Beautiful Scars (25 page)

“Not an issue,” he promised.

The need almost made her knees buckle.

“You ready to go upstairs?” he whispered, his breath ghosting over her skin.

She couldn’t find the breath to speak. So she just nodded.

If they’d gotten to the steps five seconds sooner, they would have missed him. If they’d bothered working through the crowd to the velvet rope that separated the VIP’s entrance, they would have missed him. But the main area was closer and as they mounted the steps to the third floor, he was heading down.

The music from the dance floor was muted at this level, although she wished it were blasting. Deafening her.

Tim stared at her for a long moment. Then he cut his eyes toward Marc, his mouth twisting in a sneer before he jerked his gaze back to her. “Back to your usual, it looks like,” Tim said.

“Not hardly,” she said. “After all, I moved past you.”

Marc moved a little closer, his hand resting at the base of her spine. “Come on. We’re not here to mess with fools like him.”

“Why are you here? Ready to get your freak back on?” Tim jeered. “Yeah, I know you had to let your membership lapse and all. Probably raring to go after all this time. And you got one hell of a money train going now, don’t you?”

Marc let go of her. Moved around her. She caught his arm. “Stop it,” she said quietly. “He’s not worth it and we both know it.”

Marc shrugged her away.

“You have a very, very short memory,” Marc said quietly. Snaking out a hand, he jerked Tim forward, glaring into the shorter man’s face. “Do I need to get you a refresher on what I was going to do to you if you mentioned her name again?”

“You can’t,” Tim sneered. “You know the rules here.”

“Well, the thing about being a money train, you can buy your way out of a lot of trouble,” Marc whispered softly.

“Damn it, Marc,” Chaili said. “Enough.”

He turned his head, looked at her.

Her blue eyes, blazing like flames against the soft gold of her skin, snapped at him. “He’s not worth it.”

“You are,” he said softly.

She closed her eyes, caught her breath. A few seconds later, she opened then and then looked at him. “Then let him go. If I’m worth this, then I’m worth letting him go. He doesn’t mean anything to me, and neither do his words.”

“Don’t they?” he asked, searching her face. He kept thinking of the sadness he saw. The lingering pain.

“No.” She moved closer, resting a hand on his arm. “You mean a hell of a lot more than he ever could…ever did. Don’t you know that by now?”

Heavy footsteps sounded on the steps above them. Blowing out his breath, Marc uncurled his grip from the man’s shirt, shoving him away. “You get this walk,” he warned him. “But don’t keep pushing your luck.”

He didn’t bother to watch as Tim disappeared, just focused on Chaili’s eyes, those amazing eyes. “I won’t keep letting him mouth off like that. He’ll go too far.”

“Yeah. Probably. But not here.” She leaned in, pressed her lips to his. “Come on, didn’t we have a date on the top floor?”

It was 7:38 when they got to the room.

It was 7:39 when Marc had her pressed back against the door.

It was 7:40 when he had her cuffed, the cuffs hooked over a convenient little hook fastened into the door.

It was 7:41 when he had her knees hooked over his elbows as he pushed inside her. “I told you I’d be doing this soon,” he said, his voice a low, throaty purr in the stunning silence of the room.

It was one of the private rooms, Chaili had noticed that, but unlike any of the rooms she’d seen before.

Dazed, stunned, she stared into his eyes as he continued to burrow deeper inside her. Next to no warning. Just in the room, and…bam. Arms stretched over her head, her legs hooked over his forearms as he fucked her…she sucked in a desperate breath and whimpered his name.

“Say it like that again,” he said, his voice calm, easy. Like he was ordering a pizza or something. “I like it when you say my name all broken like that.”

Groaning, she bucked in his arms and tried to ride the ridge of his cock. But he held back, watching her. Waiting.

“I want to hear you whimpering,” he whispered. He started to shaft her with slow, teasing little strokes that did nothing to assuage the fire inside her. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Chaili. Let me hear it. Give it to me…”

She cried out, squeezing her eyes closed as his name fell from her lips.

“That’s it…” He slid deeper. Withdrew. Pushed in. Harder this time, so that the flared head of his cock rasped over the sensitive bundle of nerves buried in her pussy. “Come on…do it again. I want to see you break for me.”

She jerked against the cuffs, clamped down around him and tried to keep him inside her.

He surged deeper. Harder. “Break for me, baby girl,” he growled. “Break…”

Chaili shuddered, feeling it rise inside, taking her deeper, deeper. Harder. Harder. As he moved…harder, harder…deeper, deeper.

Her heart couldn’t take it. Couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle it. Like it was going to explode, shatter…and she thought maybe
she
was…oh, oh!

He growled, slamming inside her. “Come for me,” he rasped, his mouth crushing into hers, tongue thrusting past her lips to take her mouth the same way he took her body.

She shuddered. Quaked.

And as he drove into her once more, she climaxed.

Chaili stared at the silvery strands in the box.

“Marc…I…I can’t…”

He pulled them out of the box. “Why?” He held one of them up to her ears, smiling a little. “They’ll look good on you.”

“I…just. Well.”

“We’ve been going out for over two weeks. I think that means I’m allowed to buy you a present.”

“Is that in the dating handbook?”

He tugged on her hair. “Well, for it to be official, I think I have to ask you to go steady…” He leaned and brushed her hair back. “So, tell me something, Chaili, you wanna go steady with me?” he teased.

He might have been teasing, but it still managed to settle a lump in her throat. Swallowing around it, she looked down, staring at the box so she wouldn’t give herself away. “I think we’re a little past the high school drama stuff, aren’t we?”

Marc shrugged. “Hell, out of high school, maybe. But the drama stuff, does that ever end? And I’m not entirely joking…” He laid a hand on her cheek. “There’s something real here. You know it. I feel it. We don’t need to put a name to it, but I’m not planning on walking away from this.”

Something real
.

Hell. She didn’t need to put a name to it, because she already knew what it was.

Shaken, she focused on the earrings again. Easier that way. “I’m just not really comfortable accepting gifts, Marc,” she said quietly.

“It’s just one,” he pointed out.

Rising from the couch, she tucked the earrings inside the box. Something told her she needed to be careful here. Maybe not do anything. Yet. This was a scary conversation to have.

“Just one gift,” she blurted out. “Yeah. But…” Her mind spun around, desperate to seize onto something.

Something real…something real.
She wanted to believe that so bad. Wanted to believe they’d still be spending so much time together after the website was done. But what about when he went back to the studio? Back on tour…

The website—

“The website!” She turned around and glared at him.

A wary look entered his eyes. “What about the website?”

“You all but handed me the easiest job in the world and you’re overpaying me!” Okay, that was stretching it. It wasn’t easy and she was damn well busting her ass. Maybe he was overpaying her…

“Hey, we’ve already agreed the damn website I’ve got is a joke,” he said, his voice edgy. “I needed the damn thing redone, right?”

“Well, you didn’t need to pay me double what it’s worth,” she babbled.
Okay, I’m being silly here…

“How in the hell do I know what they’re worth?” he asked. “I named a figure and we agreed on it and it’s not like it’s a handout if you’re doing the damned work!”

A handout
—

Fury flickered, flared to life inside her. Okay. She’d been reaching when she threw the website out there, but… “A handout?” she said quietly.

Marc’s face went rigid.

“That implies like you think I might need a handout,” she said coldly. She was broke, yeah, but damn it,
he
didn’t need to know that.

“I’m not giving you a damned handout. I needed a damn job done and I asked the one person I knew who could do it to get it done,” he said.

“Huh. And oddly enough, you managed to toss out a figure that all but wiped out a few of my medical bills.” Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “When did you see my medical bills, Marc?”

He didn’t say anything.

“You son of a bitch.”

Chapter Fifteen

Things could go from heaven to hell in the blink of an eye and Marc had no idea just how this had happened.

He’d just wanted to give her something.

That was all.

But as she stormed around the private room at Blue’s, gathering up the clothes he’d stripped off her, he realized he’d managed to piss her off but good.

And he didn’t know how.

She was leaving.
Why
?

She’s running
, a small voice in the back of his head whispered not even a second later.

Running?

He remembered the panicked fear he’d glimpsed in her eyes just moments ago, before it had faded. Faded? Or had she hidden it? He’d thought they were done hiding things, but was she still…

Okay. She was either hiding still, or he’d fucked things up.

Either way, he wasn’t letting her walk away like this.

As she pulled her dress on, he snagged his trousers and tugged them up. Checked his pocket. Yep. It was there.

She started for the door, but he beat her, just barely. As she tried to jerk it open, he slammed it shut over her head. “Running away?” he asked softly.

“No. I’m leaving. I can’t believe you fucking did that, Marc,” she snarled.

“What? Have you take over a job you should have been doing all along?” He shrugged. “Shoot me. The way I see it, the bonus doesn’t even cover the money you would have made if you had been doing the site all this time, like you
should
have been doing. It’s fair enough, in my mind.”

She whirled around and glared at him. “Why didn’t you just
ask
me?”

“Ask you what?” he said bluntly. “Ask you to take the job? I
did
that, remember?”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, wait, now let me guess. You’d rather I point it out like this…
Chaili, I know you’re tight on money. And I really do need you back on my website. Can you come back?
Shit, you’d never think one had nothing to do with the other.”

“Are you’re telling me they didn’t?”

“I never knew you weren’t doing it!” he shouted. “And if you had been doing it, the way you should have been, you wouldn’t be so fucking tight on money! And if I didn’t have my head up my ass, I would have realized what was going on! And it still doesn’t change the fact that you did the best job on the damned site and I needed you back.”

“So. You just overpaid me on accident.”

He glared at her. “You’re running away because you’re scared.”

“I am not,” she snapped. “I’m leaving because I can’t stand a man who thinks he can control me like that.”

“If I’d wanted to control you, I would have just paid off every last one of the fucking medical bills,” he said. “And it damn well killed me not to do it. It’s making me sick thinking about how hard you’ve had it, damn it. But I didn’t do that. I gave you a job that I needed you to do.”

She just curled her lip at him. “I don’t need the pity work, Marc. Or the pity fuck. So if you’d just move…” She turned back to the door expectantly.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the picture. Slammed it against the door. “No,” he rasped. Pressing his lips to the back of her head, he whispered again, “You’re not doing this, Chaili. I’m not letting you run away over whatever in the hell has just scared you. I just found you, damn it.”

Chaili jumped as his hand slammed against the door. One arm came around her, hauled her back against him. She jerked against his hold, but he continued to hold her. “You’ve got my head all screwed up. You’ve got me twisted up in knots and there are things I want to say to you, but I know I’m going to fuck up what I’m saying.”

As he scooped her up in his arms, she went rigid.
I’m not doing this. I’m not. Damn it. How could he have gone through my stuff, found out about the bills…
Her belly was hot and tight with shame, just thinking about it.

“I didn’t mean to see the bills,” he said as he sat on the couch. “I was working on a song, the day we were at your place, with the scarves. I accidentally knocked the bills over. That’s how I saw them.”