“You can’t give me orders,” he replied, still staring at that table like it was his deliverance.
“And yet I just did.” Lifting an eyebrow, I waited.
“Fine. I’ll go. I’ll sit. I’ll watch your every move . . . and should one of your every moves lead you to the edge of the dance floor with that runaway look in your eyes again, I’m going to handcuff our wrists together for the rest of the night. How’s that sound?”
I knew Luca had no limits when it came to keeping me safe, but handcuffing our wrists together seemed like a bluff. But I didn’t want to put it to the test. “I’ll stay right here. You have my word.”
Luca gave me a doubtful look, scanned the dancing crowd one last time, then made his way to his coveted peaceful table. His back hadn’t been turned for two seconds when I felt a hand slip into mine, familiar fingers lacing through mine.
“Dance with me?”
His voice sent rolling tingles down my back. I wasn’t sure how I could hear Rylan’s voice above the loud music, but along with every word, I heard every breath and felt every heartbeat. Instead of spinning to face him, I kept my back toward him. Just in case Luca glanced back. “What are you still doing here?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“They’ll kill you if they find out who you are,” I fired back.
“Everyone’s got to die sometime. I can’t imagine a better way to go than by your side.” His tone was confident, almost smug.
“You’re insane.”
“Only about the important things,” he replied, his fingers just barely grazing my lower back.
“Like what?” I breathed, trying to pretend his touch wasn’t unraveling me.
“Life, love . . .” He leaned in closer until his head was almost leaning over my shoulder. His eyes were on me, but if I looked at him, it would be all over. “And you.”
I reminded myself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Seemed simple—didn’t feel so simple.
“Come on. Dance with me,” he repeated.
“Not if you want to leave here tonight in possession of the same extremities you arrived with,” I replied. I should have been ten times more nervous than I was. A hundred times even. We weren’t hiding in a mirror room anymore—we were out in the open for hundreds of my father’s men to see. Sure, we weren’t being obvious, but we weren’t being as subtle as we could have been either.
“I can spare a few extremities for a dance with you.” I felt one of his shoulders lift.
“After getting to feel them a while ago, I cannot part with them as easily as you’re willing to.”
Rylan’s back was to mine, no doubt in an effort to seem inconspicuous. His head tilted back so it was just above my shoulder again. “Not all of my extremities.”
Heat pulsed up my neck, flooding my cheeks, from the way he’d said that and from my imagination picking up where he’d left off. I felt him watching me. I knew he realized that if I’d only just had my first kiss, another big first was open for business as well. I wanted to say and do so many things right then that I became paralyzed from the options.
“If you knew how badly I wanted to kiss you right now, you’d probably slap me. Or kiss me back until we’d both sucked the oxygen dry from the night.”
I heard the smile in his voice. I could even imagine which one it was—the smile where one side pulled higher than the other, his eyes inventing new forms of mischief.
“I might want to slap you or kiss you or both . . . but I can’t do any of it.” Casually looking through the crowd, I saw Luca on his chair, his gaze locked on me. I couldn’t read any suspicion on his brow, nor did he seem to be paying Rylan any notice, but all it would take was one slip up. “I’m watched everywhere I go.”
“I noticed that. Although I’ve also noticed a couple of times where you were sans guard.”
One time I’d slipped my guards, I’d almost been branded, and the other, I’d had my first kiss. I wasn’t sure experiences could wind up on such opposite sides of the spectrum. “But I’m not sans guard now. So no kissing.”
“And no slapping,” he added in a light tone.
“Then what else is there?” I teased. I had to remind myself to keep moving to the music so Luca wouldn’t get suspicious. Dancing with my back against Rylan’s, his hand grasping mine while I imagined first kisses and extremities and other firsts, was difficult. I could barely remember to keep breathing, let alone dance in a way that didn’t give away that I was a rookie.
“I’m an Aries. What are you?”
Rylan’s abrupt turn in the conversation tripped me up, almost literally. I was thankful I’d gone with flats because if I’d been in heels, I would have been waxing the dance floor right then. “What . . .?” was all I got out.
“You asked what else was there besides kissing or slapping, and I’m answering you,” Rylan said.
“You’re answering me by talking about our signs?” My eyebrows came together but quickly ironed out when Luca noticed, his own brows coming together as he inspected the crowd.
“I’m answering you by getting to know each other better. You know, the little stuff. Like signs, and favorite foods, and our first pets’ names. That kind of thing.”
“As opposed to all of the big things we’ve already covered? Like who you really are, who I really am, our pasts, our futures . . . those kinds of things?”
“We’ve got the rest of our lives to learn about those things.”
“But how do you know you’ll want to spend the rest of your life with me figuring them out?”
The song the band was playing came to an end. Before they broke into their next one, Rylan pulled me in front of him. Seeing him face-to-face with less than a foot of space separating us was dangerous. I slipped my hand from his and turned that less-than-one-foot-of-space into three.
“I know,” Rylan replied with confidence.
“How?” I asked as the music blared around me.
He exhaled. “You’re asking me to define something that can’t be defined. You’re asking me to explain how I know there must be a god when I watch a sunset. Or how I know there must be a devil when I walk the streets at night. Or how I know there’s peace when I float on my back in the ocean for hours at a time. Or how I know there’s hate when I go to the funerals of more men my own age than weddings.”
For a moment, it looked like he was going to pull me to him, and I would have gone if he’d tried. I was as vulnerable to his arms as I was to gravity, and that was where the danger lay. Less in the men around us than between ourselves. They were the grenade, but our actions either kept the pin in or took it out.
“Or how when I look at you, I see the rest of my life spread out before me. You’re asking me to define something that words haven’t been created to explain.”
If I hadn’t known what he meant, I might have pushed back . . . but I did know what he meant. How many times had I tried to put what I felt for Rylan into words? How many times had I tried to convince myself that I was acting like a stupid, lovesick girl, only to convince myself in the next moment that I’d never been so sure of anything in my life?
“Capricorn,” I stated with a smile. “I’m a Capricorn.”
Rylan’s eyes smiled before he made a face. “Your sign is totally not compatible with mine. You know that whole rest of our lives thing I was just talking about? Yeah, I’m going to have to take that back. Our stars are totally crossed.”
“It took finding out my sign to figure out our stars are crossed?” Huffing, I went to shove his chest.
Rylan moved a foot to the side right before my hand could land on its target. At first I figured he’d moved to avoid my pathetic shove, but then I realized it had been to block Luca’s line of sight. If I shoved a man, which meant touching him, that would have gotten Luca’s attention if anything did.
“Nice save,” I mumbled, wondering how the cloak-and-dagger gene my father so obviously possessed had passed me by.
“Thank you very
much.” He winked.
“Where were you born?” I asked, glad to play along in this game of Q and A. Might not have been the ideal location, but any time and place was better than no time and place.
“Here,” he answered. “You?”
“Here.” I nodded. “Did you grow up in Chicago too?”
“For a while. I moved to Ireland when I was a boy and just moved back a while ago.”
I had to remind myself to keep moving in a way that somewhat resembled dancing. I didn’t want Luca—or anyone else for that matter—to wonder why I was standing on a dance floor carrying on a conversation. “You lived in Ireland? For how long?”
“Seventeen years.”
My eyes widened. “Seventeen years? But you hardly have an accent.”
“I was born here and partially grew up here. An accent doesn’t just rub off on a person, you know?” His last few words gave away where he’d spent nearly two decades of his life. As I lifted a brow, he shook his head.
“At least not all the way, right?” I said.
“Right,” he conceded with a grumble. “Morning or night person?”
“Morning.”
“Night. Black or white?”
I wanted to ask about a dozen clarifying questions, but I shushed my internal over-thinker. “White.”
“Black,” he said, making us both smile.
“Summer or winter?”
“Summer,” he replied instantly.
My nose curled. “Winter.”
“Side or back sleeper?”
“Side,” I said. “What about you?”
His brows bounced a couple times. “Whichever way puts me closest to you.”
I let my eyes roll. “Assuming you’re sleeping alone.”
“That sounds terrible. Why would I want to do that when sleeping next to you sounds like the inner circle of heaven?” His grin was on full throttle. “But if you must know, if I’m forced to sleep alone, I’m a back sleeper.”
“Coffee or tea?” I glanced past Rylan’s arm.
Luca was still in his seat, watching my general area like he was waiting for mayhem to emerge. Of Rylan, though, he seemed ignorant. I wondered who he thought I was talking to . . . probably myself with my history of loner-itis.
“Both,” Rylan answered, lifting a brow for my answer.
“Neither.”
“Waffles or pancakes?”
When yet another person stumbled into me, Rylan filled Luca’s human-shield shoes. He shoved the man aside as if he was as substantial as a box of packing peanuts.
“Waffles,” I shouted over the music. The current song made the others seem like soft lullabies.
“Pancakes,” Rylan confessed, which made me laugh.
“We have nothing in common, it seems. I’m going to make it my mission to find something we have in common, because surely there has to be something.”
“I’ve already got something for you.” Rylan stepped toward me, putting us too close together to keep up the act that we’d just met. When he was this close, pretending not to feel anything for him was an impossible task. “We both like each other. That’s all the common I need.”
When his eyes dropped to my lips, I stepped back . . . then why was I the one stepping closer? When his hand reached for mine again, I hid it behind my back . . . so how did it wind up enveloped in his? When his eyes said something no words needed to clarify, I clamped mine closed . . . yet why did they answer back the exact same way? My mind pulled me one way, my body the opposite. In this case, and probably all of the cases pertaining to Rylan, I knew my body would always take the lead. It was a welcome concept. And just as dangerous of one.
“That’s all the common I need too,” I admitted. My body was near his, my hand in his, my eyes on his. All of me was his at that moment. “Although it will be difficult deciding what to make for breakfast. I suppose that’s why someone invented the coin.”
“That’s an easier problem to solve than with a coin toss.” His thumb brushed the crescent of my palm, managing to both hypnotize my senses and heighten them. “If you like waffles, I like waffles. You like winter, I like winter. You like mornings, I do too. I like what you like. Simple as that.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think that’s the way it works. You like what you like, and I’ll like what I like, and we’ll be okay.”
The roaring song came to an end, but hardly a moment of silence passed before the next song erupted around us.
“Any more questions of a deep nature for me?”
Rylan’s eyes casually drifted behind me, and the affectionate look in them melted almost instantly. “Just one more right now.” His voice was low, almost gruff. “Who is the man who looks like a weasel in an expensive suit coming toward you?”
The expensive suit could have described any of the men there, but the weasel part gave him away. Not because he really looked like one, but because his whole aura gave off that vibe.
“Someone I need to talk with you about,” I replied, taking the quickest of glances over my shoulder. Sure enough, Constantine was cutting through the crowd. I supposed that was his idea of me saving him a dance. Although after the things he’d said, he deserved to be danced over a cliff.
“From your answer, I already know enough.”
“Know enough for what?”
Rylan’s eyes narrowed. “To hate him.”
I had ten, maybe twenty seconds to explain. Maybe not to explain it as it needed to be, but at least to keep Rylan from reaching down Constantine’s throat and ripping out his heart. I broke out of Rylan’s embrace and put a careful distance between us. “It’s complicated, and I need more than a few minutes to explain it all, but know that I hate him too. That’s why I need you to back up, hold your temper, and we’ll talk later.”
“I like my plan better,” he hissed.
“What plan is that?”
He was already reaching behind him. “Shoot him between the eyes if he touches you.”
So much for holding his temper . . . Rylan was one of the gentlest men I’d been around, but given the wrong situation, he possessed just as much fury. From the way his own men had skulked away from him, I couldn’t imagine how his enemies would cower.
“Fine. Shoot him. I wouldn’t be anywhere in that complaint line.” I turned, partly to gauge how close Constantine was and partly because I couldn’t keep looking at Rylan if I needed to be firm with him. “But if you do, I’ll die with him. So pull the trigger. Just know that another one will be pulled soon after, aimed between my own eyes.” That might have been a slight exaggeration, but I didn’t doubt that when my father found out about Rylan and me and that Rylan had killed Constantine, he’d rather mourn a daughter than live with her after that betrayal.
Rylan froze, his hand behind his back, and looked between me and the man approaching. “Explain.”
“I will,” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure he heard me. “Just not this very moment.” The last word had just barely slipped past my lips when Constantine stopped in front of me.
“I hope you saved me a dance,” he said like nothing had happened earlier. Like he hadn’t slapped me and said things no person should be allowed to say and live to take another breath.
But if I said anything about the slap or the forced engagement or who he was or who I was, Rylan wouldn’t hesitate. He stood a few feet away, blending in seamlessly with the oblivious dancers, but I knew he was hanging onto our every word. I knew he’d be a shoot-first, think-second reactor . . . and too many people of the same mind were in close proximity. He might get the first shot in, but the second would be aimed at him.
“You hoped right,” I replied, putting on a smile that felt like a betrayal.
Constantine’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. No big surprise since I’d given him the cold shoulder at every turn, but when he slipped his arms around me and jolted me close, his suspicion was replaced by something else. Something that made me feel like a colony of centipedes was slith
ering around inside of my skin. The entire time, I was conscious of Rylan. One moment, I braced myself for him to charge, the next, I felt remorse that he had to witness another man put his arms around me. From the way Rylan’s jaw was set, he was grinding his teeth to powder.
“Isn’t the song a little too fast for a slow dance?” I said.
Constantine led me in a series of slow circles, letting his hand around my waist fall lower than I was comfortable with and much lower than Rylan was comfortable with. “The song’s whatever I say it is.” His fingers traced the line my underwear made across my lower back. His eyes went from hungry to ravenous. “Remember? You don’t need to ask questions because I’ve got all of the answers.”
My smile went from forced to plastered. “How could I forget?”
“You really are beautiful, you know that?” He leaned closer, his mouth just outside my ear. “But it’s the beauty I have yet to see that I’m most eager to explore.”
My throat went dry as I stopped a shiver from cascading down my back. To show fear was to show weakness, and in this world, weakness meant death. To Constantine, weakness also came standard with being a woman, so I would be damned if I gave him the satisfaction of feeling me shiver in his arms.
Rylan had moved a step closer. His back was still to us, but it was as rigid as a plank. I wasn’t sure if he’d heard Constantine’s words or had only glimpsed what the words had done to me, but he looked as if he’d snap from the lightest touch.
Constantine continued staring at me, his eyes playing out a sequence of illicit scenes that no girl with my lack of experience should have to endure. His hands roamed me as freely as if I was a piece of property he owned. To him, I was something he owned—or at least soon would. The thought of spending my life with him made the world close in around me. The thought of spending even one night with him closed it in a bit further, and I felt as if I was suffocating in the small space that was left.
I had to get away from him. I had to stop his clammy, cold hand from clinging to mine like he’d just as soon as rip it off as caress it. I had to swat away his other hand skimming my hip bone lower and lower . . . I had to get away from the path fate or fortune or some mix of both had laid before me.