The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(3)

What was wrong with me? Guys had looked at me before without me turning into a music-video girl for them, right?

Yeah, but not like that …

Shut the fuck up, self.

"Hello?" Ryan interrupted my internal debate before it came to blows.

"Huh?"

"I said, is Champagne OK with you?"

"Oh. Sure, why not? Are we celebrating something?" I asked.

"I'll come up with something by the time we get to the toast." He turned  to the girl standing there with a little notepad. "That's a yes,  thanks, Cindy."

The girl underlined something, smiled, and left, giving Ryan one last lingering look over her shoulder.

"Sarina, right?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah."

"Great, wanted to make sure I wasn't accidentally calling you somebody else's name all night."

"Much appreciated. And Ryan, right?"

"Mmm. It sounds so good when you say it. Yep, that's me."

I rolled my eyes playfully. "You go to college at Highston?"

"Nah. I did, but I'm out now. You? Freshman?"

"Yeah, don't tell the bouncer though. I'm twenty-two, but the girls I'm with are all eighteen and nineteen."         

     



 

Ryan held up three fingers like a Boy Scout. "Your secret is safe with me. Why the late start?"

"Late start at college?"

Ryan nodded.

"Ah, it's a sad, shitty story. In a nutshell, I had to get away from  everything. I could see my life taking a dead-end path, and if I didn't  make a change, I was afraid I'd wake up one day and find it was too late  to make something of myself. So I sold everything I didn't need, raised  about twenty bucks," I laughed, "and enrolled here. I had this idea  that I'd figure out how to pay for everything as I went, but now I'm  here, it's a bit scary."

"I'm sure you'll be fine, you'll figure it out. What are you studying?"

"Human Resources."

Ryan half-stood and shuffled his way around the table until he was right  next to me. "I didn't quite catch that," he lied, "did you say Human  Resources?"

"Um …  yeah."

I tried not to be too distracted by the way his leg was touching mine,  or the way his self-assurance wafted around me like his subtle cologne.  Confidence like that only came from a long track record of getting what  you wanted. Right now, I could tell he wanted me.

The girl came back with a bottle of Champagne in a bucket of ice and two  glasses. She poured them while I smiled politely at her and Ryan  ignored her completely. It was hard to keep it together under the  intensity of his attention.

No man had ever been so overt with his intentions for me before. I  didn't know how exactly something like that could be quantified, but I  was sure of it nonetheless.

Don't you dare forget who you are, Sarina Beckett.

I wasn't going to. Of course not. I hadn't sacrificed too much for my  career just to throw it all away for the sake of some low-level drug  pusher. Even if he was dressed like a millionaire and smelled like  heaven itself.

On the other hand, I did have to hold his interest, had to walk that  fine line between too far and not far enough. There was no law that said  I couldn't enjoy the attention a little bit.

Ryan picked up both glasses and handed one to me. I accepted it and let myself look him right in the eye.

Before men realized I was a cop, I knew how to handle a firearm, and I  could probably take them down if it came to it, they usually  complimented me on my eyes. If I had a gun to my head and somebody  forced me to say something nice about my body, they were what I would  blurt out.

Of course, after, they realized all that, they went off to find some  dainty little piece of arm candy and I went back to focusing on my  career. Ryan would have more reason than any of them to back off even  faster if he knew the truth, but it was nice to look at him and see him  looking back.

He had the kind of eyes a girl could get lost in too, if I did say so  myself, and he never broke our connection as he clinked his glass  against mine. I thought I could vaguely feel his hand on my leg, but I  couldn't bring myself to look away to double-check.

"So, Sarina, to Human Resources. What would you use me for?"

Ryan smiled at his thinly-veiled innuendo before taking a sip of his  drink, and I blushed before taking a sip of mine. Thankfully, my  color-change was probably masked by the dynamic nightclub lighting.

Hello? Wake up, Sarina!

I swallowed, shook my head a little, and looked down. Yes, his hand was  on my leg. Not on the knee either, but right by the hem of my short  skirt, which had ridden up when I sat down.

I gently moved his hand away, and was rewarded by an almost comical  flash of confusion across his face. It was brief, but it was there. Then  he smiled the way a cat smiles at a mouse. My heart was beating so fast  as I took another sip.

"Not sure, what are you good at?" I asked.

Ryan laughed. "You'll see. You staying on campus, or found your own place like the mature student you are?"

"Nah, I'm getting the whole freshman experience, staying in the dorms. Cumberland, you know it?"

"Hey! I stayed there my freshman year too. Oh man. You're gonna hate it."

"What? Why?"

"You just get in today or something?" he asked.

"Yesterday. It seems nice enough."

"What did they give you for dinner?"

I raised an eyebrow. "They called it South African beef with rice, why? It wasn't made from homeless people, was it?"

"I don't think so, no, but it was probably about as South African as  Neptune is, and just you wait. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the next  day, but within the week, you'll see South African Beef with Rice on  your plate again, only it'll be called something else, and it'll look  like it's been drying out in the fridge for a few days. Black bean beef,  I think, was a common one. Beef stroganoff, where they add gravy, was  another."         

     



 

"Oh no … "

"Oh yeah. One time, they gave us what they called breaded schnitzel, but  it was really just strips of leather in breadcrumb-colored gravel. The  knives they give you in the cafeteria are too blunt to get through it.  You could make a bear-proof suit out of it, I'm telling you."

Ryan casually draped his arm over my shoulder and took another sip. I  glanced down and saw how perilously close his fingertips were to  brushing against my right breast, and was ashamed at how hard it was to  fight down my excitement.

If I breathed too deeply, his fingers would touch the bare skin of my  chest. My hammering heart demanded deep breaths. I was caught between a  rock and a hard place. I wanted him to be interested, but I didn't want  to screw up the whole investigation. So many rocks and so many hard  places.

What I needed right now was the ability to control my heartbeat like  those people who competed in the duathlons, skiing and then shooting.  Ryan showed me no mercy, in fact he seemed to enjoy my predicament,  talking at length about the paper-thin walls in the dorm rooms and how  you could hear everything your neighbor got up to, and general dormitory  hijinks.

With all the care I could muster, I delicately moved his arm off my  shoulder and shuffled away just far enough so that our legs weren't  touching.

"Hey, Ryan, you seem really nice and everything but-"

"I'm not," he grinned devilishly.

"Um …  but I'm really just out with the girls tonight, trying to get my  bearings in a new city and figure out how I'm going to pay for it all,  you know?"

Ryan glanced at the dancefloor and chuckled. "Looks like your friends have a different idea about what tonight was for."

I looked over and saw Sally engaged in a deep tongue battle with some  guy, while Violet, clearly not the shrinking variety, was practically  getting fucked out there. You could call it dancing, but …  so much for  chicks before dicks.

When I looked back at Ryan, I saw his arm was behind me again, but  resting on the back of the seat instead of over my shoulder. He was  leaning in.

My traitor reflexes made me lick my lips and froze me in place instead of leaning away. I started stammering.

"I'm …  I'm not like them, though, I can't … "

He was still leaning in. I was still not leaning away. What would it feel like to have a man's lips on mine?

"Stop."

He paused.

"This is all too quick for me …  I need to take things slow. Maybe I could  get your number? I really need to get myself settled in and stable with  some kind of income first." I had to redirect the flow of this  situation, and fast. "Hey, I- I saw you come in and some guy gave you  cash. You selling something?"

Ryan gave me a funny look and then leaned back, his brows knitting  together as he scrutinized me. Shit. The line I had to walk was that  narrow and I'd just screwed everything up.





Ryan





Fuck. She was a cop. That was, what, the third time she'd brought up  needing to make money in the brief time I'd been talking to her? This  last one was just so blatant.