There’s a rough quality to his voice, a warmth beneath the rasp. “I like you in your jacket.”
“I think I’ll like us both better without it tonight.”
“Me, too,” I whisper because my voice is apparently as lost in this man as the rest of me.
His dark lashes lower, sweeping away his expression, but not before I see a hint of something I cannot name, something he does not want me to see.
Already the elevator halts, the doors opening. Kace pushes off the wall he’s using to hold us both up and tangles his fingers with my fingers. We step off the elevator, only a few feet from a double-arched red door. “The entire floor is mine,” he says, punching in a code to a panel on the wall. “Originally the elevator opened into my apartment, but I wanted an extra level of security.”
“And a red door is a symbol of protection.”
“And luck,” he says.
“But anyone with your skill doesn’t believe in luck. They believe in hard work, hours and hours of hard work, repeating over and over.”
“I believe in both.” He opens the door and reaches inside, a glow of lights illuminating the once dark space, but he doesn’t enter. He settles back into his place in that hallway with me. And when his eyes meet mine, anticipation burns between us. He’s not touching me and yet, I feel him in every part of me, in ways I didn’t know another human could affect me. “Welcome to my home, Aria Alard,” he says, his voice a silky seduction that strokes every nerve ending that I own.
He motions me forward and for reasons I don’t understand, I read his need for me to choose to enter, for me to choose to be here as if I haven’t already. Or maybe it’s not his need at all. Maybe it’s my need and this man, this virtual stranger, senses that in me. And if he does, he’s right. All my life has been about decisions others have made for me. I need to be in control of my life. I walk into the apartment, onto dark hardwood and directly into a foyer where a dozen teal teardrop lights dangle from the ceiling. A few feet ahead of me is a staircase.
The door shuts behind me and nerves explode in my belly. Kace steps behind me and removes my coat—his coat—and I turn to watch him hang it on a coatrack. The minute it’s dealt with, his attention is fully on me, his expression unreadable, but his eyes—I cannot see the blue of his eyes for the fire. With a predatory energy about him that is wholly man and sex, he closes the space between us, but he doesn’t grab me and rip my clothes, though he makes me wish he’d do just that. But that is not who this man is, at least, not in this moment. In this moment, he is control and power, two things that ooze from him as surely as does his desire.
Instead, his fingers twine with mine in what has too easily and quickly become a familiar and welcome gesture. It could be considered almost tender, though there’s nothing tender in what brews between us in the heat of this night, nor is tender what I crave. Tender is sweet. Tender is sheltered. Tender is all I have ever known and all I wish to escape. I don’t overthink why that is, though I might if I had time. I don’t have time. He leads me down the ten steel steps and straight into an open room wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows where an eternal dark sky and ocean seem to surround us now. The living area is to the right of the space, two steps leading to the seating area with a large steel gray high-backed couch and two matching chairs, a luxurious gray rug beneath them all, a chandelier of a violin dangling above a round gray marble table. That chandelier is stunning, while the twinkling dots of color from the city lights brighten the night sky and the miles of ocean with life. What brightens me though, what calls me, is the grand piano to the right of the living area, and the violin displayed on a stand beside it.
I suck in a breath and Kace releases my hand as if he’s telling me that I’m free to follow the burn in my belly. And so, I do. I close the space between me and it, stopping in front of the violin, a work of art, the shiny wood a perfect shade of brown flecked with black. And when Kace steps to my side, I whisper, “It’s a Stradivarius,” incredulous that I am actually standing here with a piece of my history, with a piece of my family.
“It is,” he agrees. “My favorite of the three I own. The other two are locked in a vault. Touch it if you wish. Pick it up and hold it.”
Yes to all the things he has just suggested. I want to pick it up and hold it but I do not. I resist out of sheer conditioning, taught to run from my past, and from anyone who could connect me to that past. And yet here I am, with “the” Kace August and not one, but three Stradivarius violins, within reach.
Kace steps behind me, the warmth of his body sinking into mine before he even touches me. But he does touch me. The instant his hands settle on my waist, I lean into him, welcoming the power of his body against mine. He’s strong, confident, a man who knows his place in this world and I envy this of him. He nuzzles my neck, goosebumps lifting on my nape. “It’s calling you,” he says, his lips brushing my ear, breath a warm fan on my neck. “I can feel it. You want to know if it’s real.”
I’m suddenly not sure if he’s talking about the violin, but I turn to face him, his touch rotating with me. My hands settle on his upper arms, muscles flexing beneath my palms. “Do you really want to know?”
His hand slides under my hair and settles warmly on my neck, his touch dragging my mouth close to his. “Oh yes,” he murmurs, his breath a warm caress on my cheek. “I’ve learned in life that the façade of truth destroys more than outright lies.”
Never have any words hit me deeper, harder, never have they been more real.
“I stayed away from you for reasons that haven’t changed. I’m not a forever guy. I’m not good for you.”
I almost laugh with the truth in those words. I don’t know what he expects from me, but he’s right. He is everything I’ve been warned against which, if I’m honest, only makes me want him more but there is more to this story.
“Nor am I good for you,” I say. “And I, too, have learned a few lessons, like forever doesn’t even exist. And even if it did, it’s too long.”
He pulls back, surprise etched on his handsome face, and something else—there is always something else with Kace that I cannot quite read. I don’t want to read it, either. I don’t want to talk. I push to my toes and dare to be bold when nothing in my life has been bold but death. I don’t want to think about death tonight. I press my lips to his.
For a moment, the briefest of moments, he is stiff, and then there is a low, rough groan that escapes his lips and vibrates against my lips. His tongue licks into my mouth in a sizzling slide that has me moaning. He slants his mouth over mine, deepening the connection, and he kisses me as I have never been kissed. He kisses me as if he is claiming me as if I really am his. And tonight, I want to be. Tonight, I so want to be, but his words come back to me, they stab at me.
I’ve learned in life that the façade of truth destroys more than outright lies.
I don’t need another lie in my life. I tear my mouth from his. “I need you to know that I do want to see your violins. Your Stradivarius. I have a personal reason. But that is not why I’m here now.”