“Then what was that, Kace?”
“I don’t know what the hell that was, but I won’t have her at the future shows. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t invite that.”
“As you say about Alexander wanting me: she wants to fuck you.”
“I’ve never heard you say that word.”
“Tequila and her is a bad combination. It felt like there was more to that than her wanting you. The words she sang.”
“Maybe she wants me.”
“Maybe, Kace?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter. You matter.”
“I’m still really upset right now, Kace. She embarrassed me. And I felt like—I felt bad and—”
He kisses me, drugs me with his tongue and taste, and all I can do is what I always do: melt for him. It’s terrifying. It’s wonderful. It’s insanity, but it always feels so good. “I want you,” he says, when our lips part. “Just you. I don’t want you with fucking Alexander or anyone else. We are together now. Say it.”
“You want—”
“Us. Exclusive. You and me, baby. I want you with me in California. I want you with me in Paris for Christmas. I want you with me. Say it. We’re together.”
All the reasons I’ve ever had to say no to this man become yes in that moment. “We’re together.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Kace and I don’t stay at the party.
Dan and Savage drive us back to the hotel and the minute we’re in the room, we’re all over each other. We end up in the bed, naked, a new intimacy between us, tenderness, passion, lust, friendship—it’s all there. We sleep late Sunday and plan to find a fun lunch spot. We’re actually eating tacos on an outdoor patio when Kace brings up Gio. “Savage arranged to have his boss Blake Walker meet with us Tuesday in New York. It’s the soonest he could involve Blake and Blake is a world class hacker. The kind of man that finds men wherever they may be hiding. Not that Gio is hiding. I know the delay sucks, but—”
“Thank you, Kace.”
“I would have helped sooner, but I didn’t realize until last night how worried you were. And Monday gives you time to pull together anything you think might help Walker find him.”
“Yes. Yes, that works.” What also works, I think, is the time this gives me to decide what to tell everyone, including Kace. I’ve lied to him about who I am, but I think he’s the kind of reasonable man who will understand why. For now, today, I just want to enjoy Texas with him. And so I do. We do. It’s a wonderful day and we don’t board the private flight home until nearly seven, which will put us home at midnight.
We sleep most of the flight and when we land, we load up in his car and head to his apartment. Tomorrow, I’ll go home. Not tonight. Tonight, I sleep in his bed, his real bed, with him.
Come Monday morning, I wake to Kace wrapped around me, and a call from Alexander that I decline, but it drives home a bit of reality. I have to attend to my customers. I have to face the real world of bills and demands. I have to decide if I will skip my mortgage to hire a private investigator. All that is huge, but for a little longer, I linger in the aftermath of the fabulous weekend.
Kace and I sit at the kitchen island, him in pajama bottoms and a delicious sexy stubble on his jaw, me in a robe, with my hair all over the place, eating egg whites he’s made for us, and drinking coffee. Alas though, the inevitable seeps into the air. “I need to get home,” I finally say.
“We’ll go, pack some things, and come back here.”
“I need to do some work and be ready for the meeting with Blake and Savage. And I have clients to attend to.”
“Then we’ll stay there.”
“No,” I say quickly. “My place is nothing like your place, Kace.”
“I’d love to see your store and the apartments you and Gio designed.”
I sip my coffee and think of Kace in my tiny bed. I reject the idea. I do not reject the reverse: me in his bed. “I can come back here, but I need a few hours to get some work done. I need to deal with my customer that Alexander is trying to freeze out for sure. I may need to go see him.”
“And do what with Alexander?” There is a sharp quality to his voice I imagine I have when Kiki comes up.
“I’ll handle him,” I promise.
“How?” he presses.
“I’ll decline Alexander’s offer. If I’m smart and lucky, I’ll get my client to match his retainer. Then I have to actually find him the wines he wants.”
“Chris’s family owns a winery and Sara does a bit of what you do, but for art. She finds art people really want to own. It seems like there could be some magic there. We could talk to them when we’re in San Fran for the shows.”
“I haven’t said I’m going,” I point out.
“I just gave you incentives to come. Did it work?”
I soften for this man oh so easily. “You are my incentive, Kace.”
His eyes light with my reply. I have pleased him in the way he often pleases me. “Kiki called to apologize,” he says, and when I obviously stiffen, he adds, “I told her she won’t be joining us for the remainder of the shows.”
My gut knots. “Now I feel bad. Sort of. Okay, I do. I don’t want her to lose her job.”
“It was already ending,” he says. “And I paid her and the entire crew a healthy sign-off bonus.” He glances at his watch and then back at me. “I need to go to the bank and handle a business transaction. Why don’t we shower, and I’ll be ready way before you, so I’ll go do that while you get ready and then we’ll grab a bite on our way to your place?”
“That sounds perfect.”
A half hour later, I’m in the three-hundred-dollar robe Kace bought me at his insistence and he’s fully dressed in faded jeans and a snug tan T-shirt that hugs his muscles in all kinds of perfect ways. He leans on the counter I’m now sitting in front of on a vanity chair. “You do remember I have two more Stradivarius violins for your inspection, right?”
“I do,” I say. “I can’t wait to see them.”
“Last room at the end of the hallway. I’ll unlock the vault on my way out. Feel free to take a peek if I’m slow getting back.”
My eyes go wide and I twist to face him. “I won’t dare touch them. You know that. I need you to do that.”
“Touch me. I’ll touch them. That works. But you can give them a quick look and you know you want to. The paperwork for the auctions when I bought them both are in the display case. Be back soon.” He winks and disappears.
I laugh at his touch me comment and then quickly finish my makeup before dressing in faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of Guess sneakers. Finally, eagerly, I head down the hallway and walk into an incredible room, surrounded by windows and water with Kace’s awards lining one wall. It’s a simple room that is not simple, with several stools and music stands in the center of the space. There is also a desk in one cut out nook of an area.
The massive vault is next to the desk and I head in that direction. Nervous and excited I enter the open door to find the violins sitting on top of a display table, each on a stand. I walk toward them and immediately know neither were my father’s. This comes as a relief that I can’t quite name. I mean, Kace could have bought my father’s instruments at an auction if they hit the market. It just feels better that he didn’t.
I pull my phone from my pocket where I’ve placed it, and with my flashlight, inspect the violins. One is a darker wood than the other, and the woodwork is magnificent. I’m not surprised to find the watermark remarkably quickly. My second Stradivarius in days. I’m walking on that water outside the windows. I move on to the second instrument, but find no obvious mark, and I’m not lifting the instrument. Not without Kace present.
I pull out the drawer to read the paperwork, and catch my hand on a jutted piece of wood. I yank back with a yelp as I slice my palm wide open. I’m gushing blood. Turning away from the violins that I do not want to damage, I hurry t
o the desk and sit down, looking for a tissue. I end up holding a piece of paper over the cut, to stop it from dripping on the desk. I open drawers to no avail, and then freeze when I find a folder that reads Aria and Gio Stradivari.
My real name. Gio’s real name. There’s also a napkin, which I grab and wrap around my hand. I’m shaking now. I’m shaking because there is no way Kace hasn’t betrayed me. He knows who I am. He must have always known.
I grab the folder, and bleed on it and I don’t even care. I probably need stitches but I don’t care about that, either. I open the folder and suck in air as I find a full bio of my family and written speculation that the family is now in New York City. And we are. And he knew. I’m suddenly remembering how Kace seemed to assume I’d been to Italy in the past. He didn’t assume. He knew I was born there. I shut the folder and stand up. He’s after the formula to make the Stradivarius. He seduced me to get it and I let it happen. Anger and pain collide, and I’m all but running through the music room. I enter the bathroom and grab my purse because I just need something with me that feels like mine. And it has my cards and keys in it. I need to be home. I need to be there now.
I have to get out of here before he gets back. I run downstairs to the front door and I stare at the folder in my hand. I could take it, but why? I know all about my family. I was falling in love with Kace. I was falling hard. I am such an idiot. I fling the damn folder across the room and papers fly everywhere. If he wants to know why I’m gone, now he knows. Because I know what a fraud I’ve been sleeping with. I open the door and exit, skipping the elevator, rushing to the stairs and starting the long walk down, making darn sure I don’t run into Kace August. Not now, not ever again.
The End…FOR NOW
***
Readers,
As always, I hope you’ll forgive me for the cliffhanger! Hopefully, by now, you know I’m quite fond of them. The good news is I’m hard at work with books two and three in the Brilliance Trilogy, and you won’t have long to wait for the remaining installments of Kace and Aria’s story!
Book two, A WICKED SONG, is out on August 18th, and book three, A SINFUL ENCORE, is out on September 22nd! You can pre-order both books now!
https://www.lisareneejones.com/brilliance-trilogy.html
***
Did you enjoy Mark and Crystal & Chris and Sara? You can read both couples’ story in my INSIDE OUT series which is in development for TV/movies! All of the books are available now, so no need to wait it out.
HERE’S A SEXY MINI EXCERPT FROM BOOK ONE OF THE INSIDE OUT SERIES, IF I WERE YOU
“Hands over your head,” he orders, pressing my palms to the glass above me, his body shadowing mine. “Stay like that.”
My pulse jumps wildly and adrenaline surges. I’ve been ordered around during sex, but in a clinical, bend over and give me what I want kind of way I tried to convince myself was hot. It wasn’t. I hated every second, every instance, and I’d endured it. This is different though, erotic in a way I’ve never experienced, enticingly full of promise. My body is sensitized, pulsing with arousal. I am hot where Chris is touching me and cold where he isn’t.
When he seems satisfied I’ll comply with his orders, Chris slowly caresses a path down my arms, and then up and down my sides, brushing the curves of my breasts. He’s in no hurry, but I am. I am literally quivering by the time his hands cover my breasts, welcoming the way he squeezes them roughly, before tugging on my nipples. I gasp with the pinching sensation he repeats over and over, creating waves of pleasure verging on pain, and the music is fading away, and so is the past. There is pleasure in pain. The words come back to me, and this time they resonate.
His hands are suddenly gone, and I pant in desperation, trying to pull them back.
Chris captures my hands and forces them back to the glass above me, his breath warm by my ear, his hard body framing mine. “Move them again and I’ll stop what I’m doing, no matter how good it might feel.”
I quiver inside at the erotic command, surprised again by how enticed I am by this game we are playing. “Just remember,” I warn, still panting, still burning for his touch. “Payback is Hell.”
His teeth scrape my shoulder. “Looking forward to it, baby,” he rasps. “More than you can possibly know.”
https://www.lisareneejones.com/the-inside-out-series.html
***
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EXCERPT FROM
THE SAVAGE TRILOGY
He’s here.
Rick is standing right in front of me, bigger than life, and so damn him, in that him kind of way that I couldn’t explain if I tried. He steps closer and I drop my bag on the counter. He will hurt me again, I remind myself, but like that first night, I don’t seem to care.
I step toward him, but he’s already there, already here, right here with me. I can’t even believe it’s true. He folds me close, his big, hard body absorbing mine. His fingers tangle in my hair, his lips slanting over my lips. And then he’s kissing me, kissing me with the intensity of a man who can’t breathe without me. And I can’t breathe without him. I haven’t drawn a real breath since he sent me that letter.
My arms slide under his tuxedo jacket, wrapping his body, muscles flexing under my touch. The heat of his body burning into mine, sunshine warming the ice in my heart he created when he left. And that’s what scares me. Just this quickly, I’m consumed by him, the princess and the warrior, as he used to call us. My man. My hero. And those are dangerous things for me to feel, so very dangerous. Because they’re not real. He showed me that they aren’t real.
“This means nothing,” I say, tearing my mouth from his, my hand planting on the hard wall of his chest. “This is sex. Just sex. This changes nothing.”
“Baby, we were never just sex.”
“We are not the us of the past,” I say, grabbing his lapel. “I just need—you owe me this. You owe me a proper—”
“Everything,” he says. “In ways you don’t understand, but, baby, you will. I promise you, you will.”
I don’t try to understand that statement and I really don’t get the chance. His mouth is back on my mouth.
The very idea of forever with this man is one part perfect, another part absolute pain. Because there is no forever with this man. But he doesn’t give me time to object to a fantasy I’ll never own, that I’m not sure I want to try and own again. I don’t need forever. I need right now. I need him. I sink back into the kiss and he’s ravenous. Claiming me. Taking me. Kissing the hell out of me and God, I love it. God, I need it. I need him.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SAVAGE TRILOGY HERE:
https://www.lisareneejones.com/savage-trilogy.html
ALSO BY LISA RENEE JONES
THE INSIDE OUT SERIES
If I Were You
Being Me
Revealing Us
His Secrets*
Rebecca’s Lost Journals
The Master Undone*
My Hunger*
No In Between
My Control*
I Belong to You
All of Me*
THE SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN
Escaping Reality
Infinite Possibilities
Forsaken
Unbroken*
CARELESS WHISPERS
Denial
Demand
Surrender
WHITE LIES
Provocative
Shameless
TALL, DARK & DEADLY
Hot Secrets
Dangerous Secrets
Beneath the Secrets
WALKER SECURITY
Deep Under
Pulled Under
Falling Under
/>
LILAH LOVE
Murder Notes
Murder Girl
Love Me Dead
Love Kills
DIRTY RICH
Dirty Rich One Night Stand
Dirty Rich Cinderella Story
Dirty Rich Obsession
Dirty Rich Betrayal
Dirty Rich Cinderella Story: Ever After
Dirty Rich One Night Stand: Two Years Later
Dirty Rich Obsession: All Mine
Dirty Rich Secrets
Dirty Rich Betrayal: Love Me Forever
THE FILTHY TRILOGY
The Bastard
The Princess
The Empire
THE NAKED TRILOGY
One Man
One Woman
Two Together
THE SAVAGE TRILOGY
Savage Hunger
Savage Burn
Savage Love
THE BRILLIANCE TRILOGY
A Reckless Note
A Wicked Song (Aug. 2020)
A Sinful Encore (Sept. 2020)
*eBook only
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed INSIDE OUT series.
In addition to the success of Lisa’s INSIDE OUT series, she has published many successful titles. The TALL, DARK AND DEADLY series and THE SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN series, both spent several months on a combination of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling lists. Lisa is also the author of the bestselling the bestselling DIRTY MONEY and WHITE LIES series. And will be publishing the first book in her Lilah Love suspense series with Amazon Publishing in March 2018.
A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy Book 1) Page 21