Kai stood behind him, tie straight and suit neatly pressed, his appearance so perfect it was hard to believe he engaged in a sport as brutal as boxing.
My eyes dropped to his hands, searching for bruised knuckles and bloody cuts, but I only saw crisp white cuffs and the glint of an expensive watch. Not a single wrinkle or piece of lint.
Would he exert the same level of fastidious control in the bedroom, or would he abandon it for something more uninhibited?
Both possibilities sent a heady rush through my veins. My grip instinctively tightened around the toy, and I lifted my gaze in time to see Kai’s attention drift from my face to the fuchsia dildo with the agonizing speed of a slow-motion car crash.
Silence engulfed the hall. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could’ve sworn the dildo vibrated a little despite not being plugged in, like it couldn’t contain its excitement from all the attention.
While Dante looked like he’d swallowed a wasp, Kai’s expression didn’t flicker. I might as well have been holding a piece of fruit or something equally innocuous. Still, heat scorched my cheeks and the back of my neck, making my skin prickle.
“We were testing this,” I said. The guys’ eyes widened, prompting a hasty clarification. “Not on each other. Just…in general. To see how many speeds it has.”
Dante shook his head and rubbed a hand over his face. Meanwhile, the corner of Kai’s mouth twitched, as if he were constraining a smile.
A bubble of laughter cascaded over my shoulder. I dropped my free hand from the doorknob, turned, and glared at Vivian, who’d returned from the bathroom and was watching me flounder with far too much amusement for a supposed best friend.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me I was still holding this,” I said, waving the dildo in the air.
Dante let out a choked noise that landed somewhere between a sputtering car engine and a dying cat.
“Friends don’t let friends answer the door with phallic accessories. Don’t come running to me if your husband keels over from cardiac shock.”
“How is it my fault?” Vivian protested between laughs. She appeared wholly unconcerned by her husband’s imminent demise. “I was in the bathroom. Blame Sloane for not warning you.”
I glanced at my other traitorous friend. She’d moved on from her film critique and was glaring at her phone like it’d personally produced, directed, and starred in her most hated rom-coms.
Interrupting Sloane when she was in a foul mood was like tossing a hapless gazelle in front of an enraged lion. No, thank you. I liked my head right where it was.
“Kai, are you joining us for dinner?” Vivian asked, drawing my attention back to the hall. Her laughter had finally subsided. She moved next to her husband, who wrapped a protective arm around her waist and dropped a soft kiss on the top of her head. A pang of envy wormed its way into my gut before I banished it. “Like I told the girls, we can easily change the reservation.”
“Maybe another night. Dante and I had a meeting nearby, and I just came up to say hi.” Kai’s gaze flicked toward me for a split second. An answering thrill rippled beneath my skin. “I don’t want to crash your date.”
“Nonsense. You won’t be crashing at all,” Vivian said. “Isa’s joining us, so it’d actually be perfect.
Seating four is easier than seating three.”
My shoulders stiffened. The last thing I wanted was to sit through an entire meal with Kai. I’d done it before, at a dinner party Dante and Vivian hosted right after they returned from their honeymoon, but that was different. That had been before the piano room. Before dangerous fantasies and accidental touches that tilted my world off its axis.
Kai’s eyes rested on mine again. An invisible steel door slammed down around us, shutting out the rest of the world and cocooning us in a bubble of whisper-light breaths and colliding heartbeats.
Goose bumps rose on my skin. But whereas I struggled to maintain a semblance of calm, he regarded me the way a scholar would examine an old but thoroughly forgettable text. A hint of interest, tempered by a sea of indifference.
“In that case,” he said, the words like velvet in his cultured voice, “I’m happy to help.”
An unwelcome surge of anticipation leaked into my veins, but it was dampened by unease. Dante and Vivian always got lost in their own world, which meant I was facing at least two hours of Kai’s uninterrupted company.
“Excellent.” Vivian beamed, looking happy over something as simple as a group dinner.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. My desire to experience Monarch warred with trepidation over a night with Kai. On one hand, I refused to let him ruin a bucket list item for me. On the other…
“Guys, I have to go.” Sloane came up beside me, so quiet I hadn’t heard her approach. Sometime in the past five minutes, she’d tossed a camel Max Mara coat over her blouse and pants and swapped her slippers for a pair of sleek leather boots. “My client landed early.”
She nodded a curt greeting at the men and handed me and Vivian our bags, effectively dismissing us.
We were too used to her work emergencies to be offended by her abrupt announcement. Sloane wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, and her face should be stamped next to the dictionary entry for workaholic, but if things went to shit, I knew I could count on her. She was fiercely protective of her friends.
“Who is it anyway?” I asked, discreetly dropping the dildo back into my backpack while she locked the door. “Anyone we know?”
Most of her clients were business and society types, but she took on the occasional celebrity like British soccer star Asher Donovan and the fashion model Ayana (one name only, à la Iman).
“I doubt it,” Sloane said as we walked to the elevator. “Unless you follow the lazy playboys section of the society pages closely.” Her voice seeped with cold disdain.
Okay then. Whoever the client was, he was clearly a sore subject.
Vivian and I fell into step with her while the guys brought up the rear. Normally, I’d pester her for more information, but I was too distracted by the soft footfalls behind me.
The clean, woodsy scent of Kai’s cologne drifted over me in a warm rush of air. I swallowed, tingles of awareness scattering over my back. It took every ounce of willpower not to turn around.
No one spoke again until we reached the elevator. The oak-paneled car was built for four at most, and in our jostling to squeeze into the tight space, my hand grazed Kai’s.
A golden streak of heat shot through me, electrifying every nerve ending like live wires in the rain.
I pulled away, but the phantom thrills remained.
Beside me, Kai stared straight ahead, his face carved from stone. I almost believed he hadn’t felt the touch until his hand, the one I’d inadvertently brushed, flexed.
It was a small movement, so quick I would’ve missed it had I blinked, but it grabbed hold of my lungs and twisted.