A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy #1) - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,46
pulls back to look at me, those eyes, God those eyes, pinning me in a stare. “Unless you’d rather me be a gentleman and take you home?”
Home.
I don’t even know what that means right now. And I don’t want to think about it. I’m not fooling myself into thinking Kace is my Prince Charming. I’m not fooling myself into thinking I dare to have a real relationship, but I dare to have this night. I dare whatever this night brings.
“I want to be right here,” I say. “With you. Tonight.”
On the word tonight, his eyes narrow and he studies me, his expression indiscernible, before he leans in and kisses me. “Let’s go upstairs.” He catches my hand and only then do we step away from the vehicle.
“We’re in for the night,” Kace calls out to one of the two men working the front door.
We’re in for the night.
I could be embarrassed by the way this announces that I’ll be naked with Kace tonight, but I’m not. The way Kace said those words—they fell from his lips as if me being a part of “we” was natural. He didn’t say “I.” That’s what stands out to me.
His arm slides around me and we enter a large lobby that is stunning with brown wood floors streaked with black. Fancy leather seating areas are accented with drop lights above each. A half-moon shaped security desk is to our far left, a wide distance between it and us, but Kace waves at the tall, dark-haired man behind the counter before we cut right and enter a bank of elevators. He punches a button and the doors to the nearest car open.
It’s barely a moment, and I’m inside with him, and he’s punched a code into the panel and then pulls me close, holding his jacket around me. “I like you in my jacket.”
There’s a rough quality to his voice, a warmth beneath the rasp. “I like you in your jacket.”
“I think I’ll like us both better without it tonight.”
“Me, too,” I whisper because my voice is apparently as lost in this man as the rest of me.
His dark lashes lower, sweeping away his expression, but not before I see a hint of something I cannot name, something he does not want me to see.
Already the elevator halts, the doors opening. Kace pushes off the wall he’s using to hold us both up and tangles his fingers with my fingers. We step off the elevator, only a few feet from a double-arched red door. “The entire floor is mine,” he says, punching in a code to a panel on the wall. “Originally the elevator opened into my apartment, but I wanted an extra level of security.”
“And a red door is a symbol of protection.”
“And luck,” he says.
“But anyone with your skill doesn’t believe in luck. They believe in hard work, hours and hours of hard work, repeating over and over.”
“I believe in both.” He opens the door and reaches inside, a glow of lights illuminating the once dark space, but he doesn’t enter. He settles back into his place in that hallway with me. And when his eyes meet mine, anticipation burns between us. He’s not touching me and yet, I feel him in every part of me, in ways I didn’t know another human could affect me. “Welcome to my home, Aria Alard,” he says, his voice a silky seduction that strokes every nerve ending that I own.
He motions me forward and for reasons I don’t understand, I read his need for me to choose to enter, for me to choose to be here as if I haven’t already. Or maybe it’s not his need at all. Maybe it’s my need and this man, this virtual stranger, senses that in me. And if he does, he’s right. All my life has been about decisions others have made for me. I need to be in control of my life. I walk into the apartment, onto dark hardwood and directly into a foyer where a dozen teal teardrop lights dangle from the ceiling. A few feet ahead of me is a staircase.
The door shuts behind me and nerves explode in my belly. Kace steps behind me and removes my coat—his coat—and I turn to watch him hang it on a coatrack. The minute it’s dealt with, his attention is fully on me, his expression unreadable, but his eyes—I cannot see the blue of his eyes for the fire. With a predatory energy about him that