who matters.”
I gotta love a friend who is supportive and catty with me. But when I look from him back over to Ryker, Nobody is looking right at me. A smile slides onto her more than full lips, and she arches her brow at me as if she’s saying, Your loss, before running a hand up his biceps and leaning in to whisper in his ear.
“I need some air,” I murmur and scoot back despite Archer’s protest that the main course is coming soon.
My heels click down the hallway to the beat of my own chastisements.
This isn’t you, Vaughn.
Jealousy does not suit you.
He’s bad for you. Stop needing him.
Just as I reach the ladies’ lounge area, I yelp as a hand closes around my shoulder and pushes me past it into a small alcove off the hallway.
Ryker’s lips are on mine the minute my back hits the wall. I shove against his chest to no avail until he cuffs both my wrists with his hands and just takes everything he wants from me with his lips.
It’s bruising and carnal and everything I hate about him and everything I’ve craved from him, to feel anything other than the pain.
And just as soon as he starts it, he tears his lips from mine.
“You son of a bitch,” I sneer at him.
“Never disputed it—”
“You have no right—”
“Yes I do. You’re mine, Vaughn. You have been since that first meeting. So you can play this game however the hell you want to play it. You can push me away. You can slap me across the face if you want. You can block my numbers from your cell. But there is nothing—nothing—that will make you forget what my kiss tastes like. What my lips feel like. How I make you feel. So try if you want . . . but I told you from the get-go, I don’t play games, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
His lips brand mine again with a kiss laced with equal parts lust and spite. This time when the kiss ends, he leans back, and his eyes full of questions lock on mine.
The muscle in his jaw ticks as he waits for me to speak, to tell him I accept his apology and that we can move forward. Call me stupid or obstinate or wishy-washy, but I know my worth, and it’s a hell of a lot more than accepting how he treated me.
“So what’s it going to be, Vaughn?” He waits for a beat, and he hisses out in frustration when I don’t respond at his prompting. When I don’t let my body and heart win the war they’re fighting against my head. “Goddamn stubborn woman,” he mutters before striding off in the same direction he came from.
I lean my head back against the wall in a sad attempt to let my racing pulse decelerate and my mind tell my heart to forget him.
Funny thing is, I’m lying to both of them.
Ryker Lockhart is right. He’s not a man who’s easily forgotten.
“When I said get laid, I didn’t mean by him,” Archer mutters beneath his breath when I finally return to my seat.
My cheeks blush automatically. “We didn’t. I didn’t—I—”
“Well you’re all flustered, and he waltzed in here with that alpha-male, take-no-prisoners look on his face, so I just assumed there was some hot bathroom-counter sex going on somewhere in the lobby—”
“No.” The single word shuts Archer down, but when I glance toward Ryker’s table, he’s not there. “He’s an asshole.”
One whose kiss I can still taste.
“Uh-huh.”
“Shh,” the lady at the opposite side of the table asserts just as the room erupts in applause. I mouth that I’m sorry and then look back to Archer, who has one eyebrow raised.
“I spent hours last night writing and perfecting a speech about why you should all donate generously to this charity.” My head whips to look toward the front of the room when I hear Ryker’s voice carrying through the microphone. Smooth as silk but with that little bit of grit that affects me, no matter how hard I try to ignore it. “But being here, walking up to the podium, my words from yesterday don’t seem to fit now.”
As he stands behind the lectern, his smile is engaging and he commands everyone’s presence in the room.
“I didn’t know. I promise.” Archer reiterates the same thing he’s said to me several times tonight, but I no longer think I believe him. It’s the millionaires’ club up in here, and