“Don’t be a fucking psycho,” I growl, my hands moving instinctively to grip her wrists again, and I notice the fire burn even brighter in her eyes. She fights fiercely for her freedom, leaning back and kicking out, doing everything she can to get away from me. But I drag her towards me until she’s so close I can smell the sweetness on her skin.
“I hate you!” she screeches as I pin her against my body, my arms wrapped around her in a bear hold so she can’t get loose.
“No, Chloe. You don’t hate me at all,” I rumble, crashing my mouth against hers in the worst split second decision I’ve made since I let her in my life. But I can’t seem to stop myself. Being around her makes me an idiot. It always did.
I feel the fight leave her body as she relaxes against me, and her lips slowly part, allowing my demanding tongue to slide against hers and get that first taste of her after three years apart. She’s like a fucking drug, and my head swims as my arms wrap around her. I pull her against me, as if I’m trying to devour her somehow. Like she’s the missing part of me.
We stumble backwards, and I twist us around so I can lift her onto the bench. My fingers dig into the flesh on her arse as I heft her up and she wraps her legs around my waist. I groan into her mouth and she whimpers, my hands sliding beneath her shirt, connecting with her soft skin and dragging roughly upward to cup her full breast. She gasps out, writhing against me as I squeeze her soft flesh–I’ve craved her for longer than I’d like to admit. Her taste and her touch makes me so fucking hard it hurts–and I fucking love it.
“Aiden,” I hear in my ear, as my earpiece crackles and activates. It’s just enough to make me freeze and register what cluster-fuck of a moment this is. I pull away from Chloe, my cock rock hard and my chest heaving with my breath as I lick my lips, tasting the sweetness of the fake blood she’d applied to her lip. “We need you out front. Fight in progress.”
She’s the picture of desire as she sits in front of me–face flushed and legs apart, ready for me to take her. It’s exactly what my dreams have been asking for, but I know without a doubt that this is a fucking bad idea. Once I get inside her, I won’t be able to stop. Temptation fucking sucks.
Growling my annoyance, I place my hand in the centre of her chest to keep her back as I force myself to step away, reaching my other hand down to activate my radio. “How urgent is it?” I ask Jared, who works here almost as much as I do.
“There’s four of them. We could do with an extra set of hands.”
“I’ll be right out.”
“Is everything ok?” Chloe asks breathlessly, looking at me with concern all of a sudden. If I didn’t know how well this girl could play me, I’d be forgiven for thinking that concern was real…
I take a deep breath and reach around her to grab a cloth and press it into her hands.
“Clean that shit off your face, Chloe, and then go home. This isn’t the place for you.”
“But what about my dad? I need your help.”
I step away and shake my head. “And I don’t have any fucking help to give. Go and get the cops to help you.”
“Screw you, Aiden. I should have known you’d be a bastard about this. Your ego’s too fucking big to put aside for a moment and listen.”
“And I should have known you’d happily fuck me to get your way. Go home. This isn’t going to happen again.”
I register the hurt look cross her face as she slides off the bench and turns her back to me. Swallowing hard, I force myself to turn away from her and walk out the door to do my job. But my mind is only half in it. I can still taste her mouth in mine and it’s fucking distracting.
When I finish helping Jared break up the fight, I make my way back to the office and a pang of disappointment hits me in the chest when I find that it’s empty.
I don’t know why I expected her to still be there. Hell, I made it clear I didn’t want her here – I told her to leave. I guess in some stupid masochistic way, it pissed me off that she listened. But it pissed me off even more that I wished she hadn’t. Despite knowing that what was between us was just a lie–I still want her, almost as bad as I wanted her three years ago. My mind replays it all like it was fucking yesterday.
I want her. I must be insane.
Chapter Six
Chloe
“ARE YOU going to tell me what went on in there tonight?” Leah asks, once we’ve arrived home from Ark. After leaving the club, I’d gotten into the car without a word and folded my arms across my chest, withdrawing into myself as I felt a whole range of stupid emotions from what had happened with Aiden.
I never thought he’d kiss me. Not like that. Not after the way I left him…
The only time I moved was to stop Leah from turning the music on. My mind was in such a state that I couldn’t stand any extra sound. I needed to calm down.
I push through the front door and throw my wig and my bag on the couch and turn around to face him. “I lost control,” I reply, running my shaking hands through my hair in frustration. I must look like a complete wreck because Leah is looking at me with an unusual amount of concern.
“Did you at least talk to him?”
“Not really–only a bit.”
“And?”
“And he’s still not going to help us. There’s obviously too much water under the bridge for us.”
“Exactly what did you do to him, Chloe?”
“Nothing that matters anymore. I can’t change the past, and I can’t fix what happened between us. I just wish he still cared enough to at least listen to what I had to say before he threw me out again.”
“Maybe he cares too much. Maybe you care too much too.”
I shake my head, trying to keep my emotions steady. Being that close to Aiden really rattled me. I went in there with a solid plan to get him alone and tell him everything I’d found out about the embezzlement involving the Donovan Corporation and my father. I would have begged him to help and guaranteed him any sum as payment. But we couldn’t even have a conversation without things getting overly emotional. It’s the way it always was between us. There’s something that happens that stops us both from thinking straight, like our bodies are overly strong magnets that won’t stop their pull until we slam together.
But it clouds my mind, removing all rational thought. I need him to make this work, and it worries me that I’m losing control around him, especially when I have prepared myself for this for so long…I should have been able to stay on task.
I shiver physically, closing my eyes as the wave of desire passes through me. How is it that he still affects me so intensely? It’s been three years, and we’re different people now, but our reactions are still the same. There’s still this desire. This need. It’s as if we were together only yesterday, exploring each other, promising ourselves to each other. That man is the other half of me. But I will never be whole. We’re doomed to always be apart. There isn’t room for us in this world.
I begin to pace, trying to think of what I can do to get him to listen. I feel sure that once we talk then he’ll help. I need him to want to help. This will never work if I can’t get him on board. I need someone with his skill set to help us get our hands on some very important paperwork. What I want from him involves a lot of risk, and I’ve been relying on his joy of the hunt, and his love of money to get him on board. If I can’t get him to help, then this could all fall apart and my father will die in prison as the man whose greed destroyed thousands. To the public, he’s the man who ruined lives. And whether he wakes from his coma or not, he shouldn’t be remembered that way.
I continue to pace. I need to think. I need to work out a way to get through to him. If only I hadn’t pushed him away the moment he let me in… I’d know so much more about him. But I ruined that trust when I walked away. I ruined any chance of us being together.
Leah’s voice breaks into my thoughts and halts my pacing. “Do you have a plan C?”
“I don’t know, Leah. Right now, I’m fucking shaking like a lea
f, and I was around him for maybe fifteen minutes.” I hold my hand out to show him how shot my nerves are, then I scrunch my hand into a tight fist to still it and lower my hand. “I need some time to think. It wasn’t supposed to go down like that.”
“Go down like what? What the hell happened in there?”
“I already told you–we lost control.”
“Well, you’d better sort that the fuck out, girly. We can’t let any emotions get in the way of this shit. It’ll just fuck it up even more than it already is. Keep your eye on the goal.”
“I know, ok? I fucking know!” I run my hands through my hair, finally sitting on the couch as my head begins to throb from too many thoughts and emotions for a single day.
“Although…” Leah starts, drawing the word out as he rubs his hand on his chin in thought. “He is a man who obviously wants you. So those feelings could be the very thing that gets him on board. I think you should use your assets, girly. Reel him in.”
I shake my head. “No, Leah. I don’t want to go down that road. It was too hard last time. We’re…we’re just too much together.”
“Too much? What the fuck does that even mean? Do you love him or something?”
Since the moment I met him. “No,” I lie. “We had one night together. That was it.” I leave out all of the nights we spent together before that, teasing each other but restraining ourselves as the tension built to epic proportions. That one night was THE night. It was the night that I will remember for all my days, and I’m genuinely afraid of going down that road again. I could get lost in a man like Aiden Price and I can’t afford to do that. Too much is at stake.
“Then he’s just an asset. Go. Meet him at his house and get under his skin. Tell him what he needs to hear. Behave how he wants you to behave. Be that woman I know you can be and get him on board,” he insists, leaning toward me intimidatingly as he speaks.
I nod and pick up my bag again, standing as I hold my hand out for the keys. “Fine. I’ll go,” I concede, butterflies bursting to life in my stomach at the thought of seeing him again so soon. I’ve barely come down from seeing him before.
Leah hands over the keys but doesn’t immediately let them go. “Keep your focus,” he reminds me, and I assure him that I will before heading back out again.
***
With a steel grip, I drive to Aiden’s, parking in a darkened side street with a view of his house and wait for him in the dark. Checking the time on the dashboard, I know that he’ll be home soon. Due to state implied curfews, the club closes at midnight and Aiden normally leaves there around one after helping close up. He’ll walk his sister to her car and then he’ll drive home, which will take no more than ten minutes.
My eyes scan the quiet house, lit only by the moonlight as it nestles within its suburban setting. Aiden’s house is raised off the ground about a metre by bricks that create a crawl space that gives access to tradesmen and provides under house storage. The rest of the house is made out of white weatherboard and a set of concrete steps lead up to a balcony with wrought iron railings. It’s a simple house for a man as wealthy as Aiden, but it was once his parents, and I suppose it has too many memories attached to it for him to let it go or upgrade it to more modern accommodations.
Most people would have a wooden bench or a loveseat on a balcony like his. But not Aiden. His balcony is bare. He doesn’t even have a pot plant or a wind chime or a pair of old boots sitting by his door. The only hint that someone even lives there is the fact that a sensor light flicks on the moment I approach.
Wondering if his mother ever furnished the balcony, I lean against the railing with my back to the road and wait, hearing the click of the sensor light as it switches off and returns me to darkness.
My heart thuds nervously in my chest as I listen for his car, unsure as to how he’ll react to me being here. I suspect that he’ll tell me to leave, but he could surprise me. All I know is that I definitely didn’t want to sneak up on him. I’ve seen how fast he moves due to his military training, and I wouldn’t want to surprise him in the dark.
I wait for longer than I anticipated, growing restless as I try to guess where he is and what he might be doing. Just as I’m about to give up and go home, the soft purr of his engine alerts me to his arrival, followed by the flash of his headlights as he turns into his driveway and the electric door to his garage whirs to life and opens.
I can’t see his face in the dark and wonder if he saw me as I wait for him to exit his car and head to where I’m waiting. The butterflies multiply within my stomach as I hear his door close and the sound of the garage shutting, followed by his footsteps and the click of the sensor light.
The moment the lights flick on, he’s looking straight at me and he doesn’t look happy.
“Not one to take a hint are you?” he grumbles as he heads up the path and climbs the steps.
I push off the railing and stand to meet him by his front door. “It’s important.”
“So you keep saying.” He sounds tired, his voice much softer than it had been earlier and he inserts his key, pushing the front door open.
As he walks past me, I smell the faint scent of another woman’s perfume and my mouth speaks before my brain connects. “Have you been with someone?”
Stepping inside his home, he pauses and blocks the door. “That is absolutely none of your business,” he states.
“Does this girl know that you were in your office, dry humping me before you got to her? Does she know I’m the one that got your cock so hard and ready?” I’m attacking him, and it’s stupid and unwarranted. Essentially, I have no right to be behaving this way. But I can’t seem to stop myself from feeling a jealous rage at the thought of him with another woman. It aches in my chest and sours my stomach, wetting the butterflies so it feels like they’re flapping, stuck to the base of my gut.
His eyes narrow for a moment and within a blink of the eye his arms shoot out and he grabs me, hauling me through the door and slamming me against the wall. The movement surprises me and I shriek, following my instinct to fight him. He flattens his body against mine, pinning me so I can’t move and he grabs my wrists pressing them together over my head.
Stuck, I wriggle beneath him, feeling way out of my depth. I talk tough, but in this moment, I feel anything but. “Let me go, Aiden,” I demand through clenched teeth, fear beginning to sink its claws and grip at my heart. This isn’t the Aiden I knew. This Aiden is scaring me.
“Why? Isn’t this what you came here for?” He readjusts his grip so he can hold both of my wrists in one hand then trails his other one down my arm. “It’s why you’re here acting like a jealous girlfriend, right?” His hand pauses at my throat and wraps around it uncomfortably as he leans into me, brushing his rough stubble across the skin of my cheeks. I stifle a cry. I shouldn’t have come here. “Do you want me to fuck you, Chloe?” he whispers, his voice dripping with aggression as he pushes his groin against me and I can feel his erection dig painfully against my stomach. I wince, bile rising in my throat as I fight to stay calm. “No? Then what?” His breath is hot and his fingers tighten around my throat as his mouth moves toward my ear and he growls, “What the fuck do you want from me?”
Tears burn in my eyes and I shut them tightly, feeling as though I’ve pushed him too far. I should have told Leah to go fuck himself. I should have stayed home and thought of another way to get Aiden to listen. I could have brought him bags of money. I could have brought him information. I could have used Leah to hire him all along…
This isn’t right. Things are different now. So much has happened in the last three years. So much has changed in each of our lives. We’re different people. Capable of different things. When you back a person into a corner, you can’t always be sure how they’ll react…
“Answer me!” he demands, tipping me over the edge of control and into a pit of fear.
I twist my head away from him, my emotions hitting me full force as I let out a strained sob. I didn’t want to cr
y. I wanted to stay in control but he’s scaring me. At the sound of my cry, his grip lessens. It’s as if he suddenly realises what he’s doing and slowly releases me.
“Shit,” he hisses, taking a step back to give me some space to move. I don’t waste my time. The moment my hands are free, I swing my body, bringing my arm around to slap him loudly across the face.
“Fuck you, Aiden! Fuck you!” I scream, my body shaking with fear, desire and anger from his intimidation tactic.
His cheek becomes immediately inflamed, and I watch the red bloom across his skin, as I glare up at him, angry that we’re even in this situation. Things used to be so different between us…
With his head turned from the force of the slap, he grits his teeth, his chest heaving as I watch him try and regain his control. Slowly, he turns back to me, his hand reaching up to touch his cheek as he clears his throat. “I guess I deserved that,” he admits, his voice calm as he steps away from me and inclines his head toward the kitchen. “I was out of line. Why don’t you just tell me what’s so bloody important that you feel the need to keep throwing yourself in my path lately.”
Taken aback by his sudden calm demeanour, it takes me a moment to react and follow him.
“I’m surprised you weren’t at my door, dressed as a crone and offering me poisoned apples,” he comments, throwing his keys onto his benchtop before shaking off his leather jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. “You don’t have a disguise or a fake name for me this time?”
“No. Just the truth,” I say, moving to the other side of the bench, keeping it between us for safety.
“The truth?” he asks, a slight smile curling his mouth as he opens his fridge and pulls out a bottle of beer. He doesn’t offer me one and I’m not surprised. “I’m not sure you’re aware of what that is.”
“I’m sorry for tricking you. I should have just been upfront.”
“Story of our life,” he deadpans, taking a long drink and watches me as he drains half the bottle. “And now you show up at my house, questioning me on my whereabouts…” He places the bottle on the bench and shakes his head as if he’s shaking away his thoughts. “Listen Chloe, it’s been a long, draining day and night, and I still have work in the morning. I’m too fucking tired for this right now. So please, get to the fucking point so you can leave me the hell alone.”
Partners (Fire & Lies - One) Page 4