Partners (Fire & Lies - One) (5 page)

“I don’t want
to know the whole story, Chloe, and I certainly don’t want to know
you. And coming into my family’s business, playing some damsel in
distress bullshit, isn’t going to do shit for your cause.”

She stands up
and moves toward me, which raises my guard. We don’t do well in
close proximity to each other. “Please Aiden. Just hear me out - I
need your help. You’re the only person I can trust.”

“
I’m
the only person you can trust?” I laugh, shaking my head. “That’s
funny, because you’re the last person I’d ever trust.”

Stopping in
front of me, the air begins to crackle with that fucking pull her
presence has on me. She looks up at me with watery eyes, her voice
a hoarse whisper as she pleads with me. Fuck she’s beautiful.
“
Please.
You can hate me all you want, but please help me
help my father. He didn’t do what they say he did.”

I swallow
hard, trying to keep myself as calm as I can. “That’s just the
problem, Chloe – I don’t hate you at all. I’m just not willing to
let you fuck up my life again.”

I step to the
side to move past her. I need to get away from her before I do the
very thing that got us into trouble in the first place. But she’s
quick to step into my path, reaching out to grab at my black shirt,
balling it up in her fists. “
Please!
” she begs. “Don’t
punish my father for something I did to you. It was my choice to
get involved with you and then leave.”

“Why did you
leave, Chloe? That’s the part I can never figure out.”

Her jaw
clenches and she shakes her head. I can tell she doesn’t want to
answer but I’ve waited years to know this, and she’s the one who
forced her way in here, so she’s going to talk dammit.

She turns her
body as if to leave, and I grip her upper arms, forcing her to
stay.

“Answer me,” I
growl. “I think I deserve an explanation at the very least.”

She twists her
body and pushes against my chest, trying to loosen my grip but when
she realises she isn’t getting away, she stills and a tear finally
falls from her eyes. I lessen my grip slightly, but the moment of
calm is over before it even started as she balls up her fist in my
shirt, pulling at it aggressively.

“I left
because I loved you too damn much!” she hisses, pulling tightly at
my shirt like she’s trying to shake me. When I don’t budge, anger
flashes fresh in her eyes as she opens her hands then hits her
palms in a slap against my chest. I grab her wrists and glare down
at her.

“You loved me?
That’s bullshit, Chloe. You never loved anyone but yourself and
your money. Go home. I don’t want any part of this.” I release her
wrists, dramatically giving them back to her. But she’s got a fight
in her now and she’s not backing down.

“Fuck you,
Aiden. You have no idea!” She hits at me again, her small fists
pounding into my chest as tears stream down her face. “I did love
you. But now… now, I fucking hate you!”

“Don’t be a
fucking psycho,” I growl, my hands moving instinctively to grip her
wrists again, and I notice the fire burn even brighter in her eyes.
She fights fiercely for her freedom, leaning back and kicking out,
doing everything she can to get away from me. But I drag her
towards me until she’s so close I can smell the sweetness on her
skin.

“I hate you!”
she screeches as I pin her against my body, my arms wrapped around
her in a bear hold so she can’t get loose.

“No, Chloe.
You don’t hate me at all,” I rumble, crashing my mouth against hers
in the worst split second decision I’ve made since I let her in my
life. But I can’t seem to stop myself. Being around her makes me an
idiot. It always did.

I feel the
fight leave her body as she relaxes against me, and her lips slowly
part, allowing my demanding tongue to slide against hers and get
that first taste of her after three years apart. She’s like a
fucking drug, and my head swims as my arms wrap around her. I pull
her against me, as if I’m trying to devour her somehow. Like she’s
the missing part of me.

We stumble
backwards, and I twist us around so I can lift her onto the bench.
My fingers dig into the flesh on her arse as I heft her up and she
wraps her legs around my waist. I groan into her mouth and she
whimpers, my hands sliding beneath her shirt, connecting with her
soft skin and dragging roughly upward to cup her full breast. She
gasps out, writhing against me as I squeeze her soft flesh–I’ve
craved her for longer than I’d like to admit. Her taste and her
touch makes me so fucking hard it hurts–and I fucking love it.

“
Aiden,”
I hear in my ear, as my earpiece crackles and
activates. It’s just enough to make me freeze and register what
cluster-fuck of a moment this is. I pull away from Chloe, my cock
rock hard and my chest heaving with my breath as I lick my lips,
tasting the sweetness of the fake blood she’d applied to her lip.
“
We need you out front. Fight in progress.”

She’s the
picture of desire as she sits in front of me–face flushed and legs
apart, ready for me to take her. It’s exactly what my dreams have
been asking for, but I know without a doubt that this is a fucking
bad idea. Once I get inside her, I won’t be able to stop.
Temptation fucking sucks.

Growling my
annoyance, I place my hand in the centre of her chest to keep her
back as I force myself to step away, reaching my other hand down to
activate my radio. “How urgent is it?” I ask Jared, who works here
almost as much as I do.

“
There’s
four of them. We could do with an extra set of hands.”

“I’ll be right
out.”

“Is everything
ok?” Chloe asks breathlessly, looking at me with concern all of a
sudden. If I didn’t know how well this girl could play me, I’d be
forgiven for thinking that concern was real…

I take a deep
breath and reach around her to grab a cloth and press it into her
hands.

“Clean that
shit off your face, Chloe, and then go home. This isn’t the place
for you.”

“But what
about my dad? I need your help.”

I step away
and shake my head. “And I don’t have any fucking help to give. Go
and get the cops to help you.”

“Screw you,
Aiden. I should have known you’d be a bastard about this. Your
ego’s too fucking big to put aside for a moment and listen.”

“And I should
have known you’d happily fuck me to get your way. Go home. This
isn’t going to happen again.”

I register the
hurt look cross her face as she slides off the bench and turns her
back to me. Swallowing hard, I force myself to turn away from her
and walk out the door to do my job. But my mind is only half in it.
I can still taste her mouth in mine and it’s fucking
distracting.

When I finish
helping Jared break up the fight, I make my way back to the office
and a pang of disappointment hits me in the chest when I find that
it’s empty.

I don’t know
why I expected her to still be there. Hell, I made it clear I
didn’t want her here – I told her to leave. I guess in some stupid
masochistic way, it pissed me off that she listened. But it pissed
me off even more that I wished she hadn’t. Despite knowing that
what was between us was just a lie–I still want her, almost as bad
as I wanted her three years ago. My mind replays it all like it was
fucking yesterday.

I want her. I
must be insane.

“ARE YOU going
to tell me what went on in there tonight?” Leah asks, once we’ve
arrived home from
Ark
. After leaving the club, I’d gotten
into the car without a word and folded my arms across my chest,
withdrawing into myself as I felt a whole range of stupid emotions
from what had happened with Aiden.

I never
thought he’d kiss me. Not like that. Not after the way I left
him…

The only time
I moved was to stop Leah from turning the music on. My mind was in
such a state that I couldn’t stand any extra sound. I needed to
calm down.

I push through
the front door and throw my wig and my bag on the couch and turn
around to face him. “I lost control,” I reply, running my shaking
hands through my hair in frustration. I must look like a complete
wreck because Leah is looking at me with an unusual amount of
concern.

“Did you at
least talk to him?”

“Not
really–only a bit.”

“And?”

“And he’s
still not going to help us. There’s obviously too much water under
the bridge for us.”

“Exactly what
did you do to him, Chloe?”

“Nothing that
matters anymore. I can’t change the past, and I can’t fix what
happened between us. I just wish he still cared enough to at least
listen to what I had to say before he threw me out again.”

“Maybe he
cares too much. Maybe you care too much too.”

I shake my
head, trying to keep my emotions steady. Being that close to Aiden
really rattled me. I went in there with a solid plan to get him
alone and tell him everything I’d found out about the embezzlement
involving the Donovan Corporation and my father. I would have
begged him to help and guaranteed him any sum as payment. But we
couldn’t even have a conversation without things getting overly
emotional. It’s the way it always was between us. There’s something
that happens that stops us both from thinking straight, like our
bodies are overly strong magnets that won’t stop their pull until
we slam together.

But it clouds
my mind, removing all rational thought. I need him to make this
work, and it worries me that I’m losing control around him,
especially when I have prepared myself for this for so long…I
should have been able to stay on task.

I shiver
physically, closing my eyes as the wave of desire passes through
me. How is it that he still affects me so intensely? It’s been
three years, and we’re different people now, but our reactions are
still the same. There’s still this desire. This
need.
It’s
as if we were together only yesterday, exploring each other,
promising ourselves to each other. That man is the other half of
me. But I will never be whole. We’re doomed to always be apart.
There isn’t room for us in this world.

I begin to
pace, trying to think of what I can do to get him to listen. I feel
sure that once we talk then he’ll help. I need him to want to help.
This will never work if I can’t get him on board. I need someone
with his skill set to help us get our hands on some very important
paperwork. What I want from him involves a lot of risk, and I’ve
been relying on his joy of the hunt, and his love of money to get
him on board. If I can’t get him to help, then this could all fall
apart and my father will die in prison as the man whose greed
destroyed thousands. To the public, he’s the man who ruined lives.
And whether he wakes from his coma or not, he shouldn’t be
remembered that way.

I continue to
pace. I need to think. I need to work out a way to get through to
him. If only I hadn’t pushed him away the moment he let me in… I’d
know so much more about him. But I ruined that trust when I walked
away. I ruined any chance of us being together.

Leah’s voice
breaks into my thoughts and halts my pacing. “Do you have a plan
C?”

“I don’t know,
Leah. Right now, I’m fucking shaking like a leaf, and I was around
him for maybe fifteen minutes.” I hold my hand out to show him how
shot my nerves are, then I scrunch my hand into a tight fist to
still it and lower my hand. “I need some time to think. It wasn’t
supposed to go down like that.”

“Go down like
what? What the hell happened in there?”

“I already
told you–we lost control.”

“Well, you’d
better sort that the fuck out, girly. We can’t let any emotions get
in the way of this shit. It’ll just fuck it up even more than it
already is. Keep your eye on the goal.”

“I know, ok? I
fucking know!” I run my hands through my hair, finally sitting on
the couch as my head begins to throb from too many thoughts and
emotions for a single day.

“Although…”
Leah starts, drawing the word out as he rubs his hand on his chin
in thought. “He is a man who obviously wants you. So those feelings
could be the very thing that gets him on board. I think you should
use your assets, girly. Reel him in.”

I shake my
head. “No, Leah. I don’t want to go down that road. It was too hard
last time. We’re…we’re just too much together.”

“Too much?
What the fuck does that even mean? Do you love him or
something?”

Since the
moment I met him.
“No,” I lie. “We had one night together. That
was it.” I leave out all of the nights we spent together before
that, teasing each other but restraining ourselves as the tension
built to epic proportions. That one night was THE night. It was the
night that I will remember for all my days, and I’m genuinely
afraid of going down that road again. I could get lost in a man
like Aiden Price and I can’t afford to do that. Too much is at
stake.

“Then he’s
just an asset. Go. Meet him at his house and get under his skin.
Tell him what he needs to hear. Behave how he wants you to behave.
Be that woman I know you can be and
get him on board,
” he
insists, leaning toward me intimidatingly as he speaks.

I nod and pick
up my bag again, standing as I hold my hand out for the keys.
“Fine. I’ll go,” I concede, butterflies bursting to life in my
stomach at the thought of seeing him again so soon. I’ve barely
come down from seeing him before.

Leah hands
over the keys but doesn’t immediately let them go. “Keep your
focus,” he reminds me, and I assure him that I will before heading
back out again.

***

With a steel
grip, I drive to Aiden’s, parking in a darkened side street with a
view of his house and wait for him in the dark. Checking the time
on the dashboard, I know that he’ll be home soon. Due to state
implied curfews, the club closes at midnight and Aiden normally
leaves there around one after helping close up. He’ll walk his
sister to her car and then he’ll drive home, which will take no
more than ten minutes.