And for a while, that’s what they did.
Harlow leaned forward at some point and cradled her face in her hands, though she didn’t cry. Nora sat across from her and wondered if she should. If she might anyway, whether she wanted to or not. Or if this was beyond tears.
It seemed like a very long time before Harlow straightened. She scowled at Zoe’s coffee table, and she didn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
“I want this to go away,” she whispered, harsh and loud in the quiet of the air-conditioned room. “I want it to leave me alone.”
Zoe shifted in her chair. Her direct gray gaze touched Nora’s, making her feel that she could see straight through her, then moved to Harlow.
“That’s not a luxury you get to have,” she said, her voice as matter-of-fact as it was kind.
Harlow breathed out, hard, and it sounded like a sob. Like some kind of painful relief. Like she’d been waiting for someone to utter that painful truth out loud.
“But you do get to control how you feel about it and what power it holds over you,” Zoe continued, and this time, her voice was fierce. “I promise you. It takes time. It takes some fucking work. It sucks.”
By this time, Harlow’s head was up, and both she and Nora stared at Zoe, who vibrated where she sat, unmistakably powerful.
Not a victim. Not a survivor. Powerful.
“It takes time,” Zoe said again, “but in the end, you decide what defines you, Harlow. Only you.”
*
July was starting that hot, breathless blaze toward August and Nora was packing up her life in New York in preparation for Washington when Zoe let slip at a happy family brunch with Hunter that he and his college roommates were having a little reunion.
As she did this while Hunter was off in the bathroom, Nora assumed this was not meant to be public knowledge. Or an invitation.
“All four of the old Harvard roommates,” Zoe drawled as if she often discussed her social schedule with Nora. “And their significant others. All except Zair, of course. He’s coming alone.”
Nora expressed her feelings about college reunions in general and this one in particular by tearing apart the pain au chocolat on the plate in front of her until it better resembled a mound of flour. Then she summoned a smile.
“That sounds like fun,” she said.
She thought she’d made a decent attempt to sound calm, remote, and disinterested, but when she looked up, Zoe was smiling that razor-sharp smile of hers over the rim of her coffee cup, and Nora knew better.
Later, she walked back downtown toward her loft and thought of other things. The show she had coming up, her last show in the gallery before she handed it off to the woman she’d hired to replace her. All the things she had left to pack and get ready to move down to the apartment she’d rented in Washington, DC. The day was already too warm, sticky and gritty, and she was too hot as she walked down into SoHo.
She’d been trying so hard—so hard—not to think about Zair.
Everyone she knew was surviving something and working as hard as they could to walk tall despite what they’d been through, and Nora woke up in the night reaching for a man who wasn’t there, which no one had to tell her was pathetic. This was a man who had turned her down over and over again. A man who had gone out of his way to avoid her, a man who had left her more than once, a man who had never promised her a damn thing.
A man who had told her, directly, that he didn’t love her.
But I don’t believe him.
Nora came to an abrupt stop, ignored the curses thrown at her by the pedestrians who nearly ran her down on the sidewalk, stared up at the slender, graceful shape of the Freedom Tower as it sliced into the summer sky.
She didn’t believe him.
She hadn’t believed him when he’d claimed to be a monster and she didn’t believe him now, when he claimed he didn’t love her—because she’d seen his face. She’d tasted him. She’d held him. She’d watched him walk away from her because he wanted to protect her.
Of course he loved her. And she’d only ever promised him her obedience in bed, and in Cannes, and she couldn’t think of a single reason in the world she should follow his lead when it was somewhere she didn’t want to go.
She was already changing her life. She wasn’t languishing in limbo any longer, wasting her days away, setting herself up to be some other version of Greer Bishop. The love of her life had walked away from her and she’d done nothing. She’d simply acquiesced.
But that wasn’t who she was any longer.
As Zair al Ruyi was about to find out.
*
Zair and his friends were gathered in a private room at the back of the club and Nora strolled right in as if she owned the place. She had a moment to wish that Zair—who sat in the farthest seat in the far corner, hemmed in by happy couples on all sides—had been sitting closest to the door, but Hunter and Zoe were there instead.
Oh, well. Nora thought. You can’t have everything.
As long as she had him, in the end, who cared how she got there?
And then Zair’s green eyes snapped to hers, and Nora stopped worrying about what was awkward or who was watching, because none of that mattered.
What mattered was that longing, that heat. All the things she’d been lying awake with every one of these nights in the month since she’d last seen him. All the things she could see on his gorgeous face.
“Nora?” That was Austin Treffen. He diverted his attention from the woman at his side long enough to peer around Nora. “Is Addison here?”
Nora ignored him, because Zair was already rising to his feet, his jaw like granite, as though he knew where this was going. She saw Hunter turning to look at her, too, and Zoe, and Alex and Chelsea on the other side of the table, and if she didn’t do what she’d come here to do right now she knew she wouldn’t.
And she would hate herself forever.
It didn’t matter what the outcome was. It only mattered that she asked for what she wanted. That she didn’t simply accept what was given to her without question.
Nora summoned every last bit of the calm under pressure that had served her well on the treacherous shores of Cannes, and then she reached into her bag. She pulled out the stack of bills, made sure to catch Zair’s gaze again, and then she started throwing them at him, one after the next.
He went molten. His eyes glittered and that muscle started to leap in his jaw and maybe Nora was the only one who saw his fists bunch at his sides. She kept going. Hundred-dollar bill after hundred-dollar bill. They fluttered in the air. They fell on the tabletop. In drinks and on the floor.
There was a stark silence.
“What,” bit out Hunter from the seat beside her, “the fuck are you doing?”
“I believe it’s called ‘making it rain,’” Nora replied coolly, not sparing him a glance. “And I’m repaying a debt.”
She felt the violent way Hunter glared across the table at Zair then, felt it because she didn’t watch him do it. She couldn’t tear her gaze from Zair’s. Just as she heard Alex Diaz laugh. And as she felt more than saw the way Austin reached out a cautionary hand, as if he thought Hunter was about to jump for Zair’s throat.
Zair, who didn’t move. Who stood there staring back at her like steel and glory, dressed in his usual perfectly sleek suit, and she almost hated how much he got to her. How deep it went.
“Nora.” Hunter again, because everyone else was either staring or pointedly not staring. “Jesus Christ.”
“Like you’ve never been to a strip club,” Nora scoffed at him, her eyes still on lethally furious Zair, who did love her, damn him, whether he admitted it or not. She could see it written all over him. She could feel it inside her, like a fact. Like breath.
She heard Zoe’s laugh then. “We met in a strip club, actually. Happy memories, right, honey?”
But Nora didn’t care about them at the moment. She cared about the man who looked as though he was considering putting her over his knee and no
t, she could tell by that gleaming thing in his gaze, in a way she’d entirely enjoy.
Her curse was she found that hot. So delicious it made goose bumps bristle up and down her arms.
He could see it. She saw the way his gaze darkened.
“Stop,” he ordered her. “Now.”
“No,” she replied. And then his words came back to her, from far away and across an ocean, when she’d been playing a much different role than this one. And so had he. “We go where I want to go, Zair. We fuck how I want to fuck.” She heard Hunter mutter a filthy swear beside her and pushed on. “I’ll let you know if I want you to speak. Until then? You keep your mouth shut unless I’m putting something in it. Do you understand?”
His hard mouth twitched, and then moved into a reluctant curve.
“You will regret this, little girl,” he murmured. “I keep telling you.”
He stalked around the table then, flint and fury in every line of his fine, athletic form and shooting sparks from his green eyes, and he didn’t stop when he reached her. He simply took her arm, wheeling her around and leading her out, and the hand he used was anything but gentle.
Reminding her of the first time he’d grabbed her and taken charge of her and removed her from a public place. And she wasn’t at all conflicted about the sensations that coursed through her then, with his hard hands on her and that jaw of his set.
She loved it.
Zair led her through the club, long strides eating up the floor, making her have to all but run to keep up with him, and he didn’t look as if he’d mind too much if he had to drag her. Nora’s heart was a catapult, flinging itself against her ribs in a dark frenzy, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a deep breath.
And she loved that, too.
Then they were out on the street, the warm street with the air so humid it was close to solid, and he hauled her halfway down the block until he found a doorway. He backed her into it, right up against the door to some store she’d never recognize again, and Nora thought he’d let go of her then, but he didn’t. Not exactly.
He trapped her.
He leaned in, slapped a hand on either side of her head, and put his face right in hers.
“Congratulations, Nora,” he seethed at her, dark and dangerous, and hers. He was hers. “You have my attention. What do you want?”
She didn’t hesitate. She never would again.
“What do you think I want?” she snapped at him, jutting her chin up belligerently. “You.”
*
Zair thought he was having a heart attack.
A long, drawn-out one that was only getting worse when she looked at him like that, with that challenge in her bright blue gaze and written all over her lush body. He didn’t care that this time Hunter probably would punch him in the face after that little show. He didn’t care that he’d resolved a thousand times a night to stay away from her, that it felt like a decade since he’d last seen her.
His heart. She hurt his heart.
“You can’t have me,” he told her. And himself. “And to be honest, I don’t think you really want me. You just don’t like to be told no.”
“I’ve spent my whole life being told no, many times by you,” she hurled back at him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He should back up. Put distance between them. Act as if he meant what he said. But it had been such a long month and she seemed to fit there before him like a puzzle piece, and he hadn’t known how tired or how burned out he was on international intrigue and his new role as an intelligence consultant until he’d looked up to see her bearing down on him with all that crackling temper stamped on her face.
Instead of doing what he should have done, he did exactly what he knew he shouldn’t. He slid his hand over her cheek, then down her neck to hold his palm against her pulse, his fingers curving to hold her throat like a collar.
He felt her heart kick. He felt the harsh, hot little gasp she let out.
He was playing with fire and he couldn’t seem to care about that the way he should. And he didn’t let her go.
“I know you think this is love, Nora,” he told her, and he pretended that didn’t hurt him to say. He kept his voice harsh and cold. “But it isn’t. It’s vanity. You don’t like to be wrong.”
She made a low, frustrated noise, and he felt her pulse against his hand, hard and wild.
“Don’t lie to me, Zair. If you don’t want to be with me, admit the reason why.” She glared at him, very much as if she didn’t fear him at all—but he couldn’t let that little fact penetrate. He couldn’t accept what it meant. “But don’t you dare tell me it’s because you don’t love me. I know you do.”
Something inside him crumbled then. He felt it move through him, a great chasm opening up inside him, a tectonic disaster where he stood and somehow—somehow—he kept himself from falling apart with it.
God, the ways he wanted her. The ways he needed her.
“What can that possibly matter?” he demanded, but his voice was so raw, and he still held her there, immobile—but only because she let him, he knew. Only because she saw the good in him when there wasn’t any to see. “What do I know of such a thing as love? You saw my only experience of it. You saw what I bring out in those who are meant to love me. Why would you want any part of that? There are the games we play in the bedroom, Nora, and then there’s pure, pointless masochism.”
He let go of her throat then. And he could have kept fighting her if she’d shouted at him. He could have argued her down. He’d been trained to fight. He was good at it, so very good at it—
But Nora’s lovely eyes filled with tears, and he was lost.
“I understand,” she whispered, and she slid her hands up and held on fast to his wrists, holding him close to her as though they were shackled together. “If this is all your fault, if you’re the cancer here instead of Azhil, then you can control it, can’t you? If there’s something wrong with you, there’s no need to bother surviving what he did to you. How he used you and abused your trust in him. How you’re as much a victim as anyone else.”
He remembered saying something similar to her once. And Zair, who had vowed he’d never bow his head again to anyone, broke. He simply shattered. He dropped his head down and let her wrap her arms around him, holding him to her, holding him close.
And he shook. For once, he let himself shake.
And when he lifted his head again, tears were spilling down her smooth, lovely cheeks, and he hated that.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “Not for me.”
“If not for you, then who?” she whispered back. “Who do you imagine means more to me than you do? I love you, Zair. You idiot.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and then he ran his thumbs beneath her eyes. He saw all those truths in her summer-blue eyes, her heart and her need and all of that glorious heat that had only ever been theirs, and he surrendered.
“You and I are going to have to have a discussion about disrespectful forms of address,” he said, his voice thicker than it should have been, but he didn’t care. Not when she was in his arms again. Not when she fit, and he was done fighting that. “And this penchant you have for making a spectacle of yourself.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of an appropriate punishment for my shocking behavior.” Her mouth curved. “I’m depending on it.”
And he couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lovely mouth.
“Nora,” he murmured against her lips, “you are the brightest light I’ve ever seen.” She started to say something but he kissed her again, the same indulgent, explosive touch of his mouth to hers. “You make me wish I was something more than shadows.”
She actually rolled her eyes at him. “You taste like a man to me.”
“I’m an exile,” he reminded her. “A criminal in my homeland. Your brother is no doubt plotting my demise as we speak and he’ll likely succeed as I’m no longer the ambassador of anything,
with a security detail to guard my every move.”
Her smile was delighted then, and made him forget they stood in the dark.
“Is that what you think I want?” she asked, as if he’d made a joke. “Please remember that I met you when you were eighteen years old and the ambassador to absolutely nothing.”
“You met me when Azhil brought me here and used my housing situation to set up shop with Jason Treffen,” Zair said darkly. “Also, you were a child. I think you’re making my point for me.”
“Do you love me?” she asked, and it was different this time. She wasn’t really asking, he realized, as she gazed up at him with everything he’d ever wanted right there in her eyes, as she looped her arms around his neck. She knew.
“I’ve never loved anyone else,” he told her then, because there was no use surrendering halfway. She threw herself into everything she did like this, headfirst and heedless. That yacht. Him. He could do the same. Nora was the only person he’d ever trusted completely, and it was time to prove it. He wanted to spend the rest of his life proving it. He would. “I never will.”
“Then for God’s sake, Zair,” she said, tipping back her head and forever in her eyes, “shut up and kiss me.”
And because it was Nora, his Nora, Zair obeyed.
Just this once.
A year later…
Nora loved weddings.
She’d spent a long, fascinating, heartbreaking year neck-deep in some of the very worst things human beings were capable of doing to one another. She’d seen far more darkness than she’d bargained for, perhaps.
Far more than was entirely wise, Zair maintained. And certainly far more than he thought she should see—a difference of opinion they preferred to hash out when both of them were naked and the consequences could be explored in greater and more satisfying depth.
But they never questioned each other about the wisdom of their chosen avenues, these dark careers. It might not be wise, and it might even leave marks, but they had the peculiar satisfaction of knowing that what they did mattered. That the fact that they could, in their different ways, stand up for those who didn’t have the ability to do so themselves meant they needed to keep on doing exactly that. As long as they could.
The Billionaire's Innocent: Zair al Ruyi (Forbidden Book 3) Page 20
