by Angel Payne
Bolt.
Why the hell not? It’s the way I’ve treated my own life for so long. Why shouldn’t it be the way I’m treated now?
Why shouldn’t it be the word I’m celebrated with as I crouch low, surrounded by cheers I barely hear, and sprint from everyone’s view—and in a few minutes, from their minds too—as their lives go on again, secure because of the superhero they can forget as swiftly as a tabloid magazine cover?
Again.
Chapter Five
Emma
“Seriously?”
I can barely huff it out before I’m approached by a swarthy ponytailed guy standing next to a black stretch Mercedes parked in front of my apartment building. He flashes me a crooked grin. “Well, good afternoon to you too.”
I jab up my chin. “We agreed on this, Z. Yesterday was going to be it for this nonsense.”
He adds a shrug. “It’s not an imposition. I wasn’t doing anything else.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
The smile takes on a cute quirk. “Fine. You’re right. Go ahead and gloat. You want to.”
I resist the pull of his Armenian charm. “I swear by the planet you’re named after and the insane god who created it—”
“Don’t care about that god,” Zalkon volleys. Yeah, a planet. Poor Z came along after his mom binged on Star Trek during mandatory pregnancy bedrest. “But the god who’s making sure you get to and from work in this every day?” He jerks a thumb toward the Mercedes. “Him, I care about.”
I’m tempted to yank out my phone and call said god-on-high. I have a direct line to his cloud. The all-powerful, all-knowing, overprotective Zeus in the penthouse has made damn sure I have the digits all but tattooed on my brain, thanks to his hourly texts for the last three days. Creepy? Under normal circumstances, yes—but what’s been normal about Reece Richards’s arrival in my life? Everything about this, about him, is a flash storm from fate, sizzling through my atmosphere and frying all my circuits. Yeah, including the man’s texts.
Even the one vibrating the device in my palm right now—then quivering all the way up my arm, over my shoulder, and down my spine, gripping my whole torso in tendrils of heat I can no more ignore than my own breaths.
“Sorry,” I mutter, turning from Z. “Just let me get this.”
“Uh-huh.”
I ignore his knowing jibe while swiping at the phone with the zeal of an Austen heroine opening a secret love note. I was responsible as hell getting myself out of the man’s bed—not a decision my hormones let me forget during the solitary ride in the penthouse’s private elevator—so I’m due the indulgence of at least knowing I’m still in the man’s head. It’s not like the situation’s going to last. Nothing in the world of Reece Richards does, including models and actresses who spend the equivalent of my monthly salary on a single facial. Last year, the press didn’t know what to do with themselves when he spent—gasp—a whole six months with some power blonde from France, and I’m nowhere near her league. I have to be real about that. I’m just a diversion during the man’s quest for his next piece of sparkling arm candy.
But I refuse to feel badly about at least enjoying the ride.
The guy in the tower is thinking of you from the velvet clouds.
Oh, yeah. He is good.
Too good.
I tilt my head, pondering the swoony wordage. This poetic shit is his version of outright chatty—and therefore, a huge tell. What’s he hiding? And why does my radar instantly ping it in tones of melancholy?
“Get over yourself.” I mutter the mandate at myself while tapping out a reply.
Good afternoon to you too.
The marine layer is thick over the city today, never achieving its normal noontime burn-off. That means, seventy stories up, he’s texting from another world.
So how does the muck look from the tower?
I think of adding a winking emoji but refrain. He’ll get the humor without the emoji, though the reference didn’t start with us as a laughing matter at all. Our first text exchange after the night—my private reference to all the so-good-but-so-wrong that went down in the penthouse—was definitely not Austen-novel material.
EMMALINA
I’m right here. No need to shout.
You’re NOT right here. Where the FUCK are you?
I had to go. You know that too, even if you don’t want to admit it right now.
I ordered you to stay in that bed.
But I never belonged there to begin with.
WHAT THE HELL?
Stop shouting.
We are not done.
It was great, Reece. It was beyond great. But you’re you and I’m me.
And that means what?
You live in a tower.
Irrelevant.
You have a private elevator.
Irrelevant.
You sign my paychecks!
Paychecks you risk your life to earn!
Excuse me?
You’re not taking the train to or from work again, Emma.
EXCUSE ME?
Who’s shouting now?
You don’t get to be the boss outside that penthouse, Mr. Richards.
We’ll see about that, Miss Crist.
And here I am, about to let him prove his point again. Zalkon—who’s propped against the car’s back bumper and waiting for me to climb in—will catch hell if I don’t. Not to the tune of being strung up by his toenails or anything, but if I pull a disappearing act, Reece will undoubtedly let Z go. And he’d only be replaced by a new driver tomorrow—and by one who wouldn’t be half as cool. Besides that, Z’s banking the extra money from this gig with Reece to surprise his daughter with a birthday trip to Disneyland.
I nod to Z so he’ll open the car door and do my best to snort instead of smirk as the god in the clouds finishes his reply to my query.
The muck isn’t muck at all. Not from up here.
I breathe a little easier. No more melancholy vibes, which were probably all in my imagination to begin with.
Unbelievably, my own mother’s words echo in my head. Oh, Emma. You and that oversensitive imagination.
During my musing, Reece has had time to type a new note.
As a matter of fact, it looks like a pillow-top bed.
His words make me squirm. Not noticeably. Just enough to remind my brain what happens to my body when it joins the idea of Reece Richards to the concept of a pillow-top bed. Of any bed. But one made of clouds? It already sounds wonderfully decadent. And potently dangerous.
Only thing missing is a beautiful bunny with eyes like this sky.
I quit the squirming to make time for a sigh. Oh, yeah. Dangerous. This man. This man and the way he can get to a point—as if knowing exactly what it’ll do to every tingling tissue between my legs…
But then there’s the other point. The even more dangerous one. The one I can’t help returning to, over and over.
I’m sure you can call other pets to hop across that bed.
The three dots from his end instantly start dancing. My heart lurches to my throat, though I keep it from climbing all the way up the pipe by climbing into the car.
I’m strictly a rabbit kind of guy these days.
Well, that takes care of that. I can feel my heartbeat all the way to my tongue now—the tongue that sneaks out, nervously wetting my lips, as I struggle to turn him down with words that are coy but real, witty but firm. Damn it, where’s my inner Emma when I need her? Not the me Emma. The other one. The one Mother named me after. The one played by Gwyneth Paltrow, full of willowy charm and outfitted in flowy dresses.
I have to go to work now.
She’s not in that damn text, that’s for sure. Nowhere even near it.
But maybe that’s a good thing.
Maybe I need to honor the other Emma a little bit more. The Emma who artfully presents a well-turned ankle to land a viscount to be the center of her worship. The Emma who wants so much more than the viscount, even if he can offer cl
ouds like pillows—and a work commute with air-conditioning and leather seats.
I can’t wait for you to get here, either.
And sends texts like that.
Which I can’t help but tease him about. Just a little.
So I can start contributing to the Richards dynasty again?
So you can contribute to my sanity again. When I know you’re safe.
Okay. Texts like that too.
Which, damn it, tangle my thoughts like the traffic Z guides the Mercedes through to get onto the 110 toward downtown.
Is it possible the other night wasn’t just a quick fuck for him? Can it be Reece Richards felt the same electric connection I did? Is it even conceivable to think I’m not a temporary trinket for him? But if so, is that even what I want? I moved here to prove I could do this by myself. To prove I could face scary new stuff and be all right.
Ironic plot twist of the year.
“Scary new stuff” has never had a better definition than what I experienced with Reece Richards three nights ago. Than all the things he still makes me feel every damn day, even from way up in that spire.
Which circles me back to the same unnerving question.
Do I really want to know if he feels the same way?
There’s only one answer to that.
I don’t.
Because as fearless as the new Emma is, the old one is still afraid his answer will be no.
And even more afraid it’ll be yes.
REECE
I stop typing, my fingers suspended over the keyboard.
I let a smile grab the corners of my lips.
She’s here.
The bizarreness of this isn’t lost on me—but no way am I fighting it. In a building filled with hundreds of others, I can feel her. The charge in every ion. The shift in every air current. The awakening through the whole building. Through every inch of me. Every drop of my blood. Every electron in my nerves. Every pore of my skin.
Every inch of my cock.
Damn. Nobody else has done this to me before. Only her. Only Emmalina Paisley Crist. Yeah, I know her middle name now too. Because yeah, I might’ve sneaked a fast glance at her employee file. And yeah, it might have been more than a “glance.” And yeah, that might make me obsessed and consumed and probably a criminal, but I don’t fucking care. She’s a fever now. A fucking fire. A cliff to which she’s pushed me all the way to the edge, now beckoning me to go all the way over—without safety gear. And hell, I can’t wait. For the last three days, she’s made it possible to wake up with a smile on my face again—and even to skip the ritual of the daily prayer I utter over morning coffee. The one in which I beg for the day to finally bring my death.
Yeah, that one.
I need to see her again. I’m tired of avoiding the admission, like some soaked cat sidestepping a rain puddle. Of letting her sit on the other side of the puddle, equally afraid.
Afraid.
I’m so damn tired of that word being a part of my daily vocabulary.
Fuck the fear.
You’re better than that.
She’s worth more than that.
It’s the mantra in my head as I step off the Brocade’s elevator at the second floor and make my way to the staff conference room. Those words repeat themselves in time to the steps I take down the hall, confirming the rightness of this move—an action I haven’t taken in a long damn time for a woman.
Walking into the middle of her turf.
Of course, she doesn’t know that yet—nobody down in the management conference room does—which, I realize at once, is kind of a cool thing. Even a full minute after I step into the room, I remain silent in the doorway, studying their tight huddle over what looks like a long rooming list.
Invisibility. It’s kind of nice.
For now.
I study the bunch of them, pumped and energized, crediting the extra electricity in the air to their own power. But the best part? I get to gaze at Emma in the same unguarded state. She’s facing away from me, leaning with one hand on the table, her hair a white-gold cloud thanks to some claw-clip thing. But enough of those entrancing tendrils fall loose that I conjure a fantasy of yanking them free, one by one, as I slide into her again and again, screwing her with carnal intensity…
As if the force of my vision is fierce enough to heat her thoughts—and who says it isn’t—her head suddenly lifts. I’m mesmerized by how the motion elongates her neck, exposing an adorable mole in the middle of her nape, before she whips her head around.
At once, the world falls away.
And I’m lost in the endless blue skies of her eyes.
Two seconds of heaven before reality pushes back in. Fucking bastard.
The rest of the management team—I don’t even know some of their names, and for the first time in my life, that’s not cool—go restless and jittery, exchanging self-conscious glances. I stick to my act of glib and impervious, knowing I’m a double whammy of discomfort for them. The brooding boss man who never comes down from the tower and the freak who brings his special brand of weird to the air.
“Mr. Richards!” Neeta Jain pushes through the small throng, putting physical form to their nervousness with her rapid steps. “What a pleasant—”
I stop her with an upraised hand. “Pleasant isn’t the first word on anyone’s mind right now, Miss Jain.” I sweep a knowing look around the room. “But maybe I can change that, at least a little.”
“Pardon me?”
“This is the rescheduled time for the weekly management meeting? My calendar was pinged about the change.”
The woman eyes the phone I hold up. “Oh. Of course you were. Yes, of course. Because you’re the general manager.”
“Of course.” My jibe isn’t lost on everyone. Chuckles ripple through the crowd behind her, but Neeta’s smile is just as forced as before. “Relax,” I finally admonish her. “I’m just going to sit all the way over here and listen in, if that’s okay.”
The majority of the faces shift from expressions of amusement to happy surprise. The only abstaining votes on the referendum come from Neeta and Emma. While Neeta is still clearly confused, my gorgeous velvet girl looks like she’s wrapped in sandpaper. Out of everyone in the room, she expected my appearance the least—and sees through it the fastest. Both recognitions only deepen my smirk. I like being the one to catch her off guard, but I also like being the one she can see right through—to an extent. No one on earth will ever know everything about me. Just the way I like it.
“Goodness.” Neeta’s murmur is full of warmth. “The gesture is certainly appreciated, Mr. Richards. And under normal circumstances, it would be okay…”
“But today isn’t normal?” I ask.
“Define ‘normal.’”
The crack is made in tandem by Wade and Fershan. Though Neeta flashes them a you-did-not-just-say-that-in-front-of-the-owner’s-son glare, she goes on, prefacing with a light laugh. “Abnormal is what we do around here, Mr. Richards. Tonight, thanks to our friend Bolt, we all just have to do it a little faster.”
“More than a little.” Emma flicks a dismissive glance my way before jogging her head back toward the rooming list, now joined by a housekeeping shift sheet and guest-room floorplans.
Unbelievably, I roll with her little snub. Perhaps am even grateful for it. She’ll fracture my attention, and right now I’ve got to focus on Neeta’s fresh news and then alter my convenient excuse for coming down here. Thank fuck I’ve logged some experience with the suave-under-stress thing. Granted, that skill comes mostly from listening to supermodels whisper their plans for my cock while standing in the middle of red carpets, not nodding as an employee refers to my alter ego as her “incredible friend.”
Grit your teeth. Calm your gaze. Pretend you care about what everyone else is talking about.
At least that last one’s not a stretch.
“Bolt.” I poke the tone into the realm of a question and tilt my head with equal curiosity. “Are you referring t
o a person or a laundry detergent?”
Everyone in the room bursts with shockingly sincere laughs. It’s a bigger gift than any of them realize. I follow up by tossing a full smile down the length of the table. It slams into new waves of disquiet. As if a switch has been suddenly flipped, the apprehension in the air quadruples. But can I blame any of them, after the invisible amps I’ve tossed first?
“Bolt is a person.” The second Neeta addresses my question, her face crunches. “At least I think so.”
“Dude’s definitely not laundry soap,” Wade utters.
A petite redhead next to him bites her lower lip. “Definitely not.”
“He’s a badass,” someone else declares.
“A god.” The redhead sighs.
“Won’t argue there,” Neeta murmurs.
“The man is looking for a serious answer.” Fershan stabs them with a glower.
“I was serious.” The redhead throws back as much attitude.
Neeta quells them with a calming hand. Turns back to me. “They’re calling him a superhero.”
There are times for suave, and then there are times suave can screw itself—or whatever the hell it wants to do as I surge forward. “Excuse the hell out of me?”
