Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) (12 page)

Oh.
“You box?”

He nodded.

Boxing would explain all those tight muscles
that she kept feeling under his clothes. Those weren’t gym muscles.
Those were functional muscles.

Theo’s wild gold eyes had calmed down a lot.
Maybe he had just needed to get all that out of his system. Lizzy
had one client, Dr. Gliniecki, an oncologist, who spent his hour
sobbing while she held him.

Theo’s day did sound truly horrific. She
paused, thinking. “I know something that’ll settle you down.”

Her fingers trailed down his back and slipped
under his belt in back. Muscle rounded both sides of his spine.

He untangled her arms from his body and
leaned back in his chair. “That would just get me more keyed
up.”

“Really? Most guys roll over and go to sleep
afterward.”

His mouth curved just a little, another
attempt at a smile. His hazel eyes softened. “Look, I’m not being
coy and I’m not leading you on, but let’s not rush. If, say, we did
like each other,—”

She liked him.

“—we’ll never get this time back.” He swooped
in and kissed her.

His mouth was gentle on hers, just brushing
her skin. She opened, and his lips parted, too. The malty scent of
the beer swirled in her mouth, but she could taste him, a clean,
male taste, on her tongue.

Desire sparked through her.

Lizzy was used to that. It meant nothing. The
zaps never went anywhere. It was all just static arcing between
storm clouds for her. The electricity never condensed and became
that bolt that shattered her.

Except that one time.

But with Theo, the buzzing of electricity
seemed stronger, but it was probably just her imagination.

As Theo backed up, his breath had turned
ragged, but his eyes had begun to shine with amusement again. His
hands were still around her face, and he rubbed her lower lip with
his thumb like he would like to still be kissing her. “So let’s not
rush.”

Lizzy considered throwing her arms around
him, dragging him down to the soft carpeting, and rushing things.
“Yeah, it’s not like life is short or anything.”

He blinked, and his eyebrows flinched
downward like a bright light had flashed in his face, but he sucked
in a deep breath instead of saying something. “So, about
tomorrow.”

Tomorrow was Friday.

Lizzy relented. “Yeah. I’ll text you where
Georgie and I are going to be.”

“I was hoping that I could take you out,
maybe for supper.”

“My roomie has insisted that we go dancing
tomorrow night.”

His smile grew, and she could have sworn that
his dark gold eyes actually deepened a few shades. “Dancing.”

“Yeah. Dancing.” She really wanted to dance
with him again. “You gonna show up?”

His sweet smile melted her heart a little,
and she wondered if she should believe him when he said, “Of
course. I love to dance.”

That night, after Lizzy spent an hour
giggling and exclaiming in wonder at Bruce’s
katas
—and he
really had come a long way from that awkward geek who had booked
one of her first appointments two years ago,—she strode through the
corridors of The Devilhouse toward the ladies’ locker room to
change out of her bright-blue beaded cocktail dress. Bruce was a
sweet guy. She had accepted his invitation to watch his brown belt
test, watching his eyes to make sure that he understood that she
was there for moral support and in friendship.

Bruce was also a smart guy and understood the
limitations of a Devilhouse relationship.

Lizzy pried her high, high heels off her sore
feet and held them by the heels. The bones in her feet groaned as
they settled, adjusting to standing flat-footed on the cool
carpeting in the hallway. Old breaks in her toes protested, and
Lizzy rolled her ankle, loosening the ligaments.

Down the corridor, The Dom turned the corner
and walked toward her. He was so tall that he looked lanky, even
though she had seen how ripped his forearms were and how broad his
shoulders were under that suit jacket.

Lizzy’s heart hopped under her ribs. She
grinned a bright, sunny smile, refusing to look morose.

One side of his mouth smiled at her, and his
eyes softened upon seeing tiny little Lizzy standing there,
massaging her own foot. “Are you finished for the day?”

“Yep. Gotta study for a few hours before I
can crash.”

His smile warmed just a little, maybe with a
tiny bit of fondness. “Are you all right to drive home?”

The Dom called the car service if he so much
as suspected anyone was impaired.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. The whole night, I’ve
had like half a flute of champagne. I’m driving Georgie home,
though. She had a drinking game scheduled. I’ll pour her into
bed.”

His solemn smile didn’t change. “You’re a
good friend, Lizbeth.”

Lizbeth
. “Thanks.”

He nodded as a farewell and strolled down the
corridor toward his office, which was off one of the dead-end
hallways way back behind the office.

Lizbeth,
not
Elizaveta.

~~~~~

Weeks before, in the echoing expanse of the
empty Devilhouse main stage, The Dom’s deep voice whispered out of
the darkness. “Why are you here, Elizaveta?”

Her breath stuttered in her chest. “You
always call me Lizbeth.”

“Not tonight. Not here.” The Dom said, and
she almost didn’t understand because he had switched languages on
her and was speaking
Russian
. “You speak Russian, don’t
you?”

She hadn’t spoken it aloud for years. Russian
was her first language, spoken at home. Her first giggles and cries
had been in Russian and had been answered with Russian. Her
grandmother had never learned English, so she moaned her
osteoporosis pain in Russian. A small part in the back of Lizzy’s
brain still translated everything into Russian, so that her soul
might understand it.

“
Da,”
she said.

Even that one word felt foreign in her mouth,
but The Dom’s words slipped in her ears and dove straight into the
part of her brain where she never went.

He continued speaking in Russian, “You
already know what your body can take. You already know how bad pain
can be. Why are you here?”

The guttural grunts of the Russian language
rang in her head and sounded like angry shouts, even though she
could barely hear him over the hissing air conditioner. He didn’t
sound British at all, anymore. His Russian had no trace of his
English accent. He almost, just a little, sounded like the Russian
actors pretending to speak German in those World War Two Soviet
Hero movies that her father used to rent.

The Dom walked around in front of her, and he
stood with his back to the one light, his face in shadows. The
bright stage lights glared on his white shirt, the sleeves rolled
up to his elbows.

The welts on her back and legs stung, but she
had competed through worse pain. Hell, she had
practiced
for
hours and hours through far worse pain.

He was driving her down into that dark pit
again. She had edged around that dark pit of pain in her mind for
years, but just the sound of the Russian language was driving her
toward it.

The pit might be bottomless, and she might
fall forever, or it might have a bottom, it might end, and she
might be able to fill it all in someday.

She replied, even though her tongue felt
clumsy speaking Russian after so long, “I’m here for you.”

The dim lights shone on his bright blond
hair, so she saw him shake his head.

A whip cracked out of the darkness at
her.

Deep within the anonymous business corridors
of The Devilhouse, Mannix rapped on The Dom’s office door with one
knuckle. The heavy door wobbled under his hand, but he didn’t push
it open. “Hello?”

“Come in,” The Dom said from inside. His
voice was lower in timbre than even Mannix’s, so Mannix pulled his
vocal cords lower in his throat to deepen his voice.

He pushed open the door and walked in.

The Dom of The Devilhouse sat behind his big,
glass desk, tapping on his phone with a stylus. He laid the phone
screen-down on the desk. “Yes, Mannix. What can I do for you?”

Mannix lowered himself into one of the chairs
in front of the desk, keeping his left leg straight while he sat.
Sometimes that helped. “I’m in the market for a new sub.”

The Dom barely smiled with one corner of his
mouth. He was about as expressive as a blank, white mannequin.
“Already?”

“It’s been seven months.” Mannix didn’t feel
the need to defend himself to a fellow Dom, but that wasn’t an
abnormal lifespan for one of his subs.

“Has it? I’ll ask around, but I don’t know of
anyone looking for a Dom at the moment.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye out
for me. I had an eye on one of your contractors at the membership
party last week, the little blond. She was wearing a gold dress and
black shoes. I think her name is Lizzy, or something like
that.”

“She’s not interested in a D/s relationship,”
The Dom stood and offered his hand across the desk. “If you’ll
excuse me, I have a prior appointment to attend to.”

“Sure.” Mannix hauled himself to his feet and
shook. The Dom’s hand was smooth and cool, and he almost never
blinked those eyes that were the color of broken blue bottle glass.
To Mannix, he looked fake, like a constructed man. “Wouldn’t want
to make you late.”

The Dom’s eyebrows flickered a bit. “Yes, we
wouldn’t want that.”

“Thanks.”

Even The Dom’s British accent didn’t sound
quite right, like he was putting it on. He must be hiding
something.

Mannix hung around The Devilhouse for another
hour, watching, but Lizzy Pajari wasn’t around.

He was in the spa room sitting in the sauna,
a completely redundant feature in the desert but he supposed that
moist heat was a change, when his phone buzzed with a text.

Carlos texted:
Need to meet.
Where?

Mannix texted back:
Los Dos Molinos,
6PM.

~~~~~

Los Dos Molinos was a slum house converted
into a restaurant and had the hottest food in town. Eating there
was a lesson in the consequences of machismo. The only warning,
other than its notorious reputation, was a small note on the bottom
of the menu that
Green is hotter than red.
Mannix ate there
a couple times a week, sweating over a plate of green chile
enchiladas, which scraped the inside of his mouth with fire, or the
adovada ribs, which burned chemical fire all the way down his
throat to his stomach.

The restaurant’s only drawback was the
undersized booths. Mannix’s long legs reached far under the table.
He constantly jammed his shins on the other bench.

The offensive coordinator called Mannix’s
cell phone while he ate, wanting to hash out the decision about the
halfback’s groin pull because they only had a week to either to try
to rehab him or to release him. Because the team’s offensive line
lacked depth, rehabilitating him was the better of the choices
because they didn’t want to waste a trade on a halfback.

Carlos opened the dark-tinted door and
blinded half the patrons in the restaurant while Mannix was still
talking. Mannix waved him over.

Carlos was a whipcord thin and tough, like a
steel cable wearing jeans and a blue shirt. His Latino background
showed in his tan skin and black eyes. His nose was as thin as the
rest of him and came to a perfect point, but he had lost his fine
line of a mustache someplace. His upper lip was a shade lighter
than the rest of his face. He had the physique of a
half-marathoner, a little too much gristle and muscle to be one of
those anorexic marathon runners. Carlos ordered the pork carnitas
with red chile from the frumpy waitress while Mannix wound up the
phone call.

Mannix scooted to the inside corner of the
booth so Carlos could sit diagonally across. He asked the offensive
coordinator on the phone, “Do we need more Arnolds?”

Over the phone, the guy said, “No, we’re
fine.”

Mannix covered the phone and told Carlos,
“Yeah, we need a case.” Back on the phone, “All right, Al. I’ll
call you later.” He ended the call.

The waitress slid Carlos’s plate in front of
him.
“Caliente.”
When she warned that it was hot, she wasn’t
talking about the plate.

Carlos dug into his red carnitas, using the
tortilla like a spoon. “While we’re taking orders,” he said, “you
need anything else?”

“Not right now.”

“
Bueno!”
Carlos sat back, his black
eyes happy.

“
Si,”
Mannix replied, as if speaking
Spanish were a good subterfuge in the Southwest in a Sonoran
restaurant.
“Que pasa?”

Carlos replied that he was fine, his wife was
fine, his children were fine, and his uncles and cousins were fine.
“And how’s your family?”

“All fine.” Mannix sat back in his seat and
wiped his mouth, getting the last bit of grease off his lip.

“Still no lady friend?” Carlos pried,
smiling.

“None to speak of.” Not at the moment, and
not that he would talk about personal things to Carlos, anyway.

“And how’s your brother?” Carlos asked.

That was odd. Mannix wouldn’t have mentioned
him to Carlos. They played for different teams.

He squinted at Carlos. “He’s fine.”

“Glad to hear it. He still lives in the
middle of town?”

Mannix’s mind raced, putting possibilities
together. “No. He bought a house down the street from me a couple
months back, pretty much at the bottom of the market, the lucky
bastard.”

Carlos’s grim smile sawed on Mannix’s
nerves.

Mannix leaned back, unsettled.