13. Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Lucy
Holy Shit .
I slid into the passenger seat of Dax’s car in a daze. He kissed me. And if it weren’t for that stupid alarm, I think we would have done a lot more than that.
Between at least three Gin it to Win its and the hottest make out I’d ever had, my brain was a jumbled mess as I stared straight ahead at the road.
My ears were ringing with lust. The way his unyielding lips claimed mine with a distinct possessiveness sent a thrill through me.
Every one of my nerve endings was singing while the car remained dead silent as he drove.
After a few minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore. One of us had to say something. I wasn’t sure we were ready to talk about what just happened. I still hadn’t processed it. A door had just opened I hadn’t been expecting to enter, but now all I wanted was for it to happen again.
“So…there’s something I forgot to tell you last night.” I tried to keep my voice even despite the rush of desire that still burned through my body.
Dax’s knuckles tightened over the steering wheel, his muscles on his forearm grew taught. I tried to ignore the delirious pang of want it invoked inside me, wishing those hands were still touching me.
“Go on…” His voice was rough.
“Bianca told me she’d seen Chad and Gabe before that night. Apparently, they hang out at a nightclub called The Wire where her friend was working as a stri—dancer,” I corrected myself. “Her name is Phoebe, and I guess she’s been missing for a few weeks.”
I watched the grimace flash across Dax’s perfectly structured face. “I’ve always heard that place is a shithole.” His jaw clenched. “I’ll do some recon.”
“I already did some on my own. The owner of the club is named Marty Sanchez. He owns several nightclubs from here to Arizona. I found out he was sued for sexual harassment of an employee around seven years ago at one of his clubs in Scottsdale.”
Dax’s posture softened as he glanced over at me, an expression that seemed very much like approval lighting his features.
“Impressive work.” His eyes hardened. “I’ll have my team do some poking around too.
It turns out the plates on the Escalade were stolen, still can’t get a read on their faces from the footage.
We’re gonna have to take some alternative approaches to tracking them down. ”
I thought about this for a moment. “When you say your ‘team,’ I’m assuming you’re not talking about the staff at Bellissima.
” It sounded like an accusation. There was so much I didn’t know about him, other than the fact he might be the most gorgeous man I’d ever laid eyes on.
He was supposedly a chef, but I knew there was more he was hiding.
“That would be a valid assumption.” His words were short and dry.
“What did you do before you bought the restaurant?” A nervous tick sounded in the back of my throat as I peered at him in the dim light. A pregnant pause lay still in the air, suffocating me as I waited for his response.
He took a long breath through his nose, his jaw tightened and eyes hooded as he stared ahead. “You could say I was a…closer. I finalized deals and such,” he gruffed out apprehensively.
“Oh.” I coughed. “How did you end up becoming a chef, then?” I knew I was prodding, but this was my opportunity to figure out more about who he was.
“I needed a change.” His short answer irked me.
“Okay, but that still doesn’t exactly explain why you have the kinds of connections you do.
It isn’t normal for chefs or business guys to just have people in their back pocket to call on a whim for running license plates and tracking down predators.
” I felt the heat start to rise in my cheeks as I realized how nosey I was being.
He was going out of his way to help me, and I should’ve just been grateful for that.
“You’d be surprised about the kind of connections many people have, Luce.”
It could have been a bit of liquid courage, but his words lit a fire in me. I was starting to get tired of his ambiguous answers to everything. Maybe if he actually told me what was going on behind the scenes, I wouldn’t need to ask so many questions.
“You know, it’s really impolite to kiss someone and then make them feel like an idiot right afterward.” The words slipped off my tongue.
There was no noise other than the quiet purr of the space shuttle.
“Lucy,” he started, “my actions were…unprofessional, and I should never have put you in such an uncomfortable situation. I don’t know what I was thinking. I—”
No, the only thing uncomfortable was this conversation.
“I wanted it too.” My cheeks burned hotter with the admission. His eyes jutted to mine, the faint glow of red streetlights ahead flickering across his cheekbone. Then, he gently lifted his hand and brushed a strand of my hair away from my face, leaving a trail of sensation along my ear.
“Lucy, you’ve been drinking. I feel like a complete piece of shit for taking advantage of you. It was wrong, and I promise I’ll nev—”
“I’m not drunk,” I defended, even though that wasn’t entirely true. “But now I know you have regrets, I’m not really sure what else to say.” My voice broke a little at the end, and I cringed internally. I shouldn’t have been so brazen.
“I never said I regret it.” His voice was rough edges draped in velvet.
A dark glimmer passed through his stormy eyes, and I felt like I had plunged headfirst into molten lava.
I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth, and his gaze jutted down with a sudden intensity.
“And if you keep doing that, I don’t know if I’ll have the control to stop myself from doing it again.
” Heat pooled in my stomach, and his eyes trailed back to mine at an agonizing pace.
Maybe I was a little drunk, because words were escaping my mouth without a hint of grace.
“What if I want you to do it again?” I breathed. His eyes heated, and I watched as his shoulders became rigid and he gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing tethering him to the earth.
“It can’t happen again, Lucy.” His stern voice clung to the air.
“You’ve had a very traumatic past week. Your emotions are probably running high, and the last thing I want to do is complicate things further for you.
I am going to track these fuckers down so I know they can never lay a hand on you.
Until then, you’re one of my employees, and I am your boss.
That alone makes my feelings for you so unacceptable. ”
“What are your feelings for me?” My whisper was barely audible.
“I…never mind.” His next words cut straight through the space between us and right through my heart.
“Let’s face it, once this is done, it’s not like you’ll have any reason to stay at Bellissima.
You aren’t going to stick around to wash dishes in that hot kitchen every night.
You’ll find an internship, finish school…
we’ll both go back to our normal lives.”
The bitter taste of rejection rose like bile in my throat.
That wasn’t true. Even though it had only been such a short period of time, the world since I met Dax had changed in ways I never knew possible.
There was no going back from here, even once we took down Chad and Gabe.
I knew right then there would only be two realities: my world before Dax, and my world after.
I jerked my gaze away from his and looked out the window. The tension in the car was so high I didn’t even notice we had already pulled up to the sidewalk in front of my apartment.
“Well then I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow.” I pulled at the door handle, trying to mask the quiver in my throat.
“Lucy—” he started. It was too late. I sprang from the car and stood on the sidewalk with the door open. I dug into my backpack until my fingers found the manilla folder.
I flung the filled-out employee packet on the now-empty seat next him then slammed the door shut. A sting of tears threatened the backs of my eyes as I rushed into the building and up the teetering stairs to my apartment.
When I got inside, I sat on the edge of my bed before grabbing one of my pillows and screaming into it with every ounce of frustration that wrecked my brain. Motionless, I stared straight ahead to a string of polaroid photos hung up with clothing pins on the wall in front of me.
Tara and me at a bonfire on Ocean Beach last fall.
The two of us together at a Pink Floyd cover band show two years ago.
Dozens of tiny little moments captured in time.
Moments where the world felt free and like we were invincible.
Happy. Naive. Unease settled in my abdomen, knowing what I was hiding from her.
I tried to convince myself I was doing the right thing. I was protecting her. Just like Dax promised he would protect me.
I couldn’t ignore the ghost of his lips on mine, his hot, steady hands underneath my shirt.
I hated myself for it, knowing he thought kissing me was a mistake.
That didn’t stop my mind from wandering to his delicious mouth, the way it claimed my neck, possessive and demanding and so torturously intense it felt like my insides were going to implode.
It was that thought, that feeling, that I closed my eyes and imagined when I slipped my hand beneath my sheets that night, imagining what those lips would have done to me if they went just a little bit farther.