Tinsel In A Tangle

He gathered her skirt in his hand, and another voice said, “I don’t think so, sport.”

Rugby didn’t move, didn’t stop crowding her. “Fuck off, mate.” He put his big warm hand under her skirt and grasped her hip. Yes. She dropped her head to his chest. They’d go away, whoever they were, they’d go away.

“The lady and I have business to discuss.”

Rugby ignored that, good man, snaked his hand around to her ass, sank his fingers in and brought their hips together. Her boots gave her height; he’d widened his stance. She needed that zipper down and her hand around him. She needed the oblivion of being pounded into orgasm.

“You don’t know anything about her. You don’t know where she’s been for the last ten years, how hard she was to trace, what kind of heartbreaker she is. You don’t know how to touch her the way she likes it, how to kiss her so she goes crazy.”

Rugby was kissing her, all thrusting tongue and sucking lips, and that was car chase good, but he stopped, rested his forehead on hers. “Don’t need your help, mate. Sod off.”

“You don’t know how to put her back together when she breaks.”

Rugby’s head turned. “You’re bothering me. Fuck off before I make you.”

He would, Rugby would make it right. Make it so that the man who sounded like Cleve, looked like him, wasn’t still standing there.

“No, sport, you don’t want to do that.”

“She said she doesn’t know you.”

“She knows me. We go way back.”

Rugby took her chin in his hands and brought her head up. “That true?”

She shook her head. “He’s a lying, thieving bastard.”

“Aria. No matter what she tells you, that’s her real name.”

Rugby brought his face closer and shifted his hips back. No. “That your name?”

She was Arietta Cappella. But Aria sounded like a diminutive, which was why she’d picked it from the half dozen IDs at her disposal, wanting to be herself again. Bad idea, bad, bad idea.

And Cleve really was here.

She spat out the words, “How did you find me?”

“You do know him.” Rugby stepped away. “You’re fucken drop dead gorgeous, but I don’t need the agro. Tell me now if you’re scared of him.” He put his hand to her face. “Not such a dickhead I’m gonna leave you with trouble.”

She stared up into Rugby’s frown. The look in his eyes said he wouldn’t mind a fight. “I’m not scared of him.” She’d run once, but not out of fear, out of hatred. She wouldn’t run again for any reason. “He can’t hurt me.”

Not anymore.

Rugby let her go. “Right, I’m orf.” He looked at the bastard Shadow. “You watch yourself, mate.”

She was sober now, on guard—she could watch herself. “What do you want?”

Cleve didn’t come any closer and she stayed where she was against the wall.

“I want to look at you. I didn’t believe it was you, Aria. So goddamn amazing.”

She didn’t want him to say her real name. She did want to see his ugly face, remember what it felt like when he touched her, when he betrayed her. “What. Do. You. Want?”

“What’s mine, baby.” He’d dropped his voice to a whisper made of midnight flits across rooftops hand in hand and his warm lips nibbling across the cold skin of her shaved scalp.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’d found her, but he couldn’t possibly know what she’d done, and the Greville’s auction wasn’t for another couple of hours so word wasn’t out yet.

“You were mine then, black heart and fireball soul. Years I looked for you.” He took a step forward. “You’re still mine.”