Chapter Twenty-Five
Ryder
T he silence afterwards is broken only by the whispery sounds of us putting clothes back to right and I want to kick myself. Hard.
“Elliot,” I say.
She won’t look at me, and her cheeks are flushed and her hands shake as she smooths them over her hair, pulling it back like she wants to tie that red bountiful beauty up. Hide it away.
“If you apologize, I’ll kill you.”
I half smile. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Her gaze shoots to me. “That’s dangerously close to an apology.”
“I’m not apologizing for great sex.” I’m still dressed and after a moment’s hesitation I strip out of my overcoat. My head’s still slightly dazed and the thrum of the orgasm and its pleasure still ricochets through me. But I lay the coat down on the armchair and sit because I’m a little unsteady, and I’m in half a mind to reach for her again.
Or walk out the fucking door and into the nearest bar.
“Then, it’s me?”
“You think I’m saying I didn’t mean that to happen because of you?”
“I’m better than just being something to warm your dick.”
I laugh. It’s not a pretty sound and I don’t feel warm and fuzzy inside. This thing with us gets real complicated, real fast, and I can’t for the life of me work out why. It’s like we both want something, or don’t want something, that’s slightly out of reach.
And the more I think about it, try to find an answer, the more slippery it becomes.
I wait until she glares at me, but the vulnerable light, the hopeful light, along with the shadows of no that are there are the things that sink in deep. The anger is nothing more than a byproduct of the mess of emotion she feels. I know, because I feel that mess, too.
“There are plenty of places to warm my dick, as you so charmingly put it. And one of them doesn’t even require another person. Actually, if I got all creative, there are a few that don’t require anyone else, although I haven’t tried those.”
I’m getting off track.
“So you didn’t mean for that to happen and it happened?”
“Contrary to what’s in your head, I find you hard to resist.”
She sinks down on the couch, at the other end. The whole piece of furniture is askew, a taunt of what happened. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know.”
And I don’t.
I’m fucking pissed off at myself for fucking her because I like her. She’s my friend and maybe she’s more than that, too. A friend and not a friend. Beyond just friends. It’s confusing. Like everything else to do with her.
“You wouldn’t ever be satisfied with one woman, Ryder.”
“I’ve never tried. Is that where we are?”
“No. I’m nipping this now because you won’t go there, and I don’t want to.”
“Because you think I can’t do just one woman?”
“Not think,” she says softly. “Know.”
Maybe she’s got a point. Women want me, always have, and I don’t see it changing. And I want them. I like the variety, I like having sex and all the sex I’ve had before—including the sex that led to me being here, the scandal—has been uncomplicated. Simple, unfettered, sex.
This?
This is complicated.
Complex and intricate and full of minefields I don’t expect.
And the sex is out of this world. I want to spend time exploring her. I want to worship. I want to fight and laugh and fuck her just as hard as I did then. And I want all the stuff outside the sex, too.
But what that entails is anyone’s guess. Or, I should say, mine. Because this is so uncharted it’s something I didn’t know even existed.
Elliot’s phone pings and she grabs it from the coffee table, opens it and reads the message. She stands suddenly and smooths her hands through her hair again. “Since you’re here, we need to get you prepped.”
“Prepped?”
“Your last week is going to be as CEO with—”
“I’m doing what now?” I pull out my phone and the only messages are from my brothers all angling to know if I’ve slept with Elliot, slept with anyone else, and advice on how to stay on the straight and narrow.
Really what I need.
I ignore them and go to my emails, but there’s nothing there either. And my diabolical parent didn’t seem fit to tell me this today. She’d have known.
Elliot frowns but there’s relief there, because she’s got something else to focus on other than the hot sex that just happened. I feel like the male version of fucking Alice right about now.
“No one told you?”
“Not even you.”
“I thought you knew. I just got the message as a reminder for you from your mom.”
Fuck me, I want to break something. “My mother has your number now?” I hold up a hand before she can answer me. “Where there’s a way there’s my mother. Of course she does. And no, that reminder is the only message. Trust me, at least on this.”
“I trust you,” she says quietly.
“Just not with sex and relationship things.”
She shoots me a long, cool look. “Let’s concentrate on what we need to do for you to be there tomorrow morning.” Elliot hurries over to the beautiful small art deco desk in one corner that looks more for display than use, but of course, she uses it. She picks up her laptop and comes back over, sitting and opening it. “You might as well sit down. Let’s get started.”
So I sit.
No one can tell me I’m not getting my money’s worth with Elliot. Three nights ago, when I finally left her place at some ungodly hour of the morning, I felt like I’d been deprogrammed. No stone was left unturned within me.
She told me what to wear, how to act, and then made me go through that. She threw out scenarios, riled me, pissed me off; and each time I started to run my mouth, she stopped me.
And…she did an amazing job. Every time I’ve been thrown some curve ball, I handle it like the kind of responsible, boring adult they want. I’m doing shit I have people for in my own work because this stuff isn’t for me, and it isn’t for the CEO. I’m being tested.
There’s still one more meeting coming up, and I know when I’m given a hot sex pot as a receptionist who’s, ah, very open to other things, it isn’t the test. It’s other women when I’m invited out at night and I go, but always bow out early. I report in to Elliot and…
I want to see her.
I can’t deny that.
She calls to me and it’s not just sex. This is different, but fuck me if I can work out why.
Objectively, I know hotter women exist. But she does something to me. And this woman I once thought plain with an intriguing mouth sets me alight just thinking about her.
I’m meant to be out tonight, but instead, I’m haunting my loft like a horny, frustrated ghost.
Running my hand over one of my guitars, an old battered thing that is beautiful because it was something I bought years ago. It belonged to Long Johnny Slim, one of the best old school Chicago blues men no one outside that scene has heard of. I rarely play it because I don’t have his talent, but the cheap guitar was gold in his hands.
I think about playing something, but I’m not in the mood.
One weird thing has been happening.
Lacey Fox. She of the scandal that landed me here has been texting. I put it down to dear old mother testing me. I just delete the messages without reading. I’m not falling for anything that obvious.
My phone rings and it’s my mother, so I ignore her.
Thing is, I decide as I flop down on the couch, I don’t want to lose Elliot. I don’t want to lose her from my life and right now, I’m thinking I’ll take her anyway I can get her. But what if sex—more sex—with her means I lose her in the end?
I don’t want to lose that friendship. I don’t want to lose the closeness I have with her, the way I can be open with her. That openness that comes from her, too, in those brilliant flashing moments we have.
In a perfect world, I’d throw in, I’d ask for it all, and give her everything she could ever want, including me, because it comes to me that she might feel very much the same about me as I do about her.
Whatever that is, screams, sings, coos, whispers ‘more’.
But I also know myself.
I’m not a good man in that respect.
In bed? I’m great.
Flirting? I’m winning gold stars.
I’ve got seduction and making a woman feel like the only woman worth anything and leaving her still feeling good about herself down pat.
The long haul I have doubts. Huge ones. I’ve never done that.
And what if I get her? What if I get her and we go deep into whatever this thing is and I’m me? Being me, I’d fuck it up by fucking someone else because they catch my eye. It doesn’t matter I haven’t seen anyone since I met Elliot I want to fuck. I might just be the screw up dear old dead Dad and the rest think I am.
If I’m that, then Elliot’s better off without me.
There are a few days left. Lacey still contacts me and I ignore her. And the more I do, I know these last days are critical.
What if she goes to the press?
I find myself online, reading about me, something I never do and I’m gobsmacked.
Elliot might be a goddess. A magical one.
Because the man I’m reading about looks like me, sounds like me if I was reformed, upstanding, responsible. I take things seriously. I’ve gone from a bad boy to a man women swoon over because he’s in love.
I don’t think the in love part is from her, that’s the interpretation from the photos of me and Elliot. Of how I look at her. Of what can only be the carefully orchestrated exchanges overheard, even when we argued. We look like a real couple.
And of course Elliot is everything they say she is. Smart, together, career woman, steady, scandal free.
Oh, they miss the nuances that really make Elliot special. Her wicked streak, her humor, her sharp tongue. And they don’t know how she kisses, either. Obviously.
I drag in a breath.
There’s one more event that’s super important to go to tomorrow night, but that’s not why I leave work at the company early. That’s not why I hightail it across town to SoHo and breeze past Lena and into Elliot’s gorgeous office.
God, she looks good.
It’s a different kind of suit she has on, and her hair is still pinned back, but there’s something so understated and hot about it all I’m weak at the knees, and my cock stirs.
She looks up. “Can I call you back?” she asks whoever’s on her phone over her Bluetooth. Then she hits end on her phone, pulls the earpiece out, and says, “is something wrong? Shouldn’t you be at Sinclair’s, dazzling them?”
“I have.” I wave a hand in the air like it isn’t important I reach my goals, and for a moment that’s true. “You are a master at what you do.”
“Excuse me?”
“I just read everything about me online and I’m impressed.”
She frowns, even though her mouth quirks. “You just did a very Ryder thing by leaving work to come here to tell me the job I’ve been doing to make you not look like the Ryder who walked out of the important CEO job is brilliant?”
“Yes.”
Elliot laughs. “Ryder. You’re hopeless.”
I don’t laugh. I don’t laugh at all. “Elliot.”
The laughter dies. “What is it?”
“I’ve been thinking.” I rub a hand over the back of my neck; a pimpled teen gathering the strength to ask the school beauty queen out. “I…there’s only a few days left.”
“I know that.”
“And I just, well, you and me. I think there’s more to it than a passing attraction. More than just being friends. And maybe we should, you know…”
Elliot Perry looks at me and crosses her arms.
“No.”