by Amelia Wilde
Carolyn takes another turn into a narrower hallway, me close behind, nearly blinded by the sight of her ass swaying underneath that dress, and then she’s pushing a door open with all the force she can muster. We burst out onto the sidewalk right as Noah pulls up in the Bentley. Nobody’s lurking out here, and it’s a clear path to my car.
We’re almost home free.
Chapter 19
Carolyn
We’re outside my building—our building, now—when my phone starts buzzing and won’t stop.
Ace has been kissing slowly down my neck the entire time we’ve been driving and his lips on my skin are so hot and sensual that it makes my entire body hum with electricity, trembling even though his arms are wrapped relatively chastely around my waist. I’m soaked anyway and my knees keep inching apart, subtly begging for him to fuck me.
“Somebody wants you,” he murmurs into the hollow of my shoulder.
I give a sultry laugh. “Then let me out so we can go inside.”
“No—somebody really wants your attention,” he says, and I realize that my phone is vibrating nonstop in my purse.
I want to reach inside and silence it without even looking at it, but something pricks at the back of my neck. When Ace leans over to open the door and step outside, I take my phone out.
The screen is crowded with notifications, and they’re all from Rainflower Blue.
I normally don’t have updates sent to my phone. It’s too much of a risk—what if other people saw it? It’s best if nobody knows I have any connection to the website at all, although I know many of my friends are on it. Not one of them has hinted about its existence to me so far, which is something I wonder about when I’m trying to sleep at night. Do they think I’m too naive to enjoy a website like that? Too nice? Being an excellent friend is a top priority of mine—it’s half the reason I have the website in the first place—but maybe I’ve been too sweet.
My first thought is to dismiss the notifications completely. There’s something called a Magnolia Alert on the site for urgent business, rumors that can’t wait, that people want confirmed immediately, and it looks like someone has tagged a lot of posts with it, and it’s probably by accident. I’ll have to make an admin post reminding people not to abuse that tag unless it’s really urgent.
Then my brain makes sense of the text snippets. The alert function on my phone doesn’t display the entire post, but one of them stands out.
DID ACE KINGSLEY MURDER…
The rest of the notices are more of the same, and more pop up onto the screen while I watch.
My heart races in my chest, and my mind plunges directly into crisis management mode.
First, I highly doubt that this rumor is true. Ace Kingsley doesn’t seem like the type to kill a woman and then return to New York like nothing has happened. I also haven’t heard him make mention of having a wife in—well, wherever he was before he came back to the city. That’s never been part of any of the discussions I’ve heard swirling around the Swan, or on Rainflower Blue, for that matter. It’s as if he vanished off the face of the earth and then, not long ago, resurfaced in the city, having done nothing in the intervening time period.
Of course, that ‘nothing’ has been the cause of much speculation—it’s just that I’ve never heard a location confirmed.
And anyway, how would a rumor like this get started anyway, unless someone wants to smear his reputation? Murder isn’t sexy. The vast majority of the rumors I deal with on Rainflower Blue have to do with whereabouts, with cheating, with who was seen with whom, not real crimes.
No wonder traffic is spiking.
The doubts come hard on the heels of my mental dismissal of this ridiculous rumor. He did brush me off hard last Saturday morning. He was a different person when I came out of the bathroom, brusque and rude and dismissive.
Maybe….
No.
I’m not going to start suspecting people of something like murder because someone on my website doesn’t like Ace Kingsley. That has to be the explanation.
Unless….
There was that woman at the Swan.
“…what you did to her. Just tell me.”
What you did to her.
Who?
And when?
That conversation could have been about anything.
Where the hell is Ace, anyway?
He’s in front of the building, his driver by his side. Ace has his hand on the shoulder of an older woman. He shifts to the side and I see that it’s Mrs. Hensley, from two floors below me. She has an overcoat on over her nightgown and she’s clearly distressed, tears running down her face. What is she doing down here? It’s well after midnight.
Ace’s face is the picture of compassion, and that’s when I realize I’m sitting in the car like a complete asshole, staring out the window at the scene. I climb out of the car and go over to them, listening as Mrs. Hensley’s shaking voice echoes across the sidewalk.
“I just don’t know where he’s gone,” she says, one hand going up to her disheveled hair.
My heart twists in my chest.
“I’m sure we can help you find him, ma’am,” Ace says, his voice smooth and comforting. As far as I know, he has no idea who she is, but he’s stopped out here to help her.
Not something a hardened murderer would do, right?
“I just don’t know.” Her voice is pained.
Mrs. Hensley must have woken in the night and been caught up in one of her moments. I’ve run into her in the elevator more than once, a little confused but not unhappy. This is different.
“Mrs. Hensley?” I say, stepping up to Ace’s side. “My name is Carolyn Banks. I live a couple of floors above you. Do you remember me?”
She scans my face, and then her expression relaxes. “Oh, Carolyn. Of course. How—how are you?” Another flash of confusion. “It’s quite late,” she says, glancing down at her overcoat and nightgown combo. “It’s very late.”
“You’re right, Mrs. Hensley.” I step forward and link my arm in hers. “Are you feeling all right? Is there anyone you’d like me to call?” I know she has one son in the city and a daughter on the west coast. Somewhere, I have the son’s number written down—she gave it to me forever ago, thinking she’d set us up. He should know about this, if not in the middle of the night.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I think I’d like to go back to bed.”
“Not a problem at all.” She lives on the third floor. I mouth “I’m sorry” at Ace, and he shakes his head, raising his hands slightly. “Tomorrow” he mouths back, and I give him a smile.
In the elevator with Mrs. Hensley, a strange tiredness descends on my shoulders. I was going to sneak up to the penthouse and knock on Ace’s door once Mrs. Hensley was safe in her apartment, but my eyes are getting heavier by the second, and my heart is in two places at once.
Afraid that the rumors might be true.
And warmed through by the sight of Ace Kingsley stopping everything to help a distraught old woman.
I’m falling…despite the rumors.
Chapter 20
Ace
I toss and turn all night, wishing Carolyn was here with me.
Should I go down to her door and knock softly until she answers?
No.
She seemed to take my words as a promise, although there was a flash of some expression in her eyes that I couldn’t quite place.
That poor woman outside our building.
Noah hadn’t opened the door for me when we pulled up, and it made perfect sense when I saw her standing outside the building, pacing the sidewalk. Where was the doorman? He wasn’t at his usual post behind the podium. No telling how long the woman had been out there. It wasn’t very cold for the middle of the night in September, but she didn’t seem to care about the temperature, only locating her husband.
It reminded me of seeing my grandmother like that, her mind prematurely deteriorating before she even reached her seventies.
On the way up to the penthouse in the empty elevator, my jaw clenched. I wanted Carolyn with me, not escorting an old woman back to her apartment. I might have insisted on her coming up afterward, as soon as she was done, only….
There’s something about her that splits me in two.
She makes me feel like the same Ace Kingsley who left for Italy two years ago—cocky, self-assured, and totally unafraid to go after and take the things I wanted. But she also taps into the soft-hearted part of me that came out of hiding in Europe, with Elisa.
What would Elisa think about all this?
For the first time since arriving back in New York City, I think of her without a twisted shock of pain. It’s still there, but dull, farther off, soothed by the fact that Carolyn is nearby. If I really wanted to, I could go down to her apartment right now and see her, assuming she’s there, and not out doing something on what looks from my penthouse windows like a gorgeous Saturday morning.
Nothing. She wouldn’t think anything because she’s dead.
My throat tightens.
It’s a mistake, I know it is, but Carolyn is drawing me to her in a way I can’t ignore. The way she put off sex—sex with me—to help that woman get back to her apartment safely….
That’s the kind of woman I want to be with.
Even if it means disaster.
My coffee has gone cold and I’m staring out at the New York City skyline from the windows surrounding the breakfast nook in the penthouse when there’s a knock at the door.
Who the hell…?
When I open the door, a shiver of sheer pleasure runs down my spine.
It’s Carolyn, looking absolutely fucking gorgeous in a deep red wrap dress, her hair piled on top of her head, cheeks pink.
“Hi.”
“Can I come in?”
I step back to let her into the apartment, the smile already spreading across my face.
“How’s Mrs….” The name of the woman completely escapes me.
“Hensley? She’s doing all right. I called her son this morning, and he’s coming over to visit her.” Carolyn’s forehead crinkles with concern. “Poor lady. I’ve never seen her like that before.”
“It’s too bad.”
Carolyn looks up at me as I close and lock the door behind us. “I didn’t come here to talk about Mrs. Hensley.”
“Oh, really?” I feign the slightest hint of innocence, but I step toward her all the same, and she bites her lip.
“No.”
“Then what did—”
Before I can get the words out of my mouth, she’s crashing into me, her lips hard against mine. It seems like the most natural thing in the entire goddamn world when she jumps up and wraps her legs around me, her arms sliding around my neck, her firm ass balanced in my hands.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she says between kisses, “but—”
“That can wait,” I growl before pressing my lips to the smooth skin of her neck. Without thinking about it, I’ve walked us to the bedroom, but I let her kiss me for another full minute at least, my cock standing out hard against the fabric of my jeans, before I lay her on her back on the bed and prop myself up over her on my elbows.
Her eyes are dark and glittering, and I take the time to explore her mouth with my tongue before I lean down and untie the belt of the wrap dress with my teeth, tugging it until the knot comes loose and then finishing the job with my hands.
Underneath the dress she’s wearing a black bra and panty set that takes my fucking breath away. It has her breasts cupped to perfection, and my hands ache with the need to be where that scrap of lacy fabric is, so I sit her upright, kissing her harder, faster, while I undo the bra and slide the straps down her arms before tossing it to the floor next to the bed.
The panties are next.
I spread her out on the comforter, head tipped back, eyes closed, while I hook my fingers into the waistband of the panties and tug them down. She points her toes delicately when I reach her feet, and I grab one in one hand and plant a kiss on one of her slim ankles.
Perfection.
Then I edge her legs apart, anticipating the damp sweetness waiting for me.
“You wanted to talk about something?”
I take the opportunity to kiss her ankle again, then a little higher. Her breath hitches in her chest.
She’s panting. “I thought you said….”
I kiss another inch higher, a little hotter, a little harder, then another inch.
“I’ll tell you whatever it is you want to know,” I say, kissing another tantalizing inch closer to her pussy. She tilts her hips and spreads her legs apart a little more, her ankle trembling in my grip. “Right after I fuck you.”
Carolyn whispers something I can’t make out.
“What was that, you sexy thing?”
“Please.”
Chapter 21
Carolyn
Ace makes me come so hard, and so many times, that when we’re finally finished, I turn over on my side, lay my cheek against the cool pillowcase on his bed, and fall asleep.
When I wake up, I can’t tell if it’s been minutes or hours, and for a moment all I can feel is a sharp jolt of adrenaline running through all of my veins, straight to my fingertips.
What time is it? I wanted to talk to him. I have to talk to him….
Ace stirs in the bed next to me, his eyelids fluttering. When he sees me, his smile is bright enough to light up the entire planet, and my heart beats hard in my chest.
He could be a murderer, and my heart is going crazy for him.
“Hey.” He stretches his arms above his head, his hard biceps on full display. “Did we sleep the day away?” Ace closes his eyes again, a contented smile on his face.
I squint at the floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of the bedroom, trying to determine the time by the quality of the light. “I don’t think so.”
“Then we’ve still got time.” Ace wraps one arm around my waist and pulls me back down next to him. The air in his apartment has cooled—he must still be running the air conditioning, despite the fall temperatures creeping a little lower each day—and it feels unbelievable for my smooth bare skin to slide down under his soft sheets.
We lay in silence for a few minutes, nothing but the sound of our breathing evident in the room, and I think Ace might have fallen asleep again.
Then he says, “I shouldn’t be doing this with you, but I can’t help it.”
“Why not?”
“You’re too gorgeous and perfect.”
I laugh softly. “Why shouldn’t you be doing it?”
His arm around my waist tenses, but he presses his lips to the back of my neck, and heat cascades down from where he’s kissing me all the way to my toes.
“I just shouldn’t.”
I sigh a little. “That’s not really an answer.”
He takes in a deep breath, and I feel his chest press against my back. I wait for the next breath, and the next. I could keep waiting for breaths for the rest of my life, lying just like this, and be perfectly happy.
Well—eventually I’d want to roll over and do something else to his sexy, muscled body. But right now….
My heart beats a little harder. I’m careening from utter contentment to a strange fluttering in my chest that makes the back of my neck feel cold even with Ace’s hot breath, his soft lips, against it. My shiver prompts him to answer.
“This kind of….” His voice trails off, and for a split second I think he might say “love.” “This kind of infatuation always ends in heartbreak.” Ace’s voice is a little odd as he says this, not curled so tightly into his happiness. Does he really believe what he’s saying?
I turn in his arms so I can look into his eyes, but they’re still closed, so I settle for running a finger down the sharp line of his jaw. “Infatuation?” I say softly.
I don’t want him to tell me that he’s in love with me. I don’t want to tell him that I’m in love with him. That’s not what I’m going fo
r, even if it’s—even if it might be true, on some level.
Ace opens his eyes and looks into mine, and I’m swept right up into them, for the first time noticing a green ring like lightning around his pupils.
“You’re not obsessed with me?” He flashes a half-smile that sends electricity running through my fingertips.
I suck in a breath. “A little bit.”
“But?”
“But it’s…it’s….”
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
This is as close as I’m going to come to admitting my feelings for him right now, because here it comes—another wave of unease. If this is going to grow any deeper, I need to know what the hell is going on with him. I’m not sure I’m going to like what I find out
Ace doesn’t agree with me out loud, but he does lean in and kiss me, softly, slowly, unlike any other kiss we’ve shared before. When he pulls back, I ask the first question out of the many that are roiling in my mind.
“Where did you go, Ace?”
He raises one eyebrow. “I’m still right here.”
“I mean, before you were here. Before you…came back to New York City.”
His expression goes a little harder. I feel sick. I don’t want to have this conversation, but I have to. Who the hell knows? This could be the end of it all, right now, if he reacts the way he did last Saturday. One week ago. How can I possibly feel so intense about things after one week?
Because it’s him, says the voice in the back of my mind.
“I was in Italy.”
“Italy?”
“Yes.”
Italy is not one of the places that’s been mentioned on Rainflower Blue. People have suggested everywhere from Seattle to the Middle East, but never Italy.
“Why were you there?”
I keep my tone soothing and soft, not wanting to put the pressure on but wanting him to answer me so we can leave this charged, uncomfortable moment behind.
I have one hand just above Ace’s hip, on the hard muscles of his waist, and I feel his body tense.