Stark After Dark (16 page)

“I'm sorry,” Damien says in the taxi on the way back to the Hôtel Margaritte.

“For not stopping? For breaking his camera?” I make a face. “It's okay, really. I don't give a fuck about him. I just don't want you to get in trouble.”

“Not for that,” Damien says. “For bringing you here.”

It takes me a moment to understand what he's talking about. “You mean to Paris? To the club?” I tighten my grip on his hand. “Damien, that's ridiculous.”

“Is it?” His words are tight. Clipped. “I almost canceled this entire trip after I saw your face in Mexico. How much you enjoyed the beach, the solitude.”

I remember the shadows I had seen on his face when we had talked about leaving the resort, and everything falls into place.

“And then to bring you to a city crawling with press—to put you back in that spotlight,” he continues. “And worse, to take you to that club. It was like opening a damn door for every lowlife asshole—”

“No.” I press a finger over his lips. “I love Paris,” I said. “And dear god, Damien, I loved going to À la Lune with you.” I remember the way he'd touched me, the over-the-top eroticism of feeling Damien inside me while we watched those strangers and knowing that we were just as exposed. “And there was no way you could predict that some asshole with a camera—”

“Couldn't I? There's always some asshole with a camera, Nikki. It's part of the package. The cameras and all the shit in my past. It's all there, and I'm so goddamn sorry that it's part of your life now.”

“Damien, it's okay,” I say fiercely. “I don't want to be cloistered, and I don't need to be. You take me places—in the world, inside myself—and I don't want you to stop.”

I see something that looks like hope on his face, but then it fades, replaced by both anger and regret. “At the very least I should be able to give you a respite on our honeymoon.”

“No.” My voice is hard. Firm. “Dammit, Damien, don't you get it? I don't want to escape your life. I love you. All of that shit, it's just part of the man you became.”

“Fertilizer?”

I roll my eyes. “I'm serious. You're a whole package, Damien. And maybe I don't have warm and fuzzy feelings for the paparazzi, but I do love you. And that makes it easier to put up with them. You know that,” I add, feeling just a little panicked, because he
does
know that. “I've told you that over and over. Don't you know I mean it?”

Damien, however, doesn't answer, and my throat is thick with tears as I look into his eyes. This is about more than the paparazzi, I realize. I may not like them, but I'm getting used to them, and Damien damn well knows it.

I frown at him. “What aren't you telling me?”

He is silent for a moment, and when he does speak, my chest is so tight that I am certain I have forgotten how to breathe.

“Sofia,” he says. “She's the one behind the bullshit lawsuit.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“My lawyers managed to trace it back. That's what Sylvia texted to tell me earlier. I was going to tell you later. I didn't want to spoil Paris.” He makes a rough sound in the back of his throat. “So much for that.”

He runs his fingers through his hair. “At any rate, it's been shut down, and her attorney knows how he was duped. But she started it. She's behind it. Because she wanted to fuck with you.”

I'm still trying to take it all in. “I—I don't understand.”

“WiseApp? Try WiseAss.” There's anger and hurt in his voice. “God
damn
her.”

“She's messed up,” I say, though the words are hard to choke out. I can't help but remember what she said to me—that Damien didn't love me, that I should give him up and turn to a blade to ease my pain.

I force myself to bite back the fury. It's useless now. Because she is sick, and all her antics are doing is hurting Damien now. Damien, and me.

I rest my hand on his leg. “It's not your fault.”

“She should be in a facility that doesn't allow her access to the internet or telephones. She's got someone pulling strings for her. She's too damn smart; too damn manipulative.”

“It was only a nuisance,” I say, though it was a hell of a lot more than that. “You've put an end to that bullshit lawsuit before it could get really bad.”

He turns to face me square on. “And how bad is too bad, Nikki? Everywhere we turn, my past is reaching out to hurt you.” He twines his fingers in my hair, and I wince, remembering when I took the scissors and violently chopped it off. He slides his hand down to cup my thigh, and I force myself not to cry as I think of the scars—of the times when the paparazzi, the shit with Sofia, and all the other crap has brought me so close to cutting. I shiver, but I shake my head.

“But I haven't,” I whisper. “I haven't because of you. You're my strength, Damien. You know that.”

“And your dream?” he asks, and I have to force myself not to shudder with the memory of it.

Instead, I manage a shrug. “Everyone has nightmares. Not everyone is as lucky as I am to have a man like you to soothe them.”

His hand closes around my upper arm, his eyes boring straight into mine with the kind of heated ferocity that makes me breathless. “There is no fire I wouldn't walk through for you, Nikki. But that doesn't mean I want you to burn, too.”

“I already burn
for
you, Damien. Of course I'll burn
with
you, too.”

For a moment, his grip tightens so much that I almost wince. Then he pulls me violently toward him, and his mouth is hard against mine. His palm is at the back of my head, his fingers twined tight in my hair. Our teeth clash, his tongue invades my mouth, and I want this—this heat, this wildness. I need him to know that I can take it. Him, this life, this place. All of it.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” he asks as the taxi pulls to a stop in front of the hotel.

“At least as much as I love you,” I reply.

I start to edge toward the door, but Damien's hand stops me. I follow his glance through the window and see the gathering of paparazzi near the entrance, their cameras aimed at us.

Well, hell.

“Go,” Damien says, with a firm smack of his palm to the glass divider between us and the driver.

To his credit, our driver continues on, leaving the vultures gaping. He takes us around back and delivers us to the service entrance. The decor is significantly less stunning as we walk through the kitchen and past the laundry, but at least it's a photography-free zone.

We head for the service elevator to take us up to the penthouse, and as we're waiting for it to arrive, Damien pulls out his phone and checks a text message. “Goddammit.”

“What?” I ask, but he is too busy opening apps and checking something.

I edge closer to see, and come face-to-face with the image of Damien's hand on my breast, his other inside my skirt. And thank goodness for the shadows, because nothing beneath my skirt is visible. Not that anyone needs to see what we're doing; it's pretty obvious. My face is alight with passion, after all, and the very clear sign for À la Lune glows neon orange behind us. I recognize the image—it's from before we entered the club.

I don't recall making a noise, but I must have, because Damien looks up from his phone, his expression somehow both angry and sad, both cold determination and tender vulnerability.

“No,” I say. “This isn't your fault.”

“The hell it isn't.”

“We're married,” I say. “What the hell do we care if it's on Facebook?”

“It's everywhere,” he says. “Sylvia says it's gone viral. They'll be dragging out the story about the painting soon, too,” he says, referring to the way the press vilified me for accepting a million dollars in exchange for a nude portrait of myself.

My stomach twists, but I tell myself it will be okay. “All that picture shows is that I love you and I want you. That you turn me on desperately. All it will do is make every other woman in the world jealous that I'm the woman in your bed. I can live with that,” I add with a sharp thrust of my chin.

“I don't like seeing you exposed,” he says. “Especially when I'm the one who exposed you.”

“I can deal with it,” I say. I don't mention that
can
deal and
want to
deal are two entirely different things.

“Doesn't mean you want to,” Damien says, effectively reading my mind as always.

We're in the elevator now, and it slides to a stop at our floor. I take Damien's hand and squeeze it lightly. “We'll be fine,” I say. “We're together. How can we be anything else?”

His answering smile warms me.
Yes,
I think as the doors open inside our suite.
This will be okay.

And then I see the room.

“Back in the elevator.” Damien's voice is hard and dangerous, and he is in front of me in less than a second. I have barely registered the state of the room—all I know is that it is in shambles. Our luggage wide open, our clothes scattered everywhere. We hadn't taken the time to unpack. Apparently someone decided to do it for us.

“Damien—”

“In,” he says, backing me in, then jamming his finger on the button to close the elevator door before pressing the button to ring security.

“I think they're gone,” I say. “Whoever did that to our room, I think they're gone.”

“I'm not taking chances with you. Come here. You're shaking.”

I fall into his outstretched arms and burrow close as he wraps me tight against him.

When the elevator doors open on the ground floor, we are met by hotel security. A team has gone up in the main elevator already, we are told. We wait, and I can see from the tightness in his cheek and the stiffness of his body that waiting is not sitting well with Damien. He wants to be up there. He wants to know what is happening. He wants action. And the only reason that he is not already in full motion is because of me.

Static bursts from a walkie-talkie, followed by a string of French much too fast for me to catch even a single word. The guard responds, looks at Damien, then at me. “The perpetrator is no longer in your room,” he says in clear but formal English. “We cannot at this time determine what is missing other than the…intimates.”

“Intimates?” I repeat.

He clears his throat. “It appears that whoever broke into your suite took intimate apparel. Underwear, bras.” His nose goes a bit pink and he makes a point not to look at me. “There may be more, of course, but…”

Damien stands beside me, rigid with fury. As for me, I don't know if I'm going to laugh or cry. I think the laughing will win, but I'm not sure if that's humor or hysterics.

No one speaks as we return to the room. When we arrive, we see that our things have been stacked neatly. The order doesn't lessen the feeling of having been violated.

“How did this happen?” Damien says, his words sharp and clipped. I know what he means, and it is clear that both the guard and the hotel manager who have joined us also understand the unspoken part of Damien's question—how the hell did someone get into our room in a hotel of this caliber with the kind of security that Damien demands when he travels.

“I assure you, Mr. Stark, we will be interviewing staff throughout the night, and will have answers for you by morning.”

By morning, I am certain, our underwear will be all over eBay. I catch Damien's eye and see that his expression mirrors my own.
Fuck.

“In the meantime, if there is anything that you require—”

“Privacy,” Damien says, and the manager is astute enough to know that now is the time to stop with the platitudes and just get the hell out of there.

Damien's facade remains intact until the manager and his staff leave. The perfect embodiment of a wealthy man who is very put out. Only I see the volcano boiling beneath, and as soon as the elevator doors have closed behind them, Damien picks up a decorative metal bowl and hurls it across the room to shatter the huge mirror that hangs behind the dining table.

As it breaks apart, I release a breath I have been holding. I do not begrudge him his anger. On the contrary, I want to toss a bowl myself. Except I don't. Not really. What I want is to fall to the ground. What I want is to grasp one of those shards. What I imagine is the sting of glass against flesh—and
dammit,
I don't want to feel that or imagine that or be that girl. And yet there it is, laid cold and harsh all because the paparazzi are fucking with us and Sofia is a stone-cold bitch.

“No.”

Damien's voice seems to reach me through a tunnel. It starts far away and then it is right beside me. The voice and the man. I am standing still, a bit shell-shocked, and suddenly his hands are on my arms. He spins us around until my back is against the wall and his mouth is on mine.

One hand slides between my legs, cupping my sex through the material of my skirt. Not sensual, but hard. Demanding.

Wild.

And I am just as wild as Damien.

I yank my skirt up, and he never once breaks our kiss. As his fingers thrust deep inside me, his mouth bruises mine and his other hand closes tight on my breast. So tight that it is not just trails of pleasure that shoot from my breast all the way down to my clit, but pain, white-hot and familiar.

Damn me, I want more. I want it hard. I want to spin off into an away place—and I want Damien as the tether to bring me back.

Damien, I know, needs that, too. He needs to dominate, to regain control.

And I need—god help me—I need the pain to get centered.

“Yes,” I say, and that one word is like a trigger. I feel his muscles tense, his body tighten, both with need and with trepidation.

“Nikki.” He backs off, the increased distance almost imperceptible, but to me it is a dangerous gulf.