Chapter 23
Robyn
The valet brings the SUV around, and Ridge holds the passenger door open for me. I get in without looking at him.
He shuts the door, walks around, and gets in behind the wheel.
Then we pull away from the venue. I keep my hands folded in my lap and my eyes facing forward.
This is going to be a long drive.
I wish I were home and in my apartment. I wish I were far away from him.
“You did well tonight,” Ridge says, after a minute or two of silence.
“Thanks.”
Stop talking.
Please, stop!
We had sex at a work function. Have I lost my mind? I think I have.
Anyone could have walked in on us. Someone could have seen. For all I know, someone did see, but I was too busy coming to notice.
I press my knees together and try to breathe normally.
I want the ground to swallow me whole. Heat creeps into my face. I turn toward the window so he can’t see.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say too quickly for it to be believable.
Leave it alone.
Please!
I don’t want to talk. I just want to go home and forget this ever happened.
We come up to a long stretch of dark road. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything more, but he does glance at me every so often. I know he wants to talk.
I let my head tip toward the window. I let my breathing slow. I’m going to pretend to sleep. I know it’s a little childish of me, but if it means I don’t have to say anything else to him, then I’m doing it.
We pull up at my building. He cuts the engine.
“Um…Robyn.”
I keep my eyes shut.
“I know you’re not really asleep.”
I open them. Of course he knows. He’s a dragon, and dragons can hear a heartbeat across a room. There was no fooling him.
I straighten in my seat, unclicking my seatbelt. “Thank you and good night.”
I reach for the door handle.
“I’m walking you up.”
I roll my eyes and groan. “No, you are not. There is no need. You can watch me go in.” I keep my voice as even as I can. “There’s a security guard at reception. My apartment, in case you’ve forgotten, is now Fort Knox, thanks to all of your upgrades. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
“I’m walking you up,” he says it again, quieter this time. “We need to talk about what happened.”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“Yes, there is.”
“I’m serious, Ridge. There’s nothing to discuss. It happened. It won’t happen again. The end. We can both move on. There’s no need to dissect it, or analyze it, or have a postmortem on it in my hallway. It happened, and we need to move on.”
“We very definitely need to talk about it.” He says it quietly, but I can hear the iron underneath it. “And I’d rather it not be in the car.”
“I’m telling you, there is nothing to talk about.” My voice is going up, so I drag it back down. “We will never speak of it again. We can pretend it never happened. You can finish your assignment. The Council never has to know. Nobody has to know. Please, be reasonable.”
I reach for the handle a second time.
“You need to be reasonable,” he says. “You’re kidding yourself.”
“About what, exactly?”
A hand threads into my hair at the base of my skull. He uses the pressure of his fingers to turn my face toward his. He’s right there, leaning across the console. His eyes on me. He doesn’t say a word.
He kisses me, softly.
A small, shocked sound jumps out of my throat at the warm press of his mouth, and then my whole body just gives in to it. My eyes close. My hand comes up between us and lands on his chest. I kiss him back.
For a few seconds, I forget every single thing I just said. There’s just his mouth on mine, his fingers in my hair, the heat of him through the front of his shirt.
He pulls back a fraction. I don’t open my eyes for a moment.
“There is no moving on or forgetting it happened,” he says against my mouth. “If I stay on this assignment, we will fuck again. We need to talk about it.”
That snaps me out of it.
I push his hand out of my hair and shove back into my seat.
“You did that on purpose.” My voice shakes. “You set a trap.” My eyes narrow on his. I grit my teeth.
“You walked right into it.” He doesn’t sound sorry. “Which wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t attracted to one another. It is what it is. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I want to peel you out of that dress, part your thighs, and lick you out until you come on my tongue.”
I gasp because my clit does a happy dance. My channel tightens. My body wants him, but it can’t have him.
Asshole!
“Robyn, we need to talk.”
I glare at him.
He waits.
“Fine,” I bite out. “You’ve got five minutes. That’s all you’re getting. You will not kiss me again…not anywhere. We will talk, and then you will leave.”
“Noted.” He smiles at me before quickly turning serious.
I open the car door myself this time, and I don’t look at him as I climb out.
I open the door to the apartment block using my thumb, and he’s right behind me as I cross the lobby. The same security guard is at the desk. I lift my chin in greeting. He nods back, and his eyes flick to Ridge and then back to me. I keep walking.
The elevator dings open. We step inside, and the doors slide shut.
I watch the floor numbers tick up and try not to think about the first time I rode this elevator with him.
That was the night that started this whole mess.
I put my back to the elevator wall and stare at the doors. I can feel him in the small space without looking at him. I still hate how good he smells.
We get out on my floor, and I walk ahead of him. I unlock my door and push it open. He follows me in. I drop my keys in the dish on the side table and toss my clutch beside them. Then I turn to face him in the entryway. I cross my arms.
“I’m not offering you anything to drink,” I tell him. “Because you aren’t staying.”
“Understood.”
He doesn’t move toward the living room. He stands there with his hands at his sides.
“I’m going to get right to the point.”
“That would be nice.”
His mouth twitches. “The way I see it,” he says, “there are two options. One, I take myself off this assignment. Which I’m happy to do. But I’ll have to give the Council a reason for it. I’ll have to tell them that I fucked you.”
A flush rolls up my neck. “That is absolutely not necessary. We’ll just stay out of each other’s way.”
“It’s not possible. While I’m on this assignment, I’m your shadow.
I have to be with you, or within earshot of you, for any time you’re away from this apartment.
I have to determine whether you need full-time security, which means I have to be there for the full picture.
We are stuck together until I give my report. ”
“I don’t have any other functions coming up. None. It’s just work and home for the foreseeable future. Which I can manage. There’s nothing for us to navigate. It’ll be fine.”
He takes a step toward me.
Then another.
His hands land on my hips. The warmth of his palms goes straight through the silk.
“What are you doing?” I take a step back. The wall stops.
“Admit you find me attractive.”
I roll my eyes.
What the hell is he up to?
“Of course I do,” I grind out, pushing at his chest. He doesn’t budge. “Now what the hell are you doing, Ridge?”
He steps in. His thigh brushes mine. The line of his body is right there.
“Admit that you like me inside you.” His voice has dropped. “No, admit that you fucking love it. Because I love being inside of you, Robyn.”
Holy shit.
Holy shit, holy shit.
“What did you just say? Stop it.”
“You heard me.”
“I…I—” I shake my head. “I repeat. What the hell are you doing? What are you saying right now?”
“I’m saying I can’t keep my hands off you.” He says it like a confession. “There. I said it. If I’m around you, we’re going to fuck again. It’s a given. If we’re going to be adults, we need to admit that, because it’s a fact.”
“No,” I say. “No, we won’t.”
“Don’t be a hard-ass about this.”
“I’m being honest. There is such a thing as willpower.”
He chuckles, and the sound does things to me.
Shit!
“It will happen again, and you know it.”
“We can control ourselves.” I’m almost yelling now. I pull in a breath and force my voice down. “We are adults. We can—”
“I fucked you in public, Robyn. At your own fundraising event of the year. We cannot control ourselves around each other. The sooner you admit that, the sooner we can move on with this conversation.”
Dammit, but he’s right.
I hate the fact. I look up at him, and narrow my eyes.
“You want me to admit it so you have a reason to excuse yourself from this assignment.” There’s an edge in my words. “Is that it? You want me to give you the out you’re looking for.”
“That’s not it at all.” He shakes his head.
He’s looking for an out, and I hate how much I don’t want him to go. I hate it more than anything else about this conversation.
I make a frustrated sound. “What do you want, then? Because I don’t understand what we’re doing here. Just spell it out.”
“I want the same thing as you do.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” I frown.
“Isn’t it obvious? I want to fuck you,” he growls.
There it is.
I stare at him.
He stares back.
“I had a messy divorce a year after I came to Draig,” I tell him, because the words are coming out before I can stop them. “I’ve been on my own ever since, by choice. I’m not interested in a relationship right now. Thank you for the offer, but I can’t—”
A low chuckle rolls out of him. It’s quiet and a little bit dirty, and it lands somewhere low in my belly. I want to slap him.
“What is so funny?” I ask. “What did I say that was funny?”
“Nothing’s funny. I’m laughing because I’m not asking you for a relationship, Robyn.
” He shakes his head once. “I don’t want one either.
My offer is simple. We fuck often, while I’m on this assignment.
I want you every which way I can get you.
I want to taste your pussy more than once a day.
When the assignment is done, I walk away.
We never cross paths again. There will be no dinners.
No dancing. No romantic anything. Just fucking. ”
He takes a step toward me.
“I’ll get you out of my system.” His eyes are right on mine. “You can get me out of yours.”
“Sex,” I repeat, because I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing.
“Yes. No sleepovers. No spooning. No—”
“Just fucking.”
“Hard, fast, slow. Every position you can think of. I do my job on this assignment. You do your job at the hospital. In between, we go at it. Hard.”
He licks his lips, and my body reacts, just like it reacted to every word he just said.
“Then I file my report, and I go home. We don’t see each other again.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then I go to Reed, and I’ll tell her exactly what happened tonight.
I’ll be pulled from this assignment immediately.
I’ll make sure that no one else hears about it.
Your reputation will be safe. I wouldn’t do that to you.
We either admit to this attraction and lean into it in a responsible manner, or I end the whole thing. ”
“You might lose your job.”
“It wouldn’t be your fault.”
“You don’t have to tell her.” Why is he making this so difficult?
“I do. I refuse to lie to her.”
“You leave in a few days. We can—”
“We’ll mess up.”
He’s probably right. I’m so attracted to him I can barely see straight.
His logic is good. It’s practically airtight. If we’re going to keep ending up against walls in service corridors, it’s safer to do it behind closed doors. On purpose. With ground rules. With an end date.
The only problem is that I am not sure I can sleep with this man for a whole week and then walk away with my heart still in one piece.
I like Ridge. I like him more than I want to.
He is exactly the kind of male I could fall for if I wasn’t careful, and I’m not at all sure I’m capable of being careful around him.
I’ve already proven that. He could really hurt me if I accidentally let him in.
Shit.
I take a breath. I let it out slowly.
“No,” I say.
His expression goes still.
“I’m sorry, Ridge,” I tell him. “My answer is no. I can’t do it. This has to end now.”
He looks at me a beat longer. His throat works. Then he gives a single nod.
“All good.” His voice is quieter than before. “I’ll come by your office in the morning to get the rest of my things. I’ve got some loose ends to tie up and a handover to put together for whoever takes my place. I’ll be quick…I swear. Then it will be back to Security Central and out of your life.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I hope you understand.”
“It’s probably for the better.” He nods one more time. Then he turns. He walks out of my apartment without looking back.
I stand there in the entryway for a long time, staring at the spot where he was.
Did I make a mistake?
No, I did not.
I have to do what is right.
If it’s so right, why do I feel this shitty?