I blanch and every muscle in my body locks up. He’s using me to get back at Mark for some sin he perceives he’s committed against him. “I can’t do that. I work for him. That wouldn’t be right.”
“Mark is out for Mark. You’ll learn that soon enough or you’ll end up crushed like everyone else around him. Don’t let that happen, Bella.”
I’m desperate to get this meeting back under control and reach for a way to mend his and Mark’s relationship. “Didn’t you do a charity event with Mark? That was a good thing you did together. What if we started out with something like that again?”
“Rebecca set that up, and I can donate my work for a good cause through many venues. I chose to do it at Allure because Rebecca asked me to.” He changes the subject back to his offer. “Let me show you how to scout and sell on your own.”
“I appreciate the offer, but—”
“Don’t let him suck you into his world. It’s dangerous and so is he.”
What is it about artists warning me off Mark? “Unless he brings a machete to work,” I joke weakly, “I can handle him.
“Men like Mark do not need machetes to dice your independence and self-respect. They mind-fuck you.”
No matter how true his claim might ring, I feel it like a slap, and I barely stop myself from taking a step backward. “I should go, but please know that I love your work. I mean that. I’d be honored to represent it.”
“And you can. You and you alone.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
He studies me for several tense seconds and waves me forward. “Very well. I’ll show you to the door and let you go home and think on this.”
We walk side by side again, and when I’m ready to exit the studio, he reaches for my coat and helps me put it on. Immediately I feel my pocket vibrating. Oh crap. How much time has passed? I slide my briefcase onto my shoulder and my hand slips into my pocket. I close my fingers around my cell, cringing because I’ve failed to communicate with Jacob.
Alvarez pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, even if the outcome wasn’t what either of us had hoped for.”
“I’m going to try to get your business again, you know.”
“I know.”
He opens the door for me and I step outside, and we say a quick good-bye. I’m about to start for the stairs when a question comes to mind that has me hesitating on the porch. The charity event he did at Allure was for the same children’s hospital Chris champions, but since they don’t seem to be friends, I’m curious about how this came about. I turn to the door to knock and my phone buzzes against my palm again.
I pull it from my pocket and see a text alert and six missed calls. I hit the text from Chris.
Don’t go back in that door.
My heart leaps to my throat and I whirl around to scan the driveway. A shadowy movement draws my eyes and I see the Harley parked in the shadows behind the 911, with Chris leaning against it.
Twelve
I start down the stairs of Alvarez’s house and my chest is so tight it feels like I have the damn art tape Chris seems to love binding me with around my ribs, and around my control over my own life. I’m furious that he’s here. I’m embarrassed that Alvarez most assuredly has cameras and will know about this, if not now, then at some point. The line in the sand between my job and our relationship is beyond blurred. In fact, I’m pretty darn sure I’m the only one who’d imagined it ever existed.
The idea that I’ve convinced myself he is less controlling than he is has my heels colliding heavily on the driveway. I charge toward the 911, the car I’ve let myself drive instead of holding on to my own identity. I don’t look at Chris but damn him, I can feel him all over, everywhere, inside and out, and in intimate places I can’t convince my body he isn’t welcome. It’s beyond frustrating to know that anger this potent isn’t enough to stop the thrum of awareness that just being near him creates. Not for the first time, I feel Rebecca’s words from that first journal entry I’d read deep in my soul. He was lethal, a drug I feared. I relate to her, and I understand the inescapable passion she felt and lost herself inside. I don’t want to be her. I’m not her. And for the first time since my initial first few encounters with Chris, I wonder if I am drawn to him because I’m self-destructive, and he to me for the same reason.
I reach the side of the car and in my haste to seek the shelter of the 911, I haven’t retrieved the key. Without looking at Chris, I fumble with my key. I know he will be standing by his Harley, all decked out in leather and denim, looking like sex and sin and my satisfaction. The key falls on the ground. I squat to retrieve the key and my composure.
Suddenly Chris is there, at eye level, as he had been the first night we’d met, when I’d spilled my purse. My gaze lifts and meets his, and a blast of awareness shakes me to the core. My breasts are heavy, my thighs achy. My skin tingles. A fine line between love and hate, Alvarez had said, and I understand them in this moment. I stare into his eyes and I wonder if he too is thinking about the night we met and the many ways we’ve made love. The many we have not and I want us to, when I should not. I should be seeking space, independence, and my own identity, which he is threatening by taking over my life. It makes no sense how I feel in these eternal moments. How can I be this furious with Chris and still powerfully, completely lost in him?
“We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” he asks, breaking the spell. His tone is low, and the rasp of anger in his voice is impossible to miss. It jolts me back to reality. He showed up at my client’s house and he’s angry with me?
My temper overpowers all other emotions in me and I reach for the key. His hand closes over mine and heat races up my arm and over my chest. “Don’t do what you did tonight ever again, Sara.”
The sharp command in his voice hits a bull’s-eye on every physiological male dominance issue I own, of which there are many. I try to pull my hand back but I am captive to his grip, leaving me with words as my only weapon. “Ditto to you, Chris. And yeah. We have a lot to talk about—somewhere other than my client’s front yard.”
His green eyes glint fire a moment before he releases my hand and helps me to my feet. There is a possessiveness to his touch that has me leaning into him when I should be shoving him away. He notices, too; I see it in the slight narrowing of his eyes, the gleam of satisfaction in their depths that I both hunger for and reject.
“I’ll follow you to my place,” he informs me.
“I have no doubt you will.” I click the key clicker to unlock the 911. I’m about to open the door when his hand comes down on it, and he leans close, so close his breath is warm on my neck and ear. That woodsy scent of him, which I could luxuriate in for a lifetime, permeates my senses, tearing down my already weak defenses.
His hip nudges mine. “Don’t think for a minute that when we pull up to my apartment, you’re going to ask for your car and leave.”
It is all I can do to fight him when he touches me. Purposely, I do not look at him, certain all my resolve to distance myself from him will crumble. “If I decide to leave, you can’t stop me.”
“Try me, baby. You’re coming up to my apartment.”
I whirl on him. “I don’t want—”
“I do,” he vows, and before I know his intent, his fingers twine into my hair and he pulls me into his arms, against his hard, warm body.
“Let go,” I hiss, my hand flattening on his chest. I intend to push him away, but the heat of his body seeps through my palm, radiating up my arm. My elbow softens, and I am instantly closer but not close enough.
“Not a chance,” he promises, his mouth closing on mine, firm with demand. His tongue licks into my mouth with one brutal, commanding swipe followed by another, and I have no resistance left. I’m weak, so very weak, for this man. As always with Chris, he demands my response and I helplessly respond. I am instantly wet and wanting, my nipples tight points of aching need.
I try to resist the lure that is Chris, b
ut the taste of him, familiar and almost brutally male, mixes with his anger and mine, and the effect is explosively passionate. I want to shout at him, push him away, pull him close, strip away his clothes, and punish him for what he is doing to me, what he takes from me. What he makes me need.
When his lips part from mine, too soon and not soon enough, I barely fight the urge to pull him back. “Was that for the cameras, Chris?” I pant at him, furious at myself for such weakness.
“That was because you scared the shit out of me when you didn’t answer your phone. I don’t give a damn about the cameras.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and his hand slides under my jacket, over my backside, pulling me flush against his thick erection.
I whimper, impossibly aroused, and my hands slip beneath the thick leather of his jacket, wrapping his waist. His hand caresses up my back, molding me tighter to him, branding me with heat and fire and sizzling passion that threaten to steal all the reason I possess. No man has ever made me forget where I am, forget why I should care.
“That,” he says roughly, when he pulls back again, “was for the past twelve hours that I should have been thinking about business. Instead, I was incessantly thinking about pink paddles, butterfly nipple clamps, and all the places I’m going to lick, kiss, and now, you can bet, punish you when we get home.”
I almost moan again from his words and have no idea how I manage enough coherent thought to issue a warning, but somehow I do. “If you think sex is going to make this argument go away, you’re wrong.”
“You couldn’t be more right, but it’s a good place to start and end the enlightening conversation you can bet your sweet little ass we’re going to have.” He sets me back from him and away from the door enough to open it. “Let’s go home where I can fuck what you’ve made me feel out of my system and you can do the same.”
Staring up at him, a million things I might say or do are wiped out by the word home replaying in my head. He keeps using that word, and it affects me when he does; it affects me in a deep, painfully real way that leaves me raw and vulnerable. He leaves me raw and vulnerable.
When I don’t move, he pulls me close again, caresses my hair, and gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Get in the car, Sara,” he orders softly, and as always—though I’m fairly certain he’d disagree—I do as he tells me.
• • •
When I pull up to Chris’s building ten minutes later, I’m still practically panting from his hot assault, but I’ve managed small pieces of reasonable thought. I am calmer and the understanding that Chris was truly, sincerely worried about me is as much an aphrodisiac as the taste of him lingering on my lips and tongue. There is no question that I gave Jacob reason to worry about me. Add the storage unit incident to my failure to answer calls, and Chris had every reason to be concerned. I can accept that. But Chris is a control freak in every possible way, and while I’ve found that in private giving him that control has almost become a physical burn, outside the bedroom I need my freedom. And I’m not sure Chris is capable of giving me that.
The doorman opens the door to the 911, and the last remnant of my anger flees into the chill of the night. I need Chris. I need to be in his arms. I need to feel him close. I need and need and need with this man and it’s impossible to escape.
I step outside the car, and my hungry gaze seeks Chris, finding him dismounting the Harley, and holy hell, he is sex on a Harley. If Mark is power, Chris is absolute dominance, and he knows it. I see it in his casual grace, which manages to be alpha roughness at the same time. He doesn’t need people to call him by a certain name, nor intimidate them into drinking cold coffee like Mark once did to me. When he needs power, he has it. When he wants it, he claims it. When he wants me, he claims me, and my stomach clenches with dread at the idea that one day he won’t.
He hands his helmet and keys to a second doorman before his attention shifts fully to me. Pure, white hot lust pours off Chris and over me, and I can’t move from the impact. He saunters toward me, all loose-legged swagger, and when Rich hands me my briefcase, Chris takes it instead and slides the strap over my shoulder. His fingers caress my arm and my jacket is no defense for the electricity his touch ignites inside me.
“Let’s go inside and . . . talk,” he murmurs and I swallow hard.
“Yes. Let’s go talk.”
We’ve made it all of two steps when I hear the doorman call out, “Don’t forget this.” He appears in front of me and hands me the journal.
My breath lodges in my throat as my eyes go to Chris, and his gaze lands on the red leather I now hold. Eternal seconds tick by in which I know I should explain, but some part of me must secretly want to be punished, because I wait for his reaction. Finally, his gaze lifts to mine, and there are accusations and doubt in his eyes that shred my heart. I confessed my slip about the journal entry and instead of my honesty winning me his trust, it’s earned me the opposite. It is all I can do not to explode right here in this moment, with eyes on us, and I draw a deep breath and clamp down on my reaction. Making a scene isn’t my style and it won’t give me more than momentary satisfaction.
I call out to Rich and turn to catch him. “I need my car,” I tell him.
“No,” Chris says, his voice low and lethal, his hand shackling my upper arm. “She doesn’t.”
I blast him with a look meant to flatten him but find myself captured by his sharp, commanding stare. “I promise you, Sara,” he says, his voice low and intense, “I’ll carry you upstairs over my shoulder if I have to.”
Momentarily, I’m disarmed by the thrill that shoots through me at the threat. I am wet and hot and aching to be over his shoulder and in his apartment, naked and at his mercy. His distrust cuts me deeply, yet I’m thrilled at the barbaric statement that proves I am without defenses where he is concerned.
I hold his stare, and I don’t doubt he means his words. “I’ll go up, but I’m not staying.”
He doesn’t blink or respond immediately; he’s studying me, sizing me up, and I wonder if he can see my reaction to his threat in my face, if I am as transparent as the window he’d once fucked me against.
Without a word, he releases me and I start for the door. He falls into step with me. My fingers curl around the journal and I remind myself of his distrust and my stomach knots at the idea that, even if not about this, I deserve what he feels. I’m getting a tiny taste of what it will feel like if and when he knows the real lie I’ve told, and I don’t like it. I feel an eruption building inside me, emotions boiling in a wild mixture, hot and dangerous, that I can barely contain.
We enter the building and Jacob is at the front desk. I manage a nod and a small greeting. Chris and I step into the elevator side by side, and face forward, only inches separating us. The air is thick with unspoken words, the tension certain to snap any second.
Without making a conscious decision to act, that second comes for me when the doors slide closed. I whirl on Chris and shove the journal at his chest. “Mark gave this to me today. It’s Rebecca’s business notes. I told you I locked up the damn journals, and I did.”
He shackles my wrist and pulls me close. The journal lodges between us. “Do you know how much I don’t want to hear Mark’s name right now? He shouldn’t have let you go to Alvarez’s alone.”
His words are tight, laced with the anger he’d confessed back at Alvarez’s house, and I now realize he’s been carefully controlling his fury. I feel it in the tightness of his body against mine, see it in the hard glint in his eyes. Everything about Chris is wrapped around control and I forget too easily.
“He’s my boss.” My bottom lip trembles with the words. “He’s not my keeper, and for that matter neither are you.”
His green eyes glint with amber blades of pure steel. “I told you, Sara. I will keep you safe.”
There is a possessive absoluteness to his words that both arouses and infuriates me. I am once again struck by how little I seem to know about myself and why I respond to this side of Chris. “Th
e line between protecting me and controlling me, Chris, is my job.”
“Ask me if I care about the lines right now, Sara. Ask me if I have any intention of ever living the hell I lived tonight when you wouldn’t answer the phone.”
I am taken aback by the deep, vehement reply that is laced with a threat I do not understand. “What does that mean?”
His fingers twine into my hair and he pulls my mouth just beyond his, so close I can almost taste the control he holds so easily. “It means,” he rasps, “that tonight, Sara, I’m not pink paddles and fluff, and neither are you.”
Thirteen
The elevator door dings open, and Chris grabs my hand and pulls me into his apartment. Before I can blink, I’m facing the entry room wall, one hand clutching the journal, the other flat on the surface in front of me. Chris steps behind me, framing my body with his bigger one, and I feel the hardness of his body as intensely as I feel the hardness of his mood.
His hand settles on the center of my back, branding me, controlling me, and he pulls my bag and purse from my shoulder and dumps it on the floor. I feel him shrug away his jacket and he reaches for mine. It catches on the journal and his hand closes around it.
The air seems to thicken and for several seconds we hold the journal, both our fingers gripping the red leather. Erotic images created by Rebecca’s words play in my mind and I remember reading one of the entries with Chris. I wonder if he is thinking about that day, too, or something completely different. About Rebecca perhaps? I want to ask, but there is this sharp pinch in my chest that holds me back.
Chris takes the journal from me and I have no idea where he puts it. It is gone and my jacket follows. He steps behind me, and I forget everything but him. His hands settle possessively on my hips, and his mouth, that delicious, sometimes brutal mouth, brushes my ear. “You want pain and darkness, baby, you got it.”
Shock slides through me at the unexpected promise and I think of us holding the journal, and of the dark entries inside that terrify and intrigue me. “What happened to me not being able to handle this part of you, Chris?” I ask, and my voice trembles with the question.