Reveal (Wicked Ways #2)(57)

But sometimes good things come by conquering your fears.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ryker

The club is loud and crowded and the last fucking place I want to be right now after my phone call with Chance. The Dillinger family is at a wedding overseas and won’t be back for the next ten days.

I should go to the gym and work off this rage I feel. At Vaughn’s uncle. At Carter Preston. At the life Vaughn had to live and the secrets she’s had to keep.

So many things still run through my head from my meeting with Stuart. So many what-ifs. So many need-to-knows.

I should go and punch the heavy bag and spar until my arms and legs turn to Jell-O, but hell if I can stay away from the one person who owns my mind tonight: Vaughn.

But when it comes down to it, none of it fucking matters other than . . . I miss her.

“Hey, man,” I say to the bartender when I walk up. He’s tall, with darker skin and a smile that I’m sure earns him legs propped on his shoulders more often than not.

He lifts his chin to me. “What’ll you have?”

I peer at the bottles on the wall behind him. “Gin and tonic. And Vaughn Sanders.”

“I can help you with the first. Not my place to help you with the second.” He gives a laugh, but his eyes fire off a warning that I kind of fucking like, kind of fucking hate. She’s mine to look after, not his.

“Good answer.”

He slides a drink across the bar top to me. “You the prick who keeps hurting her?”

I stare at him as the couple beside us turn their attention our way. The music is loud, but our voices are louder.

“Guilty as charged.”

He eyes me a bit closer, takes in my watch and the quality of my shirt, before pursing his lips and nodding as if he now believes me.

“You here to cause trouble?”

“Nope. Just here to see her. It’s been a long week, a lot of hours, and”—I shrug—“she’s who I want to end my night with.”

He licks his bottom lip and holds up a finger when a waitress calls his name. I glance her way, and it’s the woman who walked out with Vaughn the other night.

“Hey. Hi,” she says when she sees me. “What are you doing here? Oh. Vaughn. Right. Sorry. I’m lame,” she says in a breathless and broken sentence as her cheeks flush some.

“You know him, Mel?” the bartender asks.

She nods. “Yeah, he belongs to Vaughn.”

The phrase makes me smile against the rim of my glass as I take a sip and meet the eyes of the bartender. I raise my eyebrows as if to say, See?

“She’s up in Pod Two. There’s a private party up there. If you catch her now, you might get a second with her away from customers.” He points to the stairs at the left of the bar.

“Thanks, man.”

I head up the stairs at a jog, following the signs for each pod until I come to two. When I walk in, the beat of the song has slowed down some, and the lights darken to go with it.

And there she is.

Fuck.

I take in the thigh-high stockings with the seam up the back and the band of lace at the top that hits just below the hem of her skirt, the sky-high black heels, and her hair piled on top of her head with a few pieces falling down onto her bare shoulders.

How is it possible to miss someone as if you’ve never had her before, and yet you already know exactly how she tastes and what the curve of her neck smells like?

She laughs at something one of the four men in front of her says, and fuck if I don’t roll my shoulders at the sight.

All of them want her.

I can see them vying for her attention. I know they’re already imagining what she’d be like in bed.

Fucking pricks.

She says something and they all laugh, one of them saying loudly, “Come back soon, sweetheart.”

Asshole.

“Vaughn.” I bark her name out across the space, and her head whips my way. Her smile is automatic, but her eyes are confused as she walks toward me. All the men at her back size me up.

“What are you—”

And I don’t care that she’s at work or that I’m a man who doesn’t fucking beg, because the minute she’s within range, my lips are on hers.

She’s startled at first. Then resists momentarily as she remembers where she is and what she’s supposed to be doing. But I slip my tongue between her lips and take just a sliver of what I want from her. A tiny sliver at that.

And just when I think she’s going to give in and let me pull the clip from her hair so I can fist my hand in it and take even more, her palms are pressing against my chest until they break our kiss.

Her breath is ragged, her lips parted, her eyes firing with anger. “What are you doing?”

“Letting everyone know you’re mine.”

She lifts her chin ever so slightly, almost as if to say she isn’t . . . and that lights my temper.

Especially when she drags me from the pod. She doesn’t even touch me either, but the look she levels me with has me following without a word.

And I’m not sure what pisses me off more—the fact she fought my kiss in front of those assholes or that I’m following her without a word.

She stalks her ass down the hallway, and the minute we turn into the next pod that’s empty, her hands are fisted in my shirt, and her lips crash into mine the same time as my back hits the wall.