I drop my pouch and take the wallet. Our fingers brush against one another and he glances at me, his eyes studying mine. The smile on my lips is impossible to stop, and it’s not because he’s paying, necessarily, although that’s hot, too. It’s how adamant he was I’mnotpaying.
“What?” I ask, because he’s still looking at me like he wants to eat me alive.
He shakes his head once, then moves his hand back to the shifter and his eyes to the road.
“I hope you get scared tomorrow night,” he says softly.
I inhale and hold my breath, his wallet between my fingers but I don’t open it up yet.
“I hope you’re terrified, Sloane. And I hope you hold me so tight, I can barely fucking breathe.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
LYNX
The woman across the table is decadent.
Red, tight dress, red-bottom stilettos, a strand of diamonds around her throat. Onyx hair like one son, the same light colored eyes but in green, and a wedding ring on her ring finger that cost more than most people’s mortgages.
She has a champagne glass in hand, and her red lips are pressed together as she stares at the man beside me, Richman.
Rich is discussing in very bland terms the nature of the job he needs Cassia and Hawthorn for. Of course, Hawthorn is not in attendance in this private room at the back of the club, three guards—one Rich’s, one mine, one Cassia’s—standing ever vigilant outside the door. Hawthorn has not been the same since the thing with Cassia that we never speak about.
He rarely comes when I am here, now that he’s aware I’m “temporarily” staying.
I promised it wouldn’t be long.
And it won’t be, will it?
I focus on Cassia Leary and forget what I need to do to have her.
Rich needs a VP taken care of in a discreet and deliberate way.
Cassia absorbs the information without speaking.
I warned Rich it will seem as if she doesn’t care, isn’t interested, maybe even that she’s not taking it all in, but Cassia Leary never misses a thing.
Her eyes seem vacant at times, like they do now as she stares at Rich, who is talking hotel rooms and possible dates and guaranteed obstacles. But she no doubt has logged each time he’s said the word “um” and how many hand motions he makes as he speaks—which is a lot.
I tip back my own champagne glass.
All of it.
I don’t look away from Cassia.
The table is low between us, our couches identical; soft, brown leather. The low lighting on the wall behind her is in sconces, and it casts shadows over the sharp lines of her face. She’s as beautiful as she was when I first fell for her.
That was before Storm Leary ruined my life.
And hers, I like to believe.
But she’s never said as much. She is brash and bold and disgusting, but there are some—very few—lines she will not cross.
She drew one at him the moment he was conceived, no matter what damage it did to everyone around her. Tome.
As it is, I’m simply lucky she left me alive.
