Chapter Nineteen
Ryder
E lliot is the most exquisite thing. She’s gorgeous. I see that now. The passion on her face, the need, the way her body moves against mine. The way she kisses. The way she feels. Her mind. All of it comes together like some kind of supernova of enlightenment and she’s completely gorgeous.
And I’m about to fuck her.
I drag a deep breath in to my lungs and I stop, burying my head in her shoulder as I struggle to get myself under control.
She’s still. My hand is on her breast, beneath her shirt and bra, and I’m so hard it’s a wonder I don’t come.
I meant…I don’t know what I meant. But she didn’t want this.
She wanted it. On that physical level and I know how to play a woman.
She wants it, but she also doesn’t want it. I know that.
It’s that simple and that complicated.
“I’m rebuffing you.” The words sound ludicrous the moment I say them, muffled though they are.
Elliot shoves at me and then pushes until I let myself tumble to the ground. There, I lean my back against the sofa and try to restore my breathing and my body to pre seduction mode. To pre losing control mode.
Because yeah, I lost control.
“You’re rebuffing me.”
“Yes.” I push the word out. “That’s what we’re doing, right? Playing a game?”
And as I say that, I don’t want this to be a game. I’m not sure what it is I want it to be, other than real. Something that’s going to happen because we both want each other. Want each other beyond a stupid game. Beyond the roles we have. Beyond the stakes and the job I hired her to do.
Holy fuck. I like her.
That’s why I took it too far. I like her.
The knowledge sinks down into the marrow of my bones.
And I don’t know what to do with it. She’s meant to be my friend and I’ve crossed a line and into a lust situation. I like her, I’m attracted to her and how the fuck do I say that without sounding like, well, Ryder Sinclair? The guy who doesn’t date, who doesn’t have relationships, how does he tell a woman he’s found he likes that he likes her as in not just friendship?
I’m like some kind of awkward fucking kid.
She thinks I’m a horn dog, a fuck boy. She’s told me I’m a fuck boy. She’s called me a man whore. And…she’s not wrong. I still don’t see anything wrong with that because it’s who and what I am and I don’t judge anyone else on that. But I like her.
Liking and wanting something beyond fucking her are different worlds. I don’t know what I want in that regard. Beyond the sex. If I want anything.
“Were we?”
There’s a note in her voice that makes bells ring inside in the distance. Not good bells, either. But what is it she wants?
We’re different people. Hardwired in completely incompatible ways. I’m betting Elliot’s never had a one-night stand. Never gone out on the town to find someone just to fuck and forget.
I’ve never gone looking for a picket fence. Or even a rental with someone.
Again, I don’t know what to do with any of that.
Seems like the great fucking Ryder Sinclair doesn’t know anything at all except that he wants to fuck the redhead in the room, who wants to see if her tits fit his hands perfectly once more.
“Wasn’t that the point of all this?”
She kicks me. Not hard, it’s more a shove and I don’t blame her. I’m being a bastard.
“No, Ryder. You weren’t supposed to teach me a lesson. That’s cruel.”
“I’m not being cruel, Elliot. I’m not a cruel person. You can think of me what you want, think I’m worth nothing, but I’m never cruel to someone.” I stop, get to my feet and pour myself a whiskey neat, down it and do it again. Setting the glass down, I grip the edge of the wet bar. “At least, not deliberately.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“Because…” Shit. She might be attracted to me. I’m not an idiot. And there’s chemistry. I’m never an idiot about that. But Elliot’s made it clear what she thinks of me, and she sees me as a failure in some fundamental way. “You were there.”
“I was there? That’s the answer? The other kisses, they happened because others were there, but Ryder, you crossed a line here.”
“Of course I did. Isn’t that me all over? Isn’t that why I hired you? Because I’m the fuck up who won’t stop giving?”
Something lands next to the bar and I look down and shake my head. “I’m not sure what I’m more astounded by…the fact you threw a shoe at me or you own Jimmy Choos.”
“I can’t have pretty things?”
“You can and you should,” I say, turning to face her.
Her eyes are too big. They’re vulnerable and her clothes are disheveled, along with her hair. She looks glorious. She also holds her other shoe in her hands like she wants to aim it at my head this time.
“Do you take anything seriously? I thought you wanted this.”
“If you’re going to throw the shoe, try to hit me and not anything else. Some of this stuff’s expensive,” I say.
She looks at the shoe and then at me. “Everything in this place has a hefty price tag, but I think the problem is, Ryder, you don’t know the worth of anything.”
“Bullshit.”
“You tell me you want the Sinclair jewels because of your family history and they mean something. You tell me you don’t want to lose the family flagship company for the same reasons, yet here you are, fucking about.”
She makes sense. She really does. But she’s utterly and spectacularly wrong. I take a step towards her. “First off, things in here are a mix. But just like the jewels and the company, I want them because they mean something. To me. I’m not an art collector. I got these pieces because I like them. Some of them remind me of places I went. Some of them are because of the artist. I don’t need to surround myself with hefty price tags to show the world I can afford them. I don’t give a fuck about what the world thinks. I don’t invite the world here. And what I told you about why I’m doing this is the truth.”
“Then stop fucking around.”
But,” I say, “there’s another truth with that. I don’t want the loss to be on my shoulders. I know that’s selfish, but hey, you knew that.”
She shakes her head and looks at the shoe again. “Then clean up your act, Ryder. Most people can keep it in their pants, can keep scandal at bay for a few weeks. For a few months. You’re not trying to get famous, you want something and yet you keep screwing up.”
“I kissed you.”
Color, deep red, flares in her cheeks and something in me twists. “Don’t.”
“Don’t kiss you.”
“Jesus, Ryder. You’re not that hard up.”
I frown. “What’s hard up with kissing you?”
“We don’t have an audience, so you don’t need to go there. We were meant to be practicing you handling yourself on the public stage, and if that’s really how you do it, then we really have a major problem.”
I shove a hand through my hair and stalk up to her. “I don’t go around just kissing people, Elliot. I kissed you. And…” I trail off. Fuck, I’m going to have to tell her. “I did it because I wanted to.”
“Great,” she says, spitting the word, “you get bored and let some stupid urge take you over because I’m the only female in the room.”
“Is that so bad?”
She stares at me like I’ve grown fangs and it hits me how that sounded, I go to say something, to explain, but she shakes her head. “Don’t dig your hole deeper, Ryder, otherwise you won’t be able to get out. And yes, it is bad. What woman, even one like me, wants to hear that?”
Frustration swells inside, tightening my throat and chest and I clench my hands because damn I want to grab her and I’m not sure if it’s to kiss or shake sense into her. Or if it’s just because I want to touch her. “A woman like you? One who thinks I’m beneath her?”
“No.” The scathing burns like acid. “What was the word you used? Oh, yes, frump.”
“You can’t be serious, Perry. I used that about your work clothes, not you.”
“So?”
“So…? You’re pretty, you should shine, I told you that.”
She turns from me, then swings back. “If this is you trying another rebuff then you suck at it. You need to be smooth with it, not try and jump someone and then awkwardly get out of it.”
“You’re the most deliberately obtuse and stubborn woman I know. I wasn’t rebuffing you then.”
“Good, because you suck at it.”
“Suck at what? Rebuffing? I haven’t really tried.”
Elliot pushes past me for her glass and takes it. I pluck it out of her hands and finish it because she’s pissing me off.
“Give me that.” She snatches it and grabs the whiskey and sloshes it into the glass, then she takes a huge swallow, turns red and coughs. “Oh, that burns.”
“Like you.”
“I don’t burn.” She takes another swallow, this one smaller. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means you’re a pain in my ass.” I stare at her. “This isn’t about rebuffing, is it? This is about you being all butt hurt and I don’t know why.”
“That’s your problem. You take for yourself and never bother to understand anyone else and their needs.”
“What needs are you on about? You were trying to get me to rebuff you and you looked good and I…I kissed you.”
She jabs a finger at me. “See? You just took for yourself.”
“No, you idiot. Okay, yes, but that wasn’t the reasoning. I don’t go about thinking oh, I’ll just take this. I did it because I like you. I wanted to kiss you because I’m attracted to you.”
Silence falls and we both look at each other. Her shock is insulting, but not really surprising to me.
“I didn’t mean to say it just like that.” It had been gauche and not me. But this is new for me. I’m all sucker punched and I don’t know why.
And Elliot looks for all the world like she’s like waiting for the floor to swallow her whole.
This might be one of the lowest points in my life. I’m being rejected by Elliot.
“We’re friends, I know that,” I say. “I don’t want to lose that, but I can’t help liking you, too.”
“Don’t lie to me, Ryder.”
“I’m not.”
“You? You like me?”
“Yes.” I move in a little closer. “It might not be what you want, but…”
She laughs. She actually laughs and shakes her head and it dawns on me that she might like me, too. At least on some level.
“But,” I say, “it is what it is.”
“What it is, is you being bored.”
“No.” Now I take hold of her and draw her close, right up against me, and she makes a little hiss of sound that slides down to my cock. “What it is, is me liking you, wanting you. I’ll show you.”
And I kiss her again.
A soft, sweet kiss.
“You think,” she says, “you can just kiss me and I’ll melt?”
“Oh, Elliot, I know that.”
It’s the one thing I know. It’s a skill and fuck it all. I’m going to use it.
This time I kiss her slow and long and I take my time, I bite soft on her lower lips, draw it into my mouth and run my tongue over that sensitive flesh, and then I delve in, a deliberate dance of seduction, and exploration designed to draw her out, to dissolve her.
She’s kissing me back now. And it’s easy, so easy, to slide down into her, to just give over to the passion building.
I lift my head.
“Want me to show you more?”
She’s dazed. And I have her where I want her. I’m back on familiar ground.
So I go in for the kill.