Bold Beautiful Love -- A Temptation Court Contemporary Romance: Temptation Court: Passion in New York (12 page)

I push back. Then seize him harder. It is either that or slap him—which I may still resort to. “The fuck I will.”

The fire in his gaze changes. Brightens. “You know I love it when you use that word with me,
armeau
, but—”

Yes. Time to slap him. And I do.

At least it erases his smile. The resolution in his jaw is not any easier to stomach. “Mishella DaLysse—”

“Shut. Up.” I grab him again, this time roping my arms around his neck. Drag his head down, forcing him to kiss me fiercely. “I will
not
do it. Dammit, Cassian. I will not!”

“You
will
.” He parts his lips, exposing his locked teeth. “This isn’t just a firm request, my love. I’m giving you an order.”

“No.” I pull him close on a brutal sob. “
No.
”

“I’ll be okay.” He pushes the words into my mouth. “
We’ll
be okay. But you must get out of here, right now.”

“Why?” I implore it with all the intensity in my body. “
Why
?”

“Because…” He stops himself, darting a pair of alert glances back at both his captors. “If things have gone cocked-up like I think they have, I don’t want you to be your parents’ next prey.”

“Dammit.” The syllables, broken and furious, burn their way up my throat. “I
knew
it.”

His jaw tightens more. His stare takes on its jade dagger hue. “Do
not
speak to them, Ella. Do you hear me? You find Doyle, get on the fucking plane, and let him take your ass back to Temptation, where you’ll be safe.”

He drives in the dictate with a hard, demanding kiss. In the thrust of his tongue and the hunger of his mouth, I feel every drop of his fervent desire—and his consuming fear.

We do not pull apart until McCree and Reyes force, yanking him back with mutterings about getting a room and how they don’t want to start tipping us for the show. But Cassian fights them—now, I know, for the last time—to bore one last stare into me, sweeping his command through every last corner of me…

Before whispering guttural words to me.

“You are my bar of gold, Ella Santelle.”

I fight to answer him—but words clog my throat, bound by the ache in my heart. By the time my body feeds me enough strength to get them out, he is pulled away, his face still shining with the sheen of
my
tears.

“And you are the best contract I ever signed, Cassian Court.”

*

Cassian

K
arma is sometimes
a raving lunatic bitch.

I glare at the stone block walls and archaic architectural amenities of my “cozy” little waiting room somewhere in Censhyr Prison, and forcing myself not to flip a middle finger at the harpy. I can practically hear her rolling in the glee, replaying how I pulled up images of this place for Fortin and Selyna yesterday.

Or maybe the dynamic duo has had their own gloating laughter piped into my head.

In which case, I’ll not give them the benefit of even one middle finger.

I rise from the steel table, letting my “designer” aluminum chair clatter to the floor, glad at least the handcuffs are removed now. That was eight hours ago.

Interesting…all the things a guy can get straight in his head after eight hours.

Like exactly how hungry he has to be for
grawl.

I contemplate the point while perusing the two bowls I left behind on the table. One is empty, the other still more than half-full of the Arcadian “specialty,” a porridge-meets-poi sort of thing. Even with my rumbling gut, I can barely look at the shit now. At least the cut fresh fruit in the other bowl was plentiful and juicy. Guess I don’t have to worry about scurvy today.

I’d laugh at my own joke, if I wasn’t so busy pacing.

And battling the echoes of laughter in my head, now my only company. A guy takes what he can get in a ten-by-ten cubicle formed from hundred-year-old granite blocks.

Even the chuckles of the two people who have flipped the bitch on him.

And
there’s
my friend karma again.

I’m only two laps into my pacing therapy when one of the room’s two doors opens. It’s not the one through which McCree brought me in—apparently, Reyes got stuck with filling out the paperwork—so I expect a prison guard or some “appropriate” lawyer-type person to appear.

I halt, my shock likely apparent, to see Samsyn Cimarron’s dark head barely clear the antiquated archway.

“Hi, honey. I have arrived in the home.”

Spurted laugh. Whether it’s the irony of the setting or the absurdity of how the guy just butchered that, I have no idea. “Tell Brooke she needs to have you work on that one a little more—but I’m grateful for the break, especially after the
grawl
.”

Samsyn’s lips twist in sympathy. He holds up a steel cup. “That is why I brought you this.”

The water, tasting a lot like the alloy in which it’s contained, is still better than the beige paste still lining my mouth. I gulp the shit down then shake my head at the cup. “I’ll never complain about all the steel in Manhattan again.”

Syn’s grimace deepens. “On that note…”

And torques the scowl on mine too. “What?” I snap.

A grunt escapes him. “Whatever it is these
bonsuns
think they have on you…they think it is fairly strong.” He braces both hands to the back of the still-upright chair in the room. “I went in to ask them if they would release you into my custody. Promised them I would keep you in my suite at the Palais, with round-the-clock guards.” His shoulders tighten beneath the bulky black jacket of his uniform. “They told me that they respected me too much to put me in that situation.”

“That situation…of what?”

“Harboring a terrorist.”

I pivot away. Try focusing on the crevices in the concrete walls, even counting the seams between the bricks, to bring down the spike in my fury.

It feels a hell of a lot better to hurl the goddamn cup.

“Cassian—”

“It’s bullshit.” I twist my head back around. “You know that, Syn—right?”

Immediate nod—though questions linger in his piercing eyes. “Cassian…”

I take two hard, deliberate steps. They bring me full face with him again. “It’s all right,” I assert. “Ask me. Go ahead.”

Obeying warrior’s code, the man honors me by rising to his full height. “What
do
they have on you?”

“Plenty,” I respond right away, “if I assume Selyna and Fortin Santelle did what I think they did.”

“
Dégan kimfuks.
” As the oath spills, his lips snarl up. “Why does that ‘shock’ me as little as an Eve District whore?”

I give him the courtesy of a dark chuff. “Well, don’t high-and-mighty it all yet. I’m as much to blame.”

His thick brows bunch. “Huh?”

“I loaded the damn gun then handed it to them.”

“The fuck?”

“Remember how I pulled them out of the room yesterday? After you and I spoke out on the terrace?”

“Of course.” He nods. “Because you wanted to be honorable about your marriage proposal to Mishella.” Then snorts. “As if that pair would know ‘honorable’ if it bit them on the asses.”

“Yeah, well…” I take a deep breath. “The honorable shit was the easy part.” Start to pace again, though not with the intent of Thor-hammering a new pathway into the concrete anymore. As crazy as it sounds, just getting to talk about it lightens the bricks in my gut. Christ.
Could Kate have been right all these years
? My college friend, Kate Robbe, has preached to me for years about the value of feeling better about even life’s worst by simply talking through it. Guess I owe her a bottle of her favorite Cabernet when I get back to real life.

If
I get back to real life.

“What do you mean, the easy part?”

Syn’s prompt brings me back to the subject. “Naturally, they brought up a pre-nup.”

“Naturally.” He shakes his head, looking near disgusted.

I square my stance. “For the record, I’d give every cent my bank account to Mishella.”

“For the record, I believe you.” But across his face is the rest of his truth: that he’ll always remember how I got Ella’s attention in the first place.

I borrow boardroom tactics to deal with that tidbit.
Don’t dwell on what can’t be reversed.

Especially, dear Christ, because I must focus now what
can
be. Of what has to happen.

Convincing him of what
really
happened.

“I went into that meeting with them yesterday, knowing
they
knew it as well.” Another corporate tactic comes to my aid. Clasping hands at my back helps steel my resolve when confessing the rest. “But I had an ace in
my
pocket.” I meet his stare head-on, knowing he won’t respect it any other way. “There was proprietary information to Court Enterprise’s selection process for each of the Arcadian infrastructure contracts—things only insiders would have known, then passed along to the companies bidding on the jobs.”

For the first time since I’ve known the man, I see what real shock looks like on his face. Does nothing to turn his dark wolf into a puppy. “Are you saying…”

“That Fortin and Selyna knew all of those things?” In one motion, I scoop up my fallen chair then slide into it. Bad move. I instantly yearn to pace again but force myself to stay put, projecting taut control. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

One chair up, one chair down. Syn hurls the one he’s been massaging in favor of slamming both fists to the table and leaning forward. “So
they
were the ones who potentially exposed this country’s infrastructure to Rune Kavill’s fuckery?” he answers his own question before I can, its fury twisting down his massive arms and into those fists again. “By the Creator’s filthy balls, why?” He pushes up, circling the space behind him with vicious stomps. “Fuck. Do not answer that. I know why.”

Weirdly—maybe not so—watching him fume brings me a new infusion of calm. “Yeah, well…
I
should’ve known why.” I trace a figure eight on the table with my middle finger. “But I thought, after how those two jumped at signing our first contract, they’d readily choose luxury over responsibility.”

“You mean money over power?” His grunt is drenched in derision. “Snowball’s chance in hell, my
arkami.
They sold Mishella off to you because of those infrastructure contracts you dangled along with the agreement—and because they waited so long for the perfect match for her at court, most of those ‘potential husbands’ were non-existent.” He picks up his toppled chair then straddles it backward. “What did you offer with the new contract?”

I draw my hand back—and resist the urge to snap every one of the fingers in it. It’s the hand responsible for inking that damn contract—and setting this insane set of events into motion. “Wasn’t what I offered,” I mutter. “It was what I demanded in return.”

Samsyn’s head rocks back. Comprehension washes his face. “Because you suspected…”

“They were in league with Kavill.”

“
Dammit.
” His head falls forward. Shakes slowly. “I would have suspected the same shit pile, given that trail to go on.”

I lean back. Brace elbows on the arms of the chair. “So I told them that if they took the money, they’d immediately forfeit all positions directly or indirectly affecting Arcadian governmental policy.”

His gaze narrows. “Including Fortin’s seat on the High Council?”

I arch a brow. “If I was ready to toss those two a bone,
that
wouldn’t be the one.”

“You do not seem like the bone-throwing type.”

Despite the combination of grunt and laugh turning it into a compliment, my chest is still a meat grinder of regret—and stress. “Yeah, well—they went ahead and took the fucking thing for themselves.”

“By biting off the hand it came on at the same time.”

I abhor the tight nod of agreement I have to give up. “I gave too much fucking slack in their leashes. Clearly, they found a way to convince the CIA that I was colluding with Kavill, then bribing them to keep quiet about it.”

“In other words…” He turns the hand over, fingers spread. “Complete fiction?”

My jaw clenches harder. Tooth enamel is overrated—but possessing a long memory isn’t. The hitch in his question, so subtle it’s nearly negligible, hooks me right back to the fact that he and Evrest weren’t even prepared to let us land the plane yesterday morning.
We can go right back there if you want, man
.

It’s a commitment worth standing for. “
You
give
me
the answer to that, Cimarron,” I challenge while doing so. “By now, your people have seen every file I have about those contractors. I walked right into this Palais with that laptop—”

I’m cut off, understandably so, as he suddenly lurches up. Growls with low meaning, “That…laptop…”

“That I gave you full access to.” Maybe he needs a not-so-graceful reminder? “That your IT team cloned nearly half the files on, using their magic little stick—”

“The…laptop…”

I start sliding around the table. Is the big guy having a stroke or some shit, in the middle of my holding room? I glance up at the monitoring cameras—ancient pieces of crap; wouldn’t be surprised if they’re in place simply for show these days—and wonder who the hell will hear me through these cinder blocks if the mountain of a man goes down on me…