Chapter Fourteen
Elliot
M y heart beats wild in my chest as my eyes flutter shut.
There’s no pretending he isn’t going to kiss me.
His gaze glittered with that intent as he pulled me to him, and I want that kiss more than my next breath.
The last time—the only time—we kissed buzzes in my veins and I’m just tingling with need, with desire and—
Oh shit. What am I doing?
I put a hand against his chest and open my eyes. He’s so close, barely an inch from me and his mouth is oh so deliciously close.
“Ryder.”
“What? I’m in the middle of something here, Elliot.”
I want to melt. I force myself to keep solid form. “We can’t.”
“We can. It’s easy. Very easy. We’ve done it before.”
He’s so close the warmth of his breath is on me and that intoxicating Ryder scent is invading every single cell of my body.
“I know,” I say. “But I’m not kissing you.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” Right now, I can’t think of a reason. There are lots of reasons not to. I’m sure of it. I used to know them. But right now all I can think and breathe and want is him and that kiss, and my mind is telling me to run, but my body, my hormones are saying go for it, take that kiss.
“Because,” I say again, “we should go. There’s putting on a show and there’s causing a scene.”
“People kiss all the time, Perry. It’s like a law or something.”
I wish it was a law.
“No, I’m positive there’s no law on this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. Checked all the books.”
“What if I want to kiss you?”
I stare at him, my heart hammering, blood pressure shooting toward the roof. “Do you?”
Ryder Sinclair, the gorgeous asshole with the smile that can melt diamonds hesitates. Then he hesitates some more. When the hesitation continues, I want to kick myself. But instead, I decide to be the grown up. I step back from him.
“Stupid question,” I say, turning.
Ryder grabs my arm. “Elliot…”
But I don’t want this conversation in public, I don’t want it in private. I don’t want to be humiliated. I just smile a smile I don’t feel because I’m a mess of emotions. A mess of relief, need, annoyance, lust.
“I just…” I stop. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Fine.” He lets go of my arm and takes my hand again as we head toward the hostess table. He sends a text and then pays on his way out, handing the waitress a huge tip in cash.
I’m pretty sure she’s willing to birth all his babies if he so much as asked.
Ryder collects our coats from the coat check, still holding my hand, and then we’re outside, the coats draped over his arm.
He lets me go as he steps up to the curb where a shining black car waits and bundles me in.
I don’t even ask where we’re going because the moment the driver starts to head toward Houston Street, I know.
“Are you dropping me off, Ryder?”
“Hell no, I’m coming up.” He looks at my face, then raises a brow. “You want to unleash me on the public?”
“Is this your form of blackmail slash torture?”
“People love spending time with me.”
“Not all people, Ryder.” Like me, because surely last night was enough torture.
“You did say we need to spend time together,” he says, sounding smug and sure of himself.
Part of me wants to smack him down. Part of me wants to throw myself at him. And that’s the problem. A man like him isn’t what I want. A man like him is pure fantasy material.
I ignore the small voice that whispers how unexpectedly delightful he is. I do not need that voice. Instead, I remind myself what he’s paying me and this is my job. “So you’re saying you can’t be trusted to be alone?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
The car pulls up on the street near my building and I sigh. “Okay, come on up.”
And his grin is pure decadence and delight.
As we head into my building, every cell in me jumping like live wires, I’m wondering what kind of sadist I am.
This man is dangerous. So very dangerous. To me. Because I’m so attracted to him it’s sometimes hard to see straight. Or think straight.
My crush…it’s huge. Full blown.
And yeah. He’s really dangerous.
Inside my apartment, he makes himself at home, getting drinks for us, putting music on by hooking up his phone to the Bluetooth sound system I have.
I kick off my heels and take the whiskey on the rocks he holds out, and sip it, to give myself something to do that doesn’t involve me either running and hiding or ripping his clothes off.
Clearly, I have problems.
So does Ryder Sinclair.
Because he’s looking at me with smolder in those melting chocolate eyes and I’m buzzing. The music doesn’t help, either. It’s sultry and low, easy and seductive.
“You like this kind of music?” I ask.
It’s old school, like really old school, bluesy, jazzy, from when life was dressing to the nines and films came in black and white and bigger than life with the impossible glamor.
“Since I have it, I’m going to hazard the answer to that is yes, Perry.”
“Interesting.”
“What?” He gives his head a small shake before sprawling on the sofa. “I can’t have taste?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
“I like you. Does that count as taste, Perry?” He grins as he picks up his drink. “Don’t sell yourself short or I’ll put on some autotuned pop.”
“That,” I say, “sounds more like you.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an insult.”
“Take it how you want.” I set my drink on the coffee table. “I’m getting changed.”
His gaze slides over me. “I didn’t bring anything for myself.”
“I have some Hello Kitty pajamas you can wear.”
“Or I can wear nothing at all…”
Heat pools inside me and that familiar tingling down in my sex starts. I open my mouth but I can’t think of a damned word to say that isn’t along the line of take me now, so I turn and scurry off to my room.
Inside, I lean against the closed door, shutting my eyes and my legs start to shake.
Oh, man. He’s beyond dangerous. He’s a secret weapon. And I don’t know what to do.
It isn’t even that he wants me. I’m aware enough that he’s the kind of low-down man whore who’d do any woman he found mildly attractive. But he turned my act of dressing down into some sort of flirt fest and—
I need to get my shit together. That’s what I need to do.
Taking in a breath, I straighten up and open my eyes. Then I strip down and find pajamas, this time the old man style of thick stripes and a long sleeved button down top, all in that unsexiest of materials, flannel. Then I head to my bathroom, scrape my hair back and remove the bare minimum make up.
And okay, I feel a little silly for doing this like I’m some femme fatale or pin up girl, but it’s more for me than for him.
When I finally emerge and head back, the lamps are on, the overhead off, and Ryder looks for all the world like he’s settled in and made himself at home. His shoes and socks are off, his jacket and waistcoat and tie abandoned; and that dark head with the soft loose curls is bent over a book.
The image slams me hard against the floor, smacking me in the solar plexus. Because like that, he’s the picture of my dream man.
I’ve got it bad and I need to stop.
I sit on the other end of the sofa and pick up my drink from where he’s placed it, on a coaster on the coffee table, and I hold it like it’s some kind of lifeline to reality and good sense.
He finishes the page he’s on, slides a finger down between that and the next one and turns it. Finally, he glances at me. “Really?”
“What?” I frown.
He waves the book in my general direction before closing it and setting it down. Ryder crosses his legs. “The hair, the old dude at the homeless shelter vibe pajamas, you know.”
I pull my legs up beneath my chin and shoot him a look. “How do you know that’s not the look I was going for?”
“I’m pretty sure you were.” He leans forward. “If I was so inclined, this wouldn’t stop me making a move. It’s sexy in its own way. Except the hair. That makes you look like a librarian. Actually, I take that back, because librarian fantas—”
“Please.” I push the book and him away. “Of course you have a librarian fantasy. If it’s female, you’ve got a fantasy.”
He shrugs. “Is that a problem?”
“Ryder, yes. You have to get this shit under control.” His mother’s words come back to me, and the purpose of why he’s here, why he hired me. Not to mention the fact he’s flirting like it’s breathing and my hormones are in overdrive, acting like the worst kind of na?ve, acting like he means it.
I’m not his type. I don’t want to be his type. Spending hours on hair and make-up and clothes and appealing to a man bores me. Take me or leave me has always been my motto. So why does this one affect me so much?
The stupid physical crush, that’s what it is.
“I’m not going to do anything,” he says.
“Because I’m not your type, unless you class female as a type.”
He shoots me a low-lidded look, then sets down the book and picks up his drink. “You think I’m immune to you?”
“What does that even mean?”
“That you don’t affect me.”
I sigh. “Ryder, you’re saying this because I’m the only female near you. The only one you can have any kind of…one-on-one contact with for the rest of the month. Now, since you’re here, we need to talk about those plans.”
“Shifting the subject?”
“This is the only one we’re discussing.”
“Not why your toenails are siren red, but your fingernails are beige boredom?”
I’m not going to laugh. “They’re a very light pink.”
“That’s even worse.”
I snatch up my drink and hold it. “It’s the sort of color that goes with anything. I work for a living.”
“So do I.”
“What I mean is,” I say, taking a swallow of the cool whiskey, “is I have to present in a certain way.”
“Is frump a certain way?”
I just stare at him. “I’m a frump who wears old homeless man pajamas? Sinclair, keep this up and I’ll be putty in your hands.”
Ryder starts to laugh. “Jesus, Elliot. I wouldn’t even call a frump a frump, I’m not that into death wishes. And I don’t think there are frumps, just clothes that don’t show off assets how they should and how the fuck do you do this to me?”
“Do what?”
“Tie my words into knots?” He slides across to me and my breath is caught in my throat as he reaches out, touching my hair. “I’m good with women. Very good.”
“Or very bad.”
“Sometimes,” he says, with a small smile as he pulls the band from my hair and rakes his finger through it, making me shiver with pleasure from the sudden release of the pull, and from the soft slide of his fingers against my scalp and then down through my hair, “sometimes, that’s the exact same thing.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m not falling over myself to please you, and maybe I’m not impressed.”
“Maybe,” he says. “And maybe I like a challenge.”
The electrified taunt in his words is full of sensual innuendo and my stomach flip-flops. “In a few weeks, you’ll be able to impress all the women your trashy heart desires and you won’t even have to try.”
“Trashy?” He winces.
“Trashy.”
Now he slides his hand down along my cheekbone. “I’m not trashy. And how is this about me? I’m talking about you.”
“I’m a boring subject,” I say, going to push his hand away, but instead he turns it on me and links our fingers. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“The flirting.”
“Friendly flirting,” he says. “I’m natural born. I don’t even color it. And what the fuck’s wrong with a little flirting?”
“Oh, you know the jewels, the company you want to remain in your family. The big change you have to do.”
“Appear to do.”
I take in a breath, but I can’t tell him what his mother said to me. I don’t even know what she was trying to get at with it beyond her general warning. “Sometimes you have to give a little, bring that change into you, to make it believable.”
“That’s your job and you’re changing the subject.” Suddenly, he points a finger at me. “You don’t like flirting because it puts the attention on you.”
“No. I don’t like stupid flirting when there’s nothing behind it.”
He lifts the corner of his mouth. “But that’s ridiculous. Flirting is like air. It’s what keeps you alive and it’s good. Also, flirting is just what you said.”
“So you admit it’s empty?” I ask. “With nothing behind it.”
Ryder doesn’t speak for a moment. “Not what I said. Look at it like shopping.”
“I’m not into shopping.”
But he ignores me as he looks around my apartment and back at me.
“You know what I mean, Sinclair. Not into the boutiques. Not into having to spend my money to feel good. There’s window shopping, and there’s seeing something and going for it. Flirting is window shopping. Sometimes it’s just for fun and then you see what you like, really like, and it morphs.”
“Flirting is a transformer?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s still got my hand, I realize, our fingers linked. Ryder points at me again with his free hand. “And you’re wiggling out. You don’t like the attention on you.”
“I don’t get attention. I’m not you.”
He frowns. “Only because you choose not to. You hide, and I bet you like to reflect the attention. I’m betting you’ve done this so long you don’t realize it. I bet you did that growing up.”
“That’s a lot of bets.” But his words make something ring out in me.
“I’d win them all. You reflect by nurturing. It’s in your company, it’s in how you operate, in how you choose beautiful old things, and it’s in your plants. And I bet if I asked, you were one of those nurturer kids. See, that way you can hide and feel good.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it? I think I’m right. You hide and you try to blend in.”
“I do blend in—”
“Because you work at it. And it’s so ingrained you don’t know you’re doing it.”
My mouth is dry. This is all utter crap…isn’t it? “Save me from your amateur hour sofa therapy.”
“Hey, I charge a fortune for this. How do you think I got so rich?”
I shake off his hand and lift my fingers to my cheek and tap it. “Hmmm, I’m thinking either you stole it or inherited it.”
“Now you’re trying to deflect. I think you should let yourself shine.”
“I’m not a shiner. I’m a lurker. I do well in the shadows, way out of the limelight. Shining and the rest? That’s not me.”
“It could be, if you let it, Perry.”
“And what do you know?”
“A lot,” Ryder says softly.
He slides closer, his hand skimming along my thigh and that heat crackles like lightning between us again, the air thick with awareness and he’s close, so close.
“This might be easy for you, Ryder,” I say, wanting to run, wanting to throw caution to the wind and kiss him, “like breathing. But not for me.”
“What? Wanting to kiss you?”
“Flirting.”
“I’m not flirting.” His gaze drops to my lips. “I like your mouth.”
Suddenly I lose that battle and I surge up and I kiss him.
Ryder takes that and runs, his mouth is hot and wet and beguiling, it seduces, it doesn’t demand, and I give back, my lips parting, our tongues touching. It’s a flame that devours slowly and I’m losing everything to the heat inside, the heat he causes.
It’s not until his hand slides against the bare flesh of my ribcage that I come crashing down.
I tear my mouth aside. “No, Ryder. You’re doing this because I’m the only one around.”
“You kissed me, Elliot.”
“You can’t have me. This was a dumb idea.”
He sits back, sliding his hand through his hair and he says, “I thought it was a great idea.”
“You and me? There’s no you and me. You’re not into me and we’re not like that.”
“I know—”
“I think I’m going to go to bed.” I’m on my feet so fast it’s a wonder I don’t have whiplash. And then, before he can shake off the surprise on his face, I turn and race off to my room.
There, I shut the door, turn off the light, and just dive into bed.
Maybe he wasn’t saying he knows he’s not into me. And maybe I ran like a scared little girl.
But I had to.
I’m an idiot and crushing way too hard and kissing him was the most stupid thing I could do.
Coming out of this in one piece isn’t a matter of dealing with a bruised ego from an unrequited crush. It’s something else.
Because Ryder Sinclair isn’t just a fuck boy with a pretty face and a mouth that can kiss. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s fun. He’s deeper and way more complex than I’d ever given him credit for.
I’m lost and I don’t know anything.
Except for one thing.
Oh boy, am I in major trouble.