Chapter 4
CARDS ON THE TABLE
RUBY
The second the car doors slam, silence swallows us.
And it’s not the peaceful kind of quiet. It’s the kind of silence that buzzes with static, warns of severe electrocution ahead as it vibrates through my skin.
I press back against the leather seat with my heart hammering, refusing to look at him. Which is pointless, because he’s looking at me.
Staring like I’m a puzzle he’s already solved but wants to keep taking apart again anyway. To peer into it. Lick it. Taste it.
Lick it again.
“You know your life’s over, right?” he says finally, voice low, sinful and smug. “I outed you. Paparazzi will be all over you. They’ll find where you work, where you live. Every single detail.”
I snap my head toward him, eyes flashing. “You think that’s a good thing? You think spelling it out for me is going to make me, what? Drop to my knees and blow you in gratitude?”
His mouth curves, dark and satisfied. “I think it means you’re better off with me. But I wouldn’t run screaming from the blow you part.”
I let out a humorless laugh even as my face heats up.
I could’ve gone with a million less horny analogies and I went with that? I fold my arms to hide my hardening nipples. Wishing I could stop breathing altogether because he smells insanely good. So good, I want to lick him. Taste him. Lick him again—
Jesus, get a fucking grip, Ruby.
“Wow. Great pitch, caveman. Kidnap me, ruin my anonymity, then declare yourself my savior. Do you practice this with groupies or does it just come naturally?”
He doesn’t even blink. His gaze rakes over me, slow and obscene, landing on the apron tied around my waist.
“That barista outfit,” he murmurs, his tongue gliding back and forth across his lower lip as his silver eyes glint with its own power supply. “You’re never wearing it for anyone else again. Only for me. I’ll make sure it’s worth your while.”
Heat slams through me so hard my thighs squeeze together. And I hate it. Hate how a sexist, rock-star remark makes me hot when it should make me homicidal. “No, thank you.” Damn, why is my voice husky?
“I’ve missed you,” he croons, that sinful rasp wrapping around me like smoke.
I want to slap him. Scratch his eyes out. Spit fire for the circus he’s turned my life into.
But my lips part anyway. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.” His voice drops lower, darker. “I haven’t been able to think about anything but how your mouth tastes. Like honey laced with whiskey and poison. A kiss that makes me burn down everything else in my head just to keep it. It was incredible, Ruby. You were incredible.”
My breath stutters and my nipples turn to traitorous little rocks. I fight not to squirm when my clit warns of impending swelling.
“Big deal. I’m sure you can find three dozen women within twenty feet of here if want to get your rocks off again.”
His head tilts. “Are you seriously implying you don’t know how fucking breathtaking you are?”
I shrug. “There’s something about the configuration of my face that makes guys want to jerk off on it. Doesn’t mean I walk around handing out Go badges.”
A wave of fury washes over his face but that’s not what grabs my attention even though that will need defining. No, it’s the tell-tale reddening of his ears.
As if… “Oh my god, you’ve had the same idea, haven’t you?”
“You’ll let me, when the time is right. But we need to get a few things straightened up first.”
“Sure, starting with you turning this car around. I want to go back to the coffee shop,” I whisper, desperate to reset.
To crawl back into the safe mediocrity I know.
“Fuck no.” His growl rattles the air. “I’ll buy you the goddamn place if you want. But I’ll break every bone in that fucker manager’s face before I let you step foot in there again. The way he looks at you? Like you’re something he’s owed? Over my fucking dead body.”
I gape at him. “Do you know how caveman you sound?”
He shrugs, unapologetic. “Best we have all our cards on the table off the bat.”
“Excuse me?”
His gaze pins me, feral and hungry. “You heard me. It’s your turn, baby.”
“My turn for what?”
“To tell me how much you’ve missed me. How you haven’t been able to stop thinking about me. How you’re glad to see me.”
All of the above. All true.
But I’d cut my pinky off and feed it to a New York rat before I admit that to him. And I don’t need to just yet because Zane Draven isn’t done talking.
“You’ll also tell me all your yeses and your nos—but I reserve the right to debate some of those nos.”
I must have fallen and broken my brain somewhere between last night and now. Because there’s a wild second when I want to recite every single need I possess. Give him that chance to make them all come true.
Like some Victorian waif too stupid to rub her two brain remaining cells together.
God.
I fold my arms, glare out the tinted window, and say nothing. I can’t. He’s scrambled me from head to toe and I need several minutes.
Several minutes pass. He continues staring at me with a fixation that poets would envy. As the car slows. Turns. Climbs.
When I finally blink and attempt to work out where we are, my stomach lurches. We’re in front of towering iron gates.
But it doesn’t lead to an exclusive hotel or resort. And it isn’t some dive rock star crash pad.
It’s a mansion.
Posh, sprawling, perched on the Hollywood Hills with a view that could drown a city.
And it’s where Zane Draven just brought me.
As I stare and stare and stare at the mansion, I half pray we’re here for his work.
Because this place? It’s the kind you only ever see in music videos, with white stone, glass walls, drive lined with palms swaying like synchronized dancers. The kind of place where you half expect paparazzi drones to hover permanently overhead.
It’s not the kind of place ordinary humans actually live, eat, bathe, sleep in.
Right?
The car rolls to a stop.
Before I can dig my heels in, Zane is out of the car and circling around. He yanks my door open like he owns not just this house but gravity itself.
He reaches inside for me and I bat his hand away. “Stop doing that! I can walk,” I snap.
“Not fast enough,” he mutters, and then I’m airborne again, slung over his shoulder like luggage.
“Are you serious?” I screech, pounding my fists against his back as he strides up the steps. “Put me down, you lunatic!”
“Keep fighting, baby,” he growls, smug as sin. “It only makes me harder.”
My jaw drops.
I want to scream. I also—God help me—want to squirm until I feel exactly what he’s talking about. My third problem? With my ass so close to his face, I’m a little terrified he’ll smell how wet I am.
Because I’m stupidly wet.
Drenched.
From his words and from the way he’s been staring at me. And how utterly humiliating is that?
Sure, I haven’t had a relationship for a minute. And by a minute I mean a few…years. But to get this worked up over a handful of words and a mildly deranged expression?
So what if it’s insanely, savagely hot on this particular madman the way madness looks on Tom Hardy?
A keening sound builds in my throat. “Arrrgh! Everything about this is madness. Listen, let me go and I won’t say a word to anyone about this.”
Said the spider to the fly.
I’m not surprised when he doesn’t dignify that with an answer.
The double doors swing open without him breaking stride and I catch staff scuttling out of the way like they’ve seen this show before.
Suddenly I’m inside.
Marble floors gleam under a chandelier the size of a small planet. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the glittering upside down sprawl of Los Angeles below. A grand piano gleams in the corner, flanked by guitars mounted like hunting trophies.
And me. Still slung over his shoulder, barista apron askew, skirt creeping up my thick thighs and sneakers squeaking as I kick.
“Welcome home,” he says darkly, carrying me deeper into the house.
“Not my home,” I snarl, twisting madly until he finally sets me down, though not without pinning me to the marble with one hand at my hip to steady the waves of dizziness buffeting me.
For a second, I forget how to breathe.
Because up close, with the skyline blazing behind him, he looks like every rock ’n’ roll fever dream made flesh, with gleaming white teeth, tattoos alive in the shifting light, silver eyes glinting, chest still damp with sweat.
And me?
Fish out of water. Drenched. Flailing with wild dark-blonde hair all over the place. A barista who should’ve run when she had the chance.
“You really think you can keep me here?” I ask, voice sharper than I feel.
His lips curl. “I don’t think, my dearest Ruby. I know.”
Zane
She’s standing in the middle of my marble kingdom like she’s been dropped into the wrong movie set. Head high, eyes sharp, arms crossed like that’s enough to hold me back.
I head straight to the kitchen, yank open the Sub-Zero, pull out a tray of food one of the staff left for me. Cold cuts. Cheese. Bread I’ll never touch. I shove the plate in her direction.
“Eat.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”
My jaw tightens. “Then pretend. You’ll need the strength.”
Her eyes flash. “Strength for what? Fending off another deranged stunt? No thanks.”
God, the way she spits fire at me, it should piss me off.
Instead, my cock throbs. It’s been throbbing since yesterday.
Since I tasted her and fell in the deepest pit of lust. I can’t sleep. I can’t think straight. Hell, I can’t even walk straight without the steel pipe getting in my way.
I adjust it now, watch her cheek turn red, and lean back against the counter, arms folded, tattoos stretched across the muscles of my chest and biceps, sweat still clinging to my T-shirt.
She hates me, hates all this, but her gaze betrays her—sliding over my ink, lingering where the fabric clings.
I catch her and raise my brows. “Like what you see?” I ask, voice low and taunting.
Her glare could cut steel. “I’d rather lick the floor.”