As if I’ve summoned the event merely by thinking of it, I turn the corner to see Ryodan standing at the top of the stairs, looking down.
Lucky me. I get to witness the nod. Woohoo. Could my morning get any better?
I stop abruptly and bony vultures pile into my back. They’re still silent. It creeps me out.
I glance down to my right, past the railing. There’s Jo, looking up, waiting. I wonder again what the hell he thinks he’s doing with her. What she thinks she’s doing with him. Anyone can see they’re no match. Anyone can predict how this disaster will end. One morning Ryodan will walk to the stairs.
He’ll look down and Jo will look up.
And Ryodan will look beyond her, to some other woman, and nod.
Jo will never share his bed again.
Barrons and his men are something else. I may not care for Ryodan, we have baggage between us, but I have to admit any woman takes one look at him and wonders. And wants. It’s visceral. You know that when one of the Nine gets down to fucking, your world is about to get rocked like never before. And like it never will again. Unless you become a Nine groupie. Which I can honestly say might have its merits.
If I was Jo, and it was Barrons at the top of these stairs, what would I do? Like Jo, would I choose to take what I could get of the hottest, dirty, intense sex and passion I’d ever experience, and deem it worth a shattered heart?
There’s no question it will break hers.
I see the hunger in her face. I see the light in her eyes as she gazes up at him. I see the tenderness and the desire and need in every line of her body.
It’s not there in his.
He’s untouched by her. She burns for him.
I want to grab him, shake him, demand he stop before he destroys her. I want to grab her, shake her, demand she stop before she’s destroyed.
I hold my breath in silence. It’s not my place to choose for Jo a path I’m not sure I’d be willing to walk myself.
Life is short. At the buffet of it, who doesn’t want the best dessert?
Ryodan nods, Jo’s cue to toss her cleaning rag and race up the stairs into his arms. They’ll pass me and disappear into his office or a nearby bedroom, and I’ll go downstairs and pilfer precious eggs from the Nine’s private kitchen, whip up an omelet, and break into their espresso machine. Maybe even find some milk to add to my coffee. Oh, happy day.
Jo holds Ryodan’s gaze for a long moment.
Her lashes drop to shield her eyes.
Slowly she turns her back on him and resumes wiping tables.
I gape, stunned.
Nothing against Jo, but I didn’t think she had it in her. I want to leap up on the rail and cheer her choice to pull the plug before the bathwater drowns her.
Ryodan stands unmoving, looking down at Jo’s back.
I begin to inch backward, feeling suddenly like the voyeur I am, in no mood to be caught at it.
Jo turns around and looks up at him. I know what she wants to see. She’ll never find it on that implacable face. I want to shout at her to turn away again. Stop mining for gold where there is none. I tear my gaze from her and glance back at Ryodan.
Again, I gape. That’s me, the flapping jaw this morning.
I didn’t expect this. Not from him.
He drops his head forward in a gesture of sorrow and lets it hang a moment. Then he inclines it slowly in acceptance and respect, and I see the tension in Jo’s body ease a little when he acknowledges her as a valued loss.
I hold my breath, waiting for the bastard to nod to the next woman. The waitresses are all staring hungrily up, bristling with excitement that the boss’s bed is once again open and their lives just got so much more thrilling. Some other lucky woman is about to get her world rocked and lord it over all the other waitresses until she, too, is rejected. She won’t care. It’s a status symbol. Like the disgusting Unseelie roaches they invite beneath their skin as fat burners.
Ryodan turns from the railing and is abruptly walking directly for me.
There goes my jaw again. I might need to muzzle myself to keep it in place this morning.
I search his face, trying to read it.
“Don’t mine for gold where there is none, Mac.”
“Stay out of my head.”
“Wouldn’t be so easy to get in there if it wasn’t so empty.”
“Jackass.” I scowl at his back as he vanishes down the hall.
I’m heading up the stairs after breakfast when Barrons opens the door to Ryodan’s office and inclines his head, motioning me in. I didn’t know he was back. I suck in a breath. I wonder if we can evade Ryodan’s radar and slip off to the bookstore. For heaven’s sake, I’d take fifteen minutes. Anything would help. Part of his neck is now tattooed and I wonder what he’s been up to while I was sleeping.
A good-looking kid stands inside. Tall, lean, and lanky, with thick dark hair that hasn’t been cut in a while and beautiful aqua eyes behind glasses, I put him at about eighteen to twenty. He has a sort of brainy Canterbury scholar look, even in jeans and a blue tee-shirt. He gives me an appraising once-over as I step inside, then cocks his head as if processing some anomaly.
“Tell her what you told us,” Ryodan says to the kid, closing the door on my ghoulish procession. I don’t tell him it’s pointless. He’ll figure it out soon enough.
The kid says to me, “Who are you? And why do you smell so bad? Don’t you have showers in this place? I can hook one up for you.”
I have to unclench my jaw to answer. “I’m Mac. Who are you?”
The kid whistles soft and low. “Ah, so you’re the one who broke her heart.”
I don’t ask her-who. I don’t want to go there.
The kid goes there anyway. “Dani calls out your name when she sleeps. A lot. Sometimes Alina.”
Ryodan seems to suddenly expand and saturate the air like Barrons does. “You won’t be hearing it again. Dani sleeps at Chester’s now.”
I say nothing, keep my mask on.
“She doesn’t sleep anywhere lately, old dude. Thought we established that last time you came calling. And the first time. And the twentieth time.”
“Kid, you want to be careful around me.”
“Ditto,” the kid says mildly. “Old dude.”
“You haven’t seen her either?” I ask hastily, trying to stave off a completely unmatched battle.
“Nope,” the kid replies. “But she’s disappeared before, like I told the boss man here. And his lackeys. And his lackeys’ lackeys. I hate it when she does this.”
I almost smile. He calls Ryodan’s men lackeys. I’d like him for that alone.
Unseelie begin sifting into the office since they can’t use the door. The room doesn’t hold many, considering how wide a berth they give all three males. Not just Ryodan and Barrons, who they always steer clear of by ten feet or more, but also the boy that must be Dancer if he’s heard Dani talk in her sleep. I grow more aggravated by the moment as they cozy up to my backside. Dancer? Really? They don’t bother a teenage kid?
Barrons and Ryodan are eyeing him, too, no doubt wondering the same thing.
Dancer shrugs. “Guess they don’t like my soap. They certainly like something about you. And dude, do they stink. So, what gives with this?” he asks me. “Why do they like you so much?”
“I find that fascinating myself,” Ryodan says. “Answer the kid.”
Barrons gives him a look. “Tell her what you just told us,” he says to Dancer.