He Chose His Pregnant Mistress, So I Chose His Mafia Boss

The heavy mahogany door clicked shut, locking me in with the devil himself.

I hadn't expected him to be here. That was my first mistake. The second was thinking I could walk into Ryker Vance's underground bar, collect a forged passport from a man named Dex, and walk back out again without anyone noticing.

The room was small — a VIP lounge tucked behind the main floor, all dark paneling and low amber light and the kind of furniture that cost more than most people's monthly rent. A bottle of Scotch sat open on the low table. Two glasses. Like he'd been expecting company.

Ryker stood between me and the door.

He hadn't said a word yet. He didn't need to. He just looked at me the way he'd looked at me in the hallway two nights ago — that focused, cataloguing attention, like he was filing away every detail of my face and finding it all exactly where he expected it to be.

I kept my chin up. "I was told to come alone."

His mouth curved. "You did come alone." He took one step toward me. "That was never the part I arranged."

I stepped back. My shoulders hit the door.

He kept moving — unhurried, inevitable, the way a tide comes in — until he was close enough that I could smell him. Wood smoke. Something cool and sharp underneath. The ghost of a cigar. His forearm came up and pressed flat against the door beside my head, not trapping me exactly, just making the geometry of the room very clear.

His heavy silver ring pressed coolly against my wrist, right over my pulse point. I felt my own heartbeat spike against the metal and hated myself for it.

"The passport," I said. My voice came out steadier than I deserved. "That's all I'm here for."

"I know what you're here for." His dark eyes dropped to my mouth, then came back up. "I'm deciding whether to give it to you."

"We had an arrangement."

"We have an arrangement," he corrected. "Which involves you being visible with me. Not vanishing to Aspen on a one-way ticket before the seven days are up." Something moved behind his eyes — brief, dark, unreadable. "Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

The air in the room felt thinner than it had a moment ago.

I opened my mouth —

And then I felt it. A vibration through the door at my back. Footsteps in the corridor outside, the particular heavy rhythm of a man who walked like he owned the floor under his feet.

I knew that rhythm.

I'd lived with it for six years.

Ryker saw it on my face before I could control it — the way the blood drained, the way my eyes cut sideways toward the door. His expression didn't change, but something in it sharpened.

His head tilted, just slightly, toward the door.

Listening.

Then his mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. Something worse.

He moved before I understood what he was doing. His hand came up to my jaw — not rough, just inexorable, tilting my face up toward his — and then his mouth came down and swallowed whatever sound I might have made.

The kiss was not gentle. It was not a question. It was the answer to one, delivered with the absolute, unhurried confidence of a man who had never once doubted he would get what he wanted. His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, and the heat of him pressed the full length of my body back against the door.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't move.

And through the door at my back, I felt the vibration of voices. Two of them. One low and familiar. One lighter, with the particular musical quality I'd learned to recognize at dinner parties and charity functions and every occasion where I'd stood in the same room as my husband's mistress.

Kade. And Sienna.

Here. Twenty inches of mahogany away from me.

Ryker lifted his head just far enough to speak against my mouth. His lips barely moved. I read them from the inside.

*Make a sound, Sloane. Let your pathetic husband know exactly whose mouth you're moaning into.*

I stared up at him. My hands were flat against his chest — I didn't remember putting them there — and I could feel his heartbeat under my palms, steady and unhurried, nothing like mine.

He was enjoying this.

Outside, Kade's voice carried through the door. I couldn't hear it, not without my aids, but I could feel the low vibration of it, the particular cadence of a man performing charm. Sienna's laugh followed — I felt that too, the higher frequency of it moving through the wood.

They were right there.

Ryker's thumb traced slowly along my jaw. His eyes held mine with an expression that was almost conversational, like we were discussing something perfectly ordinary, like his hand wasn't currently sliding down the side of my neck, following the line of my collarbone, moving lower with the same deliberate unhurry he applied to everything.

I caught his wrist.

His eyes dropped to my hand. Then came back up. The almost-smile again.

He turned his hand over beneath my grip, slow and easy, and his fingers wrapped around my wrist instead — a mirror of the way he'd pressed his ring against my pulse point minutes ago, except now his thumb was moving in slow circles against the inside of my wrist, against the place where my heartbeat gave me away completely.

Outside, footsteps. Closer.

I stopped breathing.

Ryker's other hand moved. Down, past my hip, to the hem of my skirt. His fingers found the fabric and gathered it, just slightly, just enough to feel the bare skin of my thigh underneath.

I dug my nails into his wrist.

He didn't stop. His eyes didn't leave mine.

*Don't,* I mouthed.

His expression said: *Or what?*

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

I felt it — the particular stillness of someone pausing, considering. The vibration of a hand settling against a door handle. The faint, mechanical shudder of a latch beginning to turn.

Ryker felt it too. I saw it in the fractional tightening around his eyes — not fear, never fear, but attention. Calculation. His hand pressed warmer against my thigh.

The door handle pressed down.

Slowly.

All the way.