It took Andi a moment to parse all the destruction—after she’d found her underwear again and pulled them on. Between the table that Damian had shoved, the food on the floor, the wine they’d spilled, and the chair, and the wall—not even counting what he’d just done to her—she put her hand to her mouth. “Wow. That…was a lot.”
By then, Damian had himself tucked away back inside his jeans, and he shrugged. “I can afford it.”
“That sounds like something a villain might say.” She glanced over at him as he turned toward her. Something in his mood had shifted, but she didn’t know what.
“At any point in the last thirty minutes, did you want me to stop?” he asked.
She bit her lips before speaking. “Not really, no. But that doesn’t mean I’m used to this…this…mess.”
He inhaled, as if he were going to say something, then changed his mind and said something different instead. “That’s what I’m good at. Making messes. And only sometimes cleaning them up.” He righted the chair that he’d kicked, and then went for the table.
Andi watched him. There’d been a subtle change in his demeanor. She couldn’t have pointed it out to a jury, but it was making her nurse-sense all tingly. It was the same feeling that you got in certain rooms when you knew you shouldn’t turn your back on a patient—not because they were going to hit you, but because they were going to code.
“Life is always messy,” she said softly.
He snorted, picking up the table to return it to its proper spot. “I imagine working in the hospital gives you certain skills, and for what it’s worth, I don’t enjoy the messier aspects of my occupation. But I’m not sure that that makes it any better philosophically when it keeps happening to me.” He made sure to look her directly in the eyes when he spoke next. “Just because you are used to a thing doesn’t make it safe or good.”
She squinted at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to scare me off.”
“Because I am,” he admitted.
“By taking me out to the best restaurant in the city and then fucking my brains out?”
Damian chuckled darkly and gave her an indulgent smile. “Oh, Andi, I never said I was smart.” He walked to the vault’s door and hit a button on its side. Andi heard the muffled tones of a bell ring and watched him pull out his wallet as he returned. “So, how much should I pay you, princess?”
She froze. “Excuse me?” she said, trying to keep her voice flat as her heart beat up into her throat. Everything—from her last boyfriend, to shit with her uncle and her dad and Danny—all of it came rising up, and it took all of her strength to stay still and not let anything show.
“I’m cleaning up my messes. Surely your fancy dress needs cleaning too,” Damian said matter-of-factly—like five minutes ago, he hadn’t been calling out her name when she’d let him come inside her.
She flushed in deep shame. “Are you being a jerk now on purpose?” He didn’t deign to respond; he just started pulling out and folding a hundred-dollar bill lengthwise. “Has anyone told you that you’re very good at it?” she questioned, blinking back tears while wanting to punch him.
“I’m showing my appreciation,” he answered, as he leaned forward and slid the money underneath the strap of her dress with a practiced hand like it was a stripper’s thong.
“I see,” Andi said. She swallowed tightly. This was what happened when she trusted people—men, stupid rich men—even for a moment. She held a hand up as if to pardon herself and turned around looking for something—anything—and found it. A carafe half-full of water that had somehow survived their destruction. She picked it up, brought it back, and calmly threw its contents at his face.
He closed his eyes in time but let the water hit—he had to’ve known what she was going to do before she did it. He reached up afterward to flick wet hair out of his face as the rest of it soaked into his shirt, and he narrowed his golden eyes at her. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Andi said, as her phone went off again. She went and retrieved it and her clutch from the floor, welcoming the interruption to…whatever was happening between them now.
“Hello. This is General…” began a robotic voice on the far end of the line. She turned her head away from Damian to concentrate. It was an automated message from her hospital, an all-hands-on-deck plea for any available staff to come in. The last time she’d gotten one of those was when a tanker turned over on the freeway and caused a twenty-car pile-up.
Just as she hung up, Damian’s phone rang too. As he took the call and paced to the far wall of the room while listening, she removed the hundred-dollar bill and crumpled it up, dropping it to the floor.
“Are you all right?” he asked. And then, “I’m on my way.” He hung up and looked over at her. “I can’t take you home. I’ll call a cab.”
She wanted to ask why, but who was she kidding; there was no way he would tell her. “You really know how to treat a girl.”
There was a flicker of pain in his expression—so fast that Andi wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t so trained to look for it—and then he went entirely aloof. “There’s trouble. You know what kind. I have to go.” He was already putting on his coat.
She looked at the phone she held, and then over at his. “Does that trouble involve a certain friend staying at a certain place I work at?” He took too long to respond, so she knew it did. “Just drive me there.”
“What?”
Andi shook her phone at him. “Work just called. They’re offering double time, and there’s still seven hours left tonight.”
“I just gave you ten thousand dollars this morning.”
“Some of that is spoken for, which you already know.”
He sliced through the air with his hand. “No, I’m calling you a cab—”
“Which I’m going to tell to take me to work then.” She picked up her clutch. “I’ve got spare scrubs in my locker, and I always bring my badge, for opportunities like this.” She flashed him the inside of her wallet, where her badge was like a cop.
“You reek of sex.”
“As do you, but I’ve got bath wipes in my locker because sometimes my job isn’t sanitary. Besides, you have no claim nor say in what I do.”
He growled and lunged back to the door to hit whatever buzzer he’d hit earlier.
“Sorry, sorry!” said Bastian, appearing on the other side of the opening vault door. Bastian blinked at the damage, then swallowed visibly. “Dessert? Nightcap?”
Anger ignited within Andi. This was apparently so normal, it wasn’t even worth commenting upon. How many other women had Damian brought here and then wrecked the room with?
Andi put on her best smile, one honed by years of front-line customer service. “We’re done here. Thank you, it was truly a meal to remember.” And then she strode out into the hall. He could follow her or not.
“Add all of this to my tab,” Damian said behind her, confirming her guess. How could she have been so stupid—to think somehow she was special? She heard him following her as he asked, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Andi quickened her pace, darting through the empty restaurant, needing to put distance between him and her. “Like I said, to work.”
He grabbed her arm just inside the back door of the kitchen. She tried to shake her arm free, but he wouldn’t let go. “Put your coat on,” he commanded.
She gritted her teeth and turned on him, still trying to wrestle from his hold. “Let me guess, it’s for my own good, and you’re not going to tell me why?”
“We’re in a rush,” he said forcefully. “Put on your goddamned coat,” he said in a tone that broached no argument.
Andi dug in her heels. She practically got paid to argue with people at work—she wasn’t going to let herself be bullied now. “Why should I trust you? With anything at all?”
His eyes darkened, and he let her go, stepping back. “You’re right. You shouldn’t.” It sounded like a confession to her.
Andi put on her coat for herself—not him—because it was cold out and her dress was thin. But after that, he reached for her, and though she couldn’t say why, she didn’t move away.
He popped her collar up, then opened the door.
And right outside, someone was waiting—with a camera and a flash. She squeaked when it went off, and Damian propelled her to the passenger side of his car, holding his own coat out to try to protect her, tossing it into his car after her. So much for getting her own damn ride out of here. The flash blinded her three more times before the door closed all the way and it was so disconcerting—she pushed her silk skirt down, hoping she hadn’t accidentally flashed anyone, experiencing a sudden strange sympathy for celebrities.
Damian was cursing under his breath when he got in. He popped the car into reverse. He didn’t look back first, although she heard photographers leaping out of the way. She guessed that when you were a billionaire, you could handle a manslaughter charge.
“Does that happen often?” she asked.
“No.” He wheeled the car around so quickly it made her stomach twinge, and then landed in drive to take off. “Because I never go out.”
She folded her arms. Liar.
“You don’t believe me,” he said.
“Why should it matter to you?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, the last few times I went to Bastian’s wasn’t with dates. It was with…trouble. We covered it up by leaking some crap about wild parties. The paparazzi know that billionaire bad boy exploits sell ads.”
She twisted to look back the way they’d come. “How did you know?”
“It took too long for them to check in when I rang. They needed to give the photographers time. I doubt it was Bastian personally, but I’ll put him on notice after this.”
Andi kept her arms folded around her, deliberately not looking at him, but it was impossible to forget that he was there. She watched the coin swinging underneath his rearview mirror in silence, wondering if she’d made the right choice yesterday. If she’d let him make her forget everything that had happened, she’d have been at work tonight anyhow without any of the drama, mysteriously richer and dragon-free—and she never would’ve come like that, for him or around him. She felt her thighs getting warm at the memory, her body betraying her still very pissed off mind, and she squirmed.
“Can you turn off the fucking heated seats, please?”
Damian scanned his dashboard. “They’re not on.” Then he jerked his chin at her side of the car. “What’d the hospital tell you?”
“It’s a robocall we get when they want us to come in,” she said in a tone she hoped conveyed how little she wanted to exchange words with him. The sooner she got out of his car, the better.
All her life, Andi had just been an afterthought to her family. According to Auntie Kim, all her older relatives had rejoiced at her mother’s pregnancy: twin sons, which meant double luck on the clan. Danny had come out just the way he was supposed to as the much-hoped-for boy, whereas she’d started life as a disappointment—because no girl could ever rightfully pass on the family name and legacy.
She dared a glance over at Damian and saw him in profile, watching the road intently. It was like she came with a fucking manual, and he’d read it somewhere—maybe in her background check? She snorted, then looked out the window again. Go ahead and treat Andi Ngo like dirt. It’s what she’s used to. Don’t even feel bad about it. No one else ever has.
For the first time in a very, very long time, Damian did not know what to do.
In the restaurant with Andi, he’d just wanted to answer her challenge with his own, to prove to her that whatever she thought she could offer him he could take that and double it—and a dark part of him had wanted to ruin her for others, taking all of her for him.
But fucking her had been too perfect. She fit him like a glove, and he fit her like a key, and if he thought about it for too long now, he’d definitely get a hard-on again. Goddamn. Without ever having had it before, he knew they’d had the kind of sex that made men’s heart’s soft, with a pull so strong it could yank an arrow from its path.
But he was a dragon. And he had people to worry about—not to mention civilians. His life was not his own.
So, he’d hurt her. Like an asshole. Intentionally fulfilling every fear he thought would trigger her from her file. He’d watched his words wash over her and he’d known the whole time he’d said them just how bad they’d make her feel and now she was curled up like a comma in the car beside him.
His hair was still wet from the water she’d thrown at him, and he didn’t blame her for that—not one bit. He dared a glance over at her and saw her staring out the window with a small frown. She was still beautiful, even when angry.
Especially when angry, his dragon said, and it was right.
Why was he so drawn to her? What magnetic north for him did she possess?
Why was hurting her like hurting himself?
Damian dared a second glance. She’d turned, so her hair hid half her face from him and he wanted to stroke it back, feel his fingers part it to expose her jaw and neck, and then take so much more. He ground his teeth together, refocusing on the road, trying to force wild parts of himself down. His lust was hard to conquer as his dragon. Goddamn, he thought again. Every inch of him still wanted her. He would be a fool not to after she’d made him feel like that—it would take weeks—if not years—to erase the memory of her from his body, and his Forgetting Fire did not work on him.
What was it about her that made him weak? He’d hurt hundreds of people in his lifetime—maybe thousands—and here he was, half-dragon, worried about what a single mortal human thought of him.
His hands wrung the steering wheel, and then he turned toward her. “Austin said Zach was in danger.”
Her attention was on him again in an instant, and he knew she’d caught the fact he’d given her former patient a name. “What kind?” she asked quickly.
He downshifted, swept into the left lane of the highway, and then upshifted again. “The types of danger that my kind of people get into.” He hit one hand against the steering wheel, angry at himself for breaking. “Look, I can’t be holding your hand right now, Andi.”
She took off her shoes and tucked her feet under her skirt on the seat again, making herself small, and he fucking felt bad—him! Bad! What was it about her?
You like prey that fights, his dragon told him.
Stay the fuck out of this, he told it back, and then looked at her again. “I’m not apologizing,” he told himself more than her through gritted teeth.
“I’m not asking you to,” she said primly, then rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Don’t worry, I’m used to doctors.”
And now she’d categorized him directly into the box he’d wanted her to at the restaurant. He was clearly like every other asshole in her life. Well, two could play that game. “It’s not just you, you know. I’m like this to everyone,” he muttered.
“Oh, hooray, then,” she said with extreme sarcasm, as they took the next exit off the highway.