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Her hand finds my chest, pressing over my heart. She lets me part her lips with my tongue, moans when I take the kiss deeper.
I want everything deeper with her. I’ve always been the one to push, and she’s been the one to hold me at a distance. But she’s not holding me at a distance now. She grabs the back of my shirt, then strokes up my back. Her touch heats my skin instantly.
We’re alone in this house. I want to fold her over the kitchen table, take her until she’s gripping the sides and groaning into the wood. Then carry her upstairs and love her in my bed.
Before I can, she pries her lips from mine.
“What’s wrong?” I demand.
Her eyes turn glassy, and alarm sets in my gut. “Mischa wants me to play La Mer.”
I grip her arms, hard enough she flinches. No.
“He came to my show and—“
“He spoke to you. In person.”
She nods.
My heart accelerates, a horrid thudding that sounds like my past and my future colliding.
If he laid a hand on her, I would drive to him this second and rip every limb from his body.
“Did he touch—“
“Just my hair. I wanted to get the owner to turn on Mischa. But we were too late, if we ever had a chance at all. He’s selling.” She takes a slow breath. “The only thing I could think is Mischa saw me play at Debajo, and rather than turning him off, it made him…”
“Angry?”
“I was going to say jealous.”
Mischa pursued Eva because she was mine. Eva was beautiful and ambitious, though I now see she was a glittering facsimile of a gem.
Raegan is a different kind of jewel. The real kind. The rare kind.
Mischa is ruthless and arrogant, but he’s not stupid.
I knew he wanted to hurt Raegan in order to hurt me. But if there’s a chance that’s changed, and he wants her…
That’s a million times more dangerous.
I reach for the pins holding her hair in place. “You told him no?”
I finish unpinning her hair and drop the blond wig on the table with the pile of pins. I want to burn the wig. If Mischa breathed on it, I want it gone.
I turn back to the woman I love. I thread my fingers into her thick, silky hair, spreading it over her shoulders.
Still, she doesn’t answer.
The hairs on my arms lift. “Tell me you didn’t say yes.”
“This club is my dream.”
I grab her arms hard enough she flinches. “He’s doing it to fuck with me.”
“Not everything is about you.” The edge in her voice sets me back.
“This is,” I insist, thinking of the boy who hated me in school, the one who failed to recruit me to his cause, the man who’s never forgotten it. “You’re not playing for him.”
