Chapter Twelve
Sadie
“ N ormal people,” Kingston says as he turns like he knew I was there the entire time, “just say hello. Or call.”
“Dinosaurs make calls.”
His mouth twitches and heat streaks through me, the now-familiar pull to him swooping through my system. “It’s not all texts and emails.”
“No, it’s phone calls and carrier pigeons.”
This time, Kingston laughs and he leans against a wall, the cold intermittent rain giving the city a shine, giving him one, too. And he takes me in, his mouth soft, generous, and the most sensuous thing I’ve ever somehow managed to turn down.
I don’t know if that makes me an idiot or smart.
There’s a softness about him, not just his mouth; all of him. “Are you drunk?”
“No. But I’m human.”
“Are you?”
“I had a few drinks. Why are you following me?”
“Not following,” I say, keeping my distance from him because to do anything else would be me launching myself at him and claiming that kiss I denied earlier…something I can’t do. I’m not that self-destructive. “Looking.”
Kingston nods, like he knows.
Of course he does. I’m good but I’m not magic. I came after him when he left for reasons I don’t understand. And I sat at a bar opposite the one he was at, near the window, working and watching to see what he did next. I could have gone in to the one he was at, but this man has an uncanny ability to know I’m there. Like he’s tuned in.
He’s smart, and he’s someone who is highly aware, but it’s like he’s got a special radar for me.
Like the one I have for him.
I ignore that thought.
“So, you were looking for me?”
Suddenly he straightens and that hard edge starts to slide back into place.
“Yes.” I put on a cool tone to match his.
While watching him, something popped up in my messages from Damon. But I don’t say this.
“I thought we could talk.”
He nods and then he whips out his phone. “Let’s get out of this rain and go somewhere to talk, then.”
This part of East Sixth is residential, but bars and restaurants in the East Village, West Village, and Lower East Side abound.
“Okay.”
I’m curious. That’s the only reason I slide into the black car with him when it turns up. It’s why I don’t ask where we’re going. That becomes obvious as we head across town.
He cuts a look at me. “Don’t think you’ve gotten lucky.”
“And here I wore my best underwear.”
“I’d prefer you not wearing any.”
Silence engulfs us for a beat and my entire being sings and tingles with pleasure and need from his words.
Kingston doesn’t apologize, and his dark blue eyes burn hot.
“I…” I can’t think of a thing to say because my head is suddenly filled with fantasies of him, naked.
“I just thought if you figure we should talk, I figure we should do it somewhere private and comfortable.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I follow him into his building, riding the too small elevator—how can one man take up so much space, so much air, so much of my attention?—to his mansion in the sky.
Like the time I broke in it grabs with the fact it’s livable. I see so many rich people’s places that are generic showrooms or so over the top it’s hard to breathe for fear of breaking some gaudy and insanely expensive thing.
His place, with him, makes it real. I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but it fits. The place is Kingston. Oh, there are expensive pieces, but everything has its place, everything is built for comfort and to last. Clean lines, masculine without hitting someone over the head.
“Cataloging?”
I turn and narrow my eyes. “You’ve got a mouth on you, Kingston. One that might get you in trouble.”
“Depends on the trouble,” he says, dumping his coat on a chair and kicking off his shoes. He closes in and eases the lapels of my jacket from my shoulders. “If it’s your kind of trouble, I might be interested in seeing where it leads.”
I swallow and step back, the glint in his gaze doing dark things to me. Shrugging the leather from my shoulders, I dump it. On the floor. And he laughs.
“No one dares speak like you do to me. Or does shit like that. Most people would be…solicitous…”
“To be in your sacred sanctum?”
“That’s one way to put it.” Kingston moves off and to a bar, one of those old-fashioned carts, but this one clean, strong lines in wood and smoked glass, and dark sheening metal. It shouldn’t work, but it does. I’m guessing a bespoke design for him. “You have a chip on your shoulders, big as Texas.”
“That’s some chip.” I cast my gaze to the modern art painting on the wall. It’s real and it’s worth a fortune. It fits the room, too. The strong reds are offset with the black and grays in it. The mood it gives is at once sensual and austere. Hard line or hot sex, that’s what it says to me.
“I get it, Sadie. You don’t like rich people. And yes, it’s real.”
“You know I know that. That artist’s turned his hand to other things. This piece is worth a fortune and going up in price.”
He laughs as I turn. “And you know I know that. Why the chip?”
“I don’t like the rich.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “I’ve told you a lot of the reasons.”
“Indulge me.” He picks up a bottle of amber liquid in a plain decanter and turns it in his hands.
I take a step forward and stop, on the middle of the living room floor, between the sofas and lick my lips. “I don’t know. I guess so many have a sociopathic edge.”
This isn’t necessarily true. But those who do, and the way so many go about fleecing others because they can even when they have enough, it reminds me of my father, and how Dad has those genes.
It worries me that I might be the same.
Even though I’m not.
“Stupid things,” I add. “You’re different than I thought.”
“Too much or not enough of a sociopath for you?”
He sets down the decanter and opens it.
“Well, you haven’t kicked me out for not kissing up to you,” I say.
His gaze meets mine. “I find you both a pain in my fucking ass and completely refreshing.” He picks up a glass. “That what people do?”
I don’t pretend not to understand him as outside rain begins to hit the window in earnest. “I’m treated as a circus attraction.”
“You don’t have to do it, you know. Work for these people you don’t like.”
Smiling, I spread my hands. “Where else am I going to rob them legally? They don’t need me, not most of them.”
“And me?”
“I’m still figuring that out. But,” I say, “I want to see that Sinclair piece.”
“I’ll take that.” Kingston pours some drinks, crosses the room and hands one to me. “Whiskey neat. I can get ice if you’d like. Or a mixer.”
“No thanks. I’m grown. I can handle it.”
“Can you?”
“Yes.”
The heat flares in his eyes and he smiles, soft and small and cat like. I should be nervous the way he looks at me, like prey, but I’m not. It sends thrills shooting through my veins and makes me want to throw down more, just to see what happens.
Instead, I accept the drink and his fingers slide deliberately against my skin.
“Sit. Take off your damn boots.” He nods at the nearest sofa as he steps back.
Taking a swallow of the whiskey, I deliberately sit on the floor.
Kingston laughs and drops down next to me, setting his glass next to mine. “You always do that? Deliberately poke bears?”
“Maybe you bring it out in me.”
“Maybe I do.” He starts undoing the laces of my boots, and there’s something intimate about it. I should stop him. I don’t.
“Would you prefer I grovel, Kingston?”
“Hell no.” He eases off one boot. “I like how you are.”
He tosses the boot over his shoulder and it lands with a thud. Then he does the same with the other.
I’m not exactly sure what’s happening, but…I think I might like how he is, too. He’s a pain, he’s hot, he’s smart, he’s intriguing and different from anyone I’ve met before, and he makes every single part of me buzz.
“You have lovely feet.” He traces a finger down over the top of my foot in the black sock. “But you didn’t come here to discuss your feet. Since you are here…” Kingston tosses down his drink and I grab mine and do the same. “I wanted to say sorry.”
“For what?”
He gets up and comes back with the decanter. “Coming at you about your father. We can’t choose our parents.”
“You don’t like yours?”
Kingston pours us both another drink. “No, I do. I love them. My mother’s interfering and loving and devious and the old man was a workaholic. I just mean we’re ourselves and they’re them and you don’t go around conning people.”
“But I do. That’s what my job is with the evaluations.”
He raises his glass and a brow. “No, I’d say you give them what they want. And you know what I meant.”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
For a moment I think Kingston’s going to argue with me, but instead he nods. “Okay, how about a game?”
“What do you mean?”
“You give nothing away for free and I respect that. I do.” He stretches his long legs out as he sits opposite me, then raises his glass. “So, a game. We each ask the other a question.”
“Is this a drinking game?” My insides tighten at the way he looks at me.
He smiles. “Yes. We take turns in asking questions and answering. Say I ask you a question and you answer, I get to guess if it’s truth or lie, and—”
“Truth or dare?”
“Truth or lie, Sadie. I guess right, you drink; I guess wrong, I drink.”
“You think I’m going to say no, don’t you? But what if I back up the lie with a lie?”
“Will you?” he asks.
“I might.”
“You won’t.” He takes a sip of his drink. “And if you do? I’ll know you’re lying.”
I narrow my eyes at him and lean in. “And if you back up a lie with a lie? Or a truth with a lie?”
“I won’t.”
I grab his chin with one hand, his stubble the right amount of rough against my fingertips and it does things to me. That combination of hard, soft, heat, and scratch. I want to feel it against my bare flesh. I want his face—mouth—between my thighs.
The thought should shock and make me run.
I stay exactly where I am.
“I’ll know if you lie, Kingston.”
He moves, sliding his cheek against me and I drop my hand. “So?”
I could con him, win this. After all, I learned how to twist lies into truths to my own advantage from the best. But I’m not going to do that. “You’re on. I’ll start. How old are you?”
“You’re not trying. You stole my wallet.”
My mouth twitches as I try not to smile at the mock serious expression on his face. But his eyes…he knows the base part of me, how I can’t back down, and this is definitely a challenge. “I’m setting a baseline.”
He breathes out, gaze hot. “Thirty-five. Almost thirty-six.”
“True.”
He only looks at me and has a swallow of his whiskey. “Your illustrious career on the other side of the law. You said it was exaggerated. You want me to think it isn’t, I think it is. Am I right?”
I stare at him. I could lie and he wouldn’t know, he—
“Right now, you’re thinking of a way out of an answer.”
He’s bluffing, I’m sure of it. “Just mulling it over.”
“No mulling.”
“Rules on rules?”
“They’re like Russian dolls.”
I want to laugh, but I take that sip. I point at him with my glass. “Why is all this so important to you?”
“That’s not yes and no.” He slides a hand over his thigh and my mouth goes dry. “And I told you. I want what’s mine.”
“You asked me to sell it for you.”
“Yeah? But I want it first. I want to know what it’s worth and then we can do that. I want what’s mine. That’s why it’s important. I want what’s mine.”
I hesitate. He does, I know that, but I don’t know what else is there, motivating him beyond what he told me. And how he looks at me when he says that… “Okay, what about love? Do you believe in love?”
“Why, Sadie,” he says, mocking me, “Do you have a heart?”
“You can’t answer with an answer.”
“No.”
I stare at him and he stares back, not reacting. Finally, I take a sip. “Something we can agree on.”
“Are you an only child, Sadie?”
“Yes.”
He just smiles and takes a sip.
“You think you know me, Kingston?”
“Not at all; that’s why we’re doing this.”
“You know what I mean. You think you know the truth about me?”
“Yes.” He lifts his glass. “You need to drink. You skipped.”
“You’re cheating. You keep asking things.” I take a savage swallow. “And you went and took my turn. You don’t play fair.”
He finishes his drink. “Of course I don’t. Where’s the fun in that?”
“Why do you really want to find the tiara?” I need to find familiar footing. A safe place. This seems about as safe as it gets.
“I told you.” He looks at me. “Money.”
“Truth.” I finish my drink and he refills it. I’m aware he’s a little tipsy, just at the edges, but I don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s any less dangerous than he usually is. I stop and consider my thoughts. Dangerous? Yes, he is, in ways I can’t quite define.
“And you?”
“Money,” I say.
He doesn’t drink. “This is where we both have a sip. Because I’m both right and you’re lying.”
“You’re drunker than I thought.”
“I’m not drunk,” he says. “You’re in it for money and thrills. Are you going to steal it?”
“You’re not playing fair.”
“Answer.”
“It’s my turn.”
“Answer,” he says, his voice soft.
Am I? Yes. No. I don’t really know. So I say that. “I don’t know.”
“Truth.” And he has another sip.
“Why did you really take me to your place?”
“To talk.”
I point at him. “Lie.”
He stares into his drink a moment, then at me. “Thing is, I keep fighting it, but…” Now he lifts those blue eyes to mine. “I want to kiss you, Sadie. Do you want me to kiss you?”
Everything stills. Then my heart starts to beat hard. “Yes.”
We’re not playing anymore. And I don’t know why I said that. I don’t like backing down from challenges, but I’m not stupid. I go to take a drink when his hand comes down on mine and he takes my glass from me. He’s so close his breath warms my lips.
And then he kisses me.
It’s soft, sweet, and almost not there and I crave more. This time, I return the favor, and his mouth is perfect on mine. Again and again we tease each other, my stomach swirling, dipping, flying and he makes a sound.
I don’t know what it is. A low thing, almost like a sigh. I might not know, but my body does, and it’s like a dam breaks within, and need and passion come tumbling out and I wrap my fingers into his shirt, bringing him in.
He kisses me, hot and urgent. Mouth open, tongue there, and I let him in. I kiss back with the same deep hunger. It sweeps through me. And kiss tumbles into kiss.
We’re wrapped about each other, his hand on my cheek, my throat, against the side of my breast and then my waist as we roll into each other.
I’m drowning, more of this and I’ll be naked in his arms and I’ll forget why I came here.
That’s the only reason I end the kiss.
Not fear or a dark wave of the prospect of losing myself in him, because like I’m going to do that.
Somehow, I find it in me to pull free, untangle from him.
Struggling, I manage to find my breath if not my center. “I had a reason.”
He sits back, dark gaze on me. “Pardon?”
“For coming here.”
“And you remembered now?”
“I got distracted.”
A smile touches his mouth. “So I see.”
I can still feel his kiss. I can feel the slight burn from the stubble, the softness of his lips. The heat of his mouth and the slide of his tongue.
“I have a lead on the tiara.”