Chapter 7

Jax

One week later

I was late.

I checked my watch—eight p.m.—and clicked my tongue, while city lights and palm trees flashed by the car window.

Every day this week, and every night, I’d spent away from the apartment, thanks to business. And every one of those nights had ended in me jerking off thinking about Riley. Riley who answered my texts with courtesy and nothing else.

Tonight, I’d returned to find the apartment empty, though her scent floated on the air.

Playing hard to get? She could dream on. I didn’t play, and I’d already claimed her.

The games had ended the minute she’d stripped off those yoga pants and bent for me. My cock rolled against the inside of my tailored pants, and I shifted, irritation growing in my gut.

“Here fine, sir?” The chauffeur, Geoffrey, asked from the front.

The car slowed to a halt outside Riley’s place—Robinson’s Dancing Studio with a red-breasted robin on the front—and I nodded.

Geoffrey pulled into the spot.

“She hasn’t taken the car home once this past week?” I asked.

“No, sir. I was loathe to force her to do so.”

“Of course,” I replied.

I opened my car door—Geoffrey knew by now I liked to do that type of shit myself—and stepped onto the sidewalk, my focus on the door at the top of the stairs, lights on in the hall beyond it.

“Stick around,” I said to my driver. “I’ll be back quicker than a spider catches the fly.”

“Yes, sir.”

I strode up the front steps, opened the door, and walked down the hall. The studio was relatively silent. The classes had ended for the day, so why hadn’t Riley come back to the apartment?

The thought of her here, in danger, sent spirals of dread through me. Fuck, this was bad. It wasn’t enough that she moved like every man’s wet dream. She was strong enough to stick to her guns, to put off selling to me though she had to know it would end up that way.

If I couldn’t have her studio, I’d have her body. Shit, I probably already had her soul.

“You little bitch.”

I froze and listened hard.

The voice had come from down the hall, in the same studio I’d first found her.

“You think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you? You think you’re going to defeat me?”

What the hell had I walked in on? Some kinda dancer spat? Game of Thrones, studio version?

“You’ll never get me down.”

It was one voice, and it was the same one that’d stiffened my cock each night this week. Riley. Someone had pissed her off.

Red-hot anger swept through me, and the muscles on either side of my spine stiffened and corded. I charged down the corridor, my footsteps thundering on the carpet out here, and shoved open the left door of the dance hall.

Riley stood inside it, her hands wrapped around the center pole in the room, hazel-flecked gaze focused on the roof above her. She wiggled the pole. “I can’t believe I spent money on you.” This time she joggled the pole from side to side, then wrung her hands, strangling the cool metal. “Useless piece of bitch, dick, you—”

“Oh yeah, I love it when you talk dirty,” I said.

Riley let out a shriek and spun toward me, breathing hard.

“Not so much when you’re talking to inanimate objects, though. Or, shit, wait, were you talking to yourself? Because that’s kinda out of my wheelhouse. I could call someone if you’d like.”

“What are you doing here?” Riley asked.

“That’s your favorite line. Every time I arrive you ask me why I’m here. You didn’t complain when I arrived on top of you last week.” I chased my thumb down my jaw, scratched beneath my short-trimmed beard.

Riley’s nipples pressed against the fabric of yet another sports bra. This one was powder-blue and suited her complexion so perfectly it choked my sense of time. Good god, she was unbelievable.

I’d seen my fair share of women. I’d hired some of the most beautiful dancers in Miami, fuck it, in the whole United States, to dance in my clubs, and none of them had had this effect on me. It was a sweet combination of strength and vulnerability. Of confidence and innocence.

She wasn’t a dichotomy. She was an enigma.

Which was trouble, since that was what other women had called me.

I was the enigma. I was the powerhouse.

Riley stared at me, speechless. “Did you break in?” She asked. “Because if you broke anything, you’ll have to pay for it, and I’m seriously not in the mood to—”

I raised a palm. “Your front door was wide open. Literally speaking, this time.”

“Shit,” she muttered. “She should’ve locked it.”

“Who?”

Riley shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s past time I leave now.” But she didn’t budge from her spot. Instead, she studied me, her head tilted to one side, her chocolate hair escaping from the messy bun atop it.

“Good, so you haven’t been sleeping in the studio.”

“No.”

“Then why haven’t you been taking the car I send for you?” I asked. I didn’t do well with asking too many questions, simply because I expected people to do what they were told. It wasn’t an arrogance thing—Shit, who was I kidding, it was one hundred percent an arrogance thing. That, and I’d been raised in a world where disobedience ended with pain.

“There’s charity and then there’s… I don’t know. It didn’t feel like a gesture of kindness,” Riley said. “It felt like you were trying to prove a point by sending that car. Like I’m your property or something.”

“No,” I replied. “You’re not my property.” Yet. “But I want you kept safe.”

“Why? You don’t know me.”

“I know every inch of you,” I said. “Intimately.”

Riley rolled her eyes at me and focused on the pole again, clouds scudding across her clear expression.

“So, I take it you were cussing out the pole?”

“Yeah,” she said and wiggled it again. “I paid this guy to install them all, and he assured me that because they’re permanent fixtures there wouldn’t be any problems. I mean, they’re bolted to the ceiling and the floor, which means he either didn’t install them correctly, or he lied to me. And that makes me so angry I could scream.”

“Why?” My feet thudded across the polished, wooden boards.

“Because I paid good money for this place, for these poles, to continue my Aunt Jessa’s memory and—I swear to god if you suggest I sell again, I’m going to rip this pole right outta the floor and whack you over the head with it.”

“I would love to see that,” I replied. “Love. To see it. No joke. But I think I might be able to help you. Shit, even if I can’t, I know a guy who can.” I halted beside her, ran a finger down her spine, and rested it just above the lip of her yoga pants. She had to quit wearing these around me. They hugged every intimate part of her so tightly it was as if she were naked in front of me.

And that ass, though. Damn.

Too much of a distraction.

Riley shivered and arched her back.

I leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Mind moving out of the way, gorgeous?”

She jumped as if I’d goosed her, blushing red hot, and scooted backward.

I took hold of the pole and looked up at the ceiling as she’d done, then jerked it back and forth. It rattled against the upper silver casing. “You got a ladder?” I asked.

“No.”

“Any tools?”

“Oh yeah, sure. I keep them in my other pair of yoga pants, though.”

“Hoo-ee, somebody had a good day,” I replied and let go of the pole. I brushed off my palms. “Look, I can’t do anything about this without the necessary equipment. I’ve got a guy who sorts out this type of stuff, best in the business. I’ll have him come over and fix this, assess the rest of the poles too, just in case. Sound good?”

“In return for what?” Riley asked and gripped her upper arms. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but—I can’t afford to pay him. And you know I can’t afford to pay you until the end of the month, so—”

“No charge,” I replied. “Think of it as a gift from one business owner to the other.”

“Or a bribe.”

“Jesus Christ, what made you this cynical?” I asked and walked over to her.

She lifted her chin in that defiant gesture I fucking adored. She was tiny, but strong. She probably had more strength in her pinkie finger than most of the men I dealt with on a daily basis. They’d have run home to mommy and daddy before even thinking of sleeping on the floor in one of their businesses. And these were dudes who wore suits and were at least my age—thirty-five and up.

“Life,” Riley said. “I guess I’m not used to people giving stuff away for free. Everyone I’ve known has been about taking. Well, almost everyone.”

I took her hand in mine, because I couldn’t not do it. Every cell in my body screamed for me to touch her nonstop, and it was fucking painful not to follow through. She didn’t flinch. “I’m not like everyone else,” I replied. “I’m sure you’ve realized that by now. I’ve got nothing to lose here, Miss Robinson. I’ve got more money than I know what to do with.”

“Then why did you want to buy my studio?” she asked, and she slipped her hand from my grasp “I don’t understand.”

“Because I can’t stop,” I said. “I never stop. I want it all, and I want it now.”

She hesitated and tilted as if she’d caught the faintest tune. “I know that,” she said. “That’s a Queen song. I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.” Riley grinned. “Well, you can’t have it all, Jax.”

“It’s never wise to poke the bear.” I could have it all. Domination sated me.

“You’re more of a wolf than a bear. All shaggy and—” She rammed her teeth shut, tugged on the bottom of her sports bra. “Never mind.”

“All right, never mind. Let’s go eat.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s go eat. Dinner. You want to eat in or out? I’m fucking beat. Been sitting in airports all week or on flights with sweaty dudes from other countries. I always wind up sitting behind or in front of some greasy motherfucker who thinks hygiene’s a word written on the back of a toilet somewhere in India. What do you say? Chinese, pizza? Burgers? Sushi? Curry? Don’t tell me you want French food. I’ve had enough of that to last me a fucking lifetime.”

“You went to France?” Riley’s eyes glowed, and she pressed herself forward an inch, bumped my arm. “Sorry, I’ve never been out of the country before. I’m, uh, just interested.”

“Yeah, but trust me, it was all business and no fun,” I said and walked over to the stack of chairs in the corner. I grabbed Riley’s handbag and walked it back to her, held it out on the tips of my fingers—another act I’d never dreamed of performing. Fetching someone’s shit for them? It was usually the other way around.

“OK, thanks,” she said, and slung her handbag over her shoulder. “Um, pizza would be great.”

“Sure thing, roomie,” I said and took her hand again. “We’ll have pizza, and I’ll tell you all you want to know about the frogs and the baguettes and that fucking escargot. Christ, that’s enough to make anyone puke in their mouth.”

“Romantic,” Riley said drily.

“Anything for you.” It was a joke, but something twanged in my chest, in a spot that’d never so much as shifted in the past.

Man, you’re about to fuck yourself, hard.