I’ve got a lot to learn.
I must say this out loud because Cash murmurs, “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Remy. You make people smile.”
“I do?” I face him, and our lips brush, sending sparks to every nerve ending in my body.
“People gravitate towards you because you have a good heart.” He places his palm over my left breast, and his pupils dilate when he feels my hard nipple. He leans closer and whispers in my ear, “I want to rip off this dress and fuck you till you beg me to stop.”
My pussy instantly responds by saturating my panties. “Right here?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t care for audiences. I’m selfish like that.”
I smile. “Later?”
“Deal.”
His phone vibrates, killing the moment before it escalates out of control, and he slides it out of his pocket. “Terry, are you on site?” He doesn’t look at me, but his thigh is still pressed up against me, a reminder that this evening is all about me. “I’m with Remy.”
I can’t make up my mind if this is a warning for Terry to be discreet and leave us alone, or if it’s a code for increasingsecurity. I don’t fully understand why my brain instinctively makes this connection. But now that it’s out there, I glance around the casino floor and notice the bodyguards in strategic positions around the building.
I shiver despite the heat.
Their presence has sucked the childish sense of fun out of the evening and replaced it with something altogether more sinister. This is Cash’s world. Filled with security teams and NYPD and extreme amounts of money changing hands. It’s a million miles away from the world I inhabit where I dance between college lectures, café shifts, and Ariel’s hilarious tales of her adventures with Tristan, her on-off boyfriend.
“Hey.” Cash has ended the call while I’ve been sitting here with panic blossoming inside my chest, and an ever-increasing awareness of my true surroundings. “It’s okay. Terry was just checking in.”
I search his eyes. He is trying to see this from my perspective, but it isn’t easy when bodyguards and threats are the norm.
“What does he do?”
He stares straight back at me as if trying to figure out the best way to answer. Then, “He’s head of security for the Murray concerns, but in mafia terms, he is an enforcer.”
I nod. That makes it sound like a 70s movie where the good guy goes around killing all the baddies.
“Does he have to …enforce… every night?”
Cash chuckles. “I love you, Remy Jones.”
The word seems to take him by surprise too. But he doesn’t take it back. He doesn’t blush with embarrassment.
Instead, he cups my face with both hands and kisses me on the lips. No tongues. It isn’t a prelude to fucking me all night. It isn’t a distraction from the ‘l’ word he just dropped into the conversation. It’s more confirmation that he meant it.
“I love you too, Cassius Murray.”
The butterflies inside my chest morph into full-on birds of prey, soaring and swooping and snatching my breath away. Love at first sight exists. It isn’t just a thing that happened to Baby when she saw Johnny dirty dancing. It isn’t another trope that all romance readers long for when they choose a book with a hot sex-god on the cover. It altered the course of my life the moment I first set eyes on Cash in the Rinse; the only difference now is we’ve both acknowledged it out loud.
No turning back.
I sit back in my seat, heart racing.
Neither of us speaks. Cash covers my hand with his, and we immerse ourselves in this new bubble that we’ve created around us.
I don’t know where or how Bash fits into it. But I know he does. When I looked at Cash and told him that I loved him, I was saying it to his twin too. I can’t explain it, even to myself. I never believed it possible to love two people in the same way, and I keep waiting for one of them to prove me wrong. I still have no idea how to handle the situation but walking away from either of them isn’t an option.
People come to our table and shake Cash’s hand. He stands, introduces me to them with his hand on the small of my back. Affectionate. Protective. The men smile and appraise me with surreptitious glances that their wives pretend not to notice. The women kiss his cheeks and grasp his hand, squeezing it suggestively when they think I’m not looking.
And through it all, he has eyes only for me.
Just as I’m getting comfortable with this endless parade of exuberant greetings and fake smiles, Cash’s phone rings again. One glance at the Caller ID, and I feel the tension seeping through his pores.
