by Angel Payne
Angelique. His “lunatic bitch of an ex.”
A claim that should mean something—more than what it means now. But every time it seems like the man rips a mask off for me, another is swept into its place and glued on. I know he’s telling me the truth—just not all of it.
Not the biggest part of it.
“Reece? What the hell?” I let him hear every note of my desperate confusion. Let him feel the force of my searching stare. But if I make a dent in his ire, it’s impossible to tell. His features remain the texture of solid, inscrutable granite.
“I said,” he finally growls, “do I make myself clear?”
I huff out a sigh. “Yes.” I wrench my arm away—or try to. “Now let me go.” When he’s as responsive as a ninja gripping a katana, I resort to yelling. “Reece.”
When he jerks his stare up, his eyes are glazed.
“Let me go, or tell me what the hell is going on. Do I make that fucking clear?”
REECE
My hand slips from her shoulder.
Let me go…
A breath slowly flows from her body.
Or tell me what the hell is going on…
With equal sadness, she takes a step back. Then another.
Only in that moment, in the dip of her head and the stiffness of her shoulders, am I bulldozed by an awful recognition.
Warning her away from Angelique, I’ve done nothing to protect her—and everything to alienate her.
She’s just as serious as I’ve been. Letting her go…means letting her go.
No. No, damn it. Not an option.
Which means I have to consider unveiling what’s behind door number two.
“Emmalina.”
She stops, one foot angled on the corner of a stair. She waits, hands at her sides with fingernails jabbing into her palms. I watch her wrists shake from the effort—and know I’m the cause of her pain. And hate myself for it. But that’s just the beginning. I’m on a roll now. I hate myself for that, plus every dumbass, douchebag move I’ve ever pulled in my short but notorious life. From all the antics of my youth to sticking my dick in the crazy of Angelique to landing myself right here, right now—where I finally wonder how the hell I’m going to break this to the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.
There’s no instruction manual for this.
Isn’t there supposed to be an instruction manual somewhere? Congratulations! You’re a superhero! Quick and easy FAQs, including how to talk to your doctor, your dry cleaner, and your girlfriend.
And during my dumbass sulk, she’s moved on, turned away, and cleared the stairs.
“Emmalina.”
This time, she doesn’t stop. She leans over the bed to scoop up her phone, derailing every thought in my mind again with a peek of her ass, perfectly cupped by her pale-pink panties…
Christ. There needs to be a chapter in the manual about dealing with panties too.
“Please. Shit. Emma. Damn it!”
She stops and straightens but doesn’t turn back. “Reece… I…” The nightstand light throws golden light across the side of her face and the cloud of her hair, transforming her into a vision of innocence and illicitness in one breath-stealing second. “Look, I want to…” She sets down her phone and pushes out a soft tsk, as if admonishing herself for this tension between us. “I just want to say thank you, all right? Whatever this is, or was, between us…it was really awesome, but—”
“Goddamnit.” I stomp up the stairs. “No way. We’re not a ‘was.’ We’re not—”
“Reece.” She grabs one of my hands with both of hers and lifts a wistful smile. “We’re not even a ‘we,’ and that’s okay. It’s not good or bad or wrong or right. It just is. You have a lot going on. I mean, you’re…you…and—”
“Fuck.” I yank my hand back and drag it through my hair. Punch out a wry laugh. “No, Emma. I’m not me. I mean, I’m not him. That guy you think I am. That prick—”
“You’re not a prick.”
“Not anymore.”
“Not ever.” She pushes forward, lifting her hands to bracket my jaw. Her gaze pulls me in, the aqua light mesmerizing every neuron in my body. “It took you a little while to free the good man hiding underneath that other one, but he’s there. I see him, I believe in him, and he’s beautiful. Now you just have to believe too.”
I jerk my head in vicious defiance. “You have no damn idea what you’re talking about.”
The woman actually hurls back a growl. Her boldness is so breathtaking, I’m reduced to a stunned stare as she pushes on. “Oh yeah? Who came down from the tower, rolled up his sleeves, and helped us turn the rooms for the tour group during that crunch?”
“And snagged a nice fringe benefit from the deal?” I jab a knowing smirk.
“Okay, then. Who’s the guy who keeps insisting on paying Zalkon every day just to haul my backside to and from work?”
“You mean when you’ll keep your backside at work?”
“I think my backside gets an excuse note after last night.”
“I think it deserves a number of notes on any night.”
She whacks my shoulder. “You’re ignoring the point.”
“Which was what again?” Not that I’ve forgotten. More like I hope she’s forgotten—since I’m beginning to. Fast. Discussing any part of this woman’s anatomy, much less the hot temptation of her backside, derails my senses, consumes my will, blazes every drop of my blood. For the first time in my life, I really know the meaning of obsession—in the best and worst ways.
“That I’m not going to let you get away with the ‘just a dick’ excuse?” Despite her sassy tone, her hands haven’t moved off my shoulders. I watch them now, as she starts exploring my collarbones with her fingertips. It feels so fucking good. I clench back a savoring moan.
Just a dick. Oh, Velvet. If you knew exactly how much I could validate that…
To turn her explorations into my seduction. To chisel her point down to craving my point. To make her forget everything except the one thing I can do better than anyone else.
Which will do what?
Delay the inevitable, that’s what.
Tell her—or let her go.
“You’re still not convinced, are you?”
Her prod makes me chuckle. “That I’m a dick?”
“Ugggghhh.” She smacks me again. Though I attempt another laugh, she refuses to join in. “Fine. As long as we’re talking about my lame move from last night, who was the ‘dick’ who tracked me down to the train station and then came and got me—after I passed out in another guy’s arms?”
I almost laugh again. It’s the way I roll when fate opens a door so hard, the wood knocks me between the eyes. But I’m not spinning so hard that I don’t see the gaping break she’s handed over.
It’s time to jump through.
No matter how black the abyss on the other side.
“Yeah…uh…about that other guy…”
EMMA
Weird.
It was the word Neeta, Wade, and Fershan frantically whispered that first night I’d met Reece. The description I’d been irked about, much less couldn’t understand. The label that’s lingered at the back of my mind this whole week, mostly because it still hasn’t made any damn sense when it comes to the Reece Richards I’ve come to know…pretty damn intimately.
Until now.
Now, he’s weird. Not even that. His vibe is something I’m really not getting. This is more than his usual mystery, or even the unnamable energy that’s like threads of solid steel between us.
He’s…distant.
No. That’s not it, either. He’s not distant, but I sense he wants to be. That he’s fighting his pull to me. What the hell is he? Enigmatic? Cryptic?
Scary?
The descriptor fits better than the others, but I don’t want it to. Yet something about how he takes both my hands and guides me to sit on the bed sears my senses with nothing but scared.
The apprehension worsens when he relea
ses me to take a measured step back. He breathes in, as if preparing to peel back his lips and reveal gleaming fangs.
I sit up straighter. “Okaaayyy,” I finally utter. “Reece? What is it?” I manage to grab one of his hands again. “That other guy?” Then tighten my hold around his stiff fingers. “What are you…” A frown sets in. “You mean Bolt?” Another slice of fear, though he reaches for the nightstand drawer as if he’s just searching for a tissue. “What happened with him? Shit. What did he do?” I shove furious air through my nostrils. “Did he hurt you? Because, I swear to God, if he tried to—”
I freeze as he turns, trailing something from the drawer between two of his long fingers.
Not a tissue. A mask.
A sleek, black, Maserati mask.
“What…the…”
He lets the molded leather fall to my lap. I look at it like he’s dropped a killer spider.
“I…don’t understand. Where did you—” My breaths come faster and faster. “Did he give this to you? Like a souvenir?”
He laughs. Not hard, but enough to make me want to smack him again. No. Punch him. He needs to be telling me I’m right—that the leather in my lap is just a gift from his buddy or a memento found on the train platform.
Because if I’m not right, that means…
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
“He didn’t give me the mask, Emmalina.”
…that every knowing note in his tone is right…
“Then why was it in your nightstand?”
…that every ounce of dread in mine is too…
“Because it’s mine.”
…that the unreal is suddenly very real.
I lurch to my feet and force them to move in a frantic figure eight, countering my exploding mind and churning stomach. My fist twists against the molded leather game-changer he’s just laid on me. My other hand opens and closes in time to my wild-woman pace. “But not because it’s yours yours, right?”
When he issues nothing but silence, I freeze in place. Gape at him with new urgency. Mentally, I drop the towel from his body and redress him in black leather. My imagination secures the mask across the chiseled planes of his face.
All too easily, the result blooms in my mind. All too clearly, I can see him in that god-in-leather finery. Filling it with his regal posture. Turning it into visual poetry with his stride, his grace.
Dominating the very air he’s in.
Controlling it. Using it.
Like his weapon.
The guy’s weird, Emma.
He’s not the person you think, Emma.
“Shit.” I sink back to the bed. “Shit.”
“Emma—”
“It is yours.” I lift my head, staring, as if seeing him for the first time. “Because you’re…him.”
He averts his gaze. Twists his lips into a ruthless grimace. “I’m just me, Emma. And I’m just trying, for the first time, to do something with my life besides being paparazzi food. What everyone else chooses to call it, or how they want to glorify it…” He shrugs—shrugs!—turning the errant drops on his shoulders into planes of muscled luster. “That’s not up to me.”
I let that statement steep in a long damn silence. At last, I murmur, “Which is why you’ve kept it a secret.”
“Among other reasons, yes.”
“But you finally did tell me.”
I lift the mask, still dangling from my palm, back toward him. I’m not sure what I’m trying to tell him with the act, but he gazes at the leather with the same intensity I do, knowing the gesture stands for something. Not my total understanding—that may not ever come—but perhaps my gratitude. Exposing himself like this… It’s taken trust that turns his body into a block of tension and his energy into a strained matrix.
He drops the leather piece back on the nightstand before lowering himself down next to me, curling one of his hands with mine. “Because it was tell you or lose you.”
I turn, taking in his face more intently. Most specifically, the truth now speaking to me from his eyes. “But you’re still not sure I won’t run away flailing.”
I don’t expect his sardonic snort. “I’m just a guy playing the odds, beauty.”
I turn my hand in, twining my fingers with his. Comprehension slams hard. The recognition that, despite the informational warhead he dropped a minute ago, this moment blows me away more. The rogue savior of our city, the idol who’s fascinated the land of the jaded, is sitting next to me wrapped in nothing but a big towel and a lot of uncertainty. A superhero who keeps his mask in the nightstand has clearly placed his heart in my hands.
Is this really my life?
Am I really lifting his hand and gently turning it over to trace a finger along the pulse beneath his wrist? Am I really watching a tremor take him, rolling through him like a bank of summer thunder, turning his blood vessels into a web of lightning? Are his fingers actually glowing blue and gold against mine, their light corresponding to the heavy breaths pumping his sculpted chest?
“Tell me.” My whisper is weighted by demand as much as curiosity. I join a second finger to my first, flowing my touch up his arm…watching the amazing light of his bloodstream beneath his skin.
Beneath my touch, Reece’s limbs jerk and shudder. He grips me, digging into my hips, all but pleading with me to keep exploring him like that. “Tell you what?” he grates. “You can have anything, Velvet. Everything.”
I lift a hand to the thick artery pumping down the side of his neck. As it lights up like a hose holding radioactive acid, I stroke a little harder. The glint intensifies. “Is this why you always ordered me to close my eyes?”
He swallows deeply. “Yeah.”
I lift my head, confronting the gorgeous glow from his pupils too. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.” He pulls my fingers to his lips. His kiss carries a tiny shock, inciting a gasp. He does it again, sending a similar zap to the tender layers between my legs.
I angle my body more toward his. He releases my fingers and settles his incredible lips over mine. I thread my touch through his hair as we kiss for long tender moments. Static flows in the wake of my fingers, transferring white-hot energy back into my hand and up my arm.
“Wow.” I let out a delighted laugh.
“No shit.” His commiserating grin is mesmerizing.
“Dork.” I say it as a tease but turn sober enough to add, “As if all this is new for you?”
He kisses me again. New energy arcs between us, making us both gasp and quiver. “Every moment.”
“Bullshit.”
“No shit.” He dares me to doubt him with a harder, deeper kiss. Well over a minute later, when my tongue has gotten reacquainted with every hungry, electrifying inch of his, he lets me up for air once more—and I openly gawk.
“So…you weren’t kidding the other night? About it being a while?” I watch the slow, steady shake of his head. “Because of…what happened to make you this way?” Refusing to accept his thick silence as an answer, I tug at his hair. As silken as the strands are, I stay focused. “You said I could ask anything, Reece. That you’d give it to me.”
His brow furrows. I can all but hear him cursing himself, but that won’t get him a bye on my purpose. I need to know.
“This shit…it’s part of me now,” he finally utters. “It’s in my blood, my sweat, my nervous system…”
“And you didn’t know what that would do to someone if you were intimate with them.”
I release a long breath as the understanding sinks in. He answers by jerking another nod. “To be honest, my head wasn’t even there anyway. My life was ass-backward and upside down, and all I cared about was righting it again.”
“Then why did you end up here?”
“In LA?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Richards Resorts International is headquartered in New York. You’re as far away from that as the contiguous states will allow.”
&
nbsp; “And?”
“Well, if you’re trying to get your shit together, why did your dad banish you out here?” I tilt my head. “You have to know that’s what everyone is saying, right? That the family sent you out here for some heavy shit that went down in Europe. Parties? Women? Drugs?”
He chuffs. “Yeah. That’s all still pretty funny.”
I right myself. “So it didn’t happen like that?”
His stare turns droll. “Hell if I know, Velvet.”
“You were too strung-out to remember?”
“I was too not there to remember.”
I blink hard. Then again. “But there were pictures of you…”
“Cut, pasted, and altered, and then strategically released to the media,” he supplies.
“What?” I gape. “For how long?”
“Nearly six months.”
“Why?”
“So nobody would figure out where I really was.” He cuts me short from the logical follow-up to that with a look I can only describe as shellshock. He juts his jaw, inhaling deep once more. “It was six months of fucking hell, and that’s the only ‘everything’ you get about it.”
For a long second, I swallow hard. I believe every word he’s said—and by doing so, I have to wrap my mind around what he’s already survived. The pain and misunderstanding he continues to live with. As I slowly absorb it all into my conscience, my heart squeezes. My throat constricts. Air is my new enemy, hurting with every intake, as I slide my hand to the back of his neck. I wrap my other arm around his waist, rejoicing as he pulls me even tighter.
And just like that, it’s back. The sizzling, encompassing force field of his, binding our energies like lightning in storm clouds but with a thousand times more magic. I give into it with a jagged sigh, tucking my lips against his neck. I press kisses from his ear to his jaw and back again. His breaths rumble into my hair, sparking more fierce need between us. My pulse sprints to match his. My hand races up and down his spine. I marvel at his corded strength bunching beneath my touch like power cables wrapped in satin. Tanned, taut, muscle-laced satin. I yearn to dissolve into him, to tangle myself with him. The admission pushes another shaky breath through me, echoed by a similar sound in his chest.
