Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways #1)(64)

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“For one thing, because all you want is to bed me. Relationship-phobe much?”

Her jealousy stirred something dangerous in the pit of my stomach. The kind of feeling you get when you realize you’ve just survived a near-fatal car crash.

“That’s different. I don’t want anything serious with you because I cannot afford to be with you. Dating the daughter of the person I’m suing, especially in a case like this one, is not a healthy career move.”

“Do I smell leverage?” Her eyes lit up as we picked up our pace to get warm.

“No, you smell a pragmatic business decision. For you too. Imagine what it’d look like if word got out. Our relationship is doomed. That doesn’t mean I’m against settling down when the right woman arrives.”

“Way to make a woman feel special.”

I laughed.

“Are you still in touch with her? With your sugar mama?” Arya hugged her midriff, protecting herself from the cold.

“Yes. What about you?” I asked.

“I don’t know her, but I mean . . . I could give her a call?” She played dumb. I laughed some more. Shit. This was a lot of laughter.

“What were you like as a teenager?” I amended my question.

“Rebellious. Angsty. Bookworm.”

A knowing smile tugged at my lips. I still remembered her gulping books up, at least one a day during summer breaks, like the words would fade if she didn’t read them fast enough.

“Bookworm,” I repeated, feigning surprise. “What’s your favorite book?”

Atonement.

“Atonement, hands down. I stole it from my local library when I was fourteen, because it was risqué and I knew my parents would never let me purchase it. It’s tragically underrated. Have you read it?”

“Can’t say I have,” I said, tsking. I couldn’t, as a matter of principle, read the book that had caused my downfall. Because if I hadn’t kissed Arya . . . if I hadn’t caved in to her request . . .

Then what? You’d have stayed in the slums, with a mother who didn’t love you and a girl you were pining after but who could never be yours, only to grow up to be a criminal.

Things could have gone a lot worse, I knew. If I’d stayed home and gone to a shitty school. Because even if that first kiss had gone unnoticed, the second or the third or the fourth one wouldn’t have. And even if all our hypothetical kisses had gone undetected, I still couldn’t have had her. I would have had to sit on the sidelines and watch as Arya fell in love with someone she could actually be with. A Will or Richard or Theodore. Who had a driver and a maid and a college adviser from age ten.

“You should,” Arya said.

“Loan it to me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t give out my favorite hardbacks as loans. That’s a rule.”

“Rules are meant to be broken.”

“Interesting take, from a litigator.”

We stopped in front of Jefferson Market Library. The clock on the tower crawled to five minutes before midnight. I couldn’t believe we’d spent so many hours together just walking and talking. It was like the last twenty years hadn’t even happened.

Only they had.

They were there, in the inches between us, cold and lonely and filled with missed opportunities and unadulterated injustice.

“Why are you really here, Arya?” I turned toward her, my tone rough and coarse, like the scales of a sea creature. “And please, spare me the fine-dining bullshit.”

She wet her lips, dropping her gaze to the ground.

“I came to tell you I’m not coming to court again. Today was my last day. I’m done punishing myself for the things he did. I can’t stomach hearing what these women have been through.”

“You think he did it?” I needed to hear her say that. To disown the man she’d once chosen over me. Our bodies were flush against one another. You could barely fit a needle between us now.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

I reached with my thumb and index finger to tilt her chin up. Her eyelashes fluttered. They were shining like diamonds, full of tears. Swamp eyes, I’d called them when we were kids. But that wasn’t true. They were mossy. The kind of velvety green you could stare at for hours. She held my gaze boldly.

Silver-spooned princess.

The clock hit midnight behind her shoulder, chiming once.

“The witching hour.” She closed her eyes, letting two tears roll down her cheeks. “In books, strange things happen during that time.”

I cupped the sides of her neck, drawing her close, breathing her in. “In reality too.”

And just like that, two decades later, I made the same mistake Nicholai Ivanov had and crushed my lips against Arya Roth’s, knowing the world might explode and that my demise would be worth it.

My hands were in her hair, yanking lightly, like I’d dreamed of doing all those years. My blood flooded with desire. I wanted to ravish this woman and leave nothing for the man who came after me. She opened her mouth for me eagerly, our tongues playing together, a small whimper coming from somewhere deep inside her throat. I sank my teeth into her lower lip, tugging her closer, licking her lip before diving in for a deep, feral kiss. I curled my fingers around Arya’s waist, pressing her body to mine. There was not enough of her, and suddenly, I felt a little panicky. That there was only one Arya in the world. One chance at having her. I withdrew my mouth from hers, pushing her curls from her face. Her eyes were hungry. Full of things. Bad things. Good things. Arya things.