Chapter 14
Fourteen
“It wasn’t love. Nor was it hate. It was something far more dangerous, needing without mercy.” – Aria Boschett.
We’ve stepped fully out into the bright sunlight.
The door to the diner swings shut behind us, cutting off Elana’s silhouette and the collective whispered gossip of the lunchtime crowd.
Air hits my skin, and the sweet smell of blooming lilacs drifts from the planters lining the sidewalk. It should be soothing. It isn’t.
I can still see Elana’s face as Cyan dismissed her like she was nothing.
He walks fast, guiding me along the sidewalk with an iron grip to the Range Rover parked along the curb, black paint gleaming beneath the sun.
The heat radiating from the hood matches the burn of today’s embarrassment.
Cyan stops and turns. His expression is too calm for a man who just gutted an ex with a single sentence.
I’ve had enough, and I open my mouth to tell him to back the hell off, I am heading back to work.
But he leans in before the words form, his breath grazing my ear.
“Don’t make a scene. Remember, you agreed to this. Remember that night in the car, Aria?”
The memory stabs through me; my shaking voice, my plea: You have me, just leave them alone. He hasn’t forgotten a single syllable. I detest that my spine stiffens before I can stop it. He opens the passenger door with a gesture that looks polite but feels anything but. “Hop in the car, will ya?”
I glance at the diner’s of course, Simon’s secretary, Cherice, and four people from the Boston office are seated at a table with a perfect view of Cyan and me.
They all stare at me like I’m premium midday entertainment.
First, the scene with Simon, then Elana, now them.
Today seems dedicated to my public humiliation soap opera.
I lift my chin and turn to Cyan. “This doesn’t mean you’ve won, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m yours.”
“Oh, Dove, I don’t play games I can’t win.
” Cyan shuts my door with a sharp, final click.
The heated interior of the vehicle amplifies my anger and humiliation.
I slide toward the far edge of the seat, creating as much distance as I can.
If he thinks my getting into this car means surrender, he really doesn’t know me at all.
He rounds the hood, slides behind the wheel, and starts the engine with a push of the button.
Cool air blasts from the vents, but it doesn’t chase away the tension.
“So,” I say, grasping at composure I don’t feel, “where are we headed exactly?”
Cyan’s lips tilt, slow and sinfully. That smile means nothing good.
“Careful what you ask, love.” His voice is velvety.
“You’re putting images in my mind. I’ve been dreaming of the day you wrap those luscious lips around the head of my cock…
but let’s be honest, sweetheart… you’re nowhere near ready for that. ”
I choke–literally choke–on my saliva.
What…
The…
Hell…my brain empties, replaced by a violent rush of heat and images. I’m half coughing, half dying, my lungs seizing while Cyan simply watches, the corner of his mouth kicking up. Before he has the nerve to lean over and pat my back. “Easy, Dove.”
I want to slap his hand away or maybe scream at him.
I want… I don’t even know what I want. He’s now focused forward, one hand on the wheel, pulling away from the curb.
The silence that follows is unbearable. He doesn’t speak.
I can’t move as his words replay on a loop while my body betrays me again, thrumming like it’s tuned to him and only him.
His phone rings; the sound slices through the quiet.
Cyan glances at the screen, taps a button, and switches languages without missing a beat.
It’s nothing I understand, sharp consonants, smooth vowels.
As their conversation goes on, I observe him from the corner of my eye.
The language is foreign, but I don’t need to understand the words to know Cyan is not happy with what’s being discussed.
His fingers flex once on the wheel. Twice.
Then curl tight, tendons standing out. I can’t stop staring. He’s power, danger wrapped in one.
That rough accent rolls off his tongue, sliding over my nerves, and my nipples tighten so sharply I have to cross my arms to hide it.
Maybe it’s curiosity, or is it insanity?
But some twisted, broken part of me wants to know just how deep my power over him goes and how much of that darkness inside him bends for me.
This should terrify me, but it doesn’t. I’m so caught up in him I don’t notice where we’re heading until the trees open and Crescent Bay stretches out before us. The lookout.
The ocean glitters under the early-summer sun, gold dust dancing over the waves.
A breeze rolls through the cracked window, fresh and salty, and I cling to it.
I’m grateful for the distraction, desperate to think about something else.
Anything else. Of course, my mind picks her.
Elana. She’s taller than I am, graceful in that effortless, practiced way that makes people stare without realizing it.
A woman who looks like she belongs beside a man like him.
Compared to her, I’m nothing. Shorter, curvy, basically ordinary.
My hair turns into a frizzy mess if someone so much as breathes on it.
How could anyone in that diner have believed Cyan chose me over her?
No, I want him to want Elana. I ignore a sinking feeling twisting deep in my stomach, shove it down, bury it somewhere I can pretend doesn’t exist just as Cyan finally hangs up the phone.
“How long am I meant to stay in this car? Cyan, I have work to do, and I’m falling behind by the minute…
Who knows what new and complicated stack of torture Simon will have waiting for me when I get back.
” I force my gaze ahead, not toward him.
The day has already spun so wildly out of control, and here I am trapped in a car with the one man who doesn’t just cause chaos.
He thrives on it. Cyan adjusts his seat, stretching out lazily like we’re not parked at a cliff’s edge with my sanity dangling off it.
One arm draped over the wheel; his gaze slides over me.
“However long I want. James will have Simon cover whatever’s outstanding; that little man will never bother you again. Are you tired of my company already?”
I shoot him a withering glare. “I didn’t ask for your company or your attention. Why are you doing this?”
He turns fully, and that alone is enough to make the hair on my arms stand up. His eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that crawls beneath my skin. “Because I can,” he says simply. “Besides, I needed to deliver a message.”
My patience snaps like a frayed wire. I exhale sharply. “And what message is that?”
His answer is immediate. “You’re mine.”
My heartbeat misfires, a sharp punch beneath my ribs.
A laugh cracks out of me. “Of course. The damn ownership thing. That’s the running theme of today, isn’t it?
” I shake my head, breath uneven as I keep going.
“You made it pretty damn clear when you choked my supervisor for touching me.” I gesture at him with shaking fingers.
“Not to mention your little performance with Elana. You’re a fucking psychopath. ”
“Maybe so.” His head tilts, studying me like sin he intends to commit.
“I’m relentless. Want what I want.” His gaze drops leisurely, trailing down my throat before climbing back to my eyes.
“And right now, you’re exactly what I’m after.
” My fingers curl into tight fists as heat unfurls low in my belly, traitorous and molten.
“I’ve wanted you since that first night.
Your little striptease in that red number… is burned into my memory.”
My gaze drops… stupid, instinctive… right to the bulge straining against his pants.
Oh, hell, there it is, his weakness. He has guns, muscle, power, threats, but I have the one thing he can’t restrain.
I could bring him to his knees with a breath.
His voice turns to silk and sin. “Like what you see?”
I jerk my eyes upward so fast I nearly crack my neck. His mouth curves into a slow, smug smile. “Keep dreaming, buddy,” I snap, heat rushing traitorously up my throat.
His chuckle is dark, and it coils around my mind and squeezes, and before I can stop myself, something reckless tumbles out. “How long were you with her?”
His response is immediate. “I wasn’t with Elana. We fucked. That’s it. I don’t know where she got the idea it was something more.” Of course, that’s all it was to him.
I let out a scoff before I can bite it back. “You must still be sleeping with her for her to act like that.”
I raise my hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t give a damn who you fuck.”
Lie. Lie. He can probably hear the jealousy vibrating off me.
I barrel on before he can catch me in it.
“You two are perfect for each other, both making up relationships in your heads. Now, thanks to you calling me your girlfriend in a packed diner, the entire town probably thinks I’m some homewrecker. ”
“Why would they?” he leans in until the warmth of his breath grazes my cheek. “Elana’s part of my past. You’re my woman, and that’s not a title I toss around like it’s nothing.”
The words hit like a physical blow. I don’t respond. I can’t. Silence thickens, stretching, wrapping around us like smoke as he watches me with that unnerving certainty. Cyan shifts, fingers curling around the door handle. “Come, Aria. Let’s go for a walk.” For once, I don’t argue.