The question I should have expected, but while I was thinking about getting closer to him, he wanted to know that. The sad thing was, I should have told him when I talked about Patrick.
Lifting my head, I met his dark as midnight eyes and admitted, “I’m in a jumbled mess really.” I shrugged. “The wedding is soon, and yet I’ve stayed silent. At first I had planned on being honest and admitting that it wasn’t what I wanted, but then I had access to the gym because of Patrick. If I spoke out, then all that would have been taken away and I wouldn’t get to see you. I know it’s stupid, but that’s my reasoning.”
He cupped my face and kissed me. His lips hovered over mine while he kissed me again. “I know where you live, Evie. I can come to you.”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want any trouble for you because of me… I could call you. We could arrange to meet.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.” He seemed almost ashamed at that confession. Perhaps I was naïve because I thought everyone had a cell these days.
“We need to get you one.”
Now it was his turn to shake his head. “I’m not sure.” He looked away and then back to me. “Let’s get out of here. I want you to myself and there’s too many people in here now.”
I wanted that as well. I wanted a lot more.
“Yes.”
My one word had him tugging me out of the booth with him, and with a quick goodbye to Julio I found myself outside the bar with his arm tightly around my waist. It felt good walking down the sidewalk with him holding me close. Feeling his side pressed up against mine caused my blood to thrum with more desire than I’ve ever experienced before.
His own desire looked hard and uncomfortable against his zipper, which caused a moan to escape my lips.
That was all it took to find myself shoved up against a wall, my legs around his waist and his hands on my bottom while his mouth hovered above mine.
I wanted this man with everything I had, but not in an alley again. I wanted and needed to see him. To be able to touch him where I wanted to as opposed to where I could reach. Where though? Where could we go?
Millie’s apartment.
“My friends apartment. No one knows she has a new place. We can go there.”
Even though I’d spoken the words, I wasn’t sure he’d heard because he didn’t move and stayed frozen against me.
“I want you. Badly,” he whispered against my lips.
“I know.” I pressed my hips against his and felt the pulsing length of him twitch. He was long and thick and, with another wiggle of my hips against him, his hands clamped on my bottom real tight so that I couldn’t move.
“I don’t want to come again in my jeans, which I will do if you keep doing that.” He blushed and wouldn’t meet my gaze.
All too soon he let my feet drop to the ground and stepped back, raking a hand through his hair in obvious frustration. His bulge, if anything, had grown and the thought of having all of him inside me caused my sex to clench with excitement.
He chuckled, groaned, and then mumbled, “Stop looking,” before he took my hand and tugged me down the sidewalk again.
“I’ve no idea where your friend lives, but it’s near the park, right?”
“Yes. It’s in the Regents building.”
Stryker pulled to a sudden stop. “Fuck.”
I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
He looked at me as though I had two heads. “I’m in the same building. Corner unit on the twenty-first floor.”
Stunned was an understatement. “Millie is on the nineteenth, 1908.”
“I’m 2110…we have to be careful, and enter separately. They watch me.” He looked away and although it felt like minutes had passed, in reality, it was probably seconds before he got us moving again. “When we get there,” he looked around us, the frown not leaving his brows, “you go in the front door as I presume you usually do, and I’ll find my own way up to you. Leave Millie’s door on catch so I can quickly enter before the camera picks me up.”
All the cloak and dagger stuff worried me, but I guessed we both had to stay off Patrick’s radar for now. But what would happen to Stryker once my engagement was no more? Would he lose access to the gym as well? Or would he be kept on because he makes them more money than any of the other fighters?
It was all a mess and I had a feeling that Patrick’s father might be the one to want the marriage between his son and me. He always seemed to have control, icily so. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the reason Stryker was so isolated.