Page 38 of Resist

I pull my attention from the club—and the woman at my side—and turn to see Carter’s hand on Vaughn’s bicep, his eyes studying her, his body all but saying he wants to fuck her.

Jealousy streaks through me. It’s ugly and vicious, and I don’t really fucking care because Carter’s hands are on her when mine aren’t.

But Vaughn’s expression stops my knee-jerk reaction. Her wariness of him. The way her eyes glint with steel despite the sugary smile that spreads on her face. And I know there’s something between them somehow, even if their connection isn’t clear.

“I don’t think so,” she answers. “I’m always asked that . . . I guess I just have a face that everyone thinks they know. Ordinary.”

You are nothing close to ordinary.

Far from it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Vaughn

My stomach churns and nerves rattle.

From the grip the senator has on my arm. From the look in his eyes he’s leveling at me that says he doesn’t trust my answer. From the fact that Ryker is right beside me, watching this very interaction.

Right now, to Ryker I’m still just Saxony—it’s something I can deny and not have to prove—but if the senator makes the connection . . . if the senator realizes I’m Vee, the woman who threatened him the other night in my fury, then my cover with both men is blown to hell, and I’m screwed seven ways from Sunday.

The walls are closing in all around me. My separate circles are colliding in a way I never thought possible. Archer with Lola. The senator with Ryker. Ryker with my personal life. All of them at my work.

And so I do the only thing I can think to break Carter’s scrutiny of me. When someone walks behind me, I overreact so that when I jolt forward, the tray of drinks in my hands bumps against the senator’s chest and upends down the entire front of me.

I shriek at the cold sting of ice that falls into my bustier and hear the gasps of the crowd behind me.

“Idiot,” Carter growls as he jumps back immediately to remove himself from the mess at his feet. The women at his sides pat at the drinks splattered on his jacket and coo niceties to him all the while he growls insults at my incompetence.

“Are you okay?” It’s Ryker who steps up in front of me.

“Yes, I’m fine.” I don’t look in his eyes but rather squat down and begin loading the mess of empty glasses and ice on the floor back onto my tray. Anything to get me out of Carter’s line of sight.

“Vaughn.” He’s beside me now, his proximity flustering me as his hands close over a glass at the same time mine does. Like an idiot, I jolt my hand back instantly, the glass falling again.

But I never answer him.

I never respond to my name, which sounds way too intimate coming from his lips.

“Let me help,” he murmurs just above the fray of the music.

“I’ll get someone to pick this up. To—”

Ryker’s hand closing over my forearm halts my words.

I shake my head and stand abruptly, bypassing the dumbwaiter and heading straight for the kitchen myself. Ice clatters out of my top and down through my skirt as I hurry from the pod and to some privacy that might afford me a moment to process what has happened: I just spilled drinks on myself to get out of one trap and ended up falling headfirst into another one—Ryker’s.

Ahmed eyes me as I drop the tray on the counter behind the bar. “Can you get one of the guys to help clean up a spill in the Eight Pod?” I ask. He nods, sympathy in his eyes when he assesses the situation—that I dumped a tray upstairs and am morbidly embarrassed—but I’m already heading toward the locker room before he can ask.

Tears threaten for some reason.

And not because of the ice in my bra but rather the unexpected emotions that streaked through me when Ryker said my name.

Christ, even from his simple touch.

When I shove the door open to the locker room, I sigh in relief that it’s empty. But its stoic gray walls and matching lockers mirror the tears that I slowly let slip over and slide down my cheeks.

I just screwed up royally, didn’t I?