In For Keeps. Taryn Belle
revealed her truth. She looked like shit. Her skin was pale, and she’d put on a few pounds. It was the one thing she hated about her roommate, Nicola—while she lost her appetite under stress, Kiki reached for the late-night cookies as if she could tame the ugly monster that raged inside her with refined sugar. Crouching behind the bar, she slicked on some lip gloss, adjusted the straps of her sundress and stood up.
“Strawberry.”
Jesus. Dev was standing right in front of her.
Kiki’s groin went mushy as the memory of their entangled bodies came crashing over her. His kiss, demanding and soft at the same time. His eyes on hers as he’d latched his mouth on to her clit. His beautiful body and perfect cock, his urgent breath as he’d driven into her again and again, ripping sweet cries of ecstasy from her throat. The way he’d touched her like it meant something. As they’d lain on the sofa recovering, she’d seen it in his face—the same question she wanted to ask him: When can we do this again? The answer had been twenty minutes later, but even that hadn’t been enough for her. In a few short hours Dev turned her into an insatiable sex monster. She’d wanted to break all of her no-strings rules for him, and looking back, she was almost grateful for the near scandal that had derailed them the next morning. That whole experience had sucked her libido dry, which had probably saved her fucking life. Because Dev Stone was dangerous, addictive and a straight arrow to only one thing: heartbreak.
“Hey, rock star,” Kiki tossed out, reaching for a bar cloth to occupy her hands. But it was no use—she could feel her fingers trembling as they swept past his. Her cheeks were warm. She was certain her nipples were straining against her dress.
“You’ve been busy,” he said as he leaned into the counter. Those aqua eyes. That square jaw. That dark lock of hair that always flopped over his brow. She could smell his spicy aftershave, the same one that had been on her skin the next morning. Damn it.
“Busy avoiding you,” Kiki said, scrubbing hard at an invisible spot. “It’s a full-time job.”
“Then I’ll talk to your boss and get you fired.”
“Very funny,” she said when a snappy reply failed her. His eyes were all over her, devouring her—why? Dev was a rock star god who had his choice of any woman on earth. From where she stood, Kiki could throw a champagne glass at at least three gorgeous household-name females. And she was a divorced executive-assistant-turned-bartender from Atlanta, guaranteed to fall short of any man’s expectations.
“I was hoping you’d be in today,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” she replied over the sound of the blood rushing through her ears. “And why is that?”
“You want the real reason, or the PC one?”
She stopped scrubbing. “Let’s start with the PC one.”
“My tour assistant quit today. I’m just gonna say it—I’m a little desperate for a new one. Any chance you’d consider taking the job?”
She put a hand out to steady the martini glass she’d almost knocked sideways. “The job?”
“Yeah.” Dev’s fingers skimmed hers as he reached out to catch the glass with her. She pulled back as they buzzed with electricity. “You’d be perfect for it.”
“I pop beer caps for a living, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“But you used to be an executive assistant.”
“I worked with CEOs. I don’t even know what a—a rock star assistant does.”
“That’s easy.” He winked. “Whatever I want you to.”
Her belly flopped over. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Why, Kiki? What are you so scared of?” Dev’s aqua eyes were unblinking. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. It’s been three weeks, and I can still feel you under me. That’s the real reason I wanted to see you again, Kiki. I leave in two days, and I want to take the memory of you with me. I want to be inside you again. Don’t tell me you don’t want the same thing.”
Her knees unlocked, threatening to collapse her onto the floor. God, did he really just say that? She could feel her face overheating as she measured honesty against fake indifference. As usual, honesty won. “I do, Dev, trust me. But that’s not a road I can travel down.”
“Why not?”
“Because—because it’s just not. It’s complicated. And accepting a job where I had to work anywhere within a one-mile radius of you would pretty much undo me.”
“I feel like things would have been different if Brissoli had never happened.”
“They wouldn’t have been.”
“Why not?”
“Stop asking me that.”
He shook his head. “Even if I can’t have you, I still want your skills. What if I promised to keep anything personal out of it?”
Kiki laughed. “After what happened between us? I think that’s beyond wishful thinking.”
“Who said anything about wishing for it?”
“You see?” Kiki stopped the banter with a loud thud of a wine bottle. She poured a glass out and slid it to the end of the bar for pickup.
“I can be a perfect gentleman when I set my mind to it,” Dev persisted. “Even with you.”
“Jesus, would you stop? So I get to see you with your groupies instead? No, thanks.”
“It won’t be like that. How about this...” He laid his hands flat on the counter. “The first leg of the tour is six weeks long. You’re the boss. We keep it strictly business unless you decide otherwise.”
When she didn’t come up with an immediate protest, he pushed on. “Listen—I’ll pay you whatever you want. Have I mentioned where we’re going? We start in London. Then Paris, Italy, Germany. And then onto Australia. Sydney, Brisbane—”
Sydney. The word bounced around in Kiki’s head. Home to Webber Real Estate Agency, employer of Victoria O’Hare. A chance to solve the mystery. A chance to fill the empty ache that had been gouged into her at six years old.
But only maybe. Only if Victoria O’Hare was really who Kiki wanted her to be, which she probably wasn’t. And then there was the matter that she would be halfway around the world with Dev, a man she wanted to make her sex slave for all eternity. Who, in her most secret dreams, sang a song of his undying love to her.
Very bad idea.
“...anyway, you need a change,” Dev was saying.
Kiki felt her jaw tighten. Even if she did, the only person who was going to make that call was her. “How would you know what I need?”
“You moved from Atlanta to LA to go to university. You changed your major halfway through. You came here on your own two years ago. You switched from being an executive assistant to a bartender. Clearly you like to mix things up.”
Kiki couldn’t help her stunned look. On the night of his birthday party, Dev had been surrounded by groupies. Kiki hadn’t imagined he would even glance at her, but his eyes had stroked her all the way from her face down to her toes, lighting her body up like she’d been zapped with electricity. After that he’d suggested a walk on his private beach, and he hadn’t even made a move on her—instead he’d actually talked to her, asked her about her life and her family, until she’d grown weary of waiting and gone in for the kiss. She hadn’t imagined that he’d retained anything she’d told him, and yet he’d just recited most of it back to her. She squared her shoulders. “So, what—you think I’m just going to drop everything because Dev Stone asked me to? Sorry, but I’m not one of your worshipping fans.”
“Obviously.”