Obsession (Forbidden #2) (19 page)

‘So, why were you in there, with Brunette Barbie?’

‘We were just talking.’

‘And were you doing that naked? With your legs open?’

‘Jesus, Joey…’

‘Are you and Neal OK?’

‘Yes, Joey, everything’s OK. How many times do you want me to say it?’

He looks at me. Should I just tell him? No. There’s nothing to tell. Neal asking me to marry him was just a weird blip; a knee-jerk reaction to whatever crap had gone down at Barry’s.

‘Weren’t you supposed to be at his brother’s tonight?’

‘We left early.’

‘Why?’

‘Did you come down here for a reason?’

‘I feel like I’m losing you, Kira, alright? I mean, I come halfway across the world to be closer to you, and yet, I’ve never felt so far away from what
we
used to be. And that scares the hell out of me, angel.’

He’s over-dramatising everything again. New York is only around a six hour flight from the UK, so he’s hardly come halfway across the world, but I kind of get what he means. There
has
been a distance between us that wasn’t there before. Because I needed to be –
need
to be with Neal.

I pull him in for a hug, and for a few seconds we just stand there, holding each other, and I try to think of a way we can fix this before it turns into something I don’t want it to become. But I can’t think of anything. I don’t want to be anywhere with anyone but Neal. Even after what happened tonight. I’ve had my few minutes away from him, that time I needed to step back and think. I’ve had that, it’s done. And now we’ll put it behind us and we’ll get back to how we were. But because of that; because of how I feel about Neal, how much of my time he takes up; how consumed by him I need to be, 24/7, Joey is being pushed into second place in my messed-up heart now. I can’t help it. And I want to hate that fact, I really do. I want to hate myself for feeling that way, but I can’t.

Keeping my hand on the back of his neck I rest my forehead against his and smile, and he kisses the tip of my nose, which makes me laugh, and for a couple of beats normality hits. But then I remember where we are, what’s happened over the past few weeks. Nothing was normal before we came here, to New York. It’s even less so now.

‘I love you, Joey Princess.’

He rubs the small of my back and kisses me quickly. ‘Right back at ya, kiddo.’

I step away from him and fold my arms, looking down at the floor, which, of course, he reads as another guilty action.

‘Is everything
really
OK with you and Blue Eyes?’

I slowly look up and smile. ‘Yeah. But sometimes I just need a break from all the hot and heavy stuff, you know?’

He raises an eyebrow and throws me a look. ‘And, you do that by coming down here, to your depraved sex club?’

‘This is where I feel comfortable, Joey. This is my world.’

‘And I thought
she
was going home? Brunette Barbie.’

‘Not yet.’

He raises the eyebrow again, but I ignore him this time. And he leaves it. I think he’s beginning to realise that pushing it isn’t getting him the results he wants. But I know he’s only looking out for me, and I love him for caring. I love him, period.

I lean over and kiss him on the cheek, taking his hand and squeezing it tight, throwing him a small, slightly mischievous smile. ‘Thank you. For being so brave and coming down here all on your own. I know it must have been terrifying for you.’

‘You’re such a bitch.’

‘Go on. Get back upstairs, you old drama queen.’

He looks at me, and I feel a wave of love so strong for this man wash right over me. Whatever happens, I need to keep him in my life, I need that. I can’t lose Joey. Joey saved me. Joey kept me strong when I was close to falling. And I can’t guarantee I won’t need him to do that again.

‘We
are
going to be OK,
 
aren’t we, angel?’

I smile and reach out to cup his cheek. ‘Yeah. ‘Course we are. I guess we both just needed this wake-up call, huh?’

He takes my hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing it lightly. ‘Yeah. Maybe we did.’ He lets go of me and gives himself a little shake, and the Joey Princess I know and love is back. ‘Right. I’d better go and get changed. I’m on stage in half an hour and it takes longer than that to get my eyelashes on most nights. You behave, angel, you hear me?’

‘You know me, Joey.’

‘Yes. I do. That’s why I said behave.’ He starts walking away from me, shouting back over his shoulder. ‘And give Blue Eyes a big kiss from me. Alright? A really
big
kiss.’

I laugh as he disappears back into the club, and back up to the safety of Bam-Bams.

That whole encounter felt slightly surreal to me, another thing that’s happened tonight that seems to have come from out of nowhere, and I wonder if there’s a full moon out there or something that’s causing all these strange things to occur in the space of a few hours. But that’s just me reading too much into everything. It’s been one of those days, that’s all. And maybe all me and Neal need to do is go home and have an early night, because, I don’t think we’ve had something as simple as that since… since, ever.

I check my dress is pulled back down over my thighs properly before I make my own way back into the club, slipping behind the bar to fix myself a vodka and tonic before I set off to find Neal.

The club is busier than it’s ever been, but that’s no real surprise. Having done what I did – having been who I was in the industry I worked in for over ten years, I know that sex will always sell. People will always want it. Need it. People will always seek ways to make it more interesting, more diverse, more risky, and that’s what I want The Playroom to provide – within reason, of course. We have to be careful that those boundaries we cross – we have to make sure we don’t cross them too far. But people will always want sex; want to have it; want to watch it happen in front of their eyes.

‘Hello, kid.’

The voice in my ear makes my blood run cold, but I don’t turn around.

‘Still looking good, Kira. Still as fucking beautiful as ever, although, let’s be fair, darlin’, it hasn’t really been all that long. Has it? Since we last saw each other.’

If I turn around it makes it real, makes
him
real, and I don’t want that. Oh God, oh, Jesus, I really don’t want that. How the hell did he find me? How is this happening? But, at the same time, a terrifying sense of inevitability swamps me, and there’s nothing I can do now. Nothing anyone can do.

‘Took me a while to find you, I have to admit. You were pretty good at covering your tracks, but I should have guessed you’d still be up to your beautiful neck in pure filth. Just like old times, huh?’

Still I refuse to turn around.

It’s not going to happen.

The real world has no place here in my bubble of escape.

And I have no idea how that bubble was infiltrated, but he doesn’t get to burst it.

He doesn’t.

He can’t.

I can’t let him…

Eighteen

Kira

‘How did you know I was here?’ My voice can barely raise above a whisper, but he can still hear me over the sound of the music pounding out around us. I know he can. He’s too close for him not to be able to hear me. And I can smell his cologne, and it makes me feel slightly sick, but the excitement that tries to push its way through that nausea sickens me even more. ‘How did you find me?’

‘It was hard, I’ll give you that. I mean, it’s not like you left a follow-on address for all us men who once used you to satisfy those dark, dirty, filthy fantasies you allowed us to live out while you lay down, opened your beautiful legs and took us poor bastards to fucking heaven and back before you pocketed our hard-earned cash and walked out of our sad, pathetic lives, leaving us with nothing but memories to wank over in the shower. Until the next time. But now there
is
no next time, is there? You’ve retired, so I hear. And I need to know where that leaves
me
, darlin’. Do you understand?’

I close my eyes and breathe in deep, hoping that by the time I breathe out he’s gone, that that smell of cologne and stale cigarette smoke disappears and I realise this was nothing more than my tired and over-emotional state working overtime to scare me.

‘But I also hear you haven’t exactly hung up your killer heels for good, Kira.’

I swing around. I’m ready to face him now. Ready to face
this
. But, shit! This night really is kicking up layer after layer of crap I don’t need. None of us need this.

‘What do you want, Jon?’

He smiles, and I feel my stomach twist up. He still looks exactly how I remember him, all messed-up light-brown hair and heavy stubble, an air of arrogance surrounding him. This man, he represents a part of my life I should never have let happen. He was something – some
one
I should have stepped back from, because the second I allowed him inside my world I was playing with fire. And I got burned. Was I really that naïve to think that by walking away from that world, from my former life; from those days as an escort – was I naïve to think that by doing that the fire would be forever extinguished? That I would never get burned again? I should never have let him near me, not in that way; not in
any
way. I should never have let him get that close but we couldn’t stop it… Jesus! He was my weakness long before Neal Cannon arrived on the scene. And I’d just ignored that, tried to pretend he didn’t exist when I should have always known he’d come back. He was never going to leave me alone, but I stupidly refused to believe that. I buried my head in the sand and chose to pretend none of what happened between us – I didn’t want to remember it. Not all of it. So I found a corner of my brain I could shut down, and I put those memories in there. But he was never going to leave me alone. And those memories, they were never going to be forgotten. And pretending they could be; I think that might have made everything worse. More painful. More complicated.

‘How did you find me?’ I repeat the question, a little slower this time, as though doing that will make him give me the answer quicker, or even be truthful about what he’s telling me because – because he wasn’t always truthful. Neither of us were. This man is manipulative and clever and he knew – he
knows
how I felt about him. What we did was stupid and dangerous and even when it was over… no. It was never over. But even when I thought it was – tried to
convince
myself it was – I still let him back in. And that thought – those memories cause another wave of nausea to invade my already delicate stomach.

‘I have contacts, Kira. I know people, and
you
should know that, darlin’. You should know that.’

His familiar British accent – tinged with just a hint of light Liverpool twang – fills my head, his cologne still assaulting my senses and I wish I could walk away from this, but I can’t. He’s found me. And I need to know what that means now.

‘I’m not doing this, in here… you aren’t
staying
here. How the hell you even got inside when this is a private members’ club…’ I look at him, and I realise I’m just trying to convince myself that his being here is some kind of coincidence when I know his reasons are much darker and more dangerous than that. ‘Outside.’

He doesn’t argue, he just follows me as I head towards a door that leads out into the back alleyway from behind some of the private rooms. And as soon as we step outside the cool night air hits my exposed skin with an ice-cold blast, and I shiver.

‘Here.’

He slips off his jacket and slides it around my shoulders, and even though my first instinct is to yank it right off of me – I don’t want anything of his touching me, it’s too unsettling – I leave it there. The small shred of warmth it affords me is nice. ‘Thank you.’

The words stick in my throat because I can’t believe I’m actually talking to him. I can’t believe he found me. He was my – I want to say biggest mistake, but he was never that. He was never a mistake. He was my heartbreaking weakness; the biggest secret I continue to keep, even from Joey. But he was never a mistake. And if I’m being honest with myself, I know he was always going to happen. Again.
This
was always going to happen. Again.

He leans back against the wall beside me and takes a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, pulling one out with his teeth and lighting up, blowing smoke into the dark night sky.

‘Joey followed you here, then.’

‘Leave Joey out of this.’

‘Still doesn’t know, huh?’ He turns his head to look at me. ‘He still doesn’t know a thing about me. Which means I’m still your sordid little secret.’

‘Nothing we did was sordid, Jon.’

‘No. No, it wasn’t.’ He sighs, and takes a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Sometimes it just felt that way.’

I still can’t get my head around the fact he’s here. It’s too surreal, given everything else that’s happened over the course of this day. Maybe I’m just having some kind of weird dream and I’ll wake up in a minute and everything will be back to how it was before. Back to the kind of normal I can handle. Because I’m not sure I can handle
this
.

‘Does anyone else…?

Why did I even ask that? I don’t fucking care, I’m not interested in what any of them think, not anymore. They never cared about me, so why the hell should I give them a second thought?

Jon shakes his head and turns away to take another drag on his cigarette. ‘I told you, I cut all ties with everyone back there the second you told me what he did to you.’

‘So you haven’t…?’

He looks at me, and shakes his head again, his expression softening as our eyes lock. ‘No. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years, Kira. I haven’t seen or spoken
 
to any of them, you know that. Nothing’s changed on that score.’ He breaks the stare and drops his gaze, flicking ash on to the pavement before taking another drag. ‘What he did to you… that was out of order.’

‘He raped me, Jon. That wasn’t out of fucking order, it was barbaric.’

He raises his gaze and our eyes meet again. ‘I wanted to kill him for what he did to you. I wanted to kill him, for killing
us
.’

It’s my turn to look away now as another wave of memories rush forward; memories I still try to keep locked away because re-living them tears me apart. Telling Neal, that was cathartic, it was good, at the time, to tell someone else what had happened. But this – this just feels wrong. Because I’m now being forced to face up to what happened with
this
man too; something nobody else knows about. Nobody. And it’s not something I was ever proud of, it really isn’t. But it happened. And I let it. We both did. And I’m now realising that the things we do; the things we
did
… everything that happened – there are consequences.

‘But I didn’t.’ He throws his head back and sighs. ‘I walked away. I just walked away.’

‘And nobody questioned that? Why you suddenly just upped and left?’

His eyes meet mine again, and the way he’s looking at me… I don’t know if I can take it.

‘You want to talk now, huh?
Now
? After all this time? All those years we continued to see each other, even after… all those years, and you never wanted to know a fucking thing, and now…’

He stops talking and takes another drag on his cigarette, and I stay silent for a couple of beats, just listening to the sound of a busy New York night going on all around us, while my world stops turning, just for a second. And then I remember just how dangerous this man can be; how addictive he once was, and a small part of me panics. But I know he won’t hurt me. He never hurt me. He was just a stupid, mindless mistake… No. No, I keep saying that, I keep thinking that, but he was
never
that. It was just something I kept telling myself, after I left him behind. Because I thought, if I kept telling myself that, then I’d finally start to believe it. But I never did. I couldn’t. Because it isn’t true. It’ll never be true. And that’s why I’m angry he’s come here; angry that he’s found me, that he’s come back to haunt me. But that’s
my
fault. Nobody else’s.

‘Do you ever see him? Out and about, I mean?’

Again, I don’t even know why I asked that. I don’t like talking about him, the monster who took so much from me without my permission; the man who made me hard and bitter and cold. The man I ran from; the man who made me run from everything. I don’t even like alluding to him, it makes me sick to my stomach. Even when Jon was back in my life, taking me to dinner and paying me for sex we never spoke about
him
. But now I feel as though I have no choice. I need to know if
he
knows anything.

Jon shakes his head and tosses his cigarette on to the ground, grinding it into the concrete with the heel of his boot. ‘No. I don’t live around there anymore. I moved away, after everything… After you and me…’ He rakes a hand through his hair but leaves the sentence unfinished and I don’t push for him to complete it. And then he turns to look at me, and I feel another wave of panic hit me. ‘I moved away, and you’d know that, if you’d let me talk… All those years… Jesus, Kira, all those years and the only thing you wanted to know…’

Again he leaves a sentence unfinished, and again I don’t push for him to carry on.

‘I didn’t want to connect you with anything to do with him or them or that time in our lives, Jon. That’s why I didn’t want to talk. I needed you to be detached from it all, to be that faceless man you needed to be if we were going to continue doing...’

‘I
needed
to talk. Did you ever get that? How much I needed to talk, to you? About so much more than just… Yours wasn’t the only life to be messed up, Kira. Mine was turned on it’s fucking head, too, darlin’.’

I can’t look at him. This is crazy. Fucked-up and crazy, and I don’t really want to be doing it, any of it. But I don’t think I have a choice now.

‘Do you know how hard it was for me? To be with you, and
not
talk? How fucking hard it was to do that? Because we
should
have talked, kid. What happened, when we… when you…’ I glance up to see him drop his gaze, and I feel a rush of guilt and a fresh wave of panic swamp me. I need him to stop talking now, because I know what he’s about to say, and I don’t want him to open up those old wounds and make me – make
us
hurt all over again, I can’t go through that. I can’t. ‘We should’ve talked, Kira. We pushed too much aside. Pretended too many things hadn’t happened. And some things – some things can’t be forgotten.’

‘Those were the rules, Jon. There had to be rules. Had to be boundaries.’

‘And now?’

I still can’t look at him, even though I can feel his eyes almost burning into me. ‘I don’t know.’

He sighs, and I feel my heart start to beat faster, a mixture of panic and fear and regret flooding my tired and confused head. Jon Ryan is my biggest secret. A risk I should never have taken – a man I allowed into my life when I should have turned him away. But I didn’t. And the mess that caused still has repercussions now, all these years later. His turning up here proves that.