Razing Ryker (Dissonance Book 1) (10 page)

“Don’t you ever stop?” Jace asked. “Even to eat?”

Greer didn’t startle. She stopped dancing, smoothing her rehearsal dress and shaking her head to her reflection in the mirror. “I want to get it right.”

“You have it. You have it down better than anyone.”

“I want it to be perfect.”

“You are perfect.”

She looked at him sideways and he expected her to smile, but her eyes were guarded. She was scared.

He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him and locking it, letting the
click
resonate loudly through the room so she’d hear it. So she’d know.

She turned to face him, her hands on her hips and her eyes tight. He wanted to break her down. He wanted to take her to nothing, to take himself to zero, and build them both back up from the ground up until they were stronger and straighter. Until they were both full to bursting with the missing pieces they both needed, that they both had, but they had to give them up. You had to give to receive and neither of them wanted to budge. They were both too afraid to fall apart for each other because what if they couldn’t get back up? What if their pieces didn’t fit and they were worse off than they’d been before.

But they did fit. Jace knew it when he looked at her, when he thought of her and his whole outlook changed. She could brighten his day with a word, with a smile, and that kind of power couldn’t be ignored.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered, feeling like he was talking to a spooked animal. He was terrified she would run.

“How can I not be?” she whispered back.

“I’m just a guy.”

“No, you’re not. You’re Jace R—“

“No. That’s it. I’m Jace. With you I’m just Jace.”

“On the phone I can believe that. I can pretend, but in real life you are who you are and you are…” She laughed shakily. “You are so far out of my league.”

“Bullshit. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“For how long? For the run of the show and then what?”

“You’re getting ahead of things. We haven’t even hit Washington yet.”

“But when we do, what happens? You live in California, I live in New York. What? We’ll date? We’ll do the long distance thing? How many baths on the phone can you take with me before you need the real thing?”

“You’re writing us off before we’ve even started,” he snapped, feeling his temper flare.

She put her hands on her face briefly before dropping them, suddenly composed. “Look, I know I sound crazy. I know this is really new and we barely know each other, but it doesn’t mean I’m not scared. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be something and I want it to be, but I don’t even know if you’re on the same page about me, and I’m just looking out for myself. I’m okay so far. I like you a lot, yeah, but I’m not past the point of no return yet. We haven’t slept together, we haven’t even kissed and if this can’t be something real, then it’s good that we stop it now. I
need
to stop it now because I can’t do a casual fling with you. I just can’t.”

“I don’t want something casual. I’m not looking for just sex from you, Greer.”

“Then what do you want?” she pleaded. “I know it’s not fair to ask yet, but I can’t take a chance on you. On anyone. I’m not built that way, so I have to know what the hell you want from me.”

Her eyes were begging him, asking him to let her go and he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. So instead he’d have to take her.

“I’ll show you what I want.”

He crossed the room in three angry strides and took her mouth with his. She grabbed onto him immediately, her hands seeking him out and latching on to him with a strength that weakened him. He kissed her aggressively, pushing aside the images in his mind of what he’d imagined and replacing them with flesh and blood and breath, and it was beautiful.

She surprised him when she shoved him back, pushing him until he stumbled into a leather chair in the corner, a prop from another production left behind and forgotten. She stared down at him, stepping in close until her legs slipped between his and spread his knees.

He held his breath as he brought his hand behind her right knee and pulled it forward, buckling it beneath her. He lifted until the toe of her pump was resting on the leather of the chair beside his thigh. The sharp heel pressed into the supple soft material dangerously, threatening to burst through as the slit in her dress split open wide, giving Jace a view of her leg, of her exposed inner thigh, and the shadowed warmth beyond.

She watched him with stuttered breath as he ran his hand back and forth on the back of her calf. He tickled the underside of her knee with the lightest brush, just enough to make her giggle slightly. Then his hand continued up the underside of her thigh and suddenly she wasn’t laughing anymore. Greer met his eyes and he held her frozen with them as his hand continued to move. His fingertips danced up her flesh, running from the bottom around to the inside. His arm wrapped around her leg like a snake as he reeled her in. As he pulled her closer with his whisper light touch that made her shiver and burn.

“Are you going to run, Greer?” he asked, his voice rumbling in that deep bravado that tingled in her toes and bloomed like fire in her belly. “Are you going to run or are you going to stay?”

“Stay. I want to stay with you,” she whispered tremulously.

He gave a ghost of a grin just before his hand slid home. Just before he pushed aside the skirt of her dress entirely and turned his eyes to her nakedness beneath, and when his fingers found her folds and pushed them aside to enter the warm wetness within, it was almost too much.

Greer let her head roll back, her chest pushing out and filling fully as she breathed in deep, trying to control her voice that wanted to burst with life from her lungs and moan his name. She was trying to keep it all in, to keep quiet and contained and safe, but as he moved across her with his patient, meticulous fingers, she feel like shouting.

Then he looked up at her, and when she saw his eyes she knew. She had a half a heartbeat to prepare before it happened, and it wasn’t enough.

Jace slid two fingers inside of her. All the way in. She moaned, her body pitching toward him. He sat up straight, putting out his free hand to hold her up by the shoulder, but his other hand didn’t hesitate. It continued on as he crashed his mouth down on hers to absorb her moans and cries. Greer reached for him, holding on to his arms and digging her fingers into the soft fabric of his shirt. She was leaning on her right leg hard and the worry returned that she’d puncture the chair with her heel and everyone would see it and somehow know.

Then the heat began to build in her core, and she no longer cared.

“Jace,” she murmured against his mouth.

“Do you want it?” he asked breathily, his excitement over her own arousal sounding loud and clear. “Tell me you want this and I’ll give it to you.”

She nodded, pulling her mouth away and pressing her forehead against his. “I want it, yes. I want it. I want you.”

He leaned in and gently kissed her one last time.

“I want to give you everything.” He whispered it like a promise, like a vow, and then he kept it.

His hand moved faster, his thumb circling harder and harder, spinning her out of control until she could feel it rise inside of her. She felt the heat branch out through every limb, across every nerve, and then she was gasping for breath and weeping as he wrung it out of her with feather light touches that left her jerking and clenching around his fingers.

Greer held on to him for a long while afterwards. She was unable to trust her own legs to stand, and besides, she just wanted to be close to him. She needed to breathe in his scent for a few moments longer so she could think of it later that night when she went to sleep. So she could lie down and rest easy pretending he was there beside her.

That he would stay.

“Mia, what’s up?” Anna asked happily, pinning her phone between her shoulder and her ear.

“You are not going to believe what I just walked in on.”

“What?”

“You don’t want to guess?”

Anna glanced up at John where he sat flipping pages and marking like a mad man. He was obsessed. He had been ever since she’d lit the fire under his ass and insisted they get the show back on track. His only concern was the show and the only people he would speak to were her and the play’s creators, Lester and Burk. They’d recently sent him new notes, revamped songs, new dialogue and now he was a constant struggle for Anna. It was like babysitting a giant toddler uninterested in eating, sleeping, or brushing his damn teeth.

“Not really,” she muttered distractedly.

“You’re no fun. Anyway, I came back from lunch a little early and I walked into the studio to find Greer getting nasty.”

“With Cameron?”

“Nope. With Jace Ryker.”

Anna sat up straight, nearly dropping her phone. “Are you serious?!”

John looked up at her with a scowl. He gave her a hand sign telling her to shut up. She frowned at him, flipped him off, and pointed to his untouched sandwich. He shook his head and she threw her pencil at him. In response he grabbed the sandwich, took a feral bite from it, and tossed it on the table.

She wanted to kill him.

“Anna, are you listening?” Mia demanded.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. That’s insane. Are you sure?”

“He had his hand up her skirt and she was either coming or crying. If Jace Ryker had his hand up my skirt, I’d probably do both.”

“Wow, that is… I don’t know what that is,” she mumbled, the wheels in her brain turning frantically. An idea was forming. Something wonderful. Something that could actually save them. “Look, Mia, I gotta go but thanks for the call. Let me know what else happens, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Keep your head up, sweetie. We’ll find another show soon.”

“Definitely. Bye.” Anna silenced her phone and slapped it down on the table, grabbing John’s attention. “John!”

“What?!” he snapped, throwing his pen onto the table and sitting back in annoyance.

She smiled happily. “I think I have an idea.”

Keep reading for a preview of

Dissonance Book Two

“Have you talked to Sam lately?” Greer asked, scooping up a bite of her frozen yogurt.

Cameron chuckled darkly. “Uh, no. Not since she made me publicly declare my love of anal play during an encore.”

“I saw the video,” Greer laughed. “Classic.”

“How did you see the video? You don’t have a computer.”

“No, but I have a phone and it has unlimited data and internet. It would have been hard for me
not
to see it.”

“The phone that Jace Ryker gave you?” Cameron asked pointedly.

“
Lent
me. He
lent
it to me. I’m giving it back after the show next week.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “So are you going to try and make peace with Sam again?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Why bother?”

“Because you like her.”

“I like fucking her.”

“Please. You like more than that about her. You’re just running cold toward her now because of her connection to Eve.”

“It’s a miracle I want to even look at her since she went running off with Eve,” he muttered.

“My point exactly. You like her. If you didn’t, you would have forgotten about her the second she took up with
Surrendered
. But you haven’t. You think about her, admit it.”

“No.”

She looked at him, reading his angry expression. “You don’t want to talk about this, do you?”

“Do you want to talk about you and Jace and where that’s headed?”

Greer froze inside. “Nothing is going on with him.”

Cameron stopped and looked at her with an annoyed expression. “Lying to me? Really?”

“No,” she relented, her shoulders sagging. “How did you know?”

“Because I’m magic,” he told her with a sly grin. “And don’t you ever forget it. So you wanna talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“You sure?” he prodded, turning the tables on her.

“Fro yo,” she said suddenly, changing the subject for both their sakes. She held up her cup for him to see the words and snickered. “That’s what I’m going to start calling people. Instead of ‘homie’ or ‘gangsta’ I’m going to start calling people ‘Fro Yo.’”

“Since when do you ever call anyone ‘homie’ or ‘gangsta?’”

“Since never now. Now it’s all about my Fro Yo’s.”

“Great,” he muttered, biting into his frozen banana.

She nudged his shoulder, throwing him off balance as he walked. “You’re my Fro Yo, you know.”

He laughed. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Your loss.”

“I know. I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He darted across the street before she could say a word and she watched with worry as he headed up the sidewalk. He was heading toward Broadway.

Greer wished he was going to see Samantha, but she knew better. She shook her head, pulling out her phone and texting him.

I know where you’re going.

He didn’t reply.