Parker smiled at him.
Zhi smiled back at her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Parker turned her attention to the person on her left.
Zhi turned his attention back to the dance floor.
He caught a flash of Spin. Her eyes were closed as she moved in time to the music. Beside him, he heard Parker ask him a question. But he couldn't tear his gaze away from the woman on the dance floor.
Spin was completely unguarded as she moved. All her defenses were down now that she was lost in the music. It was as though he saw the burdens lifting off her shoulder as the beat dropped.
He envied her that. He was always able to get lost in the music from the piano when he or his mother played. The melodies were the only things strong enough to lift his cares away. He had the urge to join Spin out there, leave it all on the dance floor. Unfortunately, another man stepped up behind Spin to take the place Zhi hadn’t claimed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The beat vibrated from the speakers into the air. The base urged Spin’s feet to move. The treble lifted her hands over her head. She shimmied her shoulders and swirled her hips to the melody, shouting the repetitive lyrics of the popular song at the top of her lungs.
It was exactly what she needed. To get lost in the music. To find solace in the beats.
The problem was that the only thing the pulsing rhythm did was to heighten her senses. Her fingertips still burned where she’d placed them in the crook of Zhi’s elbow. Her cheeks were still hot from the blast of his breath as he’d spoken to her. Even though she closed her eyes, she still saw his eyes gazing down upon her with need before she’d pulled away from him, and he’d turned to Parker.
Spin wrenched her eyes open, staring straight into the neon lights. She hoped it would laser off the memory of him from her vision. It didn’t.
Like a beacon, she found Zhi across the room. He sat behind a table roped off with velvet. Waiters served small plates of food meant for sharing. Parker leaned her elbows on the table as she talked to the person on the other side of her. Zhi’s arm was behind Parker on her seat. But his head was turned from Parker. His eyes were on Spin.
Spin felt their connection even across the room. She saw the shift in his pupils as he watched her move. She saw the flare of his nostrils as his gaze traveled to her lips.
This connection between them was insane. It had to be broken. He wanted to be with another woman, a woman whose body was turned from his.
If it wasn’t clear through their brief interaction on the ship, or in their sparse direct messages in which Spin was often the intermediary, Parker had zero interest in Zhi. Zhi had nothing in common with Parker. Spin couldn’t fathom why he wanted her so badly?
From her place on the dance floor, Spin stared into his eyes trying to see if she could suss out his reasoning. Zhi had everything. On the outside.
Inside his house was a different story. His father was abusive. His mother was compliant. His home needed repairs. On top of all of that, why would he want to bring a woman who didn’t understand him into the mix?
From his place at the dining table, Zhi’s gaze narrowed. His lips turned down in a frown as he held her gaze. Had he heard her thoughts? Were they speaking telekinetically now?
No. That wasn’t it at all. Zhi's frown came not from their connection to each other.
Spin smelled him before she felt him. A sweaty clubber had stepped up behind her and was matching her moves. The problem was that she didn’t want a partner.
Not on the dance floor. Not later outside the club at a rundown ducal estate. She was a loner. She was used to being on her own. It was better that way.
Spin turned around to tell the guy slipping into her personal space to take a hike. She met with empty air where the sweaty clubber should’ve been. Instead, he was on the ground. Zhi towered over him, a menacing look on his aristocratic features.
“Keep your hands to yourself,” Zhi shouted over the music. He hadn’t needed to shout. The warning radiated from his face.
“I was just dancing.” The man started to get up. Then thought better of it and stayed down.
The music didn’t die down, but the dancing did. All eyes in the club were on the scene of the threesome. It was more attention that Spin hadn’t wanted.
She turned and marched away from the prying eyes. Passing the DJ booth and speakers, she headed toward the back of the club. Once the heat of the stares was off her back, and the music volume was a distant thud, she took a deep breath. But she wasn’t alone.
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
Zhi’s hands were on her shoulders. His fingertips grazed the exposed skin there, and she shuddered. Spin whirled to face him, taking a step back and out of his embrace as she did so.
“What is wrong with you?” she shouted.
Aristocratic brows dipped down in annoyance at her. “He had his hands on you.”
“We were dancing.”
“You didn’t look like you wanted him there. Or did I read that wrong?”
No, he’d read it right. He’d read her right. That wasn’t the issue. “I don’t need rescuing.”
His brows softened, but the frown of confusion stayed in place. “I never said you did.”
“I do fine on my own. I don’t need some duke in shining armor coming into my world to protect me. I can fight my own battles.”
It was a low blow. One he could interpret as being aimed at his mother. It could have been. But Spin’s true aim had been at her own mother. Whether Zhi knew her intention or not, his voice softened when he reached out to her.
“I think you’re the strongest woman I know.”
It was his thumb brushing across her cheek that broke her. A single tear slid down her cheek. Zhi caught it with his thumb. He tilted her chin up so that she was staring into his eyes, eyes that saw everything. She was no longer hiding, and neither was he.
His descent was slow. At the last second, he veered from her lips, and his lips brushed her cheek, tracing the trail of the tear. Slowly, he moved over until his lips met hers. He gave her ample time and space to get away.
She should’ve run. It was what she was good at. But her feet refused.
For the first time in her life, Spin stopped running and held still. She felt something she’d never felt before, contentment. She’d be content to stand in this spot for the rest of her life waiting for this man to kiss her.
She’d have to wait a longer time. A millimeter before his lips met hers, a breath before she knew the wonder of his taste, Zhi pulled away.
He let out a long sigh. But he didn’t let her go. He pulled her into the cradle of his arms. He bent down to rest his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in.
“I should not have done that,” he said. “That was weak of me.”
Spin felt weak herself. She didn’t have the strength to hold her walls up any longer. They were all crumbling down for this man. She had never understood how her mother had left herself so vulnerable for one man, until this moment.
She was going to kiss the Duke of Mondego. If he asked her to stay in Cordoba longer, she was going to say yes. If he asked her out on a date, she was going to go. She might even wear a dress.
“I used to think my mother was weak.” Zhi made the admission at the cone of Spin’s ear. “For taking every insult, every …” He drew in a shaky breath. “Every blow from that monster. It took me a long time to see that he was the one who was weak.”
It wasn’t kissing time yet. It was confession time. Spin let out a slow breath, finding the patience as well as the courage to admit her own truth.
“You never know what makes them stay,” she said. “Especially when you want them to leave the monster so badly.”
She’d never admitted that much to anyone. She hadn’t felt the need to go into details. By the way Zhi tightened his hold on her, she knew that he understood.
Unlike with the Mondegos, Spin’s mother
, Angelica, had been abused by a man who hadn’t even claimed her. She’d stayed for years. Until finally, she found the courage to leave. Leaving Spin’s father had taken a lot of strength for Angelica. Staying away had taken everything.
“My mother would do anything for me,” Spin said. “She would have endured anything to keep me provided for.”
Spin didn’t know why she needed to say it, but she needed him to understand. She turned her head and looked up into his pained face. With just one glance, she saw that he clearly did.
“I understand that,” Zhi said. He brushed his callused fingertips across her brow with reverence. “I’d do anything for my mother, including ignoring my own heart.”
“Ignoring your heart?” The prickle of cold doubt spread across the tops of her shoulders. She was loath to pull away from Zhi’s warmth. She held on as she reached for clarity. “Are we talking about me? Or is this about Parker?”
Zhi took a deep breath, but it came out shaky. He turned back to where he’d come, back to where Parker was. The look on his face when he turned back to Spin was filled with pain, guilt, and shame.
Spin’s first instinct was to gather him up in her arms, to take all his pain away and bring it into her. But she wasn’t her mother. She’d learned that strength came from standing up for yourself and not sitting down or taking the blows from another person.
“You’re going back to her, aren’t you?” said Spin.
Zhi shut his eyes. When she tried to step back from him, his hold tightened. But only for a second before he loosened his grip, and she was able to easily break away.
It was déjà vu. How had she come to live her mother’s life? Every time her father went back to his wife, her mother had stayed in bed for a week. A few weeks later, he was back. Finding them wherever they were in the world and the cycle began anew.
“I have to,” Zhi said, bringing Spin back to her present reality.
Spin’s feet were already in motion. There was no way she would willingly enter a cycle of her own. But she turned back. She had to know. “Why?”
Zhi looked sick, shame-faced.
“You have everything, can have any woman,” Spin said when the answers didn’t come soon enough. “Parker doesn’t want you. Why are you after her? Is it because you’re both rich?”
He actively avoided her gaze now. Turning his head away so that she couldn’t see into his eyes. But she didn’t need to see him to know.
Spin stepped to him, forcing him to look at her. Her gaze caught on his hands and the callouses there. There was a new cut she hadn’t noticed before. How did a man of leisure get cuts and calluses?
There was a single thread loose on his collar. Her father had always dressed impeccably. She’d never seen him in the same shirt or pants twice. That was the way of the noble class. So why was Zhi constantly bucking those traditions?
The possibility that flashed into her head made her nauseous. “You’re not rich, are you? You’re after her money.”
He reached for her then. “It’s not like that.”
She raised a brow.
“The situation is,” he clarified. “But I’m not like that.”
Spin crossed her arms over her shoulders. Even as he began to confess, and she began to see him anew, she still ached to be inside his arms.
“I’m not going to be like that. I’m not going to be like my father. I’m going to make her happy. I’m trying to learn how.”
As his lips worked on detailing the devotion he’d have for another woman, Spin still wanted to feel them against her lips. She wanted to know what he tasted like, what he felt like.
“I can’t let my mother live in squalor. I can’t let the staff lose everything. I’m not doing this for me. I need to save them.”
It was rational. All so rational. The sickness she thought she would never catch, the illness she’d always believed she was immune from, raged like a high fever through her body.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make Parker happy.”
“That’s the worst kind of abuse. You’re abusing yourself.” Spin took a deep breath. Her stomach hurt, and her chest was hollow, as though she’d just risen from the worst flu of her life. “You’re not the man I thought you were.”
She lifted her head to regard him. The proud head of the Duke of Mondego hung in disgrace. He looked as sick as she felt. But he didn’t take a single word of it back. He looked resolved to his fate.
To his credit, he didn’t ask her to accept his decision. Good. Because she couldn’t. She never would.
She did what their mothers hadn’t had the strength to do. She turned on her heel and walked past him. Not once did she falter or look back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
He was only able to lift his head high enough to watch her walk away. He felt like he was coming out of his body. His feet wanted to run after her. His hands balled into fists. His heart beat as though it were trying to chase after her. His head told him to stay rooted.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know where to turn. He felt pulled in every direction.
In the end, duty won out. He couldn’t abandon his family and his home. He had a responsibility. That was paramount. It was what he was born to do.
The moment Spin was out of his sight, his chin slumped to his chest from the weight of his actions and what he still had to do. With feet as heavy as cement blocks, he turned back toward the club. When he reached for the curtain that separated the club floor from the back, it was yanked open to reveal Omar.
“What are you doing back here?” said the marquis. “The party is that way.”
“Yeah. I’m headed back.”
“You don’t look like you’re having a good time.”
Zhi could only take a deep breath. He couldn’t think up a response.
Omar put a hand to his shoulder. It was a light touch, but Zhi felt he was about to fall over from the pressure he felt.
“Looks like women troubles,” said Omar. “You chasing after that pretty DJ?”
Zhi’s glance shot up. He opened his mouth. To deny it? To bemoan it? He wasn’t sure. His features screwed into incredulity. How had Omar known?
“It’s pretty clear you two have a thing going. It was clear back on the ship. You even had the whole completing each other’s sentences thing going on like you walked out of a romantic comedy.” Omar shuddered. The entertainment producer did not like that particular genre of media. Not enough testosterone to hold him in his seat, he’d once explained. “You two have a falling out? She realize you’re just a man and put your pants on one leg at a time?”
“I wasn’t chasing after Spin,” Zhi admitted. “I was chasing after Parker.”
“Why would you bother with her?” Omar frowned. “You two have nothing in common.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that.”
“Maybe because it’s true.”
“And me and Spin have so much in common? She’s a DJ. She doesn’t have a permanent address or a bank account. I don’t even know her real name.”
Omar shrugged off each of those concerns. “I don’t know if you have a lot in common, but you two certainly have chemistry. But hey, it’s your life. Do with it as you see fit.”
That was just it, it wasn’t his life. It was other people’s lives that he was managing. It was other people’s messes that he was cleaning up. If he got the chance to live his own life, it wouldn’t be in this lifetime.
He was too tired to explain any of that to Omar. The man had amassed his own wealth outside of his family’s fortune. His parents were happily married. He wouldn’t understand, and so Zhi stormed past his old friend.
Once back out near the speakers, Zhi had to face the music. The base made his head throb as he walked toward Parker’s table. She didn’t look up when he approached. Her attention was on the woman beside her. Or maybe it was a guy. The other person’s hair was closely cropped, but they were wearing makeup. This world of Parker’s was truly confusing.
“Hey,” she said when she turned to face him. “You wiling out out there?”
Zhi wasn’t sure what that meant? Was she asking him if he was ready to go? And if so, did she mean on his own? Or with her?
As the beat changed, Parker threw her hands. “OMG, this is my jam. Let’s dance.”
Before he could wonder if she was talking to him or the person next to her, she grabbed Zhi’s hand and tugged him out on the dance floor. She began the shuffle step dance. He knew this. He could do this.
With sure steps, he fell in line next to her. Her steps were a little different than Spin’s. Parker added hand movements and hip swivels that Spin hadn’t shown him. He kept with the basics. But after a few repetitive verses, it got old quick.
He looked around at the moving, glowing, rainbow bodies. What was he doing here? Was he consigning himself to a life of this?
He leaned close to Parker’s ear. “Can I talk to you?”
“What?” she shouted as she moved about the dance floor.
“Can we talk?”
He was standing motionless in the center of the dance floor and getting dirty looks. Then he was jostled to his left when someone shuffled by. Finally, Zhi put his hand at Parker’s low back and guided her off the floor.
“What’s up?” she asked when they were away from the booming speakers.
“I just wanted a minute to talk to you.”
“Okay.” Parker looked up at him expectantly, giving him her full attention for the first time since they’d met.
Now that he had her alone, he didn’t know how to begin. Except with the truth. “You have no interest in me, do you?”
“Interest?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
Nope. She didn’t. He knew enough to know that if he had to clarify it, she didn’t feel it. “I can’t do this.”
Parker put a hand on his arm. There wasn’t a single spark where her bare fingertips touched his skin. “Zhi, what are we talking about? Where’s Spin? Did you guys have a fight or something?”
The Duke and the DJ: a Sweet Royal Romance (The Rebel Royals Series Book 3) Page 11