They wasted another ten minutes arguing, but in the end Mike drove her to the nightclub in his truck, the silence in the cab charged with tension. He seemed pissed at himself for giving in and doing what she wanted, though she hadn’t left him much choice. He’d even tried to call Ryder, but Ryder wasn’t answering his cell phone, which only made her more anxious. Was he okay? Or was he purposefully avoiding Mike because he wanted to avoid her?
A quarter of an hour later, Lily was standing in the already crowded club, her ears ringing from the blaring music, while her eyes burned with tears, and she had her answer. It’d taken her only a handful of seconds to spot Ryder, and now she knew that she’d been right about the bad feeling she’d had. But Ryder wasn’t out doing something dangerous. He was too busy feeling up the woman sitting on his lap to worry about catching a terrorist. Lily couldn’t see his face behind the woman’s waves of strawberry blond hair, but she knew it was him. She recognized his long, jean-clad legs and black boots, the strong forearms and hands that were wrapped around the woman’s waist, and the shaggy locks of hair that were visible as he nuzzled his way up the side of her throat. With a small choked sound, Lily pressed a hand against the searing pain in her chest. It was unlike anything she’d ever known, as if a white-hot poker had been stabbed right through the center of her heart.
“Who is she?” she croaked when Mike placed his hand on her shoulder, her voice thick with the tears that were already running down her face.
“I don’t know.” He sounded as surprised as she was to find Ryder sitting at one of the tables on the edge of the dance floor with some unknown woman in his lap. From the edge of her vision, she watched Mike pull a hand down his face, then slowly shake his head. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“No. This is good. I needed to see this.” The last time Ryder had walked out on her, she’d cried for nearly two weeks, then spent three years missing him and hating him and trying to convince herself that she didn’t love him, without ever letting another man touch her. Tonight, there was no way in hell she was going to be so pathetic.
Not wanting to give herself time to think about what she was doing, she quickly turned and put her hands on Mike’s chest, pushing them up and over his broad shoulders, then around the back of his neck as she tried to pull him down to her.
Mike tensed against her. “What the hell are you doing, Lily?”
“Please, don’t tell me no,” she said in a rush, going up on her tiptoes. He was even taller than Ryder, which made reaching his mouth anything but easy. “I need this. I can’t lose it in front of him. I need this to ground me.”
“Shit, he’s going to fucking kill me,” he growled. But he didn’t push her away. He was already pulling her closer.
“Help me,” she whispered, knowing he probably couldn’t hear the soft plea over the music. But he was staring at her mouth so intently, she was sure he could read the words on her lips. “Please.”
He groaned deep in his chest, leaning down and giving her exactly what she wanted. And he was good, too. Better than good. If her heart didn’t already belong to someone else, Lily knew Mike Hudson could have rocked her world. But she’d met him too damn late.
Needing to push the pain to a place where she couldn’t feel it, she kissed Mike harder, thrilled with his response when he grabbed her ass and jerked her up against him, lifting her off the floor. She felt bad for using him—and knew damn well that it was wrong. But she couldn’t make herself stop. She wanted Ryder to see this and know that he hadn’t broken her. That she could take his childish shit and throw it right back in his face.
Only . . . she was acting like a child, too.
Hating herself for being such an idiot, Lily pulled back, knowing she needed to apologize to Mike. But she didn’t get the chance. All of a sudden Ryder’s strong, masculine arm was wrapping around her waist, yanking her away from Mike and plastering her against the front of his body. Then he lowered his head, and his voice was a furious hiss in her ear. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Struggling against his hold, she yelled, “Why should you care?”
His arm tightened. “Damn it, Lily.”
“Let go of me!” she screamed, prompting him to drag her through the growing crowd of customers and out the back door of the club. She had no idea where his date had run off to, but Mike followed after them with a grim look on his handsome face.
“I wouldn’t play with him if I were you.” Ryder’s voice was like cold steel, completely devoid of emotion. But he was vibrating behind her, his arm wrapped so tightly around her middle she could barely draw a breath, his other arm now banding across her chest to hold her arms in place so she couldn’t hit him. “Mike’s idea of fun is way out of your comfort zone.”
“I don’t have a comfort zone anymore, thanks to you,” she snapped, her voice cracking at the end.
“He’ll hurt you.”
“Not as badly as you have!” she flung back at him.
He sucked in a sharp breath, and she renewed her struggles, finally managing to break away from him. It was galling to know she’d only succeeded because he’d let her. They were standing in the far corner of the club’s back parking lot, close to his Jeep, the night illuminated with the flickering orange glow of a tall light post. The pain in her chest was raw and burning, but she forced it down, determined to see this through and salvage what shreds of her pride she still could.
Looking at Mike, who had stopped a few yards away from them, she said, “I want to go home now.”
• • •
RYDER GROWLED WITH impatience, thinking it would be a cold day in hell before he let her leave with Mike. “You’re not going anywhere until we’ve talked.”
She turned her head and glared at him. “I have nothing to say to you. And I don’t want to hear anything that might come out of your lying mouth.”
“I haven’t lied to you. Not once,” he argued, forcing the frustrated words through his clenched teeth. “And you are going to listen to me.”
She curled her lip at him, trembling with fury. “I don’t have to do anything where you’re concerned. You didn’t even have the balls to talk to me before hooking up with another woman. Do you know how juvenile that is? You are such a jackass!”
“Damn it, Lily. It’s not what you think!”
“I don’t care what it is. I just want you to leave me alone!”
“That’s not gonna happen,” he muttered, wiping his hand over his mouth as he struggled to get a hold of his temper and figure out what the fuck he should do. A cold, slick sweat slipped down his spine as he realized just how screwed up things had gotten. From the moment he’d left Lily at the safe house, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he should have talked to her before heading off, instead of sneaking out while she’d napped. But he’d been reeling, spinning, feeling like he’d been hit upside the head with a two-by-four. That morning, when he’d opened his eyes, the words she’d said to him the night before had come at him like a fucking wrecking ball, flattening his chest, making it impossible to breathe.
On top of that, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the danger she was in. He knew Rado was up to something—he just didn’t know what. Not a single one of the asshole’s thugs had checked out Ryder’s house. The bastard was lying low, like a snake in the grass just waiting to strike. He was frustrated by the lack of progress he and the others had made in their search for him, and so he’d reacted like a fucking idiot and gone ahead with what had obviously been a stupid plan. One that had backfired so badly he wanted to beat the living shit out of something. That “something” being the man who was standing off to the side watching them. The man who’d had his tongue down Lily’s throat and her sweet little ass in his hands.