit. To make matters worse, she was so quiet and distracted when she said it, that Booker was unsure of how to follow that. Why was this so difficult? What was it about her?

There was just something so…electric about being around Juliette. It was always as if there was a heavy charge in the air, like a calm right before a lightning strike. At any moment Booker expected, that when he stared into her eyes that he would be hit with a bolt from the heavens, that the finger of God would crash through the graying clouds with a righteous thunder and knock him square off of his feet…or smote him. Of course, the bolt of lightning metaphor that rebounded in his head also could be interpreted as him preparing to be smitten for his behavior. Seemed appropriate. Flirting with a girl that was already taken, and all.

Still, it wasn’t exactly as if the situation could be helped. For whatever reason, it felt like a fog had settled on his mind whenever he was around her. Ridiculous, of course. Booker had just met this woman once, after he had received a head injury. Really it was a situation better suited for trashy romance novel or one of those RomComs that his sister totally forces him to watch, yeah…

Despite the overwhelming evidence that all this made absolutely no sense, the librarian still found himself being utterly swept up in thoughts and emotions that entirely weren’t his own. The worst part of it was that while the man was doing his damnedest to separate himself from the woman, inevitably, he kept finding his way over to her (or was she finding her way to him?) This had now become one of those times.

They were close. So very, very, close. The world stopped around them. No one was passing through these halls to interrupt them. The close sound was the A/C unit kicking in somewhere in another hall. They were completely and utterly alone, just the two of them, sharing this extremely large and elegant room, a room that would be used to celebrate love and romance throughout literature. His head swam with this facts, flashing through romantic scenes of silent meetings between two would be lovers, and it had caused such a fervor in his mind that he didn’t even realize that with another step, the space between them was, at most, razor thin.

Before his brain could catch up with his body, it was far too late now. A haze of sticky sweet romance and the cheesiest love songs on the radio played through his mind. All those scenes in movies that made you cry, that made your heart race with romance, all of them played in a whirlwind of sound and fury in his mind; those and only those were what dictated his actions next.

A hand raised, slowly, gingerly, as the fingers carefully touched her soft cheek. Skin-to-skin, that was all that was needed to send that spark racing from the tips of his fingers, up his arm, and throughout the rest of the nerve-endings in his body. Deep down, beneath the sweet music that played in his head, he knew he would regret this. She was taken. She wasn’t his to do this with. But, frankly, my dear, he couldn’t give a damn – he needed to breathe again.

Leaning his massive height down, the last conscious thought Booker hand was the acknowledge that his lips had brushed hers. From there a cacophony of thunder filled his ears. It was wrong…but oh so very right as well…

In the eye of the storm, there was an intense quiet. Juliette’s breath had caught in her throat as she gazed into those jade green eyes and, before she knew it, she’d completely lost track of her surroundings. There was nothing coming to her mind in that moment; absolutely no thoughts racing through her head. It was just… those eyes. They were all she could see.

A moment later and they weren’t just standing close to each other. There was a hand on her cheek, which sent shivers all the way down her spine and then through the rest of her body. She'd never quite had an experience that gave her goosebumps before, but in that moment she suddenly knew what the girls in romance novels were so concerned with. She closed her eyes, letting the feeling of his hand on her face take the place of all her other senses. 

Before she knew it, he was leaning down in front of her, and there was no longer a distance between them. He'd done it, closed the barrier and gone against their unspoken agreement. They'd just stepped past the point of no return. Without bothering to take control of her body, she allowed what was about to happen to continue. There was no way that she could stop it, even if she had been actively trying to stop it. By that point, she was far too worn down to even start.

She felt his lips brush hers, and she didn’t stop it. Instead, she placed one hand on his jaw and the other on the back of his neck, drawing him closer to her. Fiercely, she pressed her own lips against his, doing the one thing she’d wanted to do since a few minutes into their first meeting, but had denied herself up until that point. She could feel his hint of a beard against her skin and the way that their lips fit together so naturally.

She stayed like that for a minute, savouring the feeling. It was wrong. She knew how wrong it was. Even without a personal tale to back her up, she still knew exactly what it was that she was doing and causing, but she still didn’t stop. It was impossible to stop.

It was impossible, but it also wasn’t. Juliette forced herself to pull away, dropping her hands at her side as she finally surveyed the damage she’d done. The eye of the storm had long passed, and she was standing in the thick of things again, nearly crushed by the weight of her guilt.

With a stifled noise of horror, she raised a hand gingerly to her lips and glanced at Booker with terrified, wide eyes. ”I-I’m sorry,” she blurted quickly, ”I have to go.” With that, she willed her legs to take her anywhere but there. Her boots clicked against the marble floors as she ran toward the stairs they’d entered from. She didn’t know how to exit, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t go back and face him after that.

Juliette ran out of the building, away from the mess she’d just caused, and didn’t look back.

There was something about the perfection of this moment that was both breath-taking and reinvigorating.. Admittedly, there was a moment of fear; Booker was scared that maybe he had misinterpreted; that when he would lean down, when he would attempt to press his lips to hers that all he would be met with was a screech and maybe a firm slap from an elegant hand. However, by the time that the thought crossed his mind, Booker couldn’t even attempt to bring himself to stop. It was too late. He was close, the gap was gone, and he was already processing the sensation of his lips against hers. But while the man had been prepared for whatever retaliation he had dreamed up, he wasn’t really prepared for what actually would happen.

The first was the fact that there was not resistance. Leaning down, his lips pressed against Juliette’s, he found nothing there to indicate that she was upset or shocked by his move. Even when he had brushed his hand gently against her cheek, she just closed her eyes and leaned into it.

Next came the pressure, the force of her own lips pressing hungrily against his own. Booker sighed, relief cascading down his body in waves. A hand found his jaw, stroking the stubble on his cheek as another snaked around to the back of his neck. Every tiny hair ignited extremely short fuses that rolled deep into his body, attached to nerve clusters that sent explosions coursing throughout his body. As her kiss tightened against him, Booker responded in kind.

His arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her closer as she tightened her kiss against him. His other hand settled on the woman’s lower back, holding her against him with just enough firmness to express exactly how much he wanted the woman who was standing before him. It was perfection, a moment that felt so utterly right that the man couldn’t even comprehend how or why this could be interpreted as wrong. How could something that felt this good be anything but?

That was the inherent flaw with perfection, however, it was never perfect. The two had gotten swept up in their sweetest of embraces, but it would be Juliette would come to her senses first. Just as suddenly as the kiss began, the man found himself that quickly devoid of lips to press against. A squeak of surprise, disgust, anger, whatever, and Juliette had pulled herself back. Feeling her body’s sudden movement, Booker’s eyes opened, wide as he straightened up, his fight or flight instincts kicking into overdrive.

He looked down, shocked and surprised, wondering for a brief moment what was wrong. But as the man looked at the expression that marred her face, Booker instantly could feel the heaviest pang of guilt settle into his heart. The good feelings, the sweetness, it was all suddenly gone and, in its place, there was only the deepest sadness and disgust with himself.

Dammit. He knew better than this…

>> ”I-I’m sorry,”

He blinked away his confusion, locking eyes with her again. How did she get so far away? It didn’t settle onto him right away that Juliette was beginning to move away from him so he took a single step towards her, his hand raised slightly in her direction. ”W-Wait…” he started to say. ”Juliette. I…I…”

>> ” I have to go.”

She didn’t give him the chance. Before he could even form the words of an apology, she had turned and found the will to move. Her legs carried her fast and far from him. He wanted to follow her, to explain to her that it was a mistake, to apologize for his behavior, and to steer her in the right direction of the exit (seriously, she was running around like a bird trapped in a building…which has happened and it’s a pain in the butt.) but he was only half—heartedly chasing her. He couldn’t chase too hard. He didn’t have that right and it would only scare her more.

Instead, Booker watched as she ran off, down the stairs and heading towards the entrance. Watching her go, the man let off the deepest and heaviest sighs as she dragged his feet to one of the nearest benches. He plopped down, sighed, and hung his head in his hands.

”Stupid, Booker,’ he chastised himself. ”So very stupid…”