by Kira Blakely
Cain walked up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. “You’re not really thinking about it, are you? Scripted? It’s fucking fake.”
“I know,” I said. “But if that’s what they need to do, then what choice do we have? I mean, it’s probably safer for everyone, like Simmons said. It will keep you out of trouble.”
Cain spun me around on the spot and held me against the counter. “I don’t need a script to stay out of trouble.” His breath chased down the right side of my face.
I slipped out from under his arm. Don’t focus on the throbbing in your core. Ignore it. No big deal. “You’re right. You don’t need a script. You need a miracle.”
“Let’s talk about this tonight,” Cain said. “A business meeting.”
“I’ve had enough business meetings with you to last me a lifetime.” Thankfully, my cheeks didn’t heat at the mention of this one.
“On neutral ground. I’m serious, Margot. I told you, I came to this shop to change my life.”
God, I wasn’t really going to do this, was I? Cain was selfish, sure, but that could mean a number of things. Not necessarily that he wanted to get me into bed. Or embarrass me. Or ruin things. “Fine,” I said.
“Good. I’ll text you the address of the place.”
A cup shattered on the wooden boards, and I gasped, spun around.
Nat stood there, holding a tray. “Whoops, sorry,” she said, and shrugged. The cameraman was behind her, filming a close-up of the shattered remains and our reactions to it. “Wait a second, where’s the other guy? The guy with the suit? Ugh, are you serious? I made two cups of coffee for nothing? I’m so totally underappreciated around here.”
I sighed. This would be a long day and the fact that I had a dinner—not date!—meeting with Cain tonight wouldn’t make it feel any shorter.
Chapter 7
Cain
I waited for no one, partially because I was a fucking impatient man. Also because the longer I waited, the more bored I got, and a bored Cain was always a reckless Cain.
I checked the time on my Breitling and scratched two fingers across the lines on my forehead. She wasn’t late. I was early.
Fuck, what are you, whipped?
Music tinkled out from behind me, a sultry tune from a guitar accompanied by a woman, crooning out a love song in Spanish. The restaurant, El Toro, had a reputation for its passionate vibe.
Live music, people dancing between tables. It was like being transported to Spain, and the food was out of this world.
Count me the hell in. Anything different turned me on.
I checked my watch again. The minute hand ticked onto the twelve and I looked up and down the street. Purple dusk encapsulated cars and buildings, crept down the street, over the road, along the center line.
The night tickled the day.
And there she was.
Margot walked around the corner at the end of the street, fiddling in her purse, her hips swaying in time to the music though she hadn’t heard it yet.
Had she lost her goddamn senses?
I’d specifically sent a chauffeured vehicle to her house to pick her up. I wanted her safe, not waltzing around in Lakeview, exposed to all the creepers and the muggers.
Goddamn, she was stubborn. I whipped my phone out of my pocket. Yeah, I had two missed calls from my chauffeur, Joseph. I dropped the cell back where it’d come from, silently fuming.
The tempo of the guitar in the restaurant picked up, and my pulse did too.
She strode closer, closer, slung the bag over her shoulder on its thin strap, and raised her gaze.
Our eyes met.
Margot stalled a step, pressed a hand to her stomach.
Christ, she was beautiful.
A picture of what a woman should be. So petite and cute, her skin unblemished except one tattoo on the inside of her wrist, another behind her ear. The only reason I knew was because I’d done the one behind her ear myself—Aggretsuko, the Japanese Sanrio character she adored. A red panda that got super aggressive when someone interfered with her work. Japan was Margot’s obsession.
And she was mine.
Margot had chosen that dress, a slinky black number with its matching heels, to drive me wild. The hem flared out above her knees. If I spun her in a circle, it would no doubt lift, and her tits pressed against the fabric just enough. She’d tied her hair up, but a few loose strands fell to her shoulders.
My scrutiny brought another blush to her cheeks, but she studied me with as much focus as I did her.
I held out my hand, a smirk tugging at my lips.
She swayed toward me, took my hand as if I’d shake it.
I pulled her to my chest instead, wrapped my arm around her waist and inhaled the scent of her hair. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered, then placed a kiss on her forehead. A light brush.
“Thank you.” It was barely audible above the music twisting within the restaurant. She pulled back and looked at the front window. “What is this place?”
“El Toro,” I replied. “It’s a good time.”
“But this is a business meeting.”
I hadn’t released my hold on her waist. “Is that why you dressed to kill?” I was tempted to kiss her again, properly this time, but that wasn’t how I wanted our first time to be.
First time. Last time.
“Come,” I said, and led her toward the entrance. I opened the door for her, and the swell of guitar music rushed out to meet us, accompanied by the tap and click of castanets.
“This is amazing,” Margot said, her eyes shining. “I mean, wow. Cain, this is—how did you find out about this place?”
I tapped the side of my nose. “My secret.”
A waiter led us to our seats, took our drinks orders, and then disappeared, and Margot nodded in time to the music, taking in the colors and sounds. Above us, red, pink, green, and yellow lanterns cast their hue on the tables, and dancers swayed between the tables and out on a wooden dance floor. Some of them were hires, others were diners, and all of them swayed or ground into each other.
The atmosphere smelled of spice and sex. It was fucking perfect for what I had in mind.
Margot had been my temptation for far too long.
Our drinks arrived: beer for me, sangria for her, and we each took a sip. We hadn’t spoken. Margot avoided my eye, looking at everything and everyone except for me. She felt this too.
The desire on the air.
I took her hand in mine and brushed my thumb across her knuckles. “You’re scared,” I said.
Margot snapped her head back to the front and speared me with anger. “Of what?”
“Of what you’re thinking about. Of why you wore that dress. It’s for me, Margot. It’s all for me.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I came to talk about scripting. About the show. The business.”
“You came because you wanted to know what it would feel like to be with me,” I said. “You’ve never had that before, have you?”
“What?”
“This.” I gestured to the room. “Passion. Spice.” I leaned in. “Real, hard sex.”
She dragged her fingers from mine and pressed them to her chest. “You don’t know—”
“I know everything about you,” I said, then stood up, dragged my chair around to the side of the table closet to her, and sat down again. I leaned in, my hand on her thigh. “I know everything you desire. Everything you dream about. You’re good, Margot. I’m not. And you want to know what it would be like to be with a man who’ll turn you inside out.”
She swallowed, her throat working around words that wouldn’t come. Her bright blue eyes studied me, the blue of sky, of oceans, of serenity.
How long had I wanted to do this?
Forever.
“I’ll show you,” I said. “You’ll finally live when you’re with me.”
“Live,” she replied. “I’m living already.”
“You think you are.” I sat back and released her thigh
, let her breathe it out. Myself too. Christ, I was hard under the table just touching her thigh. What would happen when she was underneath me?
“Cain, we need to talk about the show.”
I waved my hand. “So talk.” This was a formality. I didn’t give a fuck about the show or the shop at the moment. Interest in Margot had replaced all the emptiness and the impulses to jump out of planes or down a bottle of Jäger.
It would go away after I’d claimed her. Pity, but it would. And that was part of what tonight was—proving that this feeling was as fleeting as the adrenaline during a base jump or a cage dive.
“You don’t understand. This is important to me. If we have to script parts of it, and trust me, I hate that, but if we do, then so be it. I need this to work, or we’ll end up—”
“What do we have here?” A woman’s voice split Margot’s sentence in half.
Irritation coursed through me, and I focused it on the chick next to our table.
Tall, wearing a dress so short from top to bottom that her tits popped out and her thighs strained against the fabric. Tanned, covered in tattoos on the arms and across the chest and neck. Her blue eyes blazed above a slightly hooked nose. Like a bird of prey.
“Kelly,” Margot said, and all the breathlessness was gone. She was as sharp and clear as she’d been every day in the shop. She stood and drew herself to her full height, which was still smaller than this Kelly chick, whoever the fuck she was.
Wait a second, she was familiar.
“It’s lovely to see you enjoying yourself for once, Madge,” Kelly said, her lips pulled into a taut, fake smile. “This must be a shock to your system.”
“Yeah, I imagine this is a regular thing for you,” Margot replied. “This is definitely your scene.” She gestured to two people grinding on the dance floor.
Kelly tittered a laugh. “And who’s this slice of heaven?” She peered at me. “Wait, isn’t that—you naughty girl, that’s Cain Foster. Remember me from high school, Cain?” She wiggled her fingertips at me.
“No,” I replied, and rose to greet her properly
Shit, maybe that was harsh, but I really didn’t care. I’d been focused on other things in high school. Losing my mother, for one. Tattoos, for another. And anything that took my mind off the pain, for a third.
“Oh.” She shook my hand once, and let go. “Kelly Hayes. Tattoo artist extraordinaire.”
Margot balled her hands into fists.
“Don’t mind him,” Margot said. “He’s my business partner, and he’s not exactly civilized.”
Kelly pressed a finger to her nose, shrugged one shoulder upward, and pouted. “Uncivilized is my preferred mode of being. Listen, I came over here for a reason, and it wasn’t to disturb your, uh, business meeting. Rumor has it you’re set to start filming a TV show. Everybody’s buzzing, babe. Is it true?”
“I had no idea the rumors were so… pervasive.” Margot didn’t sound impressed.
“They are. I want to wish you all the best, sweetheart. I’m sure your show will be a raging success.” She drew Margot into a hug, slung her long, skinny arms around her, and held on like an oversized spider. “I know you’ll do great.” And with that, she detached and trotted off into the crowd, hips moving in that exaggerated model-walk so many women thought was attractive rather than off-putting.
Margot huffed out a breath and checked her hair, then sat down. “That woman.”
“What about her?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“She’s—well, you don’t remember her from school, but she’s always been the dominant type.”
I barely held in my laughter at that. That chick wouldn’t know dominant if it hit her in the face. If anyone was dominant, confident, truly in control in a totally feminine way, it was Margot.
“She owns a local tattoo parlor,” Margot continued, “which is kind of a big deal. She’s my competition. Our competition.” She shook her head on repeat, wordless. The music that’d been so addictive, so damn sexy, was now lost on her.
“Competition is good,” I said. “It keeps the blood flowing.”
“Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I love competition, but it’s more complicated than that when it comes to her. It’s—yeah, forget it. This isn’t the place to talk about it. Let’s talk business instead. The sooner we figure out what we want to do about the whole scripting issue, the better. I mean, the camera guy and the producer were really nice today, but I’m not sure they got any great footage apart from the shots of us tattooing customers. The sleeve you’re doing is cool but—”
“Margot,” I said, the growl low in my throat.
“What?”
“You’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out.” She drew herself up straight, pressed those breasts outward. Christ, now how was I supposed to concentrate? “I’m totally in control.”
I lifted my beer and glugged some back, then set the glass down. “Maybe that’s the problem with you, girl. You’re too in control. You’ve got to learn to live a little.”
Margot leaned in, blazing from head to toe as she did whenever she was in a passionate frame of mind. “I can’t afford to live,” she hissed. “If I live it up like you do, everyone around me suffers. I’ve got to take personal responsibility for the people in my life. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”
“What do you mean, ‘for the people in your life?’ Who are you talking about? Your mother? Jemma-Kate?” I wasn’t clued-in on their family issues, but it piqued my interest.
“It’s none of your business. I don’t see why you should concern yourself with it, Cain,” she said and sat back. She still hadn’t softened.
Margot had always been the place between the diamond and the cliff. Either way, whether she shimmered or blackened, she remained hard. But it was a choice, not a personality trait.
“I’m your business partner,” I said. “If there’s something affecting your personal life, I need to know about it.”
“Cain, I don’t want to talk about this. Especially not tonight.” She folded her arms and looked at the music, the dancers, the tables, all over again.
This was fucked. This wasn’t what I’d planned.
I nudged my beer glass aside and rose, tugged on the bottom of my buttoned shirt. I withdrew my wallet from my pocket, drew out a couple bills and tossed them onto the table, put the wallet away again.
“What are you doing?” Margot perked up.
I held out a hand. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
Chapter 8
Margot
My heels clicked on the marble flooring in the empty lobby of the building. Above us, chandeliers, fractal in their design, shimmered, and glass walls surrounded us, some misted, others clear. This was the fanciest office space I’d ever seen.
Cain led me, his hand on the small of my back, his touch more than a guiding force now.
“What is this place?”
“You don’t know?” There was laughter in his tone.
“No, I just like asking stupid questions,” I replied, and rolled my eyes at him, smiling though. Because tonight, Cain had made me feel good. Not like I had to control his behavior, but like he was in control of everything, from the restaurant choice to this very moment.
Thinking of him this afternoon had even dictated what type of dress I’d wear.
And the way he’d handled Kelly? The woman who’d taken everything I’d known and turned it on its head? That had been an eye-opener. The envy that had unfolded in my chest the minute she’d looked at him had pinned my senses to a mental wall.
Breathe. Think. Function, for god’s sake. He’s just your friend. Your annoyance.
I pressed my lips together and released them, slowly. I breathed through my nose. “Well? Where are we?”
Cain halted in front of a set of steel doors and hit the button for the elevator. “The Foster Tower,”
he said. “My father owns this building. His masterpiece.”
“And you can come and go as you please?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m friends with all the guys on his security team.” He grinned at me, as the number on the plaque above the doors clicked downward.
“Friends?”
“I pay them well,” Cain replied. “Come on, Margot, you know I don’t have any real friends.”
“I’m hurt.”
“Is that what you want?” He turned to me, ran his palms down my bare arms. “To be my friend?”
I couldn’t answer. My tongue had basically glued itself to the roof of my mouth. Fantastic. No human being had rendered me speechless in my entire life—apart from the time my English teacher had made me dissect The Catcher in the Rye in front of the class—and Cain had done it twice in the matter of a few days.
Cain leaned in, pressed his cheek against mine. “Anything can happen,” he said.
The elevator doors slid open behind him and he drew back. I withheld a little moan of regret.
What’s gotten into you? This is Cain! The troublemaker. The guy who does whatever he wants whenever he wants. The guy who’s just broken into his father’s building.
I grabbed hold of that thought. “Why doesn’t your father want you here?”
Cain chuckled and took my hand, walked me into the elevator. “Take your pick. I base jumped off the building. I made his secretary quit. I bought everyone a bottle of champagne on my father’s birthday and drank it with them in the lunchroom. Total debauchery. None of them got fired, of course, but productivity was way down that day and the next.”
“What? That’s—” I cut off with a gasp.
The entire back of the elevator was glass, and it looked out on Chicago, on the distant Willis Tower, on the skyscrapers and the lights, the lines of traffic below.
The elevator doors closed.
Cain’s arms slipped around my waist. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
I couldn’t speak. I wasn’t afraid of heights. I was afraid of this moment. His arms around me, his body touching mine. It wasn’t only sexual. It was deeper than that, and it was all the things I didn’t need in my life.