“I’m serious! We haven’t gone out dancing together in forever, and I am not running the risk that you’ll back out. Which is why I’m hanging up now, and warning you not to be late. I don’t want to have to stand in line, and you know they won’t let me skip to the front of the line without you.”
She hangs up without waiting for me to respond, and I know her well enough not to be surprised.
“Apparently we’re going to Westerfield’s,” I say to Jackson.
“If the celebration gods have ordained it, I don’t know how we can avoid it.”
“True.”
“You can bump her to the front of the line?” He exits the freeway and heads toward West Hollywood. “I didn’t realize you were such a party girl.”
“Not anymore,” I say. More accurately, not ever. Party girls flitter and bounce, flirting and dancing with a number of guys before letting the evening take them wherever it leads.
But that was never me. I never flittered or bounced. On the contrary, I approached clubbing like a goddamn military maneuver. Get in, get the guy, get off, go home. No attachments, and no surrendering the power.
At least not until I met Jackson.
He’s the only man to whom I’ve ever willingly given up control. The only man with whom I’ve wanted to surrender. And though that revelation had terrified me at first, now I hold it tight around me, and it is as comforting as a warm blanket. Because he knows me. He understands me. And I do not doubt that he will protect me.
He glides to a stop at a red light and turns his full attention on me. “Not anymore?” he repeats, his voice low and even.
“Don’t worry. Westerfield’s was never like Avalon for me,” I say, referring to the techno-centric dance club where I trolled for men before Jackson claimed me. “You know I don’t need that anymore.”
His right hand has been resting on the gearshift, but now he lifts it off and takes mine, twining our fingers. “I know.” His words are soft, but firm, and I know they’re true. He understands what I used to need.
More important, he understands why I don’t need it anymore. “I love you,” I say, my chest feeling full with the words.
I see the emotion in his face—a softness in his eyes coupled by an even deeper heat. He has not yet said these words back to me, and though my chest tightens a bit as the seconds go by—as he lifts our hands and kisses my fingers—I do not doubt that he feels them.
But, dammit, I still want to hear them.
“Jackson—” I cut myself off.
“What?”
“I can get into the club because it’s a Stark property. A perk of being Damien’s assistant.”
From the way he looks at me, I can tell he knows that wasn’t what I’d originally intended to say. But he doesn’t press me, and I’m grateful. I know he loves me—I do. And when he does say the words, they will be all the sweeter if they come without my prompting.
“Stark-owned, huh? Does that mean you’re comped at the bar?”
My chest feels a thousand times lighter, because whatever storm was threatening to build has dissipated, and I feel only the sweet warmth of sun between us. “Not just me,” I say. “My entire party.”
“In that case, this will be a celebration. Let’s go partake of my brother’s alcohol.”
Traffic is uncommonly light, and we maneuver the surface streets easily. Before I know it, we’re on Sunset, idling in a line of cars waiting for the valet. As I’d expected, there’s a crowd waiting to get in, even on a Thursday. This is a Stark property, after all, and like all things Damien, it’s done right, making Westerfield’s one of the city’s most popular nightspots.