Still Not Yours: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Snow, Nicole

  “Actually,” Riker says grudgingly, “one of the best ways to keep you hidden is to move you around. I’m just not sure one of Milah’s houses is a good idea. They’d be watching them.”

  “Not in Vancouver,” Milah says sourly. “C’mon, Riker. I’m blonde. I’m not stupid. We’re talking international borders, even if it’s just Canada. No one’s going to fuck around with that. Plus, we’d be taking my private jet, so no passenger manifest or TS-Asshole tracking.”

  Riker and I exchange skeptical looks.

  It’s not hard to tell we’re both thinking the same thing: this could be a great idea or a disaster.

  When neither of us say anything, Milah flounces off the front stoop and over to me, wrapping both her arms around one of mine and pulling with a sulky little whine.

  “Come oooon,” she keens, dragging me off balance. “It’s just two days! And I really need the company to keep from going stir crazy.”

  I know what that means. Stir crazy is like code for when the withdrawals start to hit, and none of her employees or handlers are willing to risk their jobs standing up to her when she starts fiending – and her groupies will just enable and possibly even supply her.

  What she’s saying without saying it is that she needs me. I sigh, leaning into her and meeting Riker’s eyes over her head.

  Please, I mouth, and he sets his jaw, then makes an annoyed sound.

  “Fine,” he says. “But I’m not pulling Em out of school early. You can wait.”

  Milah pouts harder. “But –”

  “Wait,” Riker repeats tightly, sweeping past Milah to unlock the front door with sharp, jerky movements. Milah sticks her tongue out at his back.

  “Asshole. It's always the Daddy types,” she says, and I bite back a faint, fond smile.

  He’s not an asshole, I think to myself.

  He’s just a beast, and you’re the newest thorn in his paw.

  8

  Little White Lies (Riker)

  I can’t believe Milah Holly actually owns a private jet.

  Even harder to believe I actually agreed to this trip, when I haven’t even had a chance to go over security at the Vancouver house yet.

  How the hell am I supposed to protect Liv when I can’t even control the environment?

  And why does this all feel so damned fishy?

  I almost wouldn’t believe Landon approved this, if James wasn’t settled calmly in one of the lush bucket seats. He's ice cold as ever, this human razor made of all elegance, sharp edges, and frosty blond slickness that makes him look more like a candidate to play 007 than an enforcer at a small-time security company.

  James is the type you don’t ask about his past. All I think I know is he was a government spook, FBI or CIA or something, and while he’s friendly enough and I’d trust him with my life...

  I don’t ask questions.

  Not when James looks at me with slitted eyes like a snake’s, like he’s calculating exactly how much pressure it would take on my jugular to kill me. Just in case.

  Right now, though, he’s all cool, cultured charm as he leans over a table with Em and duels her through one chess game after another. They've both won two rounds each.

  Meanwhile, Liv watches and cheers Em on, trying to distract James from his utmost focus with wiggling fingers and random noises to give her a home team advantage. It doesn’t work.

  It'd take a hammer to the head to pull this man away from anything. She keeps at it anyway, grinning when James doesn’t even crack a smile, his lips thin and pursed.

  It’s hard not to just watch them together and feel a sense of warmth, but I can’t forget it’s temporary.

  And I can’t miss how Liv goes tense every time she looks at her sister, while Milah smiles innocently and avoids making eye contact.

  There’s something going on here.

  Something I haven’t been told about, and I don’t like being kept in the dark.

  I try to distract myself by going over the plans for Milah’s house and nearby grounds. It took half an hour of arguing to even get her to put me in touch with her security team so they could forward the details to my email. Now I’m distracted, brooding over it even as I stare at my screen and mentally note points of entry and exit, possible emergency escape routes, blind spots, vulnerabilities.

  Milah doesn’t seem to be taking this situation seriously. Shocking, I know.

  The Pilgrims are after her life. Plus the lives of her father and little sister, all because of her drug habits coming home to roost. The Pilgrims blame her for some mysterious third party involved in their members’ deaths.

  That alone would have any other pop starlet taking up refuge in another country at some foreign vacation spot with the best security money could buy, but Milah’s continuing to tour around the West Coast and flit around her vacation homes and show up at my house without even a damn security escort.

  Does she know something more? Or is she just this young and reckless and irresponsible?

  I shift my gaze to Liv.

  Liv is two years Milah’s junior, yet she so often seems like the older sister. If youth makes Milah so irresponsible, Liv must’ve missed the memo.

  It’s strange. Even if she is a spoiled little rich girl, she takes full accountability for that and dives in with both hands to learn the things she never knew before. She tries like hell not to be a burden on anyone.

  Yeah, I'm biased. I’ve never been fond of assholes born with silver spoons.

  Maybe it comes with the territory, from growing up the only child of struggling parents, a latchkey kid living on dollar store snack packs and always peeking through the chain lock before letting Mom in at midnight after a sixteen-hour double shift, sometimes not seeing my father for days when he’d steal a few hours of sleep on the job between killing long hours. The kind of upbringing Milah and Liv had, I can’t imagine.

  I’m not sure I’d even want it for Em, if I had that kind of money. I want her to have a good life, a comfortable life, a safe life...

  But anyone with the kind of money Alec and Milah Holly have tends to make me wary, because it generally disconnects them from the reality normal people live through, suffer, and fear.

  Is that why Milah doesn’t understand fear? Why she lacks common sense?

  The life she’s had has insulated her so much that she just assumes if she keeps throwing money at this problem, it’ll go away?

  Fuck.

  And is that why Liv is so different, when she’s never had money of her own? When she’s looked that fear straight in the eye, stared down the barrel of a gun?

  I don’t realize I’ve been watching Liv intently until she glances up, catches my eye, and offers a sweet smile that turns her eyes into warm, glimmering crescents.

  Her bare shoulders shrug up around her jaw in a cute little quirk of hers as she cocks her head questioningly. I jerk awake and flick my fingers, beckoning her over.

  She lifts both brows, then touches Em’s shoulder with a smile as she stands to edge around her, moving carefully and barely bumping the chess table with her hip.

  But as she crosses the aisle to me, I can feel Milah’s eyes on us, watching us closely.

  Liv starts to aim for the chair opposite me, but I shake my head, shifting over into the window seat to leave the aisle seat next to me free, gesturing her toward it. She looks confused, before her cheeks flush a doll-like shade of pink and she slips into the deep, plush chair.

  That flush deepens as I lean in toward her, bending to speak in her ear.

  Harder than it sounds. I’m momentarily distracted by her scent.

  It’s something soft and breezy and cool with a faint, sweet undertone, like clean skin and quiet coastal nights. There’s a rock-hard tension in the pit of my stomach, my solar plexus turning into an iron core, as if as long as I keep myself tight, I'll keep the heat in my gut from traveling any lower and turning into something I didn’t ask for.

  Business. Right. Focus on the damn business.


  I exhale like I can eject her scent from me, but I can’t miss her shiver as my breath stirs her hair in soft, golden waves against her neck. “Liv, we need to talk,” I whisper.

  She watches me from the corner of her eye. She’s toying at her rosy little lower lip with just one tooth, making it swell and plump and dent, reminding me how her mouth melted against mine in that one forbidden kiss. Fuck.

  Then she leans in with a playful little mock-whisper and a teasing smile.

  “You're too worried. Everybody here knows we’re not engaged,” she says, while I’m struggling with the sudden prickle of fire and heat as her warmth brushes me. “You don’t have to put on this act and pretend. Not here.”

  “I don’t want everyone to hear what I’m saying, and there’s not exactly anywhere private to speak on an airplane.” I keep my lips close to her ear, voice low, and even if this is for secrecy, I can’t escape the intimacy. It's just us and the vanishing distance between us, close enough so I’m a lone breath away from kissing the soft shell of her ear, the slope of her bare, slender throat.

  That's what I want to do, yeah, but that's not what it's about. She doesn't get it.

  I force a wary gaze on a watchful Milah Holly over Liv’s shoulder, reminding myself why I’m here. Why I’m doing this. And that we’re not alone, and I’m not sure we can trust our host. “Tell me something, Liv. How much does your sis really know about those two murdered men?”

  Liv frowns, puzzled lines furrowing her brow, before she turns her head.

  Her cheek brushes mine, all peach-fine softness and silk. That fire in my blood turns my veins into smelters, turns me into a simmering pool of something dark and heavy that I most definitely should not be feeling. Not with this danger, this mystery, this damn enigma.

  “Liv?” I prod her, but she's not answering, rubbing her cheek.

  Too much? I wonder, holding my breath as she leans in, trying not to inhale her scent, but when her throaty, lilting voice caresses my ear, it’s like the curl of her breath strokes every inch of my body and licks right down to my cock.

  Fuck me.

  I never should've asked her about Milah.

  Never should've told her anything about myself.

  Never should've let her in. Because now it’s getting harder and harder to shut her out.

  She’s talking again. Damn.

  I was so focused on those soft sounds stroking against me that I missed what they were actually saying, and have to rewind to replay and parse what she actually said.

  “I don’t know,” Liv whispers. “She says they were after her for some money she owed after a wild night on a Vancouver stop. That's all Milah's ever said.”

  “So the other men who killed them just saw it as an opportunity to take down a rival syndicate while they were out in the open? Hit and run?”

  She makes a soft, confused noise. “I dunno, maybe? Is that strange?”

  “Very. Especially that they’d gun them down in the middle of a busy street in a nice part of Seattle. That’s either deliberate for a reason, or the mark of amateurs.”

  Liv shakes her head subtly, and her cheek moves against my jaw in a velvety way I feel pouring all the way down to my balls. “And you think Milah has something to do with that?”

  “I think Milah’s acting strange as hell for someone who’s the prime target. I know her reputation, I know she can be reckless and thinks she's invincible, but...”

  But, fuck, she’s still watching us. Right now.

  Even as I drug myself on Liv’s intoxicating, dick-teasing scent, I can’t miss the pinched, nervous look around Milah’s eyes. It’s not hard to tell she’s wondering what we’re whispering about, why we’re sitting so close, and her interest is suspicious in and of itself. “Listen, I'm not casting doubts on your sis. I believe she loves you enough not to endanger you. Showing up on my doorstep when we’re supposed to be hiding out and someone could be tailing you? That's dangerous. And a waste of the money your old man's spending to keep you safe. So why the sudden field trip to Canada?”

  Liv says nothing. She's got no answers, and I can't blame her.

  Suddenly, the silence between us is different, her head ducking, though she doesn’t pull away from me. All I can see is the long slope of her neck right now, teased by tendrils of honey-gold hair slipping free from a messy twisted-up clip, each soft strand licking at her skin the way I want to right now.

  My lips throb in time with the movement of her pulse against her throat. I already know she’d taste like sweet things and silk. Know she'd moan like a dove under me, enough to drive me bat-fuck mad.

  But I also know she’s hiding something, too. She knows more than she lets on.

  Because Liv Holly is as transparent as a window in her emotions, and her silence says there’s something she doesn’t want to tell me, but she doesn’t know how to get around it.

  Finally, she whispers, “I’ll ask her about it later. Promise.”

  “Later?”

  “When I can talk to her alone.”

  I nod, suddenly hopeful that we've got a prayer of figuring this out.

  I can’t think of anything else to say. I should pull away, put distance between us, remind myself of the boundaries I laid down like law.

  Instead I let my gaze linger, following the curving slope where her neck blends into her shoulder, tracing over the fine articulated ridges of her collarbone, slipping down to follow her pale skin over the soft, warm swell of her chest peeking up over the neck of her dress. It's just enough to flirt, to entice, to make me want to delve deeper, to discover creamy, virgin flesh.

  Up this close, her skin has a subtle mottled texture. Like how a pearl looks smooth and white from far away, but when you look more closely, it’s swirls and subtle grains and beautifully random.

  “Hey!”

  Milah’s voice snaps over me like a whip, sharp-edged and biting and too damn loud as her shadow falls over us. My eyes snap up, trying to hide my irritation.

  She slaps her hands on the back of Liv’s seat and the opposite facing seat hard enough to make them bounce and grins down at us. I jerk back from Liv, one last brush of her cheek against mine before we’re separated.

  I tell myself I’m imagining it, that she’s flushed. I tell myself it’s not because of me that she touches the place on her jaw where our bodies connected.

  Milah grins down at us just a little too widely, her eyes almost manic. “What are you two lovebirds up to over here?”

  Liv tosses me an uncertain glance and a fleeting, shallow smile before glancing at Milah and standing. “Nothing,” she says, her voice low. “We were just planning a surprise for Em. Can we keep it down?”

  Strange. She lies to Milah so smoothly, but telegraphs everything with me.

  And there’s something significant in the way she looks back at me, even as Milah hooks her arm in hers and drags her back across the aisle, chattering all the way.

  I don’t want to take my eyes off Liv, but I have to. Have to remember the lines I drew, and Liv’s not the only one who needs to stay on her side of them. But as I return my gaze to the laptop screen and the blueprints, I can’t help but wonder:

  What the hell am I doing?

  * * *

  From the moment we step off the plane, I can sense that something’s wrong.

  Milah’s personal Dassault jet touches down on a private airstrip just north of Vancouver, set in a broad field and ringed by trees. It’s nearly midnight, the sky mostly clear with a few low-hanging clouds making muted gray silhouettes against the stars. The evening air has a hint of pine instead of the ocean breeze I’m used to.

  There’s a subtle tension, too.

  I'm expecting an escort waiting for us, a car, but there’s no one in sight beyond the fenced exit at the end of the airfield’s service road – and from what I could hear from the cabin, the tower had gone strangely silent on our final approach.

  I’m the first off the plane, overnight bag banging on my hip
, James bringing up the rear, the two of us forming a protective shield. I glance over my shoulder, catching his eye.

  He nods subtly. He senses it, too.

  I can see danger forming the lines of his body with the same lethal, menacing smoothness as a sword sliding from its sheath. Milah starts to strut out ahead of me, her ponytail swinging, but I snap my arm out to block her path and shake my head.

  “No. Stay behind me,” I murmur. “All of you, stay back.”

  “Emily,” James says softly, a steely note of command in his refined voice. “Please hand me your bag.”

  Em frowns curiously and slings her backpack down to pass it over. “Why?”

  “I don't want you hindered if we need to run.”

  Em sucks in a soft breath but says nothing. I’ve taught my girl well. In these situations, you save the questions for later. It's more important to listen and be ready for anything.

  We’re too exposed, out in the open like this. I want us in a sheltered place before we try to figure out what’s happening.

  I don’t like the wide-open space with no cover, and I like the tree line obscuring sight beyond the edges of the field even less. Right now, the plane's our only cover, and it makes me uncomfortable to move away from it.

  Still, we can’t huddle here all night, and the door is already swinging shut and sealing, the pilot heeding my advice to lock down.

  I do a slow, careful scan of the perimeter. Nothing.

  Then, glancing at James, I gesture toward my eyes with two fingers, then flick them toward the air traffic control tower, which is less a tower and more a small concrete outbuilding attached to a hangar barely big enough for a small prop plane.

  We’ll regroup with the air traffic control personnel – safety in numbers, a defensible position, and access to outbound communications with the authorities – and then take it from there.

  Another nod from James, and he spreads his arms, ushering our charges forward. “Everyone as quickly as possible, please. Keep your heads low, precisely half an arm’s length between you.”