The Billionaire's Innocent: Zair al Ruyi (Forbidden Book 3)

by Caitlin Crews

  He looked calm, then. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Because you say so? You realize that’s not actually a good enough reason, right?”

  “Because you are pampered little rich girl who knows about paintings and had Mommy and Daddy buy her an art gallery,” he growled at her, and he couldn’t have hit her harder or in a place that hurt more. And he wasn’t finished. “What do you think it is I know about, Nora? What do you think I do?”

  “Various acts of diplomacy as an ambassador,” she replied, stung. “Which I was under the impression was a position your older brother presented to you as a family gift all your own.” She hated him all over again, she told herself. She wished she could. “Is this a competition? Because I think ‘ambassadorship to the United States’ beats ‘art gallery’ in the ‘things my rich relatives have done for me’ sweepstakes.”

  He looked as if he was biting something back this time that wasn’t anything like laughter, and it took everything Nora had not to pitch her coffee mug directly into his face.

  “And it’s not just a random gallery,” she told him, with more bitterness than she liked, and not all of it, she was aware, directed at him. “It’s a charity that actually helps people.”

  It was silly. It was fluffy. Nora had no idea what she was doing with her life and she hated that Zair knew that. That he’d zeroed in on yet another thing she’d been afraid to say out loud.

  He shifted, his cool gaze merciless. “Here’s what it’s not: a training ground for infiltrating a prostitution ring.”

  She scowled at him, which was better than weeping. “Is that what you’re doing, Zair? Infiltrating sex slave auctions? Or simply attending them?”

  Zair shook his head, which somehow called more attention to that bare chest of his. She had to order herself not to stare, and curled her fingers tighter around her mug.

  “You have no idea what you blundered into last night or how lucky you are I found you,” he told her.

  Except Nora didn’t feel particularly lucky at the moment. She wanted him to answer the question. She wanted to feel something besides that jagged, awful emptiness inside her. She wanted.

  “I don’t believe it, you know,” she told him. She was too aware, then, of too many things. Her bare feet against the stone floor. That harsh, hard face of his and that brooding expression he wore. Her own vulnerabilities. Her own need. “That you were there to buy a girl.”

  “But I was.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Decide what’s important to you, Nora,” he suggested, his voice a kind of terrible kindling, and the fire that arced high around them both then was too wild. Too hot. “Do you want to exonerate me of crimes you saw me commit with your own eyes in service to a bygone crush? Because you think you’d recognize a monster if you looked him full in the face? If he made you scream out your pleasure against a door?”

  “Monsters never look like monsters,” she whispered. She thought of Jason Treffen, her friend’s murdered father, a man she’d met and, God help her, liked. She did not think about what had happened against the damned front door of this villa. She could still feel the aftershocks. Everywhere. “That’s the point. But you’re not one.”

  “You’re a very young, very sheltered, very spoiled little girl,” he said, matter-of-factly, and that should have hurt her.

  It should have felt like a slap, the way it had when he’d said something similar six years back. And she didn’t disagree with him. But it still only confirmed that conviction deep inside her. That no matter what he said, no matter how familiar he’d seemed with that operation last night, he wasn’t a part of this. He wasn’t. Or he would have taken what she’d offered him. He wouldn’t have stopped.

  “That might be true,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re not a monster, does it? No matter how hard you try to convince me otherwise.”

  “Monsters abound where you least expect them regardless of whether or not that’s convenient for the fantasies you’re so desperate to spin,” he told her softly. Harshly. “Decide what you want to know. Are you looking for the truth about me or are you looking for your friend?”

  His tone was so harsh, as if he were dispensing judgment, but she saw something flash there in the depths of his green gaze. She saw something she recognized. Something that called out to that dark thing inside her and made it impossible for her to believe the worst of him. No matter that he seemed to encourage it.

  “I want to find Harlow,” she said after the moment grew almost unbearably tense, when she thought his stare might leave scars all over her. Or perhaps it already had. “That’s why I came here in the first place.” Was that shadow that passed over his face regret? It couldn’t be—and then, in a moment, it was gone as if it had never been there at all. “That means I have to go back to those parties.”

  He laughed then, a harsh little sound.

  “Your glittering career as a yacht girl is over.” His voice was like steel, but she thought she saw something else on his face. Something that echoed inside her and made that wanting that waited there grow bigger. Deeper. “You will not put yourself at further risk. It’s not going to happen.”

  She opened her mouth to argue—but caught herself. Did she really want what Zair had saved her from last night? This was, she realized as she stared at him, beautiful and dangerous and his mouth in a hard line, a fight she didn’t really want to win.

  “Fine,” she said. Grudgingly. Did his gaze turn even darker then? As if he’d won something here? “We can do it however you want. I don’t care. Just so long as we keep looking for her.”

  “I have the perfect strategy in mind,” he said—grimly, she thought. As if he hadn’t wanted it to come to this. As if he despaired for the both of them. Or as if he was as worried about that electric current that danced between them, even now, as she was. “And I doubt very much you’ll like it.”

  *

  Nora returned one of her brother’s curt messages later that same evening, out on the balcony that ran the length of the bedroom that Zair had told her was hers for the rest of her stay, hanging perilously over the side of the hill with only a steep drop below. He’d had her things delivered from the hotel earlier, which meant she was dressed in her own clothes again, which should have made her feel better. Less…wrecked by the previous night. Less undone by Zair’s proximity.

  She told herself it made her feel bold to stand out on the terrace as the evening edged toward night, defying gravity, watching the sun sink behind the hills in the distance. Because she wanted to feel bold again, like that girl who had set off from New York with such certainty that she was doing the right thing. As bold as she’d been then, if not quite as astonishingly stupid.

  Hunter picked up on the first ring. “What the fuck.”

  “Nice,” she replied with a mildness she didn’t quite feel. “Our mother would faint if she heard such language.”

  “Our mother is used to seeing my bullshit all over the papers,” Hunter retorted. “You’re a different story. She might never recover from this crap. What will the Daughters of the American Revolution say?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Nora said.

  But she didn’t really believe that. Her mother had so many ideas about what was “appropriate” for a girl with Nora’s many advantages. The right schools, the right sororities, the right sort of pretty charity work in lieu of any grittier, more demanding career that might actually matter—all the things the Grant heiress needed before she married the right man and set about living the right life. None of these things involved tabloid coverage, needless to say, much less in the company of a man without the proper WASP-y, well-vetted background, and Nora had found it all amusing before. Hadn’t she?

  She found she didn’t today. “Zair went to Harvard. He’s so wealthy he makes us look poor. What more could she ask?”

  “Do not mess around with Zair,” Hunter said with none of his usual bluster.
>
  “He’s one of your best friends,” she replied lightly, though she stared out over the steep hills and wondered if Hunter knew Zair at all. If anyone knew him. If she ever would. “How bad can he be if you spent all that time with him?”

  “He’s a walking dead man after this stunt,” Hunter corrected her grumpily. “But the point is, Zair has never told the whole story about anything in as long as I’ve known him. His secrets have their own secrets.”

  “Some girls like a little mystery,” she replied. Light, she thought. She had to keep it light and maybe that might make it so.

  “You’re not ‘some girls.’”

  “Am I suffering from some kind of amnesia?” Nora retorted, her patience unraveling, all thoughts of light sinking away like the sun over the far hill. “Are we pretending Mom cares that much about what I do with my life because she’s just a crazy throwback to the Victorian era? Or do you think it maybe has something to do with the fact that her oldest son was a national disaster for an entire decade?”

  “Nora.”

  But she ignored him. “I appreciate the gesture, Hunter, really. But this overprotective big brother thing is a little over the top, don’t you think? I remember when the only contact I had with you for months at a time was by watching TMZ.”

  “Okay,” he said, stiffly. “I deserve that. But that doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t be getting into limousines with Zair al Ruyi. In Cannes, of all places. You have no idea the kind of shit that goes on there.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she snapped at him, and maybe there was too much of the previous night in her voice, then. “I live in the same world you do, Hunter.”

  “I’m not telling you how to live your life,” her brother gritted out at her. “But I’d have to be seven kinds of a dick if I didn’t point out that Zair runs pretty fucking dark and that it’s not exactly a secret that you’ve had stars in your eyes where he’s concerned. For years.”

  “Thank you,” she said icily. “I’m not actually eighteen any longer. I appreciate your noticing that.”

  “Just be careful, Nora,” Hunter muttered, sounding as if he wished he’d punched himself in the face rather than have this conversation. That made two of them. “That’s all I wanted to say. Jesus.”

  Long after the call ended, Nora stood there, frowning out at the last of the light. She didn’t know when she became aware that she wasn’t alone. She didn’t hear Zair come up behind her. He didn’t make any noise. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing.

  But she knew he was there. As if he were a part of her, though she opted not to explore that notion any further. It couldn’t lead anywhere good.

  “Second thoughts?” he asked from the shadows behind her, and she told herself she had no idea what that thing was that gripped her then, hard and sad and too big to bear. She was only glad he couldn’t see her face while she wrestled it back.

  “Of course not,” she said, and she almost sounded as though she meant that, she thought. Almost. “I’ve always wanted to have a fake relationship for the sake of the tabloids. It makes me feel like a genuine celebrity at last.”

  Because that was what he’d laid out as their plan of attack in that cold, matter-of-fact way of his, completely devoid of all that heat she’d felt inside her and seen reflected in his gaze. A weeklong fake affair, conducted in the shine of so many flashbulbs, the better to divert attention from what she was really doing in Cannes. And for whatever dark reasons of his, from what Nora knew lurked there between them. She’d airily assured him that she was an excellent actress, that this would be the easiest thing in the world.

  Neither one of them had believed her.

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Zair murmured now. He sounded like the dark that fell all around her, smooth and soft, infinitely compelling. “It’s time to go.”

  “Go,” she repeated, still not turning back toward him, as if this were a major moment. As if all the grand charades of the night before had been just that—games. As if their conversation earlier had been nothing but a prologue and this was the real thing. This, right here, the true choice that would change everything.

  As if the night itself were shot through with anticipation.

  Or perhaps, as ever, that was only her.

  “Yes,” he said, and she felt him move closer then. She could sense the heat of his body, the lethal power of it. She could feel that same pull that made her want to do nothing but melt before him. “Go out with me or go home. The same choice as before. You can change your mind at any time, you know. All you need to do is say so.”

  “There are no choices here, Zair. Not really.”

  She wasn’t surprised when he took her arm, tugging her around to face him. He was dressed for the evening already in another rich, dark suit that made him look like edible danger, and she had the bizarre urge to run her cheek against the wall of his chest. He made her feel small, she realized, and cherished, in a way no one else ever had—and she didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  “This is the choice,” he said in that way of his, all dark patience and that thrilling promise beneath, made all the more intense by the feel of his hand against the bare skin of her arm. His thumb moved against her biceps. Once. Twice. As if he couldn’t quite help himself, either.

  And God help her, how she wanted that to be true.

  “But everything that happens after I decide?” She didn’t know what she was looking for in his face then, but it was the same as it always was. Beautiful and implacable. Steel and that cool green touch of his eyes to hers. His will like a physical force. “That’s your choice, not mine.”

  “All you have to do is what I tell you to do. Or get on that plane.” He shrugged. “I’ve already told you what I think you should do. You can ignore it if that is your wish, but as always, there are consequences.”

  “Do all your consequences end naked and in bed?” She hadn’t meant to ask that—but something glittered in his gaze then, a hot sort of intent that made everything in her clench tight.

  “That’s not a consequence, Nora,” he told her softly. “That’s a reward, whether you see it that way or not. Do you think you deserve a reward?”

  His thumb was still moving in that slow, lazy pattern against her upper arm, and she didn’t know what she thought she deserved. She only knew what she wanted. “Is that a direct question?”

  His cool gaze warmed and she did, too. “No, it’s a trick one.”

  She stared up at him, and she didn’t understand that loose, yearning, breathless hush that stole over her, as if the only thing that mattered was the way he looked at her. Bright, brilliant. As if she sparkled. As if the whole of France ceased to exist behind her the more he gazed down at her.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think you deserve,” he said, his voice a scrape against the night, and like a touch. She felt it everywhere. “It matters what I think you deserve. That’s how this works.”

  “Right,” she managed to say, with some approximation of her bravado, which she seemed to have left behind her on that damned yacht last night. “I think in some circles they call that ‘serious control issues.’”

  “You’re probably right.” His hand tightened against the bare flesh of her arm, then dropped away, and she felt the loss of it like a sharp, shooting pain. “In other circles, you’d call me sir and thank me for the privilege.”

  Something flashed through her then, so searing she couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold, and then Zair leaned in to press his lips against her temple. It was a firm, easy kiss that should hardly have registered and instead made her break out in an obvious red flush. He smiled, and she thought it was as much to make her tremble, to show her how easily he could, as anything else. To demonstrate his power.

  To prove what she suspected they both already knew: she liked it.

  “Guess which I prefer?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t want to guess,” she whispered.

  He held out his hand an
d she took it, and understood as she did that she’d thrown herself from a great height that simply. That irrevocably. His fingers closed over hers, his green eyes gleamed, and everything changed.

  “You don’t have to guess,” he said quietly, as though these were vows they were making here. As though the words had that weight. “You have only to obey.”

  *

  It was one thing to claim obedience and another entirely to practice it, Zair knew. Tonight was a test. He doubted very much that Nora Grant—who was so much like so many of the other gleaming, carefree girls just like her who bubbled all over New York, armored by the social status and the great privilege they’d inherited as their birthright—had the slightest idea how to follow anyone’s orders.

  This was a test. He told himself that was all it was.

  “What if I don’t know what to do?” she asked in the deep backseat of the car as it eased down the hills toward the hectic sparkle of Cannes. She looked out the window instead of at him, and he corrected that first. He took her jaw in his hand and tugged her face around until he could drown in those blue eyes of hers, deeper than the Mediterranean Sea and far more treacherous.

  “You don’t have to know,” he said, with an inexorable patience it seemed only she pulled out of him. “Look to me and do as I tell you to do. Problem solved.”

  She blinked. “Because it is the appearance of total ownership that we’re looking for here. The appearance of…”

  “Complete control,” he supplied, and dragged his thumb over her lips, keeping himself from sampling her right now by force of will alone—and because he could see how much she wanted him to do it.

  If this were real, he knew, her delayed gratification would be his major preoccupation. And he told himself it aided the act as well, and let her go. But the back of his car was too dark and too close, and he could smell the perfume she wore tonight. It was something nearly as exquisite as she was. It was an expensive temptation and he was already pushed to his limit.