The Wildcard

Chapter Twenty One

“Cayden,” I shook my head in confusion, leaning across to place my hands on his denim-clad stone thighs – giving in to the desperate urge to touch him that was burning within me as much as it was to soothe him. I try, but I’m never completely altruistic when it comes to my man, “You’re talking in circles – what is it?”

When he raised his face to mine it was almost sheepish, a slight chuckle escaping his full lips as he brought his mouth to mine softly. Drawing away, he cradled my face in his hands and looked over my face as though I was made of precious stone – his eyes burning with emotion as he rested his forehead against mine.

“Fuck knows,” he whispered softly, “Fuck knows what it is, but we’re doing something different tonight baby. I feel the need to fall at your feet, open up and bleed, and let you nurse me back to health over a bottle of champagne and the best view that London has to offer … That weird?”

Weird? Probably, but who the fuck knows the rules to this shit anyway? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if life came with a step by step guide as to how to play it? I wanted to give him the same – I knew what he was doing when he broke open more and more each time – trying to pull me out from behind the cage that he kept telling me I’d built around my heart, but I don’t think he knew how far he’d seen behind it – how deeply imbedded within the deepest corners of my eternal soul that he’d become – despite not really knowing much else about my past except my brother.

“Well damn,” I sighed out on the back of a chuckle, “Now I wish I’d gone with that Ann Summers outfit after all …”

Cheekily pulling back with a mock frown, he arched one thick, dark eyebrow at me, “Nurse?”

“Mmhmm,” I nodded, pulling my lip between my teeth saucily.

“Well you didn’t give me that one in the list, otherwise we’d have probably spent yet another of our dates grinding between the sheets and got nowhere … now it’ll just have to be over my desk tomorrow morning teaching you a lesson for withholding vital information,”

God, I so love it when he rolls out his authority like that … it shouldn’t – it really ought to remind me that I’m playing with fire – that screwing the head honcho in my brand new dream  job – the job that my whole future depends on – probably isn’t my brightest idea, especially with my track record.

But it just made the blood coarse through me with a bubbling excitement that would’ve had me on my knees at his feet in a second had he given me the slightest inclination that that was a part of the plan.

Instead I mentally catalogued my lingerie plans for the following morning …

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The thing about Cayden Gates is the amount of turns and twists you take – like every other moment will bring you some other facet to him and some other dimension that draws you into his soul… When he wants you there.

 I couldn’t hide the stunned expression on my features – it probably wasn’t my best Kodak moment either – but for at least thirty seconds, as Adam slowly drew open the door, as Cayden stepped out onto the plush red carpet to a loud applause, and turned – suave, sophisticated, controlled – back to me to catch my hand with an encouraging wink to draw me elegantly into a round of camera flashes and glaring white lightning blasts that almost had me wincing back into the tall, muscular body behind me, that was definitely the frozen image they captured that night. I got my wits eventually – sort of – but by then Cayden had coached me halfway up the red carpet – and away from the blinding paparazzi through the throngs of strangers held back by those less than ornate council issue railings that high profile events are almost always lumbered with.

“It’s just a few pre-dinner cocktails,” he murmured into the shell of my ear seductively, “I have a few things to attend to.”

I nodded quietly – I didn’t need persuasion, I wasn’t a fool I could quite work out exactly what he was doing here – this Gala evening for the local children’s charity had been well publicized, and Cayden had already given me hours out of his day that week, so it wasn’t exactly a shock that he’d have to catch up somewhere – I just didn’t really know what I was doing there with him given all that he’d said to me in the car on our way … given what he’d said to me just yesterday about his fucked up childhood, and his twisted parents … and my blood ran cold for two reasons.

The first in fear that maybe my beautiful, fearless man was deep down just as broken and scared as I was…in which case how could it ever work?

The second in ice cold fury as my wayward thoughts finally registered the haunting glare of a woman carved from stone – an ice queen matriarch cursed with a son she adored and a daughter she despised – eyes just like mine that I’d never expected to feel such hatred from again.

The woman who gave me life just to ruin it.