Sinking his fingers into her hair, he tugged until her gaze settled on him. Shock, shame and finally recklessness settled into her beautiful brown eyes. Recklessness that had his blood pounding in his veins. “Hi, hotness.”
Nate didn’t know whether to laugh or throw her over his shoulder and carry her out. Probably both.
She was all toned muscle and soft curves to his touch. His imagination running wild, Nathan swallowed. “This public display is not you, Riya.”
“Even I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.” She sounded sad, wistful. “Anyway, don’t be a party pooper, Nathan. I want to do one thing I’ve never done before the buzz in my head evaporates.”
His fingers around her arms, he tugged her toward him.
“Let me go. I’m having fun. For once in my life, I’m behaving the way I should.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“To live for the night. And you...you’re getting in the way of my fun.”
This was going all wrong. It wasn’t what he had intended.
Isn’t it? a voice mocked him. Isn’t this what you wanted all along?
For her to throw off the shackles she’d bound herself with? For her to be reckless and wild? For her to realize what it was to truly live? For her to embrace life and make it impossible for him to walk away without giving them both what they wanted without guilt?
Gritting his teeth, he clamped down the questions. It was too late now. For regrets or guilt.
His arm around her waist, he tugged her off the dance floor. “This isn’t what you want, Riya.”
Her fingers clutched the lapels of his coat. Stretching on her toes, she tilted forward until she could whisper in his ear. Her warm breath feathered over his jaw, making every muscle clench. His entire frame shook with hunger, with lust so hard that he swayed on his feet.
“Do you know what you want, Mr. Ramirez?”
She must have licked her lower lip. But the stroke of her tongue against the rim of his ear burned through him. Turned every drop of blood in him to molten desire.
Keeping his arm around her, he pushed at her chin, until she was facing him again. “I do, Riya, with a blinding clarity. And I know why it would be wrong to take what I want too.”
Large, almond-shaped eyes widened. The edge in his voice hadn’t gone unnoticed. She would back down now. She would retreat under that hard shell. She always did.
She didn’t and Nathan felt something in him unravel.
Long, pink-tipped fingers fanned over his jaw, and their restless wandering drove Nathan crazy. With the tip of her forefinger, she traced his lower lip, sending a shiver down his spine. “You know, you have the sexiest lower lip I’ve ever seen on a man. The upper one is the mean one, the one that declares to the world that you’re heartless. But the lower one betrays you, Nate.”
Her gaze caressed him. And Nate struggled to control his own desire under it. “It shows that you’re kind underneath, that you have a softer side. Why are you so bent on keeping everyone at a distance?”
Nathan felt like the lowest scum of the world. The trust in her eyes, he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t even deserve to stand next to her here. “Tell me what happened.”
“Why am I finally living my life like a twenty-three-year-old should? Why am I having fun?”
He steered her around. “I’ll take you back to the estate.”
“No.” She shuddered, her balance still precarious. “I don’t want to see Jackie. I can’t bear to be even near her,” she said with such bitterness that it stopped Nathan in his tracks. “I hate her. I didn’t know it was possible to hate anyone so much.”
He ran his fingers over his eyes, wondering what he had started. To see her turn from a sweet, caring person to this? It was like watching a train wreck happen knowing you had instigated it.
He sighed, fought against the panic rising through him. Panic because he could see clearly where it was headed and still it seemed he couldn’t stop it.
“Riya, you’re not yourself. Let me take you back to the estate.”
She tugged away from him and stepped back, her mouth pouting. “Leave me here if that suits you. But I won’t go back there.” She reached out for the pillar and moved toward it. “I’ve always taken care of myself, did you know? I’m sure I can handle tonight. What’s the worst that could happen? I’ll fall and land on my rear. The best? I’ll go home with some stranger like every other partying twenty-three-year-old over there.”
And those words...they sank into Nathan like sharp claws.
The picture they painted, her bare limbs tangled up with some faceless stranger, was enough to root him to the spot.
Nathan clasped her wrist and dragged her behind him. The swish of the elevator doors, the soft ping as it began to ascend. Everything felt magnified. As if every breath was rushing up to the moment where he would have her in his suite, dressed like this, and he and his control and his good intentions in tatters.
He still made one last attempt at keeping his sanity, at doing the right thing. “As soon as I pour some coffee down your throat, I’m taking you home.”
She laughed then, her hands tucked tight around her, her entire body trembling. “Home? I have no home, Nathan. That estate belongs to you. I have no one and nothing.”
“Riya, it doesn’t have to be this way. I understand that you’re angry. I understand how it feels when someone who should take care of you betrays you...when someone you—”
“Do you? She lied to me. About my father. She practically stole me from him.”
If she had cried, Nathan wouldn’t have been so scared for her. But she didn’t. It was as though her shock was much too deep for mere tears. “Everything I have believed about myself, everything is a lie. I thought he abandoned me. I thought he didn’t love me. I will never forgive her for this. She stole my childhood and she made me into this frozen coward who hid from everything in life. No one has ever cared about my happiness.
“Not her and definitely not my dad. If he had, knowing how emotionally weak she is, would he have threatened her that he would take me from her?”
What the hell had he started?
He had never meant to hurt her. He had never meant to make her feel alone, had never meant to unravel her like this. He understood the weight of it, he knew better than anyone how painful, how awful it felt.
“Shh, Riya. Enough,” he said in a stern voice. “Look at me, butterfly.”
When she raised her gaze to him, the depth of feeling that filled him scared the life out of him. Her mouth trembled and he jerked his hand back, the urge to touch that soft cushion overwhelming him. “This will pass, Riya. Believe me, let me drive you back to the estate and—”
“Please don’t send me away, Nathan. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to myself again. Tomorrow, I’ll be strong again. Tomorrow, I might even forgive her. Tonight, I want to be selfish. Tonight, I want it to be just about me.”
What could he say to that?
His chest was tight with guilt. All she had tried was to make his father smile. And he...he had unleashed nothing but hurt on her.
Because he had coveted something he could never have.
TIGHTENING