And it really wasn’t. But how did I explain this? All of this freaking amazement he was drilling into me. This perfect magic . . .
“I’m not . . . ” Ready to let it go yet.
And how could I be blamed? My knees were melted butter. My ribs were a grill set on high, and my lungs were charbroiled bags of wonder.
And everything in my intimate core . . .
I wouldn’t go there. I couldn’t.
But there was no place else I craved to think about more. No place I needed him more . . .
“What I’m trying to say is, you need to know that I don’t have any special thing against virgins. I’m not hung up or triggered about them. There wasn’t any epiphany or heavenly message about the whole issue of you being a virgin.” He exhaled roughly. “Just, more than anything, I think it had to do with what happened to my sister.”
Since his magnet was clearly on full power now, I surrendered to a little more of its physical pull. I wrapped my fingers around both his biceps as he guided me in between his knees. “Is Cassiopeia a single mom?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I didn’t see any ‘dad’ type at Vela’s soccer game—except you, of course.”
He nodded. “I’ve been involved with that child since Pia’s pregnancy, which wasn’t at all easy. During those months, my knuckles went through a lot of walls—which didn’t help Pia’s state of mind, of course—but I was obsessed with the injustice that some asshole had fucked her and then left her like that.”
I winced. “The guy was her first?”
“And, according to my hopeless dreamer of a sister, her last,” he snarled. “The one and only man she’ll ever love, forever and ever, as long as butterflies dance and unicorns prance and ponies have sparkles in their manes.”
I smiled—who couldn’t after a sentence with ponies and sparkles?—but understood his bitterness. “No wonder you swore off virgins for yourself.”
“Without thinking twice. Until . . . ”
His unsteady huff was his interruption. He lowered his head and hunched in his body. The lean muscles beneath his power suit were coils of anything but power. I could feel every shred of tension through his clothes.
“Until what, Sebastian?”
I felt crappy about pushing him. Crappy but doing what was necessary. I needed to hear this answer. Yes, despite how I already knew it. Okay, I hoped I knew it. I needed to hear it . . . because I was damn sure he needed to say it. Out loud. Right now. With the building bustling around us and the city clamoring below, we needed to turn this office into a cathedral and our embrace into a confessional. Safe ground. Total absolution.
He got it too. As he looked back up, I saw the understanding across his carved face. Absorbed it from every facet of his struggling gaze. And heard it in every note of his ragged voice.
“Until you, Abbigail Gibson.”
A rush of breath left me. At the same time, he sucked one in. With the slide of my hands up over his chest, I recognized how my pulse matched his heartbeat. But our syncopation went beyond that. Like sun burning through mist, there was a new awareness between us. It was still tenuous and unclear but there all the same. Sizzling through the clouds. Lifting our facades. Our layers.
It thrilled me.
It terrified me.
A million words assaulted my mind, but I couldn’t say a damn thing. Nothing made sense. While everything made sense. He had the magnet turned up again—but for the first time, I realized that I possessed a magnet too. One that was drawing him just as hard.
“What do we do now?”
The words alone were unnerving new ground. I had no idea what his answer would be. A wave of strange relief washed in as he cupped the back of my neck to coax me closer and then tenderly bussed my forehead.
“I don’t know yet.”
The words earned him my huge smile against his neck. Maybe tiny miracles were possible—because his confession officially flushed the anger I’d sworn not to surrender. With his courage, he’d cleansed it from me. With his honesty, he’d stripped me. The nakedness felt nice. My vulnerability felt right.
So beautifully right . . .
Sebastian hitched away from me. I didn’t let him get very far. With a determined tug at his jacket lapels, I pulled him right back in—and then compelled my mouth to dive too. I thanked myself for it as soon as his carotid jumped beneath my tongue. As I kept nipping and nuzzling, he gifted me with a low, lusty moan.
I lifted my mouth up to the crevice of his ear. It was heaven to breathe in the musk of his skin as well as the sage and coconut of his expensive shampoo. The intimate scents gave me the extra jolt of courage to whisper my next words.
“I think I know what we can do.”
A new groan poured out of him. His massive body shuddered beneath my roving touch—especially the part of him growing faster than all the rest. “Fuck,” he husked. “Abbi . . . ”
“You suggested it just yesterday. Something about a preview of our naughty weekend, right on your desk?”
“Yeah. I—I remember. But—”
“But what?”
“Things have changed, Red.” But while he asserted it, he hardly moved away from my nibbles at his neck and my strokes between his legs. “We’ve got to acknowledge that.”
“Umm . . . I think we already have.”
His nod, more succinct than I’d expected, preceded his reluctant drag back. The same conflict ruled his face as he set me back at an arm’s length too. Though lust still glittered in his eyes, he relented the rest of his features to his CEO scowl.
“Outstanding. Glad we’re in agreement, then.”
“A-Agreement?” I stammered it, still dizzy from the figurative revolving door into which I’d just been tossed. “What?”
“That I’m not going to handle this issue by fucking you on my desk.” He rapped a knuckle on that very surface as he moved to his central location behind all his monitors. Did he have any idea that just by talking about that now while reembracing his dark and imposing side made my sex clench for him in at least ten new ways?
“But you do want to handle it now.”
“Never a question of whether I wanted to, baby.” He scooped up some loose papers and a courier package in which they looked to have arrived. “It’s just a matter of whether I should.”
I dropped my hands. Balled them into fists. “How the hell are we back to this already?”
He lifted his head, every crease and furrow once more etched on his bold features, and brandished the sheaf of papers in his tight grip. “Little life lesson number hundred and fifty-three, courtesy of my colorful past.” He squeezed his eyes shut as his lips contorted. “People like me don’t get to leave the past in the past.”
As he spoke, I looked long and hard at him. But more prominently, at those damn papers in his hand.
The hand that practically shook with tension.
“Sebastian?”
I unrooted myself from my spot and stepped carefully back around the desk. Not that he noticed. Though he dropped the papers back to the desk with a graceful sweep, he stared as if the scribbles on them were rendered in blood. I would have assumed as much when taking in the steel pole of his spine, the tension across his shoulders, and the renewed clench of his jaw.
“Hey. Hey. Shark?” As I stepped closer to him, I had the impression of navigating invisible shadows around him. The unease of his aura was that thick and cryptic. “What’s going on?” I pressed. “What are you . . . ”
He reached up and formed a hand over the one I rested on his elbow. But it was his eyes that wrenched the words out of my throat. I’d expected more shadows in their dark-blue depths. There were none. His gaze was close to black, the color of midnight during the winter solstice.
He was as still and as silent as that long cold night. But he moved at last, sliding the three sheets of paper over to me.
As I accepted them, my fingers trembled. Right before my eyes popped wide with shock. And incredulity. And horror.
“Do you see
now, Abbigail?” His words were like accusations. His aura was gallows grim. “Do you see now why I’m not the Prince Charming to give your virginity to?”
I slammed the handwritten note back down. The motion made it possible to move all the way in front of him and then to reach in and grab him by the biceps again. “All right. So that may be the case—but right now, you need to bring your A game to what we’ve got going on here.” I pivoted at the waist to tap on the letter now lying on his desk.
He suddenly jerked as if I’d decked him. “What we’ve got going on?”
“I said we, and I meant we.”
I punctuated my declaration with a solid thump to his sternum. He just glared as if I’d just flung a foam dart at him. “No,” he growled. “And I mean it, Abbigail. This is a solo-spun mess. And so—”
“It’s going to be a solo-spun disaster, as well. Unless you stop marching in your pigheaded parade and accept a little help from someone who cares.”
The way he blinked, then stared, and then huffed out a breath was as though it were the first time he’d ever come face-to-face with the concept.
Through a bemused smile, he said, “Good Christ. Someone . . . who cares.”
“That’s what I said.” I folded my arms and tried to temper my satisfaction. He wanted to like the idea of going at this together as much as I liked the idea of helping him through a crisis.
“I don’t know what . . . I don’t know how . . . It seems so unnecessary.”
“Why? This shouldn’t be a shock to you, Sebastian. All you have to do is look around. People probably offer to help you all the time. You just have to let them.”
My instincts had my brain bracing for any number of reactions—none of which included his clasp of my body followed by his kiss.
Not that I was complaining. Not one damn bit.
By the time he was done massaging my tonsils with his tongue, I was ready to propose that desk fuck again . . . if it weren’t for the glaring pages still centered on its surface.
“How was that?” he drawled, adding an enticing nip at my bottom lip for good measure. “Were you helping me just then, baby?”
The balls of his shoulders got the brunt of my smacks this time. “Well, I’d like to be the only one who helps you that way. But focus. We need your mind in better places now.”
His gaze still hinted at mischief, but I didn’t waste time on more correction.
Without ceremony, I nodded down at his keyboard in an implied request to access his computer. He swept out a hand, wordlessly granting the permission I sought. I smiled and swiftly typed into the search window.
Spotlight News Los Angeles
After scrolling down the news channel’s main page, I released a whoosh of relief. “All right. We still have time. If she’d really done it and implicated you as this letter states, it’d be the first or second item on the page.”
But when I straightened, Sebastian was waiting with a full glower. “We have time?” he charged. “For what? Abbi, what the hell are you—”
“Not me. We. We’re in this together, remember? And we need to stop her from doing this.” My God. Was I really the cockier one in the room right now? “If we get lucky and find her quickly.” But cocky went away when I faced the gritty truth of what I had to say next. “But we have to start at the beginning. Do you remember this girl, Sebastian? What is her name?” I scanned the letter again. “Cinnamon?”
Sebastian pivoted. Stabbed his hand through his hair. Most noticeably, he left the vicinity of my personal space. That alone warned me to prepare for his answer.
“I have no idea who she is.”
And thank God I’d prepared.
“Well, if her name is Cinnamon, that means she’s probably a redhead.” Freaking great. Did this mean he had a type for his one-night stands? One I fit perfectly into? Why was Rio’s face popping into my mind so easily? “Does that help narrow it down at all?”
“Barely,” he gritted. “Especially because the hair’s probably a wig. Strippers change their hairpieces more often than their underwear.” He pulled his hand out of his hair and waved it in a dismissive arc. “She’s probably the Little Mermaid one night, then a desperate housewife, and a naughty nurse the next.”
I dashed my gaze back down to the top of the desk—though for what purpose, I was clueless. I’d already listened to the certainty with which he rattled off that colorful role-playing list—and as a result had already envisioned him being a willing fuck buddy for every one of them. The island prince to her mermaid. The gardener to her bored housewife. The dominating doctor to her illicit nurse.
And I’d just been insisting we do this together . . . why? Or, more accurately, what the hell had I been high on? Yet here I was, still grilling LA’s most famous lothario about a conquest he couldn’t even remember—less than fifteen minutes after I’d tried seducing him to screw me on his desk.
But I could worry about getting psychotherapy tomorrow. Right now, there were much more dire things to stress about. Like a woman’s life.
I pulled out my phone for my next web search. No need for the Shark Enterprises system to see that Sebastian’s computer had been used to look up LA’s leading gentlemen’s clubs. “If there really is any way for us to find her, we have to track down where she might work.”
“Now that I can answer.” He almost looked proud to be useful again.
I looked up as he slid closer to the monitors. And focused on breathing as he fixed the blue flames of his gaze back on me—
Just before he pulled my phone out of my grip and told the thing to abandon its search for the city’s finest strip clubs.
“This isn’t necessary. Thanks to someone who didn’t bolt from my side over this, I was able to figure some shit out here.”
A bashful smile yanked at my lips. Between the intensity of his blues and the strangest compliment I’d ever received in my existence, Sebastian was making it hard for me to figure shit out. But I pulled it together and replied, “Shit like what?”
“I haven’t been to a club in at least eight months,” he explained. “Between traveling to Europe due to our recent acquisitions and pushing to break ground on the Edge, I haven’t had a lot of downtime.”
“Guess it’s been good to have other . . . resources.”
I truly meant it more as a fact instead of a dig, but he side-eyed me for a couple of seconds, as if unsure how to react.
“Damn good,” he said, clearly deciding no elaboration was the best elaboration.
Weirdly, I was fine with that. I really didn’t need to know why Sebastian booked things with a woman like her. My only concern about it was the safety factor. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about his personal life, so I was ready to forget it and move on. And he obviously was as well.
“Grant and I used to frequent three places in the city. One of them, the Gold Rooster, burned to the ground about six months back, so that leaves only two possibilities. Club Delilah in Hollywood or Chemistry, which is downtown.” He leaned over and scooped up the courier envelope in which Cinnamon’s missive must have arrived. “The origin zip on this is Hollywood.”
I pumped a fist. As Sebastian flowed out a smooth laugh, I resisted the urge to jump at him with a congratulatory kiss. One, we had nothing to celebrate yet. If the woman had switched clubs and was now working somewhere else, we’d be at a dead end. Even if it was the right club, she might not be there tonight.
And there was third possibility.
That we were already too late.
I frantically opened my phone again. “I just need two minutes to make sure Rio can cover the rest of the lunch run. Can I leave the keys to the van with the security desk in the lobby?”
Sebastian looked over from beside a modern steel art piece on the wall, behind which he had popped open a safe. He yanked out an envelope bulging with cash. I didn’t bother asking what it was for.
“Red, you can leave the damn van parked in the lobby if you need to.” He walked across the
room to the en suite bathroom. Less than a minute later, he emerged with a dark-gray T-shirt in hand.
Which I silently begged him to don slowly.
Over his bared, bronzed, and utterly beautiful torso.
This was insane. The man belonged up on stage in a strip revue of his own, sharing with the world the glory of those veined arms, that rippled abdomen, and those serving platters being passed off as his pecs.
But for right now, I was happy just letting the magnificence fill my world.
Unfortunately, he didn’t hear my plea about taking his time with the more club-worthy outfit. Within seconds, he had the tee on and was replacing his polished Ferragamos with a casual pair of ankle boots. As he did that, an incoming text buzzed at my cell. “Rio, I hope?” he queried.
“Uhhh . . . yeah.” His muscles still had me at a stammer.
“Outstanding. So we’re set?
“Uh-huh.”
“Ready whenever you are, Ms. Gibson.”
“Sure. Okay. Just as soon as I pick my tongue up off the ground.”
His smile was sultry, secretive, and sexy as hell. “I’m glad you like what you see.”
“Like? Mister, you owe me a massive apology for having to deal with this case of ‘like.’ You might possibly owe me one tomorrow too. And the next day.”
Sebastian snickered. “All right, then. Sorry . . . not sorry.”
I rolled my eyes and giggled. “I don’t doubt that for a single second.”
Club Delilah was located in a part of Hollywood people drove through without truly seeing—the “real life” on the way to the flashy dream. The horizon was a block-shaped collection of big and small sound stages, punched by a bright glow from where some movie shoot was being set up.
We drove past a strip mall with a tattoo parlor, laundromat, threading studio, hookah lounge, and pho restaurant—the last one prompting my stomach to growl on cue as Joel, Sebastian’s driver, guided the car toward a garish neon sign planted atop a surprisingly stylish building.
Surreal. It was the only way I could describe all of this. Surreal. Was I really being chauffeured in Sebastian Shark’s private town car through a NoHo strip mall, on my way to find a dancer before she committed suicide? Because of the man I was still seriously thinking of giving my virginity to?
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