Hard Rules (Dirty Money #1)(22)

The elevator doors open and he leads me into the empty car, keying in a code and punching the button for what I think is the top level. The next thing I know I’m in the corner, and he’s crowding me, his hands back on my waist, and the air around us thick with sexual tension.

“Right now, I want to know you.” Right now. Those are the two words that make his attention to details sexy, not dangerous. He leans in closer and inhales. “You’re the one who smells good. Like vanilla and flowers.”

“It’s vanilla and lilac. A special scent I have made at—” I stop myself before I place myself back in Texas, not Los Angeles. “It’s the only scent I wear.”

“It’s addictive,” he declares, his cheek brushing mine, the newly forming shadow on his jaw rasping against my delicate skin and I have no idea how but my nipples pucker in response. “You’re addictive,” he amends. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day.”

Oh how easily he can make a girl feel special. “You know just what to say. No wonder you never make it to court.”

He inches backward, his gaze pinning mine. “Don’t do that, sweetheart.”

The endearment does funny things to my stomach. “Do what?”

“Don’t make what I say to you about something else or even about me.” His hand slides under my hair, around my neck, “I have nothing on my mind but you, and you have no idea how nearly impossible that is tonight. Obviously I need to work harder to make that clear.”

“No I—”

He drags my mouth to his, his lips gently brushing mine, his tongue a tease against mine that promises so much more. “You are all that matters tonight. Understand?” The question plays on his tongue as an erotic command, as does his hand on my neck.

“Yes,” I reply, quaking inside with the way he manages to possess me and arouse me when everything about my history says those things shouldn’t make me respond. But it is him I respond to, the way he somehow makes right what was always wrong for me.

The elevator dings behind us and he links our fingers, an act that, more and more, feels intimate, leading me out of the car, and it hits me then that he holds on to me like he is afraid of losing me, like I matter. And he looks at me like he really wants to see and know me, when earlier today, I was certain that I was invisible in every way.

“This way,” Shane instructs, leading me left down the hallway, and the butterflies that erupt in my belly are almost too much to handle. Each step I take is laden, adrenaline pours through me like buckets of his triple-shot lattes. Too soon, we are at his door and he’s turning a lock. He opens the door and he motions me forward, when he’s all but led me everywhere else.

I stare at the entryway and I see it as the question mark intended, but more so, I instinctively understand he’s offered me a choice. A moment of fairly profound introspection follows in which I think of all the controlling, powerful men who have come into my life by my choice, or otherwise, all with fairly devastating results, not one of them gave me a choice. But Shane has, and not only that, he speaks of my pleasure, not his, which actually makes me want his pleasure, not mine. He is the contradiction and I like it. Suddenly the nerves I’ve been battling shift and change, still existing, still alive, but not fed by fear or self-doubt. I’m not here because I’m repeating the past. I’m here because Shane might have money, power, and good looks, but he is a rare person who is not defined by those things.

I let the walls fall away between us, letting him see the decision in my eyes, answering his silent question, even before I say, “Yes. The answer to me wanting to be here, is an absolute ‘yes.’” And with that declaration, I know that at least for now, I am choosing to let tonight exist without my secret, without the fears and danger, it creates, and I enter a magnificent apartment with a towering flat-lined ceiling, and striking dark wood floors streaked with a paler bamboo color.

I stop several feet inside, my gaze reaching beyond the open living room with tan leather furnishings to the floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping the entire apartment, a dark city spotted with lights beyond. The door shuts behind me and I feel Shane’s approach, his energy a potent force wafting over me, but I can’t seem to make myself turn and face him. His hands come down on my shoulders.

“I’ll take this,” he says, dragging the jacket from my shoulders, leaving me feeling oddly naked; my hand gripping my purse I’d all but forgotten was trapped beneath. Once again, adrenaline rushes through me, fuel for my nerves that I can’t escape and I whirl around to find Shane hanging the jacket on a coat rack. My gaze falls on his hands, which will soon be touching my naked body, and it hits me that this man makes me feel naked in ways beyond the idea of taking my clothes off.

It’s a disarming thought, and needing to catch my breath, I face forward, and start walking. I pass a kitchen that is stainless steel and more bamboo, continuing on through the living area, and I drop my purse on a leather chair, on my way to stand at the window. I grip the railing splitting the glass, staring out at a strange city I barely know as my own, the sky’s inky canvas waiting to be painted with what I make of this new life, starting with this night. Shane appears to my right. I turn to find him standing at a bamboo minibar, the air thick with our awareness of one another.

“Drink?” he asks, lifting the topper to a crystal decanter.