Page 44 of Merciless Heir
I ignore that thought.
“So, you were looking for me?”
Suddenly he straightens and that hard edge starts to slide back into place.
“Yes.” I put on a cool tone to match his.
While watching him, something popped up in my messages from Damon. But I don’t say this.
“I thought we could talk.”
He nods and then he whips out his phone. “Let’s get out of this rain and go somewhere to talk, then.”
This part of East Sixth is residential, but bars and restaurants in the East Village, West Village, and Lower East Side abound.
“Okay.”
I’m curious. That’s the only reason I slide into the black car with him when it turns up. It’s why I don’t ask where we’re going. That becomes obvious as we head across town.
He cuts a look at me. “Don’t think you’ve gotten lucky.”
“And here I wore my best underwear.”
“I’d prefer you not wearing any.”
Silence engulfs us for a beat and my entire being sings and tingles with pleasure and need from his words.
Kingston doesn’t apologize, and his dark blue eyes burn hot.
“I…” I can’t think of a thing to say because my head is suddenly filled with fantasies of him, naked.
“I just thought if you figure we should talk, I figure we should do it somewhere private and comfortable.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I follow him into his building, riding the too small elevator—how can one man take up so much space, so much air, so much of my attention?—to his mansion in the sky.
Like the time I broke in it grabs with the fact it’s livable. I see so many rich people’s places that are generic showrooms or so over the top it’s hard to breathe for fear of breaking some gaudy and insanely expensive thing.
His place, with him, makes it real. I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but it fits. The place is Kingston. Oh, there are expensive pieces, but everything has its place, everything is built for comfort and to last. Clean lines, masculine without hitting someone over the head.
“Cataloging?”
I turn and narrow my eyes. “You’ve got a mouth on you, Kingston. One that might get you in trouble.”
“Depends on the trouble,” he says, dumping his coat on a chair and kicking off his shoes. He closes in and eases the lapels of my jacket from my shoulders. “If it’s your kind of trouble, I might be interested in seeing where it leads.”
I swallow and step back, the glint in his gaze doing dark things to me. Shrugging the leather from my shoulders, I dump it. On the floor. And he laughs.
“No one dares speak like you do to me. Or does shit like that. Most people would be…solicitous…”
“To be in your sacred sanctum?”
“That’s one way to put it.” Kingston moves off and to a bar, one of those old-fashioned carts, but this one clean, strong lines in wood and smoked glass, and dark sheening metal. It shouldn’t work, but it does. I’m guessing a bespoke design for him. “You have a chip on your shoulders, big as Texas.”
“That’s some chip.” I cast my gaze to the modern art painting on the wall. It’s real and it’s worth a fortune. It fits the room, too. The strong reds are offset with the black and grays in it. The mood it gives is at once sensual and austere. Hard line or hot sex, that’s what it says to me.
“I get it, Sadie. You don’t like rich people. And yes, it’s real.”