Chapter Eight
Elliot
I t’s like heaven has exploded inside me. Pleasure and unexpected tenderness, and then a deep flame straight from hell. Delicious, decadent, and wild.
Ryder Sinclair’s mouth is on mine and it’s perfection. I gasp and his tongue slides along my lip, into my mouth, and thought simply stops.
It’s just pure sensation.
I cling to him, my entire body a flickering flame of need and desire and delight. He tastes like champagne and a sweet, spiced something that’s deep and dark like a tryst and I want more.
He pulls back, mouth brushing mine with a lingering, trembling note of such tenderness I get instantly why women don’t hold grudges against him for his love and leave ways. I completely understand why they fall over themselves to just have him look at them or kiss them like that. And if he can kiss, then oh, fuck, what the hell can he do with sex?
There’s a magic to him and I can see it, taste it, feel it. His breath is warm and slightly uneven on my damp lips, and he whispers my name.
“Elliot…”
He hasn’t let me go and he’s about to say something else when everything lights up bright white.
“Shit. I almost forgot,” he mutters.
I come back to the Earth with a bang. In all that, I’d forgotten I’d orchestrated the paps, and as Ryder locks my gaze with his, I know that’s why he kissed me. He saw them and took the opportunity.
I’d just planned to walk out with him, holding him close, maybe get him to bend his head to mine like we spoke loving words to each other, but that… I can’t even be mad at him for kissing me.
There’s a slightly shocked light in his eyes, but I put it down to the flash of the cameras.
I smile. “You did good, kid,” I say, tugging him along to the sleek black car that’s pulled up to us.
Some of the paps are shouting to him, but Ryder ignores them and bundles us into the car.
He closes the door on the noise as slides a glance my way as he dances his fingers along the sleeve of my coat.
“I didn’t mean to kiss you,” he says, making my heart stutter in my chest.
“Listen—”
“I mean I did. Mean to kiss you. I just didn’t think it would go that far.” He takes his hand back and rests it on his thigh. “I’ll stop before I get myself into trouble.”
“Turning a new leaf?”
Ryder laughs and shakes his head. “I stole a kiss.”
“I’ll write about it in my bright pink diary.”
“Not lime green to match your sneakers? Or Godzilla themed? Or whatever that monstrosity of a T-shirt was you wore?”
“You’re not funny, Ryder.”
He bumps my shoulder with his and a small little thrill races along my veins. “You like me.”
I do. That’s the problem. “I don’t.”
“I’m growing on you.”
“Like a fungus?”
“A handsome fungus,” he says so seriously that I burst out laughing. “I was thinking we shouldn’t call it a night.”
I study him a long moment. “I know it’s been a second for you and you’ve just entered into your first dry spell, but I’m not a consolation prize.”
“Hardly. But I wouldn’t go home. Not if I was dressed up.”
“You’re pretending to turn a new leaf. You’re pretending you’re mature and responsible.”
“Yes,” he says, shifting to look at me, “but there’s that and there’s being so out of character. Besides, what better way to show a new me than taking my newly appointed girl out on the town?”
I shouldn’t do it. I know that. But he has a point. One that makes sense. One that’s actually smart. And, I’m dressed up.
“Okay, but I pick.”
“Deal.”
The little club we go to is in the labyrinth-like streets of the village, the curved Commerce Street, right off the tangle where Manhattan’s grid stops, and the place is down an unassuming flight of steps.
“Are you taking me to some kind of dungeon?”
The humor in his voice makes me smile as I push open the door. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“Me? Never.”
Ryder’s looking about with a gleam in his eye and no doubt he’s enjoying all the eye candy. And inside I’m struggling to hold myself together, to nail myself to solid ground because, holy damn, Ryder kissed me.
The thought won’t go away.
And the senses memory?
It zooms and flirts and swoops inside me. I can still feel his mouth on mine. The erotic slide of his tongue. The heat and wetness and the masterful concerto he can create with a kiss.
I can still feel his hands on me as he took my lips with his.
And he only did it to further his agenda, which is what I’m here for.
He leads us through the elegant young things, and the elegant older things, too. People are dressed up, and there to be seen, but also just do their thing.
This place is a little jazzy, a little quirky, and lacking in sleaze. I like it, but more importantly, I figured it would be somewhere that would fit Ryder 2.0.
We slide into a little booth and I can’t help but notice his leg, long, firm, warm, is pressed against mine.
“What is this place?”
“A little bar. Not the kind you go to, but it’s got that vibe without the sleaze.”
Ryder raises a brow. “Interesting choice of words there, Perry.”
“I just meant it’s more…grown up.”
“Yeah. I got that.” The lights go up on a stage and there’s a smattering of applause as a tuxedoed band takes the stage, and a woman with amber hair and a figure hugging dress starts to sing in a low voice.
Ryder’s gaze is pinned to her. And that’s not jealousy I feel. Not at all. Of course, he’d watch the most mesmerizing woman in the room. Her figure won’t quit and she has oodles of talent. The sultry sexiness of love mourned in her song winds around the room and I study the cocktail menu. It’s a dark place, with well placed low orangey lights. Even the stage is lit in such a way it doesn’t disturb the vibe of the place.
“The violet martini,” he says.
I look up and he’s watching me and no one else.
And it’s hard to breathe.
There’s a light in his gaze that ignites me. I’m sure it’s something he doesn’t think about, just uses. But it’s like he can see right down into me, down into my secret self, where I’m beautiful. Because that’s how he looks at me. Like I’m that. Like he likes what he sees. Like he wants it.
“You’ve been here before? And don’t look at me like that.”
“No. I can read, though. It’s a skill, what can I say? One of the many I possess.” Ryder pauses. “And what way?”
“Like you…” I trail off. I don’t want to say like your latest conquest. That’s laughable and I don’t want Ryder Sinclair to laugh at me in that way. “Like you’re making the look part of the act.”
He slides his fingers over mine. “Part of the act? That this is a date?”
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be much of a date, fake or otherwise, if I didn’t look at you like you fascinate me.” He lowers his voice to thick, melted chocolate. The darkest kind. “Which you do.”
I swallow. God, he’s a dangerous man.
The waitress chooses that moment to arrive and ask what we’d like to drink. Ryder looks at me with a raised brow and I nod. “Two violet martinis, please.”
And he hands her a black AmEx.
“I think we should strategize the next—”
“Perry.” He takes my hand in his and rubs his thumb against my flesh, making me shiver and my thoughts scatter. “No more shop, okay?”
“Sinclair.” I know I should pull my hand away, I know he’s flirting on automatic, but it feels so good, I figure what’s the harm in a few seconds more. “This is your dime, you know.”
“It’s a lot of my dimes. Do you want to be paid in dimes? We can do it, but it’ll probably make life worth it. How about unmarked bills?”
“Do you ever take anything seriously?”
“Great sex, a beautiful woman who’s fantastic company, making money, and my work. Did I mention sex?”
I pull my hand back to my side of the table just as the waitress reappears and her eyes widen at my move. I don’t blame her. I must seem like a lunatic to snatch my hand away from such a beautiful man. She places the small black leather folder with the bill in it next to Ryder’s hand and her fingers accidentally on purpose touch him.
He doesn’t even notice, his gaze still on me, as he says thanks.
When she’s gone, he adds, “I mean, you’re the beautiful woman.”
“I’m not beautiful.”
He studies me for a long moment. “You don’t like compliments. You don’t like flirting. You don’t like being the center of attention. What is it you like, Elliot?”
“I’m not the center of attention. I don’t command it the way you do or half the people in here do.”
“You did when you walked in to the event dressed like that.”
I wrinkle my nose at him and glance away for a second. “Costume and bells and whistles.”
“Or,” he says, picking up his drink and taking a sip, “you let yourself shine a moment. Two sides to everything, Elliot.”
He’s flirting again, but I shift the conversation to the night we just had, and soon we’re laughing over some of the silly conversations, some of the outfits of the mega rich who don’t give a damn. Not long after, he starts telling me some of the things he did at college.
“You did not.” I stare at him. I believe him, but I’m trying to imagine Ryder with pink hair.
He whips out his phone and drags up a photo and shows me.
I can’t help it. I start laughing. He looks adorable, ridiculous, and young.
“That’s so rude, Perry,” he says. “It was for a good cause.”
“No. You just told me you dyed your hair bright pink to win a bottle of Wild Turkey.”
“As I said, I have a good cause. I despise Wild Turkey, but I was trying to impress a girl with it.”
“Of course you were.”
He nods sagely. “She’s a fine woman, Rosalita. I think she was seventy then, and looked amazing. Also, she made the best damn poblano and roasted squash tamales I’ve ever had. I just wanted the recipe.”
I give him a curious look and smile against my will. He’ll take it and run because I’ve learned fast that’s what he does. If this man was unattractive and a pauper, I’ve a feeling women would still hang off him because that’s the super power he has.
He’s charming, he’s self-effacing, he makes you the center of the universe and he’d coax the underwear off a saint. And the man is funny.
“You can cook?”
“I’ve been known to dabble. But I’m no Rosalita.”
“Ah, but did the whiskey work?”
He sighs and it’s a theatrical sound. “Well, she said she’d keep feeding me, maybe teach me some things, but that recipe would have to be pried out of her cold, dead hands.” He pauses. “She’s still causing trouble in her little restaurant, so…no luck there.”
Then Ryder smiles low. “Maybe we should go.”
“I’m on the clock, remember? And you’ve got a time crunch.”
“After.”
Oh, Lord. After. It’s so loaded, that word. “We’ll see.”
We won’t. I know that. Because he’ll be on to his pastures he likes. Fresh, full of beautiful women.
“I’m taking that as a yes,” he says.
And as he smiles at me, a straight to the heart, screw armor and defenses and everything else smile, I realize my mistake in working with him.
This is a man a woman could fall for. Hard.
There are depths.
Layers.
And he’s got a genuine core beneath the beauty and his charm and sex appeal and dangerous ways.
Ryder Sinclair.
I’m crushing on him. Oh, so hard I’m basically glittery dust and future hurt.
Because this gorgeous billionaire is a man that no woman, especially not one like me, should ever lose their head over.
He might not mean it. He probably won’t ever notice.
But Ryder’s a man who can destroy a heart without pausing.
Including mine.