LIVVY HAD never been good at maintaining rage, which had turned out to be quite the problem when it came to staying away from certain people she was supposed to despise with all her might.
She cracked out a laugh, her anger giving way to genuine amusement. “Shut the front door, Nicholas. Behind you, on your way out, I mean.”
He grew still when she laughed, but his dark blue eyes were expressionless. She supposed some people would call him cold, but she knew him too well for that. For all that he was three years older than her, they’d essentially grown up together. She’d seen him happy, devastated, grief-stricken, and angry.
Not since they’d broken up, though. Since then, she’d only seen him cool and controlled. Or hot, his face twisted in savage pleasure as he fucked her. Those were his default modes when it came to her. And she’d never let on how much she missed those other emotions.
“You don’t think I’m serious?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes and paced back to her table, unable to stand being so close to him. “You mean about my inking you? Yeah, no, I don’t think you’re serious.” She knew exactly why he was here, had figured it out the second she’d spotted him in his car, his features shadowy but unmistakable. The man might be brilliant when it came to business, but covert he wasn’t. He’d parked right under a streetlight.
Nicholas had always liked order. Black and white. And above all else, he was loyal to his family and C&O—or Chandler’s, as it was called now.
When something unexpected happened, when the patterns in his life were interrupted, his immediate instinct was to circle his wagons and make sure those two things were protected. And he was trained to see a Kane—even her, maybe especially her—as a threat.
She could never let him see how much that hurt her. Let him think she wanted nothing from him, except his body . . . and maybe not even that anymore.
A muscle in his square jaw twitched. His features were too blunt and harsh to be called pretty, but he was beautifully compelling in the same way a blade was. Sharp. Lethal. Devastating.
His fingers went to the knot of his tie. It took her a second to realize what he was doing.
Oh no. She tensed. No, no, no, not his tie. Goddamn it.
Did he know? Could he possibly have any idea how much she loved watching him unfasten the Windsor knot at his throat?
Livvy traced her tongue under the edge of her upper teeth as the expensive silk whisked against Egyptian cotton. He carefully folded it around his hand, and she had to fight not to press her hand over her belly at the jump of excitement there. That deliberate, neat gesture always did something to her.
The times they’d come together over the years, he started the night like this. Tidy. Then she eroded every ounce of his control, until he was a naked, stripped animal, hungry for her.
She remembered the first time she’d taken notice of him in a charcoal-gray suit. She’d been fifteen, and he’d walked into her house with her brother, still wearing the corporate uniform he’d donned for his summer job at the family company. His lanky frame in the finely tailored dress slacks and jacket had made her look twice, then a third time.
He’d been wearing a red tie that day. She remembered, because it was the first time she’d imagined grabbing the thing and dragging his lips to hers. He’d gone from a family friend to the object of her teenage lust in a few seconds.
Bastard had imprinted on her. Now she was helpless against his formally clad figure.
Oh, he knew she was affected. He couldn’t be so dense. He must know because he was standing there all hot. And suited. And, and, and . . . rubbing his thumb over his tie like he knew exactly how she wanted him to drag it over her body. Or wrap her up in the silken bindings.
Stop. Drooling.
Nicholas neatly placed his tie in his pocket and pushed the sides of his jacket away, his hands on his hips. Asshole! What kind of sexy show-off power pose was that? And why did she find it so sexy?
News at ten. Area woman finds powerful, confident man sexy. In other top stories, water is wet and puppies are goddamn adorable.
She averted her eyes from the way the jacket framed his white shirt stretched over his flat belly. Disciplined guy that he was, she bet he still woke up daily at five in the morning to work out. Every year she hoped she’d find him less attractive, but when she peeled that fucking delicious suit off him, he was all tight, lean, muscular flesh. All hers. For a night, at least.
“Where do you want me?”
Everywhere. That’s the problem. I want you everywhere, and I always will.
“It’s a bad idea to play chicken with me. We both know I’m not afraid of jack.” Lies. She was deathly afraid of the things he made her feel. But if she kept saying how courageous she was, maybe she could make everyone believe it?
“I’m not playing chicken.”
“Neither am I. I will pierce your skin, kiddo.” More lies.
He shrugged, cool as a cucumber. “I have to begin somewhere. You’ve got a head start.”
Definitely, compared to him. She’d gotten her first tattoo when she was seventeen, a tiny pot of gold on her hip she’d been delighted to show off in a bikini as soon as possible. Mostly to show off to Nicholas, who had stared for a long time before he’d realized she was watching him. Then he’d flushed a dark red, before making his excuses and disappearing inside his family’s lake house.
They’d started dating a week later, and the first time his hands had coasted over her body in the backseat of his car, he’d gone straight for the gold, fingers and lips and tongue tracing it reverently. She owed that lucky charm a lot.
Like years and years of heartache, dummy. She pursed her lips, trying to think past her inconvenient lust long enough to get out of this.
She’d known keeping off his radar would be difficult, but she’d thought she’d have more time. She’d kept a low profile, only traveled back and forth between home and work, hadn’t looked up any old friends or acquaintances. What a naive, silly idea. Clearly, all it took was one person who spotted and recognized her to get the phone trees ringing. This town literally wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
You came home to move forward.
There was nothing to discuss here, nothing that would help them move forward. Only a repetitive cycle of pain and desire she had resolved to break this year. If she hadn’t had to come home, it might have worked too. “You’ve got a ways to go if you’re planning on catching up.”
She played with a lock of her hair, draping it over her left shoulder, letting it cover her heart. She’d done a shitty job of protecting that foolish organ her whole life. That needed to change.
Nicholas’s gaze dropped to that lock of hair. When she’d caught sight of him sitting in his car, she couldn’t deny she’d felt a spark of joy.
That same spark tingled to life as he walked toward her now. But then she noted how his steps were hesitant, reluctant, and that spark died a swift, fierce death.
Because he didn’t want to walk toward her. He might crave her body, but that was all he wanted. And he hated himself for it, the same way she hated herself for being unable to control her feelings for him.
Every muscle tensed when he raised his hand, but it only hovered over her bare arm before dropping back to his side. “This is new.”
Her skin was hot and tingly, like the ink on the vine was fresh. “Got it a few months ago,” she managed. Because a clinging vine the color of her eyes served as a good reminder of what she didn’t ever want to be.
“Hmm.” His gaze dipped to her cleavage and grew heavy-lidded. They never lingered when they were in bed together, and the lights were usually off, so he hadn’t seen the details of the rest of the ink on her body. Part of that was by design. Each dot of pigment meant something to her, something she wasn’t sure she could share with him and be okay.
But in her fantasies, they played a wonderful game called Inspect Livvy’s Body Thoroughly. It was a good game.
But you’re not playing it anymore, in your mind or reality. Because you’re taking charge of your life and your future and heavenly God, he smells so good, like cinnamon and . . .
“It’s pretty. What does it mean?”
She faltered. “It means I like pretty things,” she lied.
Deep lines etched his forehead. “Why . . . ?” There went that muscle in his jaw again. “Why are you here?”
More reluctance. He hated he’d had to ask that. She bet the only son of a family on Forbes’s richest must generally know everything going on in his world.
Did he not know about her mother’s accident? She’d simply assumed he would hear of it. Or . . . A sharp pain lanced her chest. Maybe he did know, and he hadn’t expected her to show up.
If that was the case, then it only underscored how much they’d changed. The woman he’d known all those years ago would have dropped everything to come home if her mother’d broken her hip. No, that wasn’t right. That woman would have never left to begin with.
Ugh. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her mom with him. “I told you. I don’t have time to talk. I’m working.”
He leaned closer, giving her another delightful hint of aftershave. “And I told you. I’ll get a tattoo, if that’s what it takes to have you answer my questions.”
Her lips firmed, her temper crackling. Yes, good, get mad. A solid show of messy drama will chase him out just as well as anything else. “Fine.” She reached behind her, grabbed the clipboard holding blank forms and a pen. “Here.”
He accepted the board when she shoved it at him. “What is it?”
“A health and safety acknowledgment and a disclaimer. Says you’re not drunk and you understand I could screw up and completely destroy your body, turning you into a hideous monster that makes all those hordes of women panting after you run screaming from your bedroom.” She smiled sweetly.
He raised an arrogant brow, but he didn’t dispute the part about the hordes of women. “Do you do that often? Disfigure men?”
“Twice on Tuesdays.”
“I wouldn’t sue you.”
“That’s good,” she said flippantly. “I don’t have anything worth suing for.”
She waited for him to fumble his way out at the reminder of her diminished fortunes. The Chandlers had wound up with everything, and the Kanes with nothing, after all.
Because the Chandlers are opportunistic, greedy, soulless bastards, came Paul’s voice in her head.
Nicholas looked down at the clipboard and quickly signed it without reading it.
“You should read the things you sign,” she snapped, genuinely annoyed with his carelessness. “I could have stuck a blank check on there.”
“Do you need money, Livvy?”
Not from him, thanks. “Only what you’ll pay for your tattoo. Spoiler alert: I’m fucking expensive.”
“I know.” He shrugged when she met his gaze. “You can get a lot of information on the Internet.”
He’d googled her? No, heart, don’t you dare go pitter-pat over that! Googling is hardly a sign of caring. Do you know who casually googles exes? Everyone with a stinkin’ Internet connection.
She yanked the clipboard from him and ripped off the last page of the carbon copy. “Your aftercare instructions are on the back of this. Might wanna keep them.” She gestured to the seat. She’d done the guest-artist deal in a ton of shops over the years, some better than others. This place was on the small side, but scrupulously hygienic, her biggest requirement.
He peeled off his jacket and draped it neatly over the plain plastic chair in the corner that was reserved for guests of customers before settling into the leather padded seat. He looked far too good in her chair. “Where do you want to do it?”
Her step faltered. To cover her reaction, she went to the sink and washed her hands. The it was a tattoo. He meant where did she want to tattoo him on his body, not where did she want to have wild animal sex. “Usually the customer decides that.”
Not in this case. Livvy knew exactly what she’d put on him, and where. She’d scribbled it on a cocktail napkin years ago, around three a.m., when he’d been sleeping soundly next to her, his naked back bared.
She’d like to say she’d thrown that napkin away, that she hadn’t visualized that design getting more elaborate and perfect, but that would be a complete lie.
It was art, she told herself defensively. She didn’t throw away any of her designs.
She dried her hands and turned to catch him undoing the right cuff of his shirt. Ohhh, she liked watching him do that too. Usually by the time he was done unfastening his tie and the cuffs, she was in a frenzy of lust. Not today, though. Today she’d be all adult and shit. In full command of herself.
Nicholas rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, baring his muscular forearm, and rested it on the arm of the chair. She hooked her stool with her ankle and shoved it closer so she could sit next to him, contemplating his arm like it held all the secrets of the universe.
She could do it. She could totally touch him and control her pesky base desires. Livvy pressed her fingers against the skin of his wrist.
Her stomach clenched. Okay, maybe she couldn’t. “There?”
“Fine.”
She slid her fingers higher, up to the middle of his forearm, because those base desires demanded to be fed a nibble of pleasure. His late mother had been Greek, and his heritage was apparent in the olive tone in his skin. She swallowed. “Or here?”
He cleared his throat. His hand had become a fist, she noted. “Whatever you want.”
“What am I putting on you?”
He released his fist, and his arm jumped. “I told you. You decide.”
Livvy slid her finger down again, and that damn muscle responded. She kept her head bent. “You’re permanently altering your body,” she began, about to launch into the speech she’d had to give to intoxicated college students for the past year in Boston.
“I don’t care.”
Lies. He cared about his body. He treated it like a goddamn temple. Yet another thing for him to control. “Oh, goodie. I haven’t done any naked women in a while.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
Always so confident. “How do you know?”
“I know you.”
The three words had her swallowing around the lump in her throat. No, he didn’t really know her. She was hardly the same pigtailed kid who’d tagged along behind him and Paul, eager to play with them. Or the young woman he’d swept off her feet, whose virginity he’d taken in a luxurious hotel room a few towns over.
Everything had seemed so easy then. Perfect. They’d been a magical couple, young wealthy royalty destined to unite two powerful families.
Then it had been over.
“You don’t know shit,” she managed, then grabbed a Sharpie from her workbench.
He was silent for a bit. “You’re probably right.”
She uncapped the green Sharpie and bent over his arm. A blank canvas. A tingle of excitement ran through her, the same tingle any artist would feel if they’d theoretically been given carte blanche.
“What are you doing?”
“I draw my designs first,” she lied. She tended to freehand most of her work, unless her client wanted to see it in advance. Then she used transfer paper, like a temporary tattoo.
There was no way she was actually piercing Nicholas’s virgin skin with a needle, though. Otherwise she would have prepped the area properly by shaving and cleaning it.
“Naked lady it is,” she said lightly, and bent her head to draw a woman’s head on his inner wrist, making it deliberately big.
She didn’t have to steady him—he was unmoving—but she kept her finger right on his pulse. Its regular tempo reminded her of all the times they’d lain curled up around each other, their heartbeats synchronized. Nothing frazzled him, not even his childhood sweetheart and former lover putting permanent marks on him.
Livvy bit her inner cheek when she sketched in huge boobs, waiting for his yelp of outrage. When she glanced up, though, his eyes were shut, head tilted back, thick lashes flaring against his cheeks. It wasn’t fair for a man to have eyelashes like that when she had to wage a war with her mascara brush every morning to turn her short lashes into any kind of flirtatious arcs.
Was there anything she didn’t like about his face? Nope. It wasn’t perfect, but she lusted after all of it, from his fierce eyebrows to his twice broken nose to his high cheekbones to those aforementioned lashes. She wanted to drown in his eyes and be revived by his cruel lips.
She drew the female’s legs coyly bent to preserve some modesty—Livvy would happily draw a vagina, but she wasn’t sure what level of detail she could manage in a hasty doodle on an arm, and she hated to half-ass a vagina—and continued sneaking peeks up at the man. There were new lines on his forehead and around his mouth, like he frowned a lot more now. He was thirty-three, hardly ancient, but silver threaded through the hair at his temples.
“Why are you really in town?”
She concentrated harder on her dumb drawing than she needed to. “My mom broke her hip. Where do you think I’d be?”
At his silence, she looked up. His lips were compressed tight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. How is Tani?”
At least he could say her name. “She’ll be fine. She just needs someone.”
Not entirely true. Tani wasn’t totally alone. She lived with her sister-in-law, and she had other people who could look out for her.
But Livvy wanted Tani to need her.
Livvy had managed to avoid spending more than twenty-four consecutive hours in this town or in her mother’s company for longer than a decade, since her beloved father had died and everything had come crashing down around her. Her self-imposed exile had felt like protection back then. Not so much anymore.
In a fit of whimsy, Livvy added two large wings to the back of the voluptuous female.
“Did your brother come back too?”
Her hand jerked at the bite in the words, the first real, non-lusty emotion Nicholas had clearly betrayed.
She knew Nicholas probably had ten thousand unresolved feelings toward her late father but she didn’t really think he actively hated her or her mother. She didn’t even think he’d despised Paul, though Paul had been eaten up with bitterness toward anyone named Chandler. Nicholas probably considered them collateral damage in the sequence of events that had happened after the tragedy, people who were simply too painful to be around or think about.
But her twin? Yeah, the guy who’d been arrested for burning down the very first Chandler’s was a pretty easy target for his anger. “No,” she said shortly.
There was a beat of silence. “I’m happy to hear she’s okay.”
“Are you?”
Nicholas shifted, his heavy thigh brushing against hers. She scooted back a hair. Those thighs were dangerous. “Of course I am.”
She hummed, wishing she’d kept the snarky question back. Move on. Ten years ago, she’d run away instead of staying in the dramatic role of spurned lover in this feud. She wasn’t about to start now.
“Of course I am,” he repeated more forcefully. “I wouldn’t wish her ill.”
She finished the outline of the woman’s legs and leaned back on her stool. “Yeah. Fine.”
“You can believe me or not, Livvy.” His voice was downright frigid now. “I’m not a monster.”
“My family would say differently.” She roughly capped the Sharpie, rose to her feet, and threw it on her worktable.
“What would you say?”
I would say I’ve never been able to hate you the way I should. “I’d say nothing.”
His eyes dropped to her hands, and she realized she was wringing them. She immediately turned to her table and started to arrange and rearrange the few supplies she kept out. Though she was messy in the rest of her life, she was a neat freak at work.
Leather creaked behind her as Nicholas came to his feet. She didn’t hear him walking toward her, but she could sense his body behind her. “Livvy—”
“I do actually have a lot to do,” she interrupted him. “You can go.”
“I’m not done talking to you.”
“Well, I’m done talking to you.”
Silence, for a long moment. “You didn’t finish my tattoo.”
She closed her eyes at the ridiculous statement. “For fuck’s sake. There’s not going to be any tattoo.” He’d won this round of chicken. He’d won all the rounds of chicken, because she was the ultimate chicken, okay? Cluck, cluck. “We don’t have anything more to talk about. I’m only here for a month, tops, until my mom’s self-sufficient again. You can go back to your peaceful life and—” She broke off with a gasp when he grasped her shoulders and whirled her around.
Whoa.
He crowded her, big hands planted on the table on either side of her hips. Metal hit her ass, and his body pressed flush against her front. He should have looked ridiculous with the pinup fairy doodled on his arm, but it didn’t detract from his attractiveness. He was too close, too big, too . . . him.
His chest was hard, and beneath her top, her nipples tightened with the friction. Without conscious thought, her legs widened, making space for him. Their clothes did nothing to disguise the thick bulge of his penis. It pressed tantalizingly against her softening core.
“You think I can have peace with you here?”
His rough whisper blew over her senses and her ear. Her head fell back submissively, baring her throat. “Yes.”
His head lowered, lips hovering over the arch of her neck. “Why didn’t you text me this year?” he asked.
She should have expected that question, as awkward as it was. Black and white. She’d ruined a precious pattern in his ordered brain.
She could bullshit him, but he’d only poke and poke. So she’d give him a snippet of truth. Enough to satisfy him. “I turned thirty.”
“I know how old you are.”
“Ten years.” She licked her lips, wishing he was the one licking them. “It would have made it an even decade since we first started meeting like that.” He’d called it quits with their relationship two months shy of her twentieth birthday, two weeks after the accident that had left them both grieving a parent, a day after his dad had swindled her mother out of her half of the C&O.
The threads that made up the timeline of their complicated past were basically a tangled knot.
I can’t do this anymore. It’s impossible for us to be together now, Nicholas had told her, stony-faced.
“I figured ten years is long enough for us to get each other out of our systems.” Ten years is long enough for me to be hung up on a man who hates to want me. Who I can’t seem to hate enough to stop wanting.
He lifted his head. “Did it work? Am I out of your system?”
“Am I out of yours?” she countered.
Instead of responding, his hand left the table and skimmed over her hip, barely touching her. Long, strong fingers pressed against the strip of flesh bared between her pants and her bustier. Unable to stop herself, she gave one shimmy of her hips, gasping at the burst of pleasure that ran through her as his cock dragged over her clit.
You were going to stop, she thought, with no small amount of despair. Don’t do this to yourself. This isn’t healthy.
She took his lust because it was all she could have of him. She knew how this would end, and still, part of her brain wanted it.
“How is it still like this?” he muttered, incredulous. His index finger inched under her top, and she ground up against him again, their breaths coming faster. His head lowered, and she lifted hers, waiting for him to kiss her. Needing something to hold on to, she clasped his forearms, one bare, the other still covered by his shirt.
The second her skin touched his, he jerked like he’d been scalded. Nicholas straightened, separating their bodies so fast she had to grab the table for balance. “No. I can’t.”
What?
No.
“I can’t do this.” He took a giant step away. “We can’t do this.”
She was cold. Colder than she’d been in a while. “I’m not the one who sought you out.”
“I know.” He ran his hand through his ruthlessly clipped hair. She bet those thick brown strands never disobeyed him. Even in his agitation, they only appeared slightly mussed. “But this isn’t what I came here for.”
“Could have fooled me.” She lifted a shoulder, pretending a blasé attitude she didn’t feel. “You still clearly want me.” And as much as she knew she shouldn’t be happy about that, she couldn’t prevent a trickle of joy.
His head moved slowly from side to side. “I’m seeing someone.”
She stared at him, the words pushing through her brain one by one. They made no sense at first. Her body was still clamoring for attention and hungry for his touch.
Then, unfortunately, comprehension came. And with it, a new kind of pain. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged.
She’d never assumed he was celibate when they were apart. She wasn’t.
She was commitment shy. She didn’t want to be tied down. A relationship would make her nomadic lifestyle difficult.
Those were the things she’d told herself for why she only sought out casual hookups with other men over the years, until even those lost interest.
The real, dysfunctional, fucked-up reason? It was hard to maintain a relationship when half your attention was on the few hours you might steal in another person’s arms.
When they were together, they’d both been single. That had been part of the agreement, set that first time. One night. No one will know.
Don’t bother coming if you’re with someone.
Nausea roiled through her stomach. She hadn’t contacted him because she’d decided she needed to move on with her life. Funny how she hadn’t really thought about how that meant he’d be moving on too.
She had to clear her throat twice to speak. “Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.”
“Livvy—”
“It’s cool.” She had to find another word. “Great. Awesome.” No, that was going too far. “Like I said, I’ll be leaving soon.” She imagined the world beyond this shop. She wished she felt excitement instead of weariness at the thought of setting out into it again. “Forget I’m here. Don’t get any tattoos.”
Livvy couldn’t watch as he moved away after a pregnant pause and gathered his jacket, or when he hesitated at that curtain. “It’s not serious. Me and her.”
The burst of joy she felt at that news terrified her, second only to the fear that she didn’t know if it would matter if Nicholas was serious about this mysterious woman. Even if he told her he was engaged and then opened his arms to her, would she be able to resist him? “Don’t care. None of my business. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
The blood in her veins turned to ice. Oh God. No. She couldn’t let him see how not fine she was.
All those years ago, she’d lost her father to death, her mother to grief, her brothers to hate. And then she’d lost him. It had been her one measure of solace, when he’d smashed her already broken heart into smithereens, that he hadn’t known the extent to which she hadn’t been fine. Every year she put all her energy into proving to him how fine she was.
Get him out. She had to swallow twice to speak, and finally met his gaze across the floor of the shop. “I’m fine. And you need to leave.”
“I—”
“You need to leave,” she said, with a calm she didn’t feel. But if messy anger couldn’t chase him out, calm was the only thing that would appeal to logical Nicholas. “Because the longer you stay, the more likely it is that someone will spot your car. And we both know you don’t want to be seen with the daughter of the man who was responsible for your mother’s death.”