His mouth is broad and lush-lipped, his teeth white and impossibly straight. Twin dimples frame his grin, giving the brooding, dark stranger I first saw in the lobby last week a fleeting trace of boyish charm now. But I’d be a fool to mistake anything about this man for innocence. I know that instinctively. Why the hell that understanding doesn’t send me running for the nearest door, I have no idea.
“So, tell me,” he prompts again. “How come I’ve never seen you in the building before the other night?”
The truth stalls out in my throat for reasons I can’t explain. Maybe because I’m enjoying our conversation too much and I want it to continue. Against all better judgment, I’m enjoying him.
And some small part of me—the part of me that’s so curious about this dangerously compelling man it can only be described as reckless—is too selfish to ruin it all by telling him I’m simply hired help. He’s never seen me before because I don’t inhabit the same orbit he and Claire Prentice do. Even now, in the middle of Dominion’s gallery party, I’m just an impostor pretending I belong here.
As we stand there, all but a few of the small crowd of patrons moves on from in front of the painting. I say nothing for a moment, using the slow shift of people around us to give me time to formulate my answer.
“I’m house-sitting for a friend while she’s out of the country the next several months. My place is, um . . . being renovated, so the timing worked out well for both of us.”
Just a small bending of the facts. Harmless enough, I rationalize, as he holds my gaze and makes a low sound of acknowledgment.
“Have you lived there long?” I ask, awkwardly trying to make small talk when my body is still humming with awareness of him and a bit too much champagne.
“Yes, I have,” he says, and I can tell he’s only humoring me. He’s as much tuned in to whatever is arcing between us as I am. “I’ve kept an apartment in the building since it went up a few years ago. Is it Beauty’s pain or her pleasure that moves you the most?”
“What?” The abrupt change of subject catches me off guard. Especially when I know the handful of people standing near us can easily hear every word.
He doesn’t seem to notice or care. “You were on the verge of tears when I came up to you,” he reminds me. “I’m curious to know why.”
“Oh. Was I?” I want to deny it, if only so I don’t appear weak to him, but he’s seen too much already. I shake my head vaguely, then shrug. “I don’t know why it affected me like that.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me.”
I look away from him to the painting, glad for the excuse to free myself from his provocative stare. The impact of the piece hasn’t lessened now that I’m familiar with the subject, but studying it now, with Nick Baine standing intimately close to me, the air feels charged and pulsing.
Everything has taken on newer, weightier context now that he’s invaded my space. He’s invading my senses, too, making my skin tight with awareness of him and my body’s undeniable response.
“She’s being consumed by pain and pleasure. It’s shattering her,” I murmur, my gaze fixed on the woman whose image is reflected in the countless shards of painted glass on the canvas. “She’s alone, maybe she’s frightened. But she’s not bending to it. She’s not afraid to feel the pain . . . or the pleasure. She’s defiant. That’s what makes her so beautiful. Her eyes tell you everything you need to know. Nothing’s ever going to truly destroy her.”
The words spill out of me, and I feel suddenly, irrevocably, exposed.
I haven’t known disease, but I do know pain. I know corrosion—the kind that comes from within and from without. I’ve survived both. But as I look at Beauty, still whole and unbroken, despite the sharp fragments that comprise her, I’m reminded that deep down, I am a coward.
Inside the facade of my intact shell, I’m a thousand jagged pieces held together by fear and sheer will.
“You see more than most,” Nick tells me, his praise and the low vibration of his voice wrapping around my senses. “Do you feel envy when you look at her?”
“No. It’s not envy.” I shake my head solemnly and turn to face him. “It’s hate.” My honesty is raw and real. It’s got the bite of acid on my tongue, even though my tone is quiet with shame. “I hate her for what she makes me acknowledge about myself.”
His eyes hold mine unflinchingly, and for a moment, I wonder if he understands. Does he have sharp fragments of his own hidden behind those mesmerizing blue eyes and smolderingly intense good looks?
I can’t take his silence. And I’m afraid of what else I might be tempted to reveal to him if I allow this strange meeting between us to continue. Until now, I haven’t noticed that all but a couple of people have left the display where Nick and I stand. Leaving suddenly seems like a very good idea to me too.
I break his stare and awkwardly clear my throat. “I think I should go. I’ve had a little too much champagne tonight on an empty stomach. It’s making me say and do things right now that I normally wouldn’t. Things I’m probably going to regret.”
“Is that so?” He doesn’t smile at my attempt to deflect his study of me. Dark interest sizzles in the penetrating gaze that only homes in deeper now. “I don’t think it’s the champagne talking. I don’t think you really believe that either.”
When I don’t answer, he reaches over to cup my jaw. The shock of his touch startles me. More than that, it inflames me. He bends toward me as if he might kiss me right in the middle of the gallery. But he smoothly bypasses my parted lips, bringing his mouth to the side of my face, maddeningly close to my ear.
“Art is meant to provoke emotions, Avery. Its sole purpose is to arouse our senses, even if it disturbs. Even if it’s ugly. Even if it fucking scares the living shit out of you.”
A gray-haired lady directly in front of me swivels an uncomfortable look at the both of us before shuffling away. It isn’t long before the other remaining patron drifts away, too, and then it’s only Nick and me in front of Beauty.
His voice is a velvet caress against my cheek. “Are your senses aroused now, Avery?”
I close my eyes in an attempt to deny what I feel. But I can’t deny it. I can’t deny him, even though everything cautious and rational inside me warns that I am venturing into dangerous territory with this man.
“Yes,” I whisper, unable to stop the confession from slipping off my tongue.
“So are mine,” he says. “I’m aroused by you. I have been since I saw you the other night.” He shifts closer to me, until his lips brush the shell of my ear. “I wanted you even then. Does that scare you?”
I shake my head slightly, but that doesn’t seem good enough for him. Drawing back from me with my face held in his hands, he looks at me with searching, turbulent eyes. “I want you in my bed, Avery. When I see something I want, I reach for it.”
No man has ever been this bold with me before, not in all of my adult life. Then again, I’ve never met anyone like Nick Baine. Dark. Magnetic. Arrogant. Hotter than hell.
Hadn’t I sensed this power about him that night at the elevator?
He had tripped all of my self-preservation instincts from the second I saw him. He’d terrified me, and I would have stayed away.
But now he’s here, looking at me possessively, as if no one else in the room exists. His intensity is a force I’m not prepared for, but I’m not terrified like I should be. I’m wildly, undeniably, turned on.
Desire is etched in his handsome face and the hard line of his rigid, square jaw. His eyes blaze into mine, searing all of the flimsy reservations crowding my thoughts.
“If you really want to leave—if you think this will be something you’ll regret—then go now.”
Yes. I should go.
I should pivot on my heel and get as far away from this unsettling man as I possibly can. I should damn well run.
But that’s not what I want right now.
It’s not what I do.
Without a care for the fact that we?
??re not alone—never mind that we’ve only known each other for not even a full hour—I turn my face into the cradle of his hand. My lips touch the warm center of his palm and he utters a rough groan.
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. His eyes are dark with erotic promise.
I shudder with the ferocity of it. And I can’t wait for him to make good on everything I see churning in his consuming gaze.
Without a word of coaxing or command, he leads me away.
Chapter 8
I meant it when I told him I wasn’t reckless. But those words feel like more lies added to the others I’ve told tonight, as I fetch my coat and leave the gallery party with a man I’ve only just met.
My pulse is racing with something far more potent than anxiety or doubt.
I’m excited. I’m so turned on, I can hardly breathe.
He leads me discreetly out the back of Dominion. Outside, a narrow alleyway runs between the tall buildings behind the gallery. We no sooner step out to the privacy of the darkness than he stops abruptly and turns to me. Without asking or warning, he pulls me into a kiss.
The instant our lips meet, all of the desire that had been kindling back inside the gallery erupts into something urgent and molten. His fingers slide into my hair as he draws me closer to him, his mouth firm and hot and possessive against mine. I’m unsteady on my feet, though less from the effects of the champagne now than the spiral of need that’s twisting through me as I melt into the heat of his kiss.
I breathe him in greedily, reveling in the spicy, clean scent of him as he commands my lips with dizzying skill. I shudder under that force, my nipples tightening inside my bra, my clit pulsing with every frantic beat of my heart. There’s no stopping the small moan that escapes me as his tongue sweeps across the seam of my lips, then pushes inside without hesitation.
Nick Baine is not a man who asks permission. He is not a man who needs to ask. I recognized this about him immediately. Now, I’m feeling the carnal truth of that understanding and it exhilarates me beyond all sense or reason.
I don’t want him to ask. I don’t need it. Not right now.
Not from him.
Seeing him that first night, talking to him inside the gallery . . . it’s cracked something open inside me. He’s seen through my fissures tonight the way I’ve never let anyone else before, and there’s no taking it back. I don’t want to take any of it back. Not when I’m kissing him out here in the darkness with the knowledge that this is only a prelude to where we’re heading.
He rocks into me, our bodies melding together in perfect alignment. Part of me registers a jolt of shock at feeling the hard ridge of his erection pressing against my abdomen, but that part of me isn’t the one in charge of my thinking now. I’m not thinking; only feeling. And what I feel is need—all of it centered on this man. It’s wild and out of control, something very foreign to me.
It’s reckless.
What I’m doing here is probably worse than foolish. Hell, I know it is. I also know I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
A low, yearning ache thrums between my thighs. If I had any reservations about allowing myself to be pulled into his orbit, this kiss is the point of no return. The air is thick and heavy around us, charged with a current I can feel vibrating in him too.
I moan with the wave of arousal that floods me. As my lips open on that involuntary cry of need, Nick’s tongue sweeps inside, claiming a deeper taste. Stoking my need.
His hands release me, but only so that one of them can begin a slow slide down the front of my body. My pulse speeds as his touch descends from my neck to my breasts, then down the side of my rib cage, leaving fire in its wake even through the layers of my clothing.
He doesn’t stop there. With the same masculine confidence he’s had from the first moment our eyes locked on each other, he reaches down to cup my sex.
He caresses me, kneads me ruthlessly. Pleasure arcs through me and I gasp with the force of it. I can’t stop myself from rocking against the delicious pressure of his palm.
I clutch him as our kiss deepens and his hand continues to drive me mad with want. Sinking my fingers into his dark hair to anchor myself against the intense assault on my senses, I can’t curb my sigh at the luxuriant softness. Especially when everything else about him is hard and powerful, from the broad curves of his shoulders to the muscled planes of his back.
As I run my hands over him, I feel the demanding jut of his cock surge even fuller against me. An erotic thrill chases through me as we grind together just steps from the crowd inside the gallery.
My blood is racing, my heartbeat throbbing in every pulse point, though none so demanding as the knot of nerve endings between my clenched thighs. He could unzip my jeans and take me right here in the alleyway and I wouldn’t stop him. God, I’m so wet for him, I’m almost hoping he does.
He groans against my mouth, a strangled sound. When he pulls back to look at me, I see pure animal hunger in his hooded gaze. I see what looks almost like bewilderment—as if this fire erupting between us has caught him off guard too.
“Damn, you taste so fucking good,” he says in little better than a growl. His breath skates across my sensitized lips on a low curse. He takes a step back from me as if he needs the space. “Let’s get out of here.”
I nod, not quite capable of speech yet. At the end of the alley is a private parking area I had no idea was back here. He pulls a key fob from his pants pocket and a sleek black BMW coupe chirps to life.
I follow him over to the M6, easily the most expensive vehicle in the lot. Nick opens the passenger side door.
“Get in,” he instructs me, his voice a deep, velvet rasp.
But as I start to move in front of him to climb inside, he catches me once more and drags me into another fevered kiss. This one is swift, but carnal. Even more so than before. The heat of it licks through my nerve endings, straight to the wet ache pulsing between my thighs. I shudder, knowing if he touches me there again right now, I’ll explode.
I pull away from his mouth on a jagged sigh. “Drive fast.”
Chapter 9
Nick operates a car with the same purpose and command I just witnessed in the alley with him. Aggressive, confident, smoothly in control. It seems like only seconds since we left the gallery before we’re turning in to the Park Avenue building entrance.
To my still-thrumming body, it feels like hours.
Nick’s hand stroking my inner thigh the whole time hasn’t made it any easier. Although we haven’t spoken since we got in the car, the electricity snapping between us hasn’t lessened in the least. If anything, the short drive has only made me more impatient to pick up where we left off.
Driving up to the building, he bypasses the brightly lit main lobby where we’d have to pass Manny. I hadn’t even considered that we might have to waltz past the sweet old door man together, and I exhale a soft sigh of relief to be avoiding that awkwardness.
Instead, Nick drives around to an underground parking garage below the tower high-rise. He parks the BMW in an empty space closest to the secured glass doors leading into the building. The only one marked Reserved.
I dimly register that fact and what it likely signifies, but there’s no room for logic or questions when Nick cuts the engine and pivots toward me. The soft gray leather rasps with his movement. He’s so gorgeous, so intensely masculine yet beautiful at the same time, I have to remind myself to breathe when he looks at me. I am far out of my depth with this man. I sensed that from the instant I saw him. He’s powerful, sophisticated. Obviously wealthy, based on the exclusiveness of his address and the price tag of his car. I have no doubt he could take his pick of any woman who lays eyes on him, and yet he’s sitting here with me now. Touching me. Staring at me as if he wants to devour me.
I lick my lips, an involuntary movement that draws his gaze to my darting tongue. As he watches me, that sinfully sculpted mouth of his compresses into grim line.
“Last chance to change
your mind.” His deep voice is thick and rough in the silence of the car. As he speaks, his hand slides higher on my thigh, trailing fire in the wake of his touch. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, just teases me with the sensual slide of his palm on my leg, his roving fingers coming closer and closer to my sex. “If you say the word, Avery, this goes no further. If you’re not sure, it can end here and now.”
No. I’m not having a single doubt, even if I have many reasons that I should. I don’t do casual sex. Then again, I’m not very good at relationships either. What’s happening here has no future—I recognize that. I accept it. Hell, I’m counting on the fact that it can’t possibly last past tonight.
But I can’t call this casual either. Nothing about what Nick Baine stirs inside me feels fleeting or insignificant.
His desire-drenched gaze is locked on me. His touch is possessive and bold, as if he understands exactly what my body needs and knows how to deliver.
Would he want me like this if he knew I was at the gallery party by coincidence rather than invitation? Would he treat me differently if I told him I was a failing artist and struggling bartender? That I had no money and nowhere to go before I’d suddenly gotten the chance to live in his fancy building for a little while?
What would he think if he knew all of my other secrets? The ugly ones. The dangerous ones. The ones I’ve never let see the light of day.
He doesn’t know any of that. And he won’t.
One night of this scorching desire—that’s the only thing I’m sure of right now. It’s enough for me, but I can’t find my voice to answer his question. The words won’t come. Not when he’s caressing the tender inside of my thigh, turning the throbbing ache of my clit into an agonizing need for release.
“I can feel your heat,” he says, his words inflaming me even more. “My fingers are on fire and I haven’t even touched you the way I really want to. Christ, woman. You’ll burn me up when I get inside you.”
I let out a strangled moan, and he seems to take that for his cue to kiss me again. His free hand cups my nape as he draws me to him and our mouths come together. Twice already tonight he’s given me a taste of his kiss—the first one explosive and consuming, the second swift and carnal.