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

by Caitlin Crews

  When he’d finished, he’d angled himself back and let his gaze move all over her, seeming to get caught on the place where her nipples jutted out against the red silk. Nora thought his eyes burned then, and she’d held her breath, but he’d only raised that endlessly patient green gaze to hers, dark and brooding and wonderful in ways she hadn’t understood.

  “Perfect,” he’d said quietly. “The dress is an illusion, Nora. It must look as if you are bound in it while simultaneously looking as if a stiff breeze might dislodge it. Or a breath. Or an impertinent touch of my finger.”

  “Will it?” But she hadn’t cared about the dress. She’d cared about him and that gleaming approval in his beautiful eyes. And she’d been running out of ways to pretend otherwise—or to pretend that any of this was as much about Harlow as she knew it should have been.

  “That all depends,” he’d said. As if he’d seen the question in her gaze then, he’d smiled. “On whether or not it would be to our mutual benefit to expose you in a roomful of johns and deviants. Because this is the game we’re playing. Remember?”

  That his voice had been so gentle then made it worse.

  “Of course I remember,” she’d said, her voice tight. She’d thought that maybe she’d been addressing herself. “What else would it be but the game?”

  Now she smiled at a passing waiter as she took two glasses of wine from his tray, and ordered herself to calm down. Fast, because they were in public again and who knew who was watching her? But she couldn’t seem to obey her own directives, no matter that it seemed easier by the hour to obey Zair’s. Something about the way he issued his little orders made her feel like melting. It was sugar in her veins, dark and sweet and irresistible, and she couldn’t seem to talk herself off that ledge.

  He hadn’t touched her again the way he had that first night. He hadn’t kissed her. He hadn’t stroked his way inside her. Beyond the panties, he hadn’t ordered her to strip for him in private and he hadn’t told her to kneel down before him. He hadn’t taken the games they played outside the villa anywhere at all, and inside it, he was distant and unreachable, retreating behind closed doors and emerging only when it was time for the next public performance.

  Yet Nora felt that unsteady thing inside her anyway, like a tremor deep in her gut and high in her breasts, a yearning heat in her throat and a constant pulse between her legs, as though she might fall apart if he didn’t do something. As though she might dissolve. Or worse, beg him to touch her and she didn’t care where or how.

  And she had the terrifying, humiliating suspicion that he knew it.

  She was so busy worrying about all the things that must mean that she almost walked into the person beside her. She blinked, an apology already on her lips, then realized it was Greer.

  Greer Bishop, whom she’d gone to boarding school with and who’d been her introduction to the yacht girl life. Only days before, though that night felt like years ago already.

  “Holy crap,” Greer drawled, helping herself to one of the glasses of wine Nora was holding and taking a big gulp, leaving a dark maroon lipstick stain behind on its rim. “You like to start strong, don’t you? Zair al Ruyi is hard-core.”

  A better woman would have excused herself then, Nora imagined. A better woman would have thought hard about all the reasons Greer Bishop was a terrible source of information, not least of those being that glassy look in her eyes tonight and the fact that Greer wasn’t playing any games here. Greer really did prostitute herself out for the hell of it.

  Nora wasn’t a better woman. “What’s his deal, anyway?” she asked.

  Greer eyed her in that canny way of hers that Nora remembered from her hotel room what felt like a whole lifetime ago, when Greer had picked her up for her first night on the scene and looked at her like she was a piece of meat. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  “What do you mean? Is he weird?”

  “I don’t know.” Nora shrugged, not sure she wanted to know what constituted “weird” for Greer. “Intense, I guess.”

  “That’s one word for it.” Greer swirled the wine around in her glass. “Sometimes the girls who go off with him disappear. Maybe that’s why he never picks the same one twice.” Her eyes didn’t seem glassy any longer as they fixed on Nora. “Until you, I guess.”

  “Well, he knows my brother,” Nora said easily. Maybe too easily, as though she was taking to all of this lying and pretending a bit too quickly, but this wasn’t the time to worry about that. “I feel like maybe he’s working out some stuff.”

  Greer laughed. It was a brittle sound, but genuine even so, Nora thought, and she was surprised when she found herself joining in.

  “Aren’t they all?” Greer shifted on her high sandals, as if she were restless. “It’s better than therapy, anyway. If twenty times as expensive.”

  “Do you know Harlow Spencer?” Nora asked, when the laughter had faded away and Greer’s attention had shifted to the crowd around them.

  Greer reached up and fluffed her shining cap of bright red hair with her free hand, her eyes on a scrum of men a few feet away, several of whom looked horribly familiar. “From Baltimore, right?”

  Theirs was such a small world, really. The same handful of snooty boarding schools, exclusive summer camps, fancy colleges with the same sororities, and the kinds of social events people in their parents’ tax bracket attended year in and year out. The same dull if shiny lives. If they were the same approximate age, they’d probably heard of each other at some point.

  “Her family is old Roland Park money,” Nora confirmed. “We were in the same sorority at Columbia.”

  “Kudos,” Greer said, with a roll of her eyes.

  “She was supposed to meet me here,” Nora said, pretending not to notice Greer’s eye roll. Or sarcasm.

  “At this party?” Greer laughed again, this one harder and less genuine. “No one misses this party. Unless she has a good reason. By which I mean, like, a starring role in a Spielberg movie.”

  “She was supposed to show up a few days ago, actually.” Nora sighed theatrically and apologized to her friend privately as she did it. “Knowing Harlow, she’s probably holed up somewhere and doesn’t want to answer her phone. She does that.”

  She made a face as if that were an everyday occurrence, when nothing could be further from the truth. Harlow’s inability to make it through five whole minutes without texting someone had, in fact, been how Nora had first realized something was wrong. Not hearing from Harlow for an entire day was a call for help. But Nora doubted Greer knew that.

  Greer stopped scanning the crowd and fixed her gaze on Nora again.

  “Maybe she found a way out,” she said, almost wistfully. Nora wasn’t sure she’d heard that right and froze, afraid that anything she said or did would make Greer think better of what she was saying. The other girl smiled after a moment, but it was a sharp thing. “I wouldn’t mess with that. It’s so fucking rare.”

  Nora held her breath, but there was no denying that what she saw on the other girl’s face then was pain. Etched deep, like scars.

  “Greer.” Her throat was dry, and she knew she shouldn’t do what she was about to do. She knew she shouldn’t risk this—that it could expose her. But she reached over and put her hand on Greer’s arm anyway. “Do you need help? Can I help you?”

  Greer blinked. She looked down at the place where Nora gripped her, and when she looked up again, her eyes were hard. Flat.

  “That’s sweet,” she said, her voice impenetrable once more, hard and cool.

  She nodded behind them, and Nora turned automatically, not surprised to see Zair there with a set of unpleasant-looking men. They were all laughing, but his gaze was on Nora. Watchful and serious, and her stomach dropped.

  And then hit bottom, hard, when Zair inclined his head in that commanding way of his, ordering her to his side like the good little whore everyone on this boat thought she was.

  “I’d worry more about yourself, if I were you,” Greer said
from beside her with a brittle laugh that seemed to hurt both of them. “Looks like you need a lot more help than I do.”

  *

  But when Nora made it to his side, Zair led her away from the men he stood with. Once again, he settled his hand on the nape of her neck and he navigated their way through the crowd with such ease, she almost thought they were connected somehow.

  Idiot, a little voice whispered. Why don’t you focus on whether or not you can see Harlow in all this madness rather than your pathetic feelings of connection to a man who likes to put his hands on your throat?

  She looked for Harlow then. Fiercely. But she also flushed so hot at that memory that she could feel the faint film of perspiration spring up all over her skin—and so could Zair. She felt his low laugh, felt it move through his lean chest and down his arm straight into her skin, as if it were another one of his wicked caresses.

  Nora welcomed the cool outside air when they stepped out onto the deck, and as they walked toward the back of the boat where the crowd thinned. He moved in front of her then, taking her hand the way he had that first night and leading her up the stairs until they stood by themselves in a small alcove. Visible to anyone who might happen by, but relatively private unless others came up the same stairs.

  He took her wineglass from her hand and sipped from it, his gaze inscrutable as it met hers. Green and hard and the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Even here, where everything beautiful was so deeply twisted.

  “Did you have a pleasant conversation with your old friend?” Zair asked in a mild voice that immediately put her on alert.

  And she didn’t want to believe she needed help. She didn’t want to believe that Zair was one of the bad guys. Even though she knew he’d be the first to tell her he was. She could feel his hand against the nape of neck as if he were still touching her, as if he’d branded her, and the things that moved inside her still scared her as much as they confused her.

  And his eyes were so damned green, and saw far too much.

  “She said that sometimes, the prostitutes you take home never come back.”

  It wasn’t until she said that out loud that she recognized how much it hurt her to imagine Zair doing…any of that. Buying women. Taking them off somewhere. Doing whatever he did, then doing something that ensured they’d disappear—

  If she didn’t know him, if she didn’t know that when given the opportunity he’d opted not to do any of those things to her, she’d believe what her friends back home already believed about him.

  You remember that he’s potentially the bad guy, right? Addison had asked in a text after another photograph appeared of Zair and Nora, not-quite-kissing in a restaurant over a candlelit dinner.

  It’s complicated, Nora had replied.

  But it felt like far more than that. It felt like fate, heavy and perfect at once.

  “Greer Bishop has been on the circuit for years,” Zair said with that quiet intensity that made her fight to keep from shivering, standing there in the evening breeze that played with those silken bands of fabric that made up her dress, just as he’d said it would. “In the beginning, she could spend the summers with the younger men. The better-looking ones.”

  “Like that makes a difference.”

  He smiled slightly at her vehemence. “Of course it makes a difference, if only in the lies she could tell herself. But that was a long time ago for Greer. These days there are fewer offers and when they come, it’s generally from much older men who are far less attractive. They tend to also pay less and yet have far more degrading demands.”

  “You say that like you’ve made a study of this place. These people. Is that what you’re doing here, Zair? Is that why you were on that boat?”

  “I am one of them,” he told her, and though his voice was soft and sure, his green eyes blazed, his mouth was hard and wounded at once, and she didn’t believe him. Was that faith or pure wishful thinking? “I’ve seen this with my own eyes and believe me, Nora, it’s never pretty. There are only a few ways out of this particular circle of hell.” He began to tick them off, like a list. “A generous benefactor—but let’s be honest, this is a fantasy that the girls tell themselves based on the legends of certain well-known movie stars. A lateral move into pornography—but that can become its own spiral if a girl isn’t very careful. Or death.” He shrugged. “Sometimes slow, sometimes quick. Sometimes the addictions speed the process, sometimes they dull the slow, inevitable slide. Sometimes the girls decide to turn tricks the rest of the year, because what’s the difference? They very often find themselves in debt to creatures like Laurette, who traffic in bad problems and worse solutions. But sooner or later it is death all the same.”

  “Not all women in the sex trade are desperate, strung out, or even exploited,” Nora said staunchly, and she wasn’t sure whom she was defending. It felt like herself, though that made no sense.

  “True.” Zair’s gaze was calm the way it always was. And harder than usual, too. “But those more liberated women tend to divide into two camps. Tourists, like you’re pretending to be, who think this kind of thing is an adventure. A crazy night or two they can use as a wicked story to tell later. Or high-level private operators, who enjoy their work and don’t need to troll the French Riviera or anywhere else for new clients. Either way, if they find their way here, they don’t stay long. They don’t come back year after year for diminishing returns. The ones who do?” Another shrug, a harsh, judgmental shift of his shoulder. “It is as I said.”

  “They don’t have to stay here and die,” Nora gritted out, her voice catching in her throat, and she understood this wasn’t about Greer. It was about Harlow. And it was about Nora herself, too. “They could just leave.”

  Zair’s gaze was bleak, then. He reached over and ran one of his fingers along the length of a long, silken strap. “Yes. But they never do.”

  “Greer is different,” she said, and she didn’t know why she felt choked up inside. Why this bothered her so much. It wasn’t as if she and Greer Bishop had ever been close. It wasn’t as if what happened to Greer would affect Nora’s own life, and Nora knew Greer wouldn’t thank her for this defense. Still. “She doesn’t need the money, or a savior, for that matter. She’s doing this because she feels like it.”

  “That’s her story,” Zair agreed. “Though it was more convincing five years ago. But the world is full of broken heiresses who come to bad ends, isn’t it? Too much money and too little sense. Too many questionable situations filled with expensive drugs and then, soon enough, an outsize habit to match.” His mouth tightened, but he didn’t shift his gaze from hers. He didn’t look away. “I’d be very much surprised if Greer didn’t owe Laurette Fortin a sizable amount of money. Most of the girls do.”

  Nora felt chilled through. “Surely Greer is a special case,” she said, and she recognized that note in her voice. The one that verged on desperate. “The exception that proves the rule.”

  “You know better.” His finger moved slowly, so slowly, painting a lick of fire just beneath the lower curve of her breast. “Believe enough of the wrong people and you become what they make you.”

  She swallowed, hard, and she felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. Frozen. Terrified. Much too close to losing what passed for her self-control. And aware that he wasn’t the one who’d secured her there. She’d done that. She did it every time she believed him. Every time she convinced herself he was somehow untainted by this swamp they were both standing in.

  “What happens to the girls you take home who don’t come back, Zair?” she asked in a harsh whisper.

  His mouth shifted into something that scraped at her, but she couldn’t let it deter her. “What do you think?”

  “And Harlow,” she continued, and it hurt. It all hurt, and it was a bright-hot, wet heat that threatened to spill out from behind her eyes, and she made herself do it anyway. “She got on a yacht much like this one, except it was registered to the Port of Ruyi. It left London three weeks ago. Then s
he was seen on CCTV entering Nice with some strange man.” She searched his face, the face she knew so much better now and could no longer read at all. Had she ever read it? Or had he shown her what he wanted her to see? If he was a monster, how would she know? “Do you know where she is, Zair? Did you have something to do with it?”

  *

  Zair al Ruyi wanted her to think the worst of him. So it shouldn’t have felt like a red-hot poker through the chest—like the worst kind of betrayal—that she did.

  “Will we get to the truth this time?” he asked. He put the wineglass down and then leaned against the rail, shifting so he was closer to her.

  Nora Grant, who had always believed the best of him. It stunned him to realize that he’d imagined she always would.

  “I’m not the one who’s been concealing the truth,” Nora said, her voice thick, but she swayed toward him anyway, as though her body trusted him no matter what came out of her mouth. “I’ve told you everything. All you’ve done is talk about obedience and make me trail around after you like a dog on a leash.”

  “Why did you come here, to Cannes? Into this grim little world?” he asked her, making no attempt to modify his tone. “What on earth would make you put yourself at risk like this?”

  Her eyes glittered with emotion. “I told you—”

  “Yes, of course.” He moved so he was trapping her at the rail, a hand on either side of her hips and his face too close to hers. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t need to touch her—not when he could see the fine little tremors that moved over her skin. Not when he could smell her perfume and the warm heat of her arousal beneath it. Not when he could see the way she melted toward him, then yanked herself back. “This epic friendship of yours, the likes of which the world has never seen before or since. I am fond indeed of my friends, Nora. And if I suspected they were caught up in something like this, I would contact the authorities. I would not prance into the middle of this cesspool with absolutely nothing to protect me.”