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Nico
At precisely seven-thirty, I slid the Porsche into park in front of the hotel where I’d left Raven just a few hours earlier and stepped out. I had no doubt she’d be there, waiting in the hotel lobby. She had to be, if the Luciano family wanted her to keep me distracted or garner intel, or whatever it was they were after.
But I wasn’t prepared for the woman who walked out of the glass doors.
I’d expected makeup, and jewelry, and five-inch heels. This Raven was the one I’d seen earlier today. Her dress, the color reminded me of human bones, showed off her bare shoulders. On her feet were a pair of sandals. I could spot the pink on her toenails from a mile away. It was the same pink her cheeks turned when she was flustered. The same pink that had become my favorite color.
The woman knew what she was doing. It pissed me off to know she had taken what I’d told her earlier about liking her this way and used it to her advantage—which was ridiculous since I was playing her just as much as she was playing me.
“Hi,” she said, meeting my gaze and then glancing down at her toes, making the wayward lock slip free of its restraint. The blue in her eyes were a little darker than before; I didn’t miss the note of sadness in it.
“Hi, Raven,” I said, ignoring the rush of arousal that was coursing through my veins. Tonight was about knocking her off-balance, which meant no getting sidetracked by silky hair, or pink toenails, or sad eyes, or anything else she was going to try to throw at me.
I opened the passenger side door for her and waited for her to slip inside, taking absolutely no notice of how her painted fingernails matched her toenails. Then again, maybe it was not such a bad idea to notice. Maybe once I’d gotten her worked up tonight, I’d have her use those fingers on her own body.
She was quiet as we began the long drive outside the city limits. When I glanced over, her whole countenance seemed to scream of sadness. The slump of her shoulders, the dejected tilt of her chin. This was obviously part of the act, so maybe it was time I made her think I was taking the bait.
“Why are you doing this?” she blurted out, throwing me a curveball before I could open my mouth.
“What do you mean?” I asked slowly.
“I mean…” She pressed her lips together and turned inward like she was searching for words. “I mean, why did you want to see me again?”
The guileless act again? She played it so well it took effort to remember it was all an act.
“Because I liked what I saw the last time,” I said easily because it was the truth. Or at least, part of the truth.
Her cheeks pinkened, but she forged ahead. Her determination would have been impressive had it been real. “But I know who you are, Nico. I know what all the tabloids say about you.”
“And what is it they say?” I wasn’t really a tabloid guy, so I was actually kind of curious.
“They say you’ve never been seen with the same woman twice, that a one-night stand pushes your average relationship length to its limits.”
Well, the tabloids got something right.
“So, you can understand why I’m a little baffled?” she said.
Fuck.If she were the honest, guileless girl I’d foolishly thought she was, I might have been tempted to tell her that I didn’t know quite what it was about her that had me coming back for more. It could have been that we’d been interrupted, but in truth, that would have just pissed me off with any other woman. I would have been onto something new in three seconds flat. But even if I could explain it, I still wasn’t telling the conniving, manipulating woman sitting next to me anything she didn’t need to know.
“What can I say, Raven? You amuse me, and I like to be amused.”
I probably should have come up with something more flattering if I wanted to keep stringing her along, but she’d made a fool out of me. She deserved it.
“So, I’m like a shiny, new toy you haven’t tired of yet,” she said, though it came across more as an observation than a question.
“Does that bother you?” I sat up a little straighter in my seat as I waited for her response, my ears almost pricked up in anticipation.
She was silent for a moment like she was putting a great deal of thought into the question.
“No,” she said eventually with a slight shake of her head. “The moment I saw you, I knew who you were. It wouldn’t be fair of me to expect you to be something different.”
A woman who didn’t want to mold me into something different? That was new. But then, it wasn’t real. Raven was just playing a role. How she knew how to play it so perfectly, I had no idea.
“Where are we?” she asked as I turned into the long drive that led to my house.
“This is my home,” I told her with a casual shrug as the wood and stone structure came into view.
My sanctuary. My private retreat. And I was about to let her walk right in.
