Closing the door behind them, he held out her keys. She stepped in close, and his heart pounded. At the touch of her fingertips to his, something inside of him broke.
This was it.
The jagged metal dug into his palm, probably into hers as well, but he didn’t care. He caught her hand in his, twisting their fingers together. Her pulse seared into him, and he shook his head at the way her lips parted. He didn’t need to hear it, whatever it was she’d been working up to telling him. He knew.
“I fucked up.”
Her eyes went wide, jaw going slack.
“It— I thought—” He stopped. What had he thought? Besides all the wrong things? “I should have known.”
“Rylan—”
“I thought I could give you the fantasy.” A laugh bubbled up, harsh and painful in his throat. “I always knew you’d hate the money, but it’s not going away, Kate. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I thought I could show you that.”
“By flaunting it around?”
“By giving you a nice night.” He let her go then, and it hurt, how fast she pulled away, keys secure in her grasp. Leaving him inside her home but still on the outside, with no idea how to work her locks. “You like art, and the ballet…”
She winced. “It was a nice thought?”
A thought he’d had without any consideration for who she was.
“The ballet was a mistake.”
She’d put her back to the opposite wall. Her chest rose with the force of her breath, her breasts on display in a way they never would be normally, pushed up and out by the bodice of that dress he’d sent her. The trappings he’d asked her to wear. Her voice cracked. “The thing is…” She blinked, lifting her gaze to the ceiling. “What bothered me was that you didn’t like it, either.” Finally, she looked at him. “Did you?”
He’d promised he would never lie to her again. “I liked sitting next to you in the dark.”
“Hardly. You couldn’t have been any farther away without buying another seat.”
The accusation stung.
Worse, it was true.
The corner of his lips trembled, until the smile he’d tried to force became a false, flickering thing. “You didn’t exactly seem to want to be touched.”
It was in every line of the way she’d held herself, the rigid set to her limbs as she’d occupied that seat.
“What did you want? An engraved invitation?” She gestured at herself. “I wore the dress you wanted, went to the show you said you picked out for me. I tried.”
She’d tried so hard to fit herself to the shape he’d outlined for her, the…
A light went on inside his mind. A harsh, too-bright bulb illuminating the ugly corners he hadn’t wanted to see.
It was fucking Chase, telling him all women were the same, all wanted the same damn thing. It was him, latching on to that idea, because he didn’t know how else to make this work.
“I put you in a box,” he said, suddenly numb. Her brows furrowed, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek. But the pain didn’t help.
“You…”
“I like you.” Another verb sat on his tongue. Another way to look at everything he’d done, and he wasn’t fooling himself about how he felt. He didn’t think he had been. But the word was too big for them right now. Too much. He raked a hand through his hair, mussing it up. It’d been too perfect. Everything he’d planned for them had been. He’d just been too blind to see it until now. “I like you more than I’ve liked anyone before.”
It’d taken him all of three days to figure that out, their first time around. He’d been so clever, picking things he’d known she’d love, tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants and neglected wings of famous museums. And then as soon as he’d realized her value, her worth—the moment he’d grasped the uniqueness of her—
He’d started to treat her like everyone else. First Versailles, and then this. Outings designed to impress, when he’d never had to. When he could have treated her like herself.
He tugged even harder at his hair. “This is what I know.” Letting go, he pointed to her and to the dresses lying discarded across her bed.
It was how people in his life showed they cared. A fancy new car instead of a pat on the back.
“And you’re better than all of it,” he said.
For the first time since he’d picked her up, her gaze softened. Her shoulders dropped. “Just—is it—is that what you want? Boring nights at shows you don’t even care about? Stuffy dinners?” She plucked at the neckline of her dress. “Clothes you can’t breathe in? For yourself? For me?” Her voice faltered. “For us?”
That she still might think there was a chance for an us made him bold. “No.”
“Then what do you want?”
And wasn’t that just the question? It’d driven him to another continent, driven him to waste an entire year, refusing to decide. Nothing had changed in that time.
And at the same time, everything had.
When he didn’t answer, she pushed off the wall. “I’m not your manic pixie dream girl, Rylan. I won’t solve everything for you.” A shiver racked her frame. “And I won’t let you turn me into yet another thing that’s bound to bore you by the end.”
He couldn’t imagine it.
“Never.”
“Then what do you want? Not what do you think you’re supposed to want, what you think I should want. What do you want?”
The question hit him in the center of his chest.
The day Kate had left, she’d told him he needed to make some decisions about his life. She’d hated him for lying to her about who he was, but she’d called him out on lying to himself, as well. The accusation had burned like a bullet lodged in his lungs for months.
Until a week ago, nursing a hangover and staring lovelorn at her sketchbook, when he’d finally figured it out.
“So many things,” he said, choking on lead. “I’ve made such a mess.” With his father’s company and with his family and with her. “I came back here to fix it all, but I don’t know how.”
“I told you. It’s going to take time—”
He shook his head. “Not just between us.” This, here, between the two of them was the most important piece, but it was far from the only one. “My father’s company is a wreck. Lexie’s been doing her best, but if we want to save it, then I have to step up and play a part, and I don’t—I don’t know if I can put myself back in that box.”
His father had built this kingdom, and he had groomed him to become his heir. Rylan wanted to have hope again, to try again, but returning to New York had him stepping right back into the role and the life he’d been running away from in the first place.
But he didn’t have to be that man. He didn’t have to do things the way they’d always been done.
“I’ve been trying old solutions to old problems,” he said, a light beginning to dawn. “With you and with my family, and they won’t work. Things have to change. I have to change.”
This night had been a failure of the most epic proportions. But maybe it was an opportunity, too.
“I have to start over again.”
He had to start with her.
In a half dozen strides, he crossed the room. Standing before her, he fit his hands to the cool, smooth skin of her shoulders, and he cursed himself. Stupid, sending her these tiny dresses, not a one of them with proper sleeves. All night, she must have been freezing. Well, he’d warm her up all right. Her body seemed to go to liquid beneath his palms, and it filled him with a rush of power, a certainty the likes of which he hadn’t felt since he’d gotten on that plane and come a supplicant to her door.
The flimsy cover of her shawl hit the floor, and a gasp left her lips as he spun her. With her back to him, he dropped his brow to the top of her head and took a moment. Soaked in the shape of her against him, the sweet, soft scent of her skin. The fact that she was still here, that he was still here. For now.
He sucked in a breath, then stooped to press his
lips to the back of her neck, sweeping her hair out of the way. She trembled, and he closed his eyes.
He found the zipper that ran the length of her spine. Tooth by tooth, he pulled it down, stripping away the costume. “This.” He chased the fabric from her arms, caressed her sides as the dress slid to the ground. “I want you like this.”
A weak hint of a laugh passed her lips. “Naked?”
“Yes. No.” Of course he wanted her bare, all that gorgeous skin laid out for him to kiss and touch and worship. But it was more than that. “I want you just the way you are.” He left a trail of kisses along her shoulder and squeezed her waist. “Naked or clothed. Sexy dresses or ratty jeans.” With his fingertips, he traced the edge of her hip, right above her panties. His throat went dry, his flesh stirring as she molded to his touch. “I want to take this night off of you.”
“Then take it off yourself, too.”
He had to squeeze his eyes shut tight. It wasn’t mere arousal, wasn’t only sex, though they seemed to be headed in that direction. Opening his eyes, he took his hands from her sides and brought them to his tie. He loosened it, pulled it over his head, and dropped it. The buttons on his shirt parted like water beneath his fingertips. Cuff links and jacket, belt and slacks and socks and shoes. She stayed just the way she was, her back to him, her whole body motionless but for her breath.
When he was down to his underwear, he paused. She was still in her heels, and low as they were, they changed the way they stood together, changed the height her head hit on his chest.
He sank to his knees. He’d been on them for her before, prepared to put his mouth on her or to beg her for another chance. Tonight, he slid the flats of his palms down the outsides of her thighs, curled his hands around her knees before dragging them lower. With his brow pressed to the back of her leg, he grasped her ankle. She got his hint when he fit his grip around her shoe. She lifted one foot and then the other for him.
When he rose again, it was to kiss every vertebra on his way up her spine. He stepped his bare feet to either side of hers and took her in his arms, pressing all of him to all of her. A wall in his mind collapsed, letting him really feel her, the curves and the edges, the smooth softness of her skin. The hard line of his cock met the small of her back, and just like that it was arousal. It was sex.
And it was so, so much more.
He turned her in his arms. Her makeup around her eyes was smudged, the edges damp, and she was so beautiful, it nearly brought him right back to his knees.
“Better?” he asked, the sound too raw.
She nodded, averting her gaze, staring at his chest instead of at his eyes, and that was wrong. He put a hand to her chin to lift it, only for her to reach up, to wrap her fingers around his own. She brought them to her lips, and it was fire, was a punch to the gut as she touched him.
He’d been so deliberate, every motion to peel away their clothes an act of sheer restraint, but all of that was gone now. With heat and a sudden need so bright it seared him to his bones, he let the hesitancy, the distance, fall away.
When he tilted her head up this time, it was to take her mouth, to possess it. She met him with a desperation he wasn’t sure he understood, except that it resonated with his own.
“I’ll do better,” he mumbled, working to breathe past the slick glide of her tongue, the plush of her lips against his. “I promise.” He cupped her neck, fit his thumb to the hollow of her jaw and held on. “But you have to let me.”
He kissed her again until the stiffness in her limbs began to ease, then took a step toward her bed, guiding her along. When they reached the mattress, he shoved the other, discarded dresses to the floor. They fell in a clatter, and he didn’t care. She didn’t seem to, either.
At his prompting, she lay down in the center of the bed, a vision of creamy flesh and soft curves, dark hair in a cloud about her shoulders, and he could gaze at her all night, except that he was dying to touch, his hands shaking and cock screaming for it. Predatory, he settled above her with his knees caging her thighs, spine straight, arms braced. He gazed down at her. At her hands to either side of her head.
He paused. She’d put them there the last time, too, and he’d encouraged it, wanting her helpless to the pleasure his body could bring hers. But now it was different. Passive, like she had been all night, except to tell him she was mad at him.
Now, it felt wrong.
He shook his head, the words to explain too far away, too slippery. So instead of trying, he flipped them, getting himself flat on his back. Making it so he stared up at her.
Confusion marred her features, and his heart clenched. This was that skittishness he’d seen too many times before. He grabbed her by the arms before she could retreat or protest. He wanted to shake her.
“You have to let me do better.” His throat chafed. “You have to make me do better.”
He’d been the one to come to her, all right. Had crossed an ocean because she had shown him the holes in his own life. Because he knew he had to fill them but didn’t know how to without her.
She’d agreed to give him another chance. But that was all she had done.
In another world, another life, she’d challenged him at every turn, calling him out on his bullshit and making fun of his terrible lines. He wanted that Kate. He wanted more limits than a refusal to let him spend the night. Than her voice, telling him she couldn’t save him, that he had done everything wrong again. After. When it was already too late.
He might need to start over here, but he couldn’t do it all on his own.
“You have to tell me what you want.” He silenced her protests with a finger against her lips. “Don’t just go along with me when I screw up.” She never had before. He was finished with her acting like she had to now. He might’ve asked her for this chance to prove himself, but it couldn’t all be for him to win or lose. “Do this with me. Together.” His voice and his heart both cracked. “Or.” Fuck. He shouldn’t say this. Shouldn’t even think it.
But there it was pouring out of him regardless.
“Or what’s the point in us doing this at all?”
Chapter EIGHT
Kate reeled.
Rylan lay beneath her, his gaze pleading, his words hanging in the air and pressing hard against her heart. Making the breath in her lungs go thick.
What’s the point in us doing this at all?
An ugly laugh threatened her throat. How close had she been to asking him that herself? They’d walked in the door, and she’d had it on the tip of her tongue. She’d been so ready to lay into him for wasting both their time.
And now what? He was mad at her for letting him screw this up?
Ice flashed through her bones. For one lilting, awful moment, she was back in her father’s home again, where everything was her fault, she’d done everything wrong, why couldn’t she just do something right for once?
But then the ice gave way to fire. She bristled, an instinct to fight rising up in her like it never would’ve before this summer. Because she deserved better than to be a pawn like that. She twisted her fingers hard against the sheets, flames making their way up her face. She should climb right off him and go find some clothes. Should show him the door and tell him never to come back again, only…
Only there was something in his eyes, a fragility to the way he held her close. Her chest constricted, and she went still.
As if seeing his opportunity, he grasped it. Licked his lips and dug his fingers into the flesh of her arm. “Tonight was my fault. So many things in this have all been my fault.” His throat bobbed. “But you went along with it.”
She almost got whiplash, she snapped her head back so hard. “Excuse me?”
He squared his jaw. “You don’t like the ballet, you tell me you don’t like the ballet, Kate. You don’t sit through it for three hours silently stewing.”
“And what were you doing for those three hours?”
The weakest smile played across his lips. “Trying to figure out
how I’d gotten it all so wrong.”
She just— What was she supposed to do with any of this?
She flexed her arms inside his grip and winced. “You’re hurting me.”
His hands softened, sending blood rushing back through her limbs. With a gentle touch, he stroked where he had squeezed too tight. Then the corners of his mouth pulled to the side, his eyes going warm and sad. “See? Was that so hard?”
“It—” It wasn’t the same thing. Was it?
“I saw you lying under me a second ago. You were flat on your back, with your hands above your head.” Heat prickled her neck, and he shook his head. “It was sexy as hell, knowing you were going to let me do whatever I wanted. But this isn’t just about what I want. Not in your bed, and not when we go out. It’s not all just for you to sit back and let me plan, then reject or not.”
That wasn’t what she’d been doing. It hadn’t.
Except—
Except maybe it had been.
He’d come crawling back to her and begged her for another chance. And she’d been nursing this deep, impossible hurt. Holding on to it. She’d resented his return, resented him assuming he had the right to interrupt her life and fit himself into it. She’d agreed to give him a chance to prove himself, but the burden had been on him. But maybe some of it was on her, too.
“This is never going to work,” he said, voice quiet and soft. “Not if you aren’t in it with me.” His gaze met hers. “Try with me, Kate. Please.”
Her anger was a stone inside her gut. She didn’t know how to let it go, or how to be charitable to the man who had put it there.
The stone rocked. And maybe, just by a fraction, it shrunk.
Because Rylan wasn’t wrong. There was a difference between giving him a chance and giving them one. Only—
“I don’t know if I can.”
“All I’m asking is that you try.”
For what seemed like an impossibly long time, she stared down at him.
The truth was, he hadn’t just asked her to trust him the once. Over and over again, inviting her to tour a museum with him and opening his mouth for the first time against her skin, he’d presented her with these opportunities, and she’d taken them. By and large they’d been amazing, but to a one, they’d been his idea.
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