by Bromberg, K.
“I do, yes.”
“How exactly did she insult him?”
“Let’s just say there was some laughter and then some mention of a minimal number of inches.”
“Ouch!” He hisses the word as he bites back a chuckle. “I’m assuming we’re talking about—”
“Yes. We’re talking about those inches. Or lack thereof.”
“Poor bastard.”
“True. But now I get to deal with the fallout.”
“I’m sorry. So I can’t see you, then?” His voice deepens when he asks, and I’m so tempted to call in sick to work but know that I can’t. I’m about to make a big payment on my debt and need to have the hours on my timecard in case Priscilla questions it. I’m already pushing the envelope with her thinking I make tips that large, so remaining on the down low is paramount.
“First my shift at Apropos and then dealing with my girl. I have no idea when I’ll be done or if I’ll be anything close to coherent with how tired I already am.”
“Mmm.” I can all but hear his disappointment in his murmur.
I’d rather be with you too. But I don’t say the words. I don’t let him know how much I want to see him.
“So what you’re saying is that I need to rent out a pod at Apropos to see my girl, then?”
“Don’t be silly. Save your money.” But a smile spreads on my lips at the thought.
“I could do a whole lot of fun things to you in that pod. Just you and me and the loud music and your short skirt.”
“Is that so?” I shift in my chair to abate the need he stoked last week with his kissing but no touching that he hasn’t fulfilled yet. “Too bad they don’t have a lock on the door.”
“The risk of getting caught is part of the thrill.”
“The risk of getting caught and fired is more of a cold shower in my book,” I respond.
“So all those men in the club get to see you tonight and I don’t? Can I admit I hate that about your jobs? The men who look at you and want you and see everything you’re not.”
“That means you’re the one who looks at me and sees everything I am.”
“True . . . but I still don’t like it.”
“A jealous Ryker isn’t one I’ve seen before.”
“Baby, I’m jealous of any man who gets to be with you when I don’t.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” And I love it. The way it makes me feel. The burn it leaves in my chest. The butterflies it prompts in my belly.
“Have you heard from Priscilla?”
“I have. Yes. I’m sorry, I thought I texted you that I had.”
“You’re just too busy for me anymore.” The playful tone in his voice makes me want to be sitting across the table from him, watching his smile spread across his lips and light up his eyes.
“Too many men, too little time.”
“Better not be.” He laughs. “What did good ol’ prissy Priscilla say? I take it everything is cleared up and you’ll be able to see Lucy soon?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Not really. She wasn’t exactly warm, so I’m sure I didn’t do myself any favors in the likability department, but—”
“I’m surprised she had the gall to call you. I’d figure her for the passive-aggressive, nonconfrontational email type,” he says with irritation lacing his voice. I may have gone to him crying and looking for someone to comfort me, but I was surprised how angry he was on my behalf. “You should have let me make some phone calls, Vaughn.”
“For what? So she can think that I need someone else to step in and fight my battles for me?”
I can picture the look on his face right now. The same one he gave me when I told him I could handle this myself. That it was handled. And that I was just waiting to see what she was going to do about it.
“It’s okay to ask for help,” he murmurs.
“Just like it’s okay to be self-sufficient.”
“Screw her,” he mutters.
“I need her, though.”
“And I need you.”
“Ah, nice segue.”
“You noticed?”
“Pretty hard not to.”
“So tonight? Can I see you?” he asks again.
“I told you—I have work.”
“After, then?”
“I told you”—I laugh—“I have to meet a potential client, and you have an early court date tomorrow.”
“Are you telling me no, Vaughn?” he teases and reminds me of how stubborn he can be.
“I’m telling you I have to go now,” I say and hang up with a smile on my lips.
My cell rings again instantly. I laugh when I see Ryker’s name again.
“This is Vee. Can I help you?” I answer like I always do my Wicked Ways number.
“Yes, I’m having trouble with one of your girls, and I’d like to file a report.”
“A report? Is that so?” I ask, my heart beating faster at the sound of his voice, even though I just heard it.
“Mmm-hmm. She’s gorgeous and stubborn and works too damn much, but I admire her for it more than she’ll ever know.”
“Well, I’m sure she’d be flattered to hear that, but it can’t make the girl she has to deal with, the day job she has to attend, or the nervous Nellie client she has to meet with—any of those three things—go away. It’s an awful lot to pack into one night and then have enough energy to give you the proper attention you deserve.”
“Something’s standing at attention all right,” he jokes, and before I say anything, he continues. “I hate that she has to work a day job. A night job. A job that doesn’t suit her.”
“I’m sure she does, too, because she’d rather be with you.”
“And I hate that she has to meet with random men at all hours of the night. It’s not safe.”
“I’m at the club. It’s safer than most places.”
“But meeting the man after . . . I don’t like that in the least.”
“Becoming overprotective, are we?” I ask, all the while secretly loving that someone is. That someone cares. “Besides, you know this person because you referred him to her back in the days when you were trying to apologize by referral.”
“Can’t blame a man for trying.”
“I’m not.” I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. “But like I said, you referred him my way, so I’m pretty sure he’s safe.”
“Who is it?” he asks.
“You know I can’t answer that,” I say with a sigh.
“Why are you meeting him so late? What time do you get off?”
“He’s nervous and doesn’t want anyone to see us together. He’s afraid I’m an undercover cop, I think.”
“The irony.”
“I know, right?”
Silence falls for a beat before he carries on. “I still don’t like it that you have to meet with men on your own.”
“I can take care of myself just fine.” I say the words but realize now that he’s in my life, I hate these meetings with clients more and more with each passing day. The thrill is gone. The risk I’m taking with each and every one is more and more evident.
“Maybe I want to take care of you instead.”
I let the silence float on the line as his words take root and then cause a panic to settle in. The fear of needing him—of wanting to need him—is so new and foreign that it causes my palms to sweat and words to falter.
“Let me pick you up after work and bring you home,” he finally says to break the silence that’s not hard to miss.
“I’ll text you during my shift. I’m not sure what time I’ll be off. There’s a huge private party tonight that might run long. If it’s not too late, then we’ll figure it out.”
“Don’t blow me off, Vaughn.”
“Good night, Ryker.”
And when I end the call, I sit and stare out the window of my office for a minute, my ears hearing the neighborhood boys playing their usual game of baseball but not rea
lly listening to them. My attention is pulled to the picture of Samantha and me on the bookshelf to my left. It’s crooked in its spot; I must have knocked it askew when I came in last night to shuffle through my desk for my paperwork. I reach out and straighten it, the ache in my chest over missing her still as prevalent as the day I found out she was gone.
I wonder what the sober her would say about all of this. Wicked Ways. Ryker Lockhart. The senator. Would she be proud of me for fighting so hard to keep the only piece of her I have left—Lucy? Would she like Ryker, or would she tell me to walk away without looking back?
With a shake of my head to clear the questions I’ll never get answers to, I glance at my stack of college applications on the opposite corner of my desk.
Hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention when I see Birmingham University’s application on top when I swear Stony Brook was there last night.
I glance around my office in an unexpected panic, suddenly creeped out that someone has been here snooping through my things. The crooked photo, the reshuffled college applications to get my teaching credential—what else is off other than just the general feeling that is disturbing me?
I wouldn’t put it past Carter to break into my house to try to find the call log.
“You’re losing your mind, Vaughn,” I mutter into the empty room, convincing myself that I was so tired last night when I was working that I easily could have moved the stuff.
I probably switched the order when I was double-checking all the information I entered on the applications to make sure I didn’t make any errors.
College. A teaching degree.
I shake my head. The possibility is a little more real now that I’m about to submit my applications. I wonder what a normal life would be like for me? What does that feel like? What is it like to be safe and cared for by someone other than my mom and Samantha?
Maybe I want to take care of you instead.
It’s Ryker’s words again in my head. It’s the tone in which he said it that wraps around my heart—sincere, caring, proud.
This is real, Vaughn. Men like Ryker don’t say shit like that unless they mean it.
He’s already gotten the sex, so there’s no need to make promises and say words he doesn’t mean to get you into bed when you’re already there willingly.
The big question is, Why is this notion causing me such panic? Didn’t I already know there’s so much more between us? Isn’t this why I was so upset about the Hamptons and everything after? Or was I just waiting for it to fall to shit? And when it didn’t, I was subconsciously thinking I’d self-sabotage it so it wouldn’t work.
Because I don’t deserve this. A man who wants to take care of me. Not that I’d let him—not in a million years, because that would mean my independence would be tied to reins—but because this is so different and new, and it scares the shit out of me.
But sometimes good things come by conquering your fears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ryker
The club is loud and crowded and the last fucking place I want to be right now after my phone call with Chance. The Dillinger family is at a wedding overseas and won’t be back for the next ten days.
I should go to the gym and work off this rage I feel. At Vaughn’s uncle. At Carter Preston. At the life Vaughn had to live and the secrets she’s had to keep.
So many things still run through my head from my meeting with Stuart. So many what-ifs. So many need-to-knows.
I should go and punch the heavy bag and spar until my arms and legs turn to Jell-O, but hell if I can stay away from the one person who owns my mind tonight: Vaughn.
But when it comes down to it, none of it fucking matters other than . . . I miss her.
“Hey, man,” I say to the bartender when I walk up. He’s tall, with darker skin and a smile that I’m sure earns him legs propped on his shoulders more often than not.
He lifts his chin to me. “What’ll you have?”
I peer at the bottles on the wall behind him. “Gin and tonic. And Vaughn Sanders.”
“I can help you with the first. Not my place to help you with the second.” He gives a laugh, but his eyes fire off a warning that I kind of fucking like, kind of fucking hate. She’s mine to look after, not his.
“Good answer.”
He slides a drink across the bar top to me. “You the prick who keeps hurting her?”
I stare at him as the couple beside us turn their attention our way. The music is loud, but our voices are louder.
“Guilty as charged.”
He eyes me a bit closer, takes in my watch and the quality of my shirt, before pursing his lips and nodding as if he now believes me.
“You here to cause trouble?”
“Nope. Just here to see her. It’s been a long week, a lot of hours, and”—I shrug—“she’s who I want to end my night with.”
He licks his bottom lip and holds up a finger when a waitress calls his name. I glance her way, and it’s the woman who walked out with Vaughn the other night.
“Hey. Hi,” she says when she sees me. “What are you doing here? Oh. Vaughn. Right. Sorry. I’m lame,” she says in a breathless and broken sentence as her cheeks flush some.
“You know him, Mel?” the bartender asks.
She nods. “Yeah, he belongs to Vaughn.”
The phrase makes me smile against the rim of my glass as I take a sip and meet the eyes of the bartender. I raise my eyebrows as if to say, See?
“She’s up in Pod Two. There’s a private party up there. If you catch her now, you might get a second with her away from customers.” He points to the stairs at the left of the bar.
“Thanks, man.”
I head up the stairs at a jog, following the signs for each pod until I come to two. When I walk in, the beat of the song has slowed down some, and the lights darken to go with it.
And there she is.
Fuck.
I take in the thigh-high stockings with the seam up the back and the band of lace at the top that hits just below the hem of her skirt, the sky-high black heels, and her hair piled on top of her head with a few pieces falling down onto her bare shoulders.
How is it possible to miss someone as if you’ve never had her before, and yet you already know exactly how she tastes and what the curve of her neck smells like?
She laughs at something one of the four men in front of her says, and fuck if I don’t roll my shoulders at the sight.
All of them want her.
I can see them vying for her attention. I know they’re already imagining what she’d be like in bed.
Fucking pricks.
She says something and they all laugh, one of them saying loudly, “Come back soon, sweetheart.”
Asshole.
“Vaughn.” I bark her name out across the space, and her head whips my way. Her smile is automatic, but her eyes are confused as she walks toward me. All the men at her back size me up.
“What are you—”
And I don’t care that she’s at work or that I’m a man who doesn’t fucking beg, because the minute she’s within range, my lips are on hers.
She’s startled at first. Then resists momentarily as she remembers where she is and what she’s supposed to be doing. But I slip my tongue between her lips and take just a sliver of what I want from her. A tiny sliver at that.
And just when I think she’s going to give in and let me pull the clip from her hair so I can fist my hand in it and take even more, her palms are pressing against my chest until they break our kiss.
Her breath is ragged, her lips parted, her eyes firing with anger. “What are you doing?”
“Letting everyone know you’re mine.”
She lifts her chin ever so slightly, almost as if to say she isn’t . . . and that lights my temper.
Especially when she drags me from the pod. She doesn’t even touch me either, but the look she levels me with has me following without a word.
And I’m not sure what pisses
me off more—the fact she fought my kiss in front of those assholes or that I’m following her without a word.
She stalks her ass down the hallway, and the minute we turn into the next pod that’s empty, her hands are fisted in my shirt, and her lips crash into mine the same time as my back hits the wall.
Her kiss is anger and hunger and irrationality and desperation all combined into one addictive action that drags me under and grabs hold of every ounce of my testosterone.
The heat of her body. The possession of her kiss. The ownership in her touch.
I’m not a man to follow a woman’s lead, but hell, if this is where it ends, I just might follow a bit more often.
And just as thoughts of sliding my fingers up the hem of that skirt to dip inside her wetness begin to own my mind, she pushes against me and tears her mouth from mine.
“Don’t you ever walk into my work and do that to me again.”
Her lips crash back against mine.
“You don’t own me, Lockhart.”
A duel between our tongues.
“They wanted you,” I manage as I grab her ass and squeeze, prompting her to lift her face up so she’s forced to meet my gaze. Her lids are heavy with arousal, her lips swollen, her eyes filled with violent desire.
“A lot of men want me.” The dig of her fingernails. “Just like a lot of women want you.”
She sucks on my tongue, and it causes every goddamn part of me to stand at attention.
“I don’t like it.”
A nip of my lip that has me swearing at the sting.
“Tough.”
“You’re mine,” I say and pull her into me so I can grind against her.
“I’m no one’s.”
“Like hell you aren’t, and now they know it.”
And this time . . . this time, I take charge.
I’m being completely irrational. She’s at work, and I’m dying to fuck her . . . but hell if I care.
Some things can’t wait.
Some things are a necessity. Like air and water and food and Vaughn.
She wants a fight?
I’ll give her a goddamn fight.
But not with words. No. Those are weapons and something I probably can’t win with when it comes to her.