Rafe nodded, then leaned his head back against the seat as Fallon pulled out of the parking lot right as the police sirens came into earshot.
She didn’t know how true her words were. He needed a distraction in every sense.
• • •
As the sirens rang closer, Fallon breathed a sigh of relief that they’d left before the police arrived. Leaving her club unannounced after a fight—not to mention a fight with a headliner—would cause one giant headache in the morning, but she also knew Simone would step up and take care of it for her. She was gonna owe her big time.
The following ten minutes they sat in silence as her tires spun across the black asphalt. Fallon kept her eyes on the road in front of her, but she could feel Rafe’s gaze shift over to her every now and again. And it was strange the way those little looks made her feel. Excited? Nervous? Neither one was an emotion Fallon was familiar with. Arm’s length, remember?
Pulling into a small parking lot, Fallon parked her car away from the few others and killed the engine.
The silence between them was growing—and it wasn’t growing roses, that’s for damn sure. It was tense and unsettling. Brooding . . .
Fallon shifted in her seat, facing Rafe. He remained silent, looking at her with an expression that pricked a tiny little ache beneath her collarbone. She was used to men looking at her—it was her job. She was used to seeing desire and need in men’s eyes as they watched her. But there was something so different in the way Rafe was regarding her in that moment. He wasn’t looking at her like he was ready to undress her. Instead, he looked at her with a curious hunger that matched her own. A desperation that she was all too familiar with.
“Why’d you do it?” he asked.
“Do what? Stop you from fighting in my club?”
“Why’d you get me out of there? Why didn’t you just let the cops arrest me?”
She inhaled a breath, slushing through her different answers, and opted for telling him the truth. “Because you were defending one of my girls. And because I was watching you.”
His brows darted up in a cocky way that suited him a little too well. “You were?”
“Yes,” she replied. Her confidence reached up and found its role in her voice, and she let it carry her. “I watched you watch me.” She paused, then shook her head. “That doesn’t happen.”
“What doesn’t happen?” he asked, his voice still even, but she could tell his curiosity had spiked.
“I’m not easily distracted.”
His head moved back just the tiniest amount. Not enough to call it a nod, and not enough that she should have noticed, but she did. And she also noticed the subtle pull in the muscles on the corner of his beautiful mouth—the warning sign of an imminent smug grin. To her appreciation, he was fighting it.
Then the complacent expression in his eyes vanished as he blinked, and when he set those smooth, sable eyes on her again, she lost her breath.
Literally lost it. She couldn’t remember how to inhale to fill her lungs with much-needed oxygen. She was too trapped. Too entranced by the way he looked at her. She couldn’t remember the last time a man could draw such a strong physical reaction from her with just a look. That look could make her beg, and Fallon didn’t beg.
Anyone. Ever.
But she’d admitted it and accepted it. The way he held her captive with his eyes felt like he was truly touching her, containing her—holding her. And if he looked away, she was afraid she would beg him to look back.
“Looks like we’ve both got a talent for distracting the other when no one else can,” he commented.
The balmy air in the car morphed thick and hot, a tangible tension clinging to them. What was it about him that did this to her? She didn’t know how long she just sat there watching the twitch of his chiseled jaw beneath a few days of stubble, imagining the feel of his buzzed head beneath her fingers, captured in his controlling eyes. Surely minutes had passed, many minutes.
A hum sliced through the silence in the car, and Fallon turned away from him, focusing out the windshield. She felt the moment his eyes moved from her body and she sighed inwardly.
She faintly heard his voice as he answered his phone, but it was muffled by the volume of her rambling mind. Taking back her body’s control was imperative. She wasn’t this woman; she’d never been this woman.
“Sorry about that,” Rafe said a few moments later, pushing the phone back into his pocket.
“Lose the tie.”
His eyes widened at her sudden command. Then, cracking a smile, he pulled on his tie, loosening it a little more so he could lift it from his neck.
“Come here.” The breathiness she was prepared for never coasted from her lips. Relieved, she lifted her hands to his collar, fumbling with the cream buttons, sliding them through the small slits.