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“Next we lunch. I’m driving.” Ryder got out of the car and motioned she do the same.
Lunch? He wanted to eat? She was so wired she could fly! Nadia gripped the wheel a moment longer and wondered how far she might get if she just took off. When he opened her door she squinted up at him. “Bonnie and Clyde had to start somewhere.”
He merely held out a hand. She let him help her out of the car when she realised she was trembling all over, adrenalin knocking about her insides till her nerves sang. He must have felt it as he cupped her elbows in an effort to steady her, which was kind of sweet. Then his eyes turned dark and he pressed her back against the sloping side of the car which was anything but sweet. “Tell me how that felt?”
Shaking hands running over his chest, she said, “You were the one putting your life in my hands. How did that feel?”
His eyes narrowed. “Not in the least bit unusual.”
“Oh,” Nadia said in barely a whisper. While in the cocoon of the car she’d managed to just hold herself together while being cracked apart. Now, out in the open air, the country breeze tickling at her hair, sunshine pouring down over her bare shoulders, Ryder’s challenging hazel eyes looking deep into her own, she felt...too much.
Heat rising, everywhere, she looked up at him. “I know I was a bit of a beast to start with, but thank you for today.”
“It just seemed like a nice day for a drive.”
Said the man who worked so hard that he never had time to change out of his suit for a ten p.m. appointment, who’d taken a day off because he’d seen she was about to crack and chose to be there to hold her together when she did. “Come on, Ryder,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “I doubt you’ve done a thing in your life that wasn’t entirely deliberate.”
Something slid behind his eyes like quicksilver, something deep and onerous. “So I might have had an ulterior motive.”
His gaze slipped to her neck, the hot spot below her ear, before landing on her lips, and any breath she’d managed to gather in her lungs poured out of her in a shaky sigh. Then his eyes slid back to hers. “You, Nadia Kent, have reserves of strength inside of you you’ve not yet tapped. Add drive, talent, panache, and you can do anything you set your mind on. You don’t need your mother’s permission to soar.”
Mention of her mother was quite enough for the adrenalin still sliding hot and molten through her veins to solidify like cooling candle wax. “Ryder—”
“Tell me you know it.”
His eyes were no longer smiling. They were intense. Serious. Unrelenting. As if he believed in her. Not just her ability to dance. To do well despite her ex watching on. But her. And he wouldn’t give up until she believed the same.
“I know it.” And like a flash of white-hot light bursting inside her, illuminating the shiny new places inside her she’d only just begun to feel, she did. In fact in that moment she felt pretty much invincible.
Pure and unadulterated instinct taking her over, Nadia lifted up onto her toes, slid her hands over his big shoulders and kissed him. Soft at the start. Appreciating every lick of heat building in its wake. And when his hand moved to her breast, kneading, running a thumb over the centre, it ached. She ached. Every last bit of her inside and out, filled with such sweet pain she could barely stand it—
A car zoomed past, flushing them with a burst of hot air, and a beeping horn that echoed off into the distance. Still, they were slow to pull apart, and when Nadia leant her forehead against Ryder’s shoulder the erratic beat of his heart more than matched her own.
“Lunch?” Ryder asked, his voice coarse.
“Sounds like a plan.”
* * *
When Ryder dropped Nadia home late that evening, he helped her from the car once more. And once again made a meal of her self-control, the cold metal of the car at her back doing nothing to dampen the heat of the man kissing her senseless.
But after the events of the day—the news, revelations, and realisations—she was exhausted, emotionally and mentally wrung out. The thought of putting one foot in front of the other to get to her door was enough to make her whimper. So she pressed a hand to his chest. “Ryder, wait.”
When he growled in frustration, she bit her lip so hard it bruised. She swiped her tongue over the spot, then said, “I’ve been thinking, and I need to cool things between now and the audition.”
Hard, and hot, and breathing heavy, Ryder didn’t move for a long while. When he did it was to curl away from her and lean back against the car, where he crossed his arms and looked out into the night.
“Like a football player,” she explained, turning to face him, the cold of the car now seeping into her skin. “No sex before a big match. I’m going to need all the reserves of stamina I can muster. You understand, right?”
