My Wicked Devil (Club Wicked) (26 page)

Kira wiped her eyes and took a hitching breath. “I’m sorry. I should have eaten. This is all my fault. I ruined your evening.”

The doctor gave Bryan a sympathetic look. “She comes out of subspace hard, doesn’t she?”

Bryan nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, give her lots of love tonight, and she should be just fine.” The doctor gave her a dark, intimidating look. “And you, young lady, eat before you do a scene next time, or once you’re well enough, I’ll personally paddle your ass, and you won’t like it one bit.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Chapter Thirteen

Kira tugged at the strap to the purple silk halter top that was currently struggling to hold up her breasts. When she’d bought this dress last month for her parents’ dinner party, it had fit great, but evidently marathon sex sessions in a dungeon didn’t burn off as many calories as she’d hoped because it was extremely tight and uncomfortable now. A dull ache had started in her neck, and she rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension. She wished she could kick off her gold heels and sit, but she had to endure for at least another two hours until the charity auction was over.

Her salvation hailed her from across the room in the form of Bryan returning with two glasses of wine. He moved through the crowd, pausing now and again to speak to mutual friends. They knew so many of the same people she’d been surprised they hadn’t met before Wicked. Maybe she’d seen him briefly before at some social function, then again at Wicked, and her brain had decided he was safe.

Sliding up next to her, looking like walking sex, Bryan smiled and handed her the glass of wine. “Did I mention how much I like that dress yet?”

She flushed and gave him a narrow-eyed look. Leaning in, she whispered, “If you tell me you want to fuck my tits tonight one more time, I’m going to have to kill you.”

His deep rumble let her know she was in trouble before he even said a word. “
When
I’m fucking your tits tonight, I’ll remind you of that threat.”

“Hey!” People looked at them, and Kira cleared her throat and smiled. “You are a dead man.”

“Prove it.” He glanced down at his watch. “We’ve been here for three hours. Let’s go.”

“We need to stay a bit longer.”

“Why? We’ve had dinner with your parents, talked with your sister and her husband, and you even managed to get me out on the dance floor. I’d say I’ve more than fulfilled my duties as your escort this evening.”

She smiled, remembering how nice it had been to waltz with him. “Bryan, there is a lovely set of gold and green Depression-era champagne flutes going up for sale. I’d like to win them, which means we have to stay for the auction.”

The lines around his mouth deepened as he gave her his grin that meant nothing but trouble. “Stay here.”

As soon as he was gone, a few of her casual girlfriends descended on her, asking her who he was and where she found him. She enjoyed gossiping with them, getting caught up with what was happening among her friends. While she looked forward to spending time with Bryan, she felt like they needed to have at least two days a week where they could do their own thing. As it was, they were practically living together, and neither had said the big l-o-v-e word yet. She wanted him to say it first before she told him, as silly and juvenile as it sounded. Deep down, she knew he loved her—it was in his every action and every touch—but she was pretty sure he was afraid to say it. Though he tried to hide it beneath his cool facade, his parent’s disowning him had hurt him deeply. She had a feeling he was afraid to say that he loved her. That was okay; she’d wait as long as it took for him to gather the courage to tell her.

Kira was laughing over something a friend had said when Bryan’s energy brushed her back a moment before he touched her. His smooth, accented voice was like auditory sex as he said, “Ladies, if you’ll excuse us.”

Her friends tittered, and she rolled her eyes at how easily they’d fallen under his spell. She really needed to make him wear sunglasses so he couldn’t enchant random women. He didn’t do it on purpose. He was just a sensual man by nature, and women seemed to pick up on it.

Which made his open, affectionate gestures toward her in public all the more sweet.

Waving to her friends, she let him drag her through the crowd. “Bryan, what about the glasses?”

“I bought them.”

She gaped at his back. “That’s cheating! It was up for auction.”

“Yeah, well, they had a buy-it-now price, and I got it. They’ll deliver it to your house next week.”

“You are a bad man.”

He looked over his shoulder and winked.

They quickly made their good-byes to her family and headed out the main door of the restaurant. As soon as their feet hit the carpeted steps, they got blinded by flashbulbs. Ah fuck, the paparazzi. She’d forgotten a bunch of movie stars were affiliated with the charity now, and with them came the photographers. Bryan squeezed her hand so hard it ached, and her heart hurt for him.

She took the ticket stub from Bryan’s clenched hand and gave it to the valet before returning to Bryan’s side.

Leaning up, she placed her hand on his cheek and gently turned his head from the flashing bulbs. His anger seared her, and she watched him visibly struggle to let it go. She pressed her lips ever so gently against his, sighing when he responded. While he didn’t ravage her like he would when they were alone, he did kiss her well enough that she was almost unsteady when her car arrived.

“Hey, isn’t that the de Sade guy with Kira Harmony? Fuck, that picture just went way the fuck up in value. Jason, follow them!”

The crowd of photographers surged toward them, barely held back by event security. They swarmed like sharks with the scent of blood in the water, and Kira worried that she and Bryan might be trampled. These photographers would do anything to get a picture that they might be able to sell for six figures. A security guard yelled for someone to call the police, but that didn’t stop the frenzy.

Bryan’s face lost all of its color, and for a second, she thought he might pass out.

She needed to get him out of here ASAP.

The valet had to beep the horn to clear a space from the paparazzi, and the security staff was being quickly overwhelmed. The valet hopped out of Bryan’s Aston Martin, and before he could give the keys to Bryan, she snatched them.

“Bryan, get in the car.”

His eyes cleared for a moment. “Give me the keys.”

“No. Get in the car.”

He protested again, but she shoved past an overeager photographer and got in the car without responding. A few seconds later, Bryan followed suit and got into the passenger seat, his expression furious.

“Kira, what the fuck are you doing? Your license is still suspended for another two weeks. You can’t drive.”

A male photographer fell against Bryan’s side of the car with a
thump
, and she watched as a few of the photographers started to push and shove one another. This was bad, really bad. She needed to get Bryan safe. There was no way in hell she was going to let anyone hurt him.

Anger seared through her, and she began to pull forward, the paparazzi blinding her with their camera flashes and only moving at the last second.

If that guy falling on the door had dented the car, she was going to kick their asses and give them something to really report about.

“Are you listening to me? Pull the fuck over! I’m not kidding!”

Finally at a point where she was able to pull out into the street, she eased Bryan’s car forward into traffic. Two cars followed them, almost hitting in their haste to keep up with Kira. One of them, a blue sedan, cut off an incoming taxi and tailgated the car right behind Kira. From her other side, a white SUV rode up on the shoulder, earning more blaring horns.

“I’ve got this. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe.”

“Pull over! You are breaking the law and could go to jail. Please listen to me! ”

“No. I can do this. Now please be quiet so I can get us out of here.”

Traffic began to clear ahead, and she checked her positioning. Gunning Bryan’s car into gear, she shot through the gap before them, quickly gaining distance between them and the paparazzi. She almost hit a minivan that abruptly hit its breaks but managed to drive up slightly onto the curb to pass them.

There was no fucking way she was letting those bastards follow them and hurt her man.

“Kira! What the fuck is wrong with you? Slow down! You almost hit that car. Pull over.”

She ignored him and continued to dart around slower-moving traffic while keeping an eye open for any cops. The last thing she wanted to do was get a ticket where she’d be photographed getting yelled at for endangering people’s lives. Plus Bryan just might have a point about her getting into legal trouble for driving when she wasn’t supposed to. But it wasn’t like she was putting them in any real danger.

She knew what she was doing out here.

Car chases had been one of her specialties in the movies, and she knew how to get the most out of any vehicle, especially a fantastic car like the Aston Martin.

“Are they keeping up?”

Bryan didn’t even look out the window. “Stop the car right now.”

“No. I need to get us safe first. Now stop distracting me.”

“Kira, I mean it. Stop the car. I’m asking you to stop, please.”

She ignored him, taking a hard right onto the freeway. They merged into traffic, and she let out an exhilarated breath. “Fuck. That was fun.”

“Stop the goddamned car, or I swear I will open my door right now and jump out!” He yelled so loud her ears rang.

Startled by his shout, she did as he asked, pulling onto the side of the freeway, her headlights illuminating the grass in front of them. “Are you okay, Bryan?”

“Am I okay? You broke the law, endangered both me and yourself, and didn’t fucking listen to me at all! If I had a safe word, I’d have been screaming it four blocks back. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you determined to get yourself killed?”

Adrenaline still raged through her body and made her emotions sharper than usual. “What the fuck? You should be thanking me for rescuing you from the paparazzi.”

“You didn’t rescue me from anything. I can handle my picture being taken. I can’t handle you totally ignoring me and putting yourself in danger. Don’t you understand? Can’t you see how reckless and dangerous your actions were?”

“Look, we’re fine. I don’t know what the big deal is. So I have a suspended license. Big deal. It doesn’t mean I can’t drive.”

“That’s exactly what it means. Did you even notice all the cars you almost hit? What about that minivan full of kids? You had to drive on the fucking sidewalk to get around them! What if there had been people walking there? What if someone had been in your blind spot and you got in an accident? How many more fucking times are you going to keep taking unnecessary risks before you get killed?”

His words stung, and she hated that he might have a point. “Every second of every day we could die. I could fucking choke to death on a potato chip going down my throat the wrong way.”

“You choking on a potato chip isn’t going to kill other people. Use some fucking common sense.”

“No one got hurt!” she screamed, incredibly pissed that he kept making it seem like she was some psycho running around and trying to kill people.

He hit the dash hard enough to make her jump. “That’s only because you got lucky.”

“That wasn’t luck. That was skill.” Oh, she was mad, red-hot with anger. “You just want me stuck at home being a good little submissive that you can control. Fuck, look at how fucking overbearing you are already! I mean, I can’t even fucking eat nonorganic food now because you worry that I’m going to get some type of rare toxic poisoning from the fucking spray they use on strawberries to kill bugs. Well, that isn’t me, Bryan. I’m going to do what I want, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

“You’re right. You are going to do whatever you want, and nothing I say is going to stop you.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back onto his seat. “I’m sorry, Kira. I can’t see you anymore.”

Stunned, she slumped back into her seat and pressed her hands against the center of her chest. All of her rage drained away so suddenly she felt weak. “What?”

Unbuckling his seat belt, he didn’t look at her. “I can’t trust you. You don’t care what I have to say, you don’t care about your own safety, and you don’t respect me or my wishes.”

“What are you talking about?” Her body broke out in a stinging sweat as a terrible hurt crushed her from within.

He turned on her, the pain in his gaze slicing through her soul. “I can’t trust you to stop, Kira. I can’t trust you to listen to me when you don’t want to. And I can’t trust you with my safety, let alone yours. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. Either it ends now, or it will end up with one of us in the hospital. I care about you too much to be the one who puts you there.”

“I’m sorry!” She reached for him, and he jerked away. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry. I really am.”

He opened the door and stepped out, slamming it behind him. Walking the opposite direction of his car, illuminated by the brake lights, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. She sat there, frozen like that, until his figure was no more than a speck on the horizon, waiting for him to come back.

But he didn’t.

Chapter Fourteen

Bryan’s life was now measured by a different concept of time. He no longer lived by the calendar and clock, but rather by how long it had been since he’d last seen Kira. Five weeks since he’d left her. Three weeks since she’d stopped calling. One week since she’d stopped e-mailing him. One day since he’d received her collar back in the mail.

Sweat dripped down his face as he ran hard on his treadmill, trying to outpace his demons.

He missed her immensely.

With Kira gone, he found himself drifting, not really having a sense of purpose anymore. When he’d left her, he’d left a part of himself behind too. He’d never experienced emotional pain like this, not even during the sex tape scandal and his subsequent banishment.

The hour mark rang out from the treadmill, and he considered pushing it, then caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and slowed down. His muscles stood out in sharp relief from his body, all the fat gone from his constant exercising and not having the will or desire to eat.