The overhead light faded, the muted light making her heart skip a beat. She was reminded of their time together at the club when he had backed against the wall, and he was all she could focus on.
It was much easier confronting him when other people were around. Then, she was better able to focus on what she was actually meant to be doing.
Rather than what she’d rather do.
She wondered if he exuded this same level of charm and utterly captivating darkness when he dealt with other women. Did they feel the inexplicable draw? Did they want to throw themselves at his feet in supplication?
Only when she felt the cool brush of metal did she realize she had taken a step back once he turned to her, but there was nowhere for her to go. And the space between them seemed to be growing smaller by the second.
But she didn’t allow the nerves she felt to be reflected on her face. Instead, she cleared her throat and asked, “Is there a reason you needed to see me?”
“The better question, I imagine, is how you were able to access that website where you posted a rather interesting article about me.” He smiled coldly. “Though I must admit, Kingmaker does have a rather nice ring to it.”
So he had read what she wrote on Red Rum
“Isn’t that what you are?” she asked, genuinely curious whether he saw what she did. “Grant favors and make people into kings … for a price. To some, you’re even a little more than that.”
“Yet that’s not fear I’m seeing in your eyes right now, is it?”
How could his mere presence jumble her thoughts the way it did? As if she had never been around a man before, but then again, she had never been around a man quite like him before.
There was no doubt about that.
Ignoring his question, she asked one of her own. “Is there a reason you’re cornering me in an elevator?”
“You wanted my attention, and now you have it.” He tucked his hands into his pocket, canting his head to the side. “You had to know I would find it.”
“I quite deliberately omitted your name.”
“Yet here we are.”
She … didn’t have a response to that. Not one that would be good enough.
Because she had wanted him to read it.
She wanted exactly what he was giving her.
From what she had gleaned about him from others and from the people she’d witnessed him with, he very clearly valued his privacy.
“If you wanted to finish what we started the other night, I’d be more than happy to acquiesce you.” His smile was a touch too wide. Too rueful. “Or you could just say yes to Paris,” he said, leaning into her. “Put us both out of our misery.”
“You’re just refusing to take no for an answer.”
“Am I? Go on then,” he said with a tilt of his head. “Tell me no.”
She bit her lip, and the hesitation cost her. He knew exactly how she felt about him.
“Go on,” he taunted. “Say it like you really mean it.”
She refused to let him get the best of her. “Have you always been this arrogant?”
He chuckled, low and dark. “In most things.”
At least she knew what she was dealing with.
He reached over and pressed the button to start the elevator back up again.
“Have you packed yet?”
“Sorry?”
“For Paris. You seem the planning sort.”
Oh, he couldn’t be … “I never said I was going.”
“No?” he asked as the doors slid open. “I’m the Kingmaker, poppet. I always get what I want, don’t I?”
With that parting remark, he pressed the button that sent the elevator moving again, and then walked out onto the next floor as if he hadn’t shaken up her world all over again.
19
Want
Every time his thoughts turned to her, a little shot of adrenaline swept through him. Making him feel alive.
Making him want.
Uilleam couldn’t think of anything he could possibly want more.
She was everything he had never known.
The confusing emotions he felt for her should have dulled after her little stunt with the post on Red Rum—she might not have posted his name, but she had added her own little moniker with with enough details about him that some would be able to make the connection—but it had only made the craving worse.
When he closed his eyes at night, he didn’t have to worry about the nightmares that usually plagued him. Instead, he heard her voice when she was challenging him, or her soft panting breaths when he got close to her, and even the delightful moans that spilled out of her when he kissed her that ensured he hadn’t been able to get any fucking peace until he had his hand wrapped around his cock.
And once wasn’t enough. Not nearly. The need was relentless.
He was getting fucking restless.
Even now, as he rested his palms flat against the shower wall, he couldn’t help but peer down at his rapidly hardening cock, wondering when he’d reverted to a teenage boy.
The lust was never-fucking-ending.
His eyes slid shut as he gripped himself. All he could see was the look of abandon on Karina’s face when he’d been about to make her come.
It was that look in the back of his mind that got him off.
He groaned, resting his head against the cool subway tiles of the shower, letting the water streaming down from the trio of rainfall shower heads drench his hair and slide down his back.
It had helped, for a moment, to loosen the tight muscles in his shoulders—to relax him further, considering he had spent another night with little sleep.
But the shower was doing fuck all to calm the raging erection he had, and it was becoming something he couldn’t ignore.
He didn’t even want to ignore it.
Not when he could still taste her on his tongue.
It didn’t matter that it had been twenty-four hours previous, or that he’d eaten and brushed his teeth and had drinks in the span of time between him being with her and his arrival back at his suite, but that didn’t stop the memory from conjuring whenever his thoughts turned to her.
Whether it was for a mere few seconds—the edge of the newspaper sitting on the corner of his coffee table had been the leading reason he was in the shower now—as soon as he thought of her, his cock hardened, and the rest of him grew anxious.
She wasn’t a complication as he had first deemed her so many weeks ago.
Karina was a fucking virus.
An infection down to the bone and threading through the marrow, but he still didn’t bloody well know whether he liked the feeling or not.
Uilleam had been hours into his work day as seven a.m. rolled around while the rest of the world seemed to only now come awake. He considered retiring to his room for a while since he didn’t have any meetings to attend for another few hours, but the thought was just as quickly abandoned when he considered what else he could be doing in that time besides attempting to sleep.
His work never ended.
As he grabbed his phone, sorting through the messages that had come in while he’d been busy working on other matters, the elevator chimed, the concierge rounding the corner a moment later. He rolled in a cart with a gold-domed dish, three different newspapers, and three bottled waters with sealed tops.
One could never be too careful.
“Morning, sir,” he greeted as he always did before unveiling the platter of food the chef had personally prepared for him.
He only had a few moments to enjoy the peace and quiet before Skorpion joined him, his face twisted into a scowl.
“While I’m all for everyone doing whatever the fuck they want so long as they’re not hurting anyone else, you clearly can’t be fucking allowed.”
Sometimes even he forgot he was the boss in their little arrangement rather than the other way around.
Uilleam wondered for the seventh time that day why he bothered to put up with Skorpion at all. He had a
complete lack of respect for authority.
Became distracted by food more often than he didn’t.
And there was never a single time when Uilleam didn’t know the man’s opinion on something because he wasn’t one to hold back on that front.
The question played on a continuous loop as Uilleam sighed before finally giving the man the attention he had all but asked for. “I sincerely don’t want to know what you’re on about.”
“Your latest obsession has been busy.”
He considered, briefly, correcting the man—he didn’t think he had ever been obsessed with anything in his entire life—but thought better of it as a newspaper was slapped down in front of him.
A cursory glance at the cover page told him the name of the paper—The Gazette Post—and the current date. Even if there hadn’t been something curious lingering in the back of his throat as he spoke, Uilleam would have still been searching the paper, looking for a name he was all too familiar with.
He suspected that she would get back to work sooner or later now that Paxton was away and his story was finished, but as he turned the paper onto the fifth page where there was merely a small column of text to the left, he was surprised to find that her next story wasn’t closer to the front.
That was usually the way of it when a journalist managed to earn notoriety from what they wrote. Their stories would become more closely followed.
They would become as interesting as the articles they wrote.
“If you’re not careful,” Skorpion continued, “she’s going to cause more problems than she’s worth.”
Oh, he wasn’t so sure about that.
He didn’t doubt for a second that she could cause him problems. If he hadn’t been willing to turn on Paxton, that situation would have turned out very differently, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Not even a little.
“You’re not seeing the bigger picture,” he answered, looking from the paper back to the mercenary. “She could be an untapped resource should I ever have the need.” And he was always in need of people with various skill sets.
It was because of people like her that he had gotten to where he was now.
He just wasn’t going to admit that wasn’t the only reason he wanted her.
“Right … so what the hell are you going to do about her?”
That was a question even he didn’t have an answer to yet.
He had a myriad of things he could be doing right now, but they all paled in comparison to what he actually wanted to be doing.
The only way to remedy that was to feed his compulsion.
Which was how he found himself back in Karina’s apartment, helping himself to the tea he found in her cupboard—a blend he had always enjoyed when he lived in Wales.
And this time, he wasn’t as concerned whether she knew he was here or not. He was hoping she did, actually.
He waited with his cup in hand, wishing he could ignore the soft vibrations of his phone. His work never ended, though it would probably be worth taking a day or two off at a time.
He was in the middle of sending a text confirmation that would have him a quarter of a million dollars within the hour when Karina finally returned.
She hadn’t been at work, that much he could tell. Her hair was down instead of up. And she was in a pair of jeans with a rip in the left knee.
There was no reason he should have known the difference between her casual attire and business, but he did.
He knew the moment she spotted him because she gave a little jerk, her eyes widening partially before she rested her hand on her chest and sighed audibly.
He couldn’t help but smile at the idea that she didn’t fear him in the least, though he had given her every reason to.
“It’s weird that this is the least concerning thing you’ve done since I met you.”
“Lucky you.” Others weren’t always so fortunate.
“What have you come for this time?” she asked as she stepped out of her heels first, then slid off her jacket. “Have you found a new creative way to threaten me?”
“There’s no need. Your post was a one-off.”
“Is that what you think?”
He shrugged.
They both knew the answer to that.
“Has there ever been a time in your life when you weren’t this arrogant?”
For just a second, Uilleam flashbacked to when he was a child, remembering the searing heat in his cheek whenever Alexander lost his temper at what he considered as his incompetence. He’d been unsure of everything back then, often wondering whether there was anything he was good at.
“I am who I am.” It was as simple as that.
One finely arched brow rose, but there was something about her expression that made him think she knew he wasn’t as at ease as he appeared. “Yeah, there’s no doubt about that.”
“A Kingmaker is what you called me, right?”
“It was a figure of speech.”
Yet he could think of no better title that fit.
No better ideal.
He could make anyone into a king … for a price.
And he rather liked the sound of that.
“One that I thank you for.” He set his tea aside and stood, crossing the floor until he was nearly in front of her. He watched the moment she anticipated him reaching for her, but he chose instead to gesture at the picture sitting on her dresser that he hadn’t paid very much attention to the last time he was here. “Who’s this?”
Her gaze skipped to the picture as if she didn’t already know which one sat there. Something odd and unreadable passed over her face before her expression settled.
“My sister. Why are you here, if not to threaten me?” she asked, changing the subject back to him.
“I asked you a question before,” he said turning to better face her. “Now, I’m ready for an answer.”
She blinked once, confusion marring her features before it dissolved into understanding. “You seriously want me to go away with you?”
“I thought I made that rather clear.”
“That doesn’t mean I understand why.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he admitted.
Even he didn’t understand the compulsion—the need to get closer to her. Learn who she was and what she liked.
Figure out how he could get her to react.
Before, he thought he had all the time in the world to give her a chance to change her mind. He would have wooed her for as long as it took if only because he rather enjoyed the game they were playing.
And he liked, though it was proving quite frustrating, that she wasn’t immediately giving in to whatever he wanted.
He would have quite happily persisted until she changed her mind, but now he just didn’t have the time for it.
This opportunity was too good to pass up, and with the current state of things, he doubted another opportunity would present itself in the near future.
If he wanted a hearing about the empty seat, he would have to go now and hope that all he had done proved just how valuable he could be.
The only thing left now was the details.
“What would it take for you to say yes?”
“You have to give me something in return.”
God, those words thrilled him. “Beyond what I’m already offering.”
Her laughter was light and amused, the lyrical sound making him smile. “Yes, beyond even you.”
“Name your price.”
He loved the eagerness he saw in her face as she turned to better face him.
The way her eyes came to life when she thought she was getting what she wanted.
But more than anything, he wished he knew why he wanted to give her exactly what she wanted when she looked at him like that.
“Orion. You have to make those charges go away.”
At the mention of his name, some of Uilleam’s good mood fled. “Name something else.”
“Are you seriou
s?”
“Making a crime disappear takes time and effort, poppet. Not to mention money that I severely doubt you possess.”
“Sure, Uilleam. Keep going and see how this ends for you.”
For fuck’s sake. “Fine. I’ll make sure your pet is taken care of.”
“Call him that again and this conversation ends.”
“A lot of loyalty to someone you proclaim is not yours.”
“He’s my friend. There’s nothing wrong with being loyal to people that are loyal to you. That’s how it works.”
Not for Uilleam. Even those that were meant to be the most loyal sometimes couldn’t help themselves. He’d started to expect the worst from people.
“Consider it done then,” he said begrudgingly.
“And I want to know how you did it,” she said, resting her chin on her fist. “Give me that much at least.”
“Did what exactly?”
“Paxton. All of it. I want to know how you did it.”
Uilleam couldn’t think of a single individual he had ever explained his process to. Skorpion knew of it, of course, but he didn’t know the details behind his orders. He merely did what he was told. But he found he wanted to tell her.
“The men who pretended to arrest you owed me a favor.”
While there were plenty of upstanding police officers in the world, there were also the few who forsook their badges and happily turned to the other side to make more money than the paltry amount they made from the department year after year.
He didn’t begrudge them their greed, but he also wasn’t above using their deceit against them.
These two hadn’t actually done very bad things themselves. One had a nearly five-figure gambling debt, and the other was in the midst of an affair with his captain’s wife.
But they were important enough for the men to want to pay any price to make sure their secrets were kept.
“So they were willing to just let me go?” she asked, an adorable little pinch between her brows forming.
“As far as they were aware, no crime had taken place.”
“But I broke in.”
“The door was unlocked when you got there,” he said easily. “And you were concerned for whomever might be inside.”
White Rabbit: The Rise (The Kingmaker Saga Book 1) Page 17
