Page 6 of No Knight (My Kind of Hero #3)

Ryan

In the empty marble entryway, music resounds, glasses clink, the sounds of conviviality and happiness pouring from the room beyond.

I blow out a breath, slow and steady, as I try to ignore my sweaty palms and rotating intestines.

Despite what I’ve said, despite all the trouble I’ve gone to, I do not want to be here.

But as with a dose of bad-tasting medicine, I just have to take it.

I pause at a glittering sign nestled in an ostentatious floral display, announcing the marriage of the happy couple.

Curse their lineage. But not really. I’ve got nothing against the bride.

I kind of feel for her, not that it makes any sense, considering all she has.

But I guess she also has a cheating asshole of a husband now, so curse his ass because he deserves none of this.

“All good?”

I nod, resisting the urge to look at the man to my left.

He is a whole lot of man. I’ll admit I was a little shocked when I first set eyes on him.

I almost swallowed my tongue. I thought Carl from the Cuddle Collective must’ve used some very unflattering photos on his business profile, because the man in front of me was plain gorgeous.

I could even see that making sense in my head, the reasons for underplaying his attractiveness.

Don’t want the ladies booking a platonic cuddle appointment thinking they’d get down (literally) to more than that.

In short, Matt is a snack! He’s fire. He’s so freakin’ hot that, in other, less dire circumstances, I’m not sure I could be so blasé about being on his arm.

His hair is so dark it’s almost black, and his eyes a deep forest green shot through with summer gold.

He has the kind of chin that belongs to a comic book superhero, and I bet I could slice ham on those cheekbones.

His shoulders are broad, and his thighs are thick.

The man is country strong, yet he looks like he was born to wear a tuxedo.

Like a modern-day Cary Grant—thanks for introducing me to the archetype, TCM—so debonair, with oodles of charisma and kindness.

It’s a reluctant brand of kindness, but it’s there. Or else he wouldn’t be here.

He’s a good man. Maybe the last one in Manhattan.

Not that I recognized any of that as I stood in the run-down bar, coming to grips with the realization that he wasn’t Cuddle Carl.

Feeling my plans, feeling myself, unravel.

It was blind panic and a sense of desperation that made me latch on to him.

Despite my earlier bravado, I would’ve chosen just about anyone.

He might’ve been eighteen or eighty, as bald as a billiard ball, or possessing the kind of face that only his mother could love.

It didn’t matter in that moment. I needed a man, and he was it.

I needed a man, and I was somehow blessed with a whole lot of one. A man whose job is kind of a mind fuck. And an actual fuck. A man who is a purveyor of pleasure, I suppose. At the thought, my stomach flips. Not at all unpleasantly.

I wonder what kind of money a night with him costs. No, I don’t, not really. What I wonder about is what a night with him entails. I bet he’s worth every penny.

I give myself an internal shake because it’s not like he’s doling out freebies. Besides, that’s not why he’s here. We have other fish to fry.

I turn to the table plan embedded in another ridiculously sized floral display. You can find your seat here, it reads, but your place is on the dance floor.

There’s nothing quite like a cliché. And I should know.

So much for being bold, because I feel physically ill at the prospect of going in there.

Not because he’s there. The man whose gaslighting made me question my own sanity, the human facsimile whose ultimate betrayal left me in pieces.

This apprehension is not about him, because no one gets to hurt me twice.

It’s more about the occasion. This wedding.

The direction I thought, I imagined, our relationship was heading.

But I wasn’t lying when I said I had to be here—that all employees of Dreyland Capital are expected to attend.

I’m sure I could’ve feigned illness, gone on vacation, or claimed a clash of events.

Maybe faked a broken leg. Except, I had to be here.

I needed to see this for myself. As penance, if nothing else. Punishment for being taken in by a man.

Something I won’t let happen again.

I also wasn’t kidding or laying it on thick about my feelings toward my ex. I do see red every time I look at him. Like I could punch him in the face until it turns to Bolognese.

“Found us yet?”

I resist a tiny shiver as the puff of Matt’s words brushes my neck. I realize I’m staring unseeing at the table plan. “Can’t seem to find which circle of hell we’ve been put in.”

“The wrathful one. That’d be circle nine.”

I chuckle and add smart to the list of Matt’s charms. Well read. Urbane. And I am so into the rhythmic rise and fall of his accent. Even if it isn’t Spanish. And his voice? Yum. It’s so deep and rumbling, it seems to hit a girl right where it counts.

Then I spot us—spot where we’ve been seated. A table named Paris.

That fucker.

“Found us!” I whip around with a second wind of determination. Paris was our first vacation. It was there he first declared his love.

Well, my place is wherever the hell I want it to be.

And while I might not want to be here, some evils are just plain necessary.

This is just another hurdle to jump. Something else I won’t ever look back on.

An experience that won’t even get a second glance in the rearview mirror of my life. “Shall we?” I add brightly.

“Can’t wait.” His voice is low, and his tone is flat. But his eyes, they’re dancing.

Boy, did I luck out when Cuddle Carl—a pox on his lineage—was a no-show.

“I think you’re trying too hard.” I poke him playfully in his chest. His broad, solid chest. “Tell the truth—you’re a closet wedding fan.

” And don’t get me started on the rest of him.

Those long, elegant fingers on such capable hands.

The kind of hands that might stop a girl from falling.

Maybe the side effect of Irish whiskey is becoming fanciful.

“You got me.” His chest moves with an amused-sounding huff. “That’s exactly what I’m doing here.”

“Knew it,” I singsong.

“You’ve had me worked out all along.”

His low tone causes a wash of goose bumps along my arms. And now I’m looking at his mouth, wondering what it would feel like to have those lips on mine.

How it would move, the shapes it would make.

How he’d taste. Whiskey laced, I’d bet, to match that dreamy (if unauthentic for tonight’s purposes) accent.

“I guess we’d better get this shit show on the road.” I turn to the oversize ballroom doors, and Matt follows.

“Ryan?”

In the doorway, I half pivot, my eyes flying wide as his hands slide around my waist. My body offers him no resistance as he pulls me close, the scent of his woody cologne hitting me so viscerally.

My breath hitches as I find our lips are just a breath apart, and for one crazy moment, I think he might kiss me like we’re in some classic movie.

“What are you doing?” My voice sounds kind of breathy, and I don’t have the wits to be annoyed by that.

“Setting the tone. Strangers might walk in together, but lovers love.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Maybe because my blood is pumping so hard, it’s starving my brain. I feel tiny in his arms. I mean, I am physically small, but I rarely feel so.

“We’re not late because my plane was.” His voice is husky and pitched low.

“We’re lovers who’ve been separated by sea and by weeks.

Everyone here—your colleagues, the people watching us right now, the people you like and the people you don’t—they know the real reason we’re late.

” His eyes seem lit from within. “They can sense what we’ve been up to. ”

Heat rises through me, like we’ve actually spent the afternoon fucking.

Wouldn’t that have been something.

Oh, my God, am I blushing?

I think I must be in shock. Eighteen months, and not once have I felt that visceral pull of attraction. The whole time, I’ve been deadened from the neck down. Discounting the hate that still burns in my heart, of course. I haven’t wanted sex at all—not with myself, not with anyone.

“No one’s w-watching us,” I stammer. Because why would they?

They better not be, or they might ask why steam is currently rising from my skin.

I give a tiny clearing of my throat and make to move away as though my knees aren’t a little unsteady and my heart isn’t jumping out of my skin.

I’d better get a hold on this thing—a hold on myself, more like. “There really is no—”

His fingers tighten. I don’t pull away because ...

We’re just playing a part. Even if I really want to dry hump him right now.

“Maybe you should’ve gone for an escort,” he murmurs, sliding away a lock of my hair. “At least then you’d have control.”

That heat coursing through me suddenly drops to my center, warming the space between my hips. “You think I’m not in control?” Damn the tiny waver in my voice.

He gives the kind of smile that causes me a jolt. Devilish? Rakish? I don’t know what the word is, but there is something overtly sexual about it. I get the feeling that I’ve missed something. Missed something in him.

“It’s cute that you think you are. But you see, when we step into this room, you’re at the whim of a Latin lover. Your Latin lover,” he says, exaggerating his accent with extravagant rolling r ’s. Well, maybe not his accent, but someone’s. Someone not at all Spanish and slightly comical.

“You’d better let me do the talking.” The man sure is pretty, but his Spanish accent is anything but. But there’s not a lot I can do about that now.

“I’m deeply offended,” he says, looking the exact opposite.

“Seriously, I appreciate your help, but—”