Who was scowling at her. “That’s not what I said.”
“I get it,” she continued, and she couldn’t quite put the pieces together inside her. She only knew that she’d never felt stronger, suddenly, and it had everything to do with how deliciously weak Zair had made her feel. You shine brightest when you let go, he’d said. So Nora let go. “You coach high school football now and those kids think you’re a god. They fall all over themselves to do what you tell them to do and if they don’t, you make them run laps or do nine thousand push-ups or whatever. But I don’t play football and I don’t care if you’re mad at me and unfortunately for you, I remember who you were all of six months ago, Hunter, when you didn’t give a shit if I lived or died.”
“Just like I remember who you were two weeks ago,” he shot back, because he was a professional athlete who had never backed down from a single challenge or thrown gauntlet in his entire life, as far as she knew, so why would he start now? “Before you traipsed off to Cannes, hooked up with Zair of all goddamned people, and started acting like a crazy person.”
“You don’t remember who I was, ever,” she blazed at him, and she didn’t care if the entire city overheard her. “You remember how I acted. Because you don’t actually know a single thing about me!”
Hunter eyed her for a moment, his hands shoved in the pockets of his trousers as though he was deliberately restraining himself from doing something with them. “The next time I see that motherfucker, I’m punching him in the face,” he muttered.
Nora felt too many things at once. She wouldn’t exactly cry if Hunter punched Zair in the face—but then again, she thought she wanted to do it herself. Or maybe that wasn’t at all what she wanted to do to him, should she see him again. Maybe she wanted to explore the things they’d done in public in private, all twisted and dark and perfect for her somehow, and that wasn’t the kind of thing she could share with anyone. Certainly not her older brother.
“Mind you, his security detail gives him an unfair advantage,” Hunter was saying, still muttering. “I’m picking my moment. I bet he knows it, too. Why else would he see Austin and not me?”
Nora decided she had to leave. Before the prickly, aching thing in her chest turned to sobs. Before she told Hunter things she didn’t want to tell anyone, simply because he was there. Before she embarrassed herself any further when the one person who had always been there for her since the moment they’d met was still out there somewhere. Possibly lost, hurt, imprisoned, God knew what else. Every single thing that Nora did that wasn’t finding Harlow was a betrayal of her, of their friendship. That truth felt like a vicious cramp and practically made her double over.
But she didn’t, because Zair was there too inside her, like a song she couldn’t get out of her head, wrapped tight around her bones.
“I have to go,” she muttered thickly, and turned to do that, but came to an abrupt stop when Hunter moved so he was standing in front of her.
“You’re not okay, Nora,” he said quietly. “That’s obvious at a glance. Let me help.”
She wished he could. She wished they had the relationship he was pretending they did. She wished she could rest her head on his shoulder and let him solve all her problems. But that was a little girl’s wish, wasn’t it? And if Cannes had taught Nora anything, it was that she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Not any part of her. And that there were too many people who preyed on little girls as it was.
“You can’t help me,” she told Hunter, matter-of-factly. Almost kindly. “But it turns out I can’t help anyone myself. I guess that makes us equally useless, doesn’t it?”
“Nora—”
“Stop,” she told him. She almost smiled, but was afraid it would make her cry, and she didn’t want to do that. Not here. Not again. Not anymore. “There’s a way that’s almost comforting, Hunter. If you think about it.”
And then she fled.
*
“I’m going to kill you,” Hunter bit out in lieu of a more traditional greeting. “What the fuck did you do to my little sister?”
Zair knew he shouldn’t have taken the call. “Not whatever it is you’re imagining.”
He was out of patience with the game he played—and he understood that was as good as signing his own death warrant. He knew that and still, he couldn’t seem to snap out of it. His partners in Washington had shouted themselves hoarse about the Greer situation, to say nothing of Nora herself. Your job is to give us the names and let us pull them out if we can, not go off and do it yourself, they’d told him, over and over. You risked your cover. You risked this entire operation. And for what? Two girls out of hundreds?
He knew. He still hadn’t cared. He was finished—and he felt that deep inside him, whatever it might mean for him. He had no idea what would happen as this sordid endgame played out—and yet all he could think about was Nora. The particular games they’d played and all the ways he longed to make them real.
Because they’d felt real. That was the part he couldn’t seem to get past. Even when he knew—he knew—it made him as sick as some of the people he was working to stop.
He had to force himself to focus on his conversation with Hunter. “And when, may I ask, did you begin playing the role of overprotective big brother? It’s an awkward fit.”
“Times change, asshole.”
“You mean women change you and you suddenly find yourself interested in a host of responsibilities that were anathema to you before,” Zair said. He paced the length of the suite that was always set aside for him in the Ruyian consulate when he stayed in New York City, feeling caged. Trapped. Furious and edgy at once. “I’ve heard of this phenomenon.”
“My little sister ran out of my house five seconds away from a breakdown last night,” Hunter said in a clipped tone. “If you didn’t do what I think you did—what the entire world thinks you did, thanks to those pictures you should have known better than to let them take—what the hell did you do?”
But that was such a complicated question, wasn’t it?
“Not enough,” Zair muttered.
Later, after Hunter had run out of threats, Zair found himself at his window, staring out at Park Avenue as a summer storm moved in. He welcomed it. The swollen, threatening clouds. The wind that whipped the trees into a fierce dance. The snaking tail of red brake lights as the cars fought to make it downtown before the rain started in earnest.
He was going out of his mind. He could feel himself cracking apart from the inside out and could see no end to it. Azhil was due in Manhattan later this month to address the United Nations on human rights, of all things, and Zair didn’t know what he would do. What he could do. Only that he thought he might burst if he continued to do nothing.
Your job is to do nothing and let us pick up the pieces, they’d told him.
But maybe he couldn’t live with that any longer. He’d had a taste of control, of surrender freely given, and he wanted more of it. The rest of his life made no sense, was all lies and charades stretched across decades. But Nora—Nora had been like sweet clarity in the midst of all that din and clamor. And it had poisoned him with possibility, game or no.
Maybe that was why he ditched his own security team, ducked out a side door, and surrendered himself to the anonymity of the city, the storm. Maybe that was why he walked the streets, and even after the rain started coming down, hard and furious like some kind of punishment, kept walking.
He told himself he didn’t know where he was going. That he was simply out in the violence of the storm because he was no one out here in the wild, relentless wet. Because no one could see him and that made him feel about as close to real as he’d been since the last time Nora had touched him.
Because out in the rain he could pretend he might ever feel clean again. Whole again. At peace.
He wasn’t surprised when he found himself outside the gallery space far to the south. He’d hardly noticed the distance. Manhattan still heaved and bustled around him, but here on this old, still-cobbl
ed street, the storm blanketed out all of the din. He stood, soaking wet, outside the art gallery that spilled golden light from within, as if it were a lighthouse. As if he’d been heading here all along.
Maybe he always had been.
He watched through the windows as Nora moved through all that brightness, gleaming and gilded. Everything about her was smooth, sweet. Perfect. She pulled on a light jacket as she spoke to two other women. She laughed; she sparkled. He told himself to leave a thousand times but found his feet rooted to the old stones beneath him.
She pushed her way outside some time later, frowning as she was confronted with the weather. He saw her brace her shoulders and duck her head as she stood on the top of the gallery’s steps, still protected by the building’s stone overhang, and he found himself something like jealous—as if he should be the one to protect her from the elements, if not from himself. Zair thought she’d simply put her head down and race for home—but she glanced around as if she’d heard a loud noise, and then she froze.
She stared straight at him.
There was no one else on the street. It was one of those brief, unusually quiet New York moments. There were no paparazzi, no clamoring crowds. There were no malicious eyes on them, no enemies lurking near with poisonous smiles at the ready. No one to make reports, no one to filter what happened here through the lens of their choosing.
There was only the rain. There was that look on her face that broke his heart, hopeful and resigned at once. There was the way his heart kicked at him, as if he’d run all the way here, when he knew he’d been standing still for much too long.
There were a thousand things he couldn’t say and they all coursed down his face and the length of his body, soaking him and sinking into him, chilling him and washing him like the kind of tears he’d never permit himself to cry. There were too many things left unsaid, turning into all the rain that bounced off the cobblestones and rushed into the gutters.
He saw her breathe hard, as if it hurt.
As if he was hurting her, even standing in the street as if he were no more than a ghost.
And it was time to go. He should never have come.
But then she was there, across the street and before him without seeming to move. Or perhaps he’d truly turned to stone at last.
She pushed up against him, pressing herself into him as though the rain was nothing and the wet hardly signified, and she was so pretty and fit there so perfectly it was like its own ache. And he was, he noted, not made of stone at all. Oh, no.
“Nora,” he said, all dark edge and furious hunger, “this can’t happen. I told you to leave Cannes for a reason. To leave me.”
But she lifted up her hands and pressed them to his face, as if she thought he was something precious. She launched herself up on her toes, and he couldn’t keep himself from drawing her closer to him like the addict he was, because he knew that she truly was infinitely precious.
“Tell me to walk away,” she whispered fiercely through the wet, the cold, her hands like hot brands on his jaw and her eyes brighter than the whole rest of the world. “Tell me to obey you. I promised you I would. Tell me to walk away from you again, Zair, and I will.”
He felt something in him break apart then, like chains falling open at last or whole buildings crumbling to the ground. His hands were on her hips, her body was a lush thing, sleek and wet in the summer storm, and he didn’t want to fight anymore. Not Nora. Not this. Not when she was the only light he’d seen in years, no matter that it had been in the darkest of places.
“I can’t,” he whispered back. “But this isn’t a game tonight. We aren’t playing. Be damned sure you know what you’re doing, Nora.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what we’re doing,” she said, her voice hoarse and wry at once. “Good thing you’re so bossy. You can make it up as we go along and tell me as you do.”
He moved his hands to grasp hers where she clapsed his jaw, holding her immobile. Holding them both there, stretched taut, on the edge of a great precipice.
“This isn’t a joke.”
“No.” Her hands moved, caressing him. And her gaze was like the ocean, deep and peaceful and perfect. His. “But then, it never has been.”
And when he took her mouth, hard and slick and deep and yes, it felt like fate.
Like coming home.
Chapter Seven
NORA HAD NO idea how they got from the street outside the gallery to her loft.
There was only the heat of Zair’s mouth, the desperate, slick slide of his lips on hers. His hands were in her hair, her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, and everything else was that blistering fire and the summer storm all around them, as though it was part of them, inside them.
As though it was called into being by that endless, glorious, heart-stopping kiss. Urgent and dark. Desperate and hot. And then the two of them were inside her loft with the bolt thrown to lock them in and there was nothing left in her world but Zair.
She felt alive again. Vibrant and electric, as if he were the only source of power in the universe and she’d plugged herself back in.
He didn’t speak. He moved farther into the great space, headed toward the windows on the far side, and Nora found herself holding on to the door as if it were the only tether keeping her on the earth. She remembered that first night in France, when she’d been the one at the windows. She remembered how wild her heart had been in her chest, how hard it had been not to show her fear.
But when Zair turned back to face her, he didn’t look anything like afraid.
“Tell me what you want.”
His voice was low, but she felt it as if it were inside her skin. The rain drummed against the high windows, making the shadowy loft seem closer, tighter, with only the one lamp she left on in the far corner near her couches and chairs shedding any light.
It felt as intimate as a touch. As perfect. As if everything that happened here would be safe.
Nora didn’t think. She moved toward him—but some instinct made her stop when she was an arm’s length away. His gaze was so green, so dark, it very nearly hurt. But it was that different kind of hurt. Like when he’d tugged on her hair that long ago first night and everything within her had bloomed to life, pain like pleasure, indistinguishable.
“You,” she said. Her voice was soft, but clear. Perfectly clear. Free of any doubt.
He shrugged out of the jacket he wore, then kicked off his shoes, and she told herself it was simply because he was soaked through. That there was nothing particularly erotic about it. But her heart sped up, and between her legs, that fire seemed to burn brighter.
“You can have me,” he said when he was facing her again. He closed the distance between them and Nora didn’t know what that was in her, that bright ribbon of need and longing, that made her stand completely still. As if she were on display again—but this time, she wanted to be. This time, she felt nothing like an object when he reached over and took her jaw in his hard hand. She felt precious. Adored. “It’s only a question of how.”
How.
And everything inside her shifted. Like a kaleidoscope, all the pieces that had been blurry shapes she couldn’t quite put together suddenly came into sharp focus. It was almost too much information at once. Pale and pointless, he’d called her previous romantic experiences, and she understood why. Because in all her life, she’d never felt as alive or as sexy or as wild with need as she had pretending to play a certain kind of game with this man.
“You told me you know how,” she reminded him, reveling in the hard clasp of his fingers against her skin. “Over your knee. Down on mine. Your hand again but this time, maybe not to make me cry.” She smiled at him. “Not like that, anyway.”
He didn’t smile back. His gaze was a fierce, harsh thing, his mouth was a stern line, and it didn’t matter. Nora knew. She could feel him inside her. She could feel the need, the triumph. The dark, wild desire. This perfect, twisted thing that was nothing but beautiful, because i
t was theirs.
“Do you think you can handle me, little girl?” he asked softly, taking them back six years. Making Nora shiver. She felt the gooseflesh rise all over her damp skin. She felt his question in the way her nipples pebbled, the way her knees went weak, the way she was slippery and too hot and ached—
“I can try,” she said, and then she sank down to her knees in front of him the way she had before, some potent mixture of yearning and excitement sizzling through her, because neither one of them was playing a game tonight. “If you let me this time.”
“We’ll have to have a longer discussion about the meaning of the word ‘obedience,’” he murmured as she propped her hands against his hard thighs. “I don’t think it normally includes outright taunting.”
“Obedience was a Cannes thing,” she said. “It had a broader purpose. This is different.”
His mouth was a faint curve. “Is it?”
And Nora felt as though she was made of fire. As though she was a comet, lighting up the sky, and it was all because of that way he gazed down at her.
“I don’t want to be a thing you own,” she whispered. “I didn’t like the why of Cannes. But I liked the how.”
“You liked the games we pretended to play.” She couldn’t read his expression then, but there was a gleam in his green gaze that felt like a drumbeat, deep within her. “You want them to be real.”
Her breath shuddered as she let it out. “I do. What does that make me?”
“On your knees in front of me and possibly the most beautiful creature I’ve ever beheld,” Zair said, sounding something like reverent. He brushed her wet hair back from her face, and Nora thought her heart stopped then and there. “And mine, Nora. It makes you mine.”
And then she lost her train of thought completely because his hands were on his belt, opening it and then unzipping his trousers and then, finally, pulling himself free. And she didn’t wait. She didn’t try to analyze the pounding, delirious need that chased through her. She simply angled herself closer to him and took him in her mouth.
The Billionaire's Innocent: Zair al Ruyi (Forbidden Book 3) Page 13