True North (Compass series Book 4) Read online

  I wipe my hands on my pants because the only thing worse than being nervous is people knowing you’re nervous. That gives me nauseated chills. But I shake it off because the conference room door is creaking open.

  Usually that would annoy me and I would’ve sent one of the minions crawling around to fix it. I almost had, snapping at one of the wide-eyed interns to send them scrambling for the facilities crew or sprinting down the street for a can of WD-40. But then I’d realized it lets me know when anyone’s coming in. And I’ve been keeping an eye on the door for a certain petite, black-haired demon.

  I go back to my conversation with Cynthia Quaid, who’s been bending my ear about all the improvements she’s instituted since taking over LAHA. I’ve read the reports. I know she’s doing a good job. She was a good hire, one of myriad good decisions Jack and India have made where LAHA’s concerned. That’s what this particular session is about, actually. How much longer their presence is going to be required.

  There’s a jolting squeak in the middle of Cynthia’s description of their new inspections policy, and my head swings toward the door. Jack Valentine, leading with his booming voice, strides in, and India follows not far behind. She looks the same, and a pulse of blood rushes toward my cock as I picture her hair splayed over the fluffy pillows at the Grant-Arthur. How she’d have to brace herself with a hand against the upholstered headboard because I’d be fucking her that hard. I’d booked a suite, hoping to entice her back to my room with the promise of some hot sex and a big tub. Women like big bathtubs, right? Even women like India Hellion Burke?

  But she’s not naked and panting or wallowing post-fuck in the bath. She’s got that polished professional thing going on, and I want to rub it right off her. Or better, smack it off. My palm almost itches with the urge to feel the sting of flesh hitting willing flesh again.

  I let Cynthia finish her spiel and dismiss her. I’m eager to get close to India, though I don’t want to show it, but suffering through Cynthia’s inane list of accomplishments I’m already aware of should’ve given me enough of a buffer that I won’t seem overly keen.

  Stalking across the room, I wait for India to finish greeting Cooper. I’ve never seen Cooper be friendly to anyone, with the exception of India; it’s fascinating to watch them interact. Two of the sharpest women I know, who don’t hesitate to eviscerate anyone in their path, actually seem to have some affection for each other. I would’ve thought they’d go at each other tooth and nail, rip each other to shreds, but no. What’s the deal with that anyway?

  When they’re through, I approach India before someone else claims her.

  “Ms. Burke.”

  The arch of her eyebrow gets tugged slightly higher. “Mr. Lewis.”

  I glance around, taking in my surroundings, making sure there aren’t any curious ears too close. But we’re good, so I lean in as close as I dare and drop my voice. “Are you busy this evening? I thought a repeat performance might be in order.”

  Please say yes, please say yes. I’ve been thinking about her for months, lusting after the smell, the feel of her in my fantasies. When I’m not thinking about Pressly.

  “I—”

  The purse of her lips and the soft tone of her voice indicate the beginning of an apology. No. No. The hope is bleeding away, and it completely circles the drain when she lifts her left hand, turning it to show me a ring. A ring. On that finger.

  “I can’t, Slade.”

  “You’re married?” I spit the words, incredulousness overwhelming my manners.

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” she mutters and looks vaguely self-conscious. Is that a swell of pink on her cheeks? Is she embarrassed?

  “I’m not surprised you got married.” Which is not at all true. I’m flabbergasted she’s married, but not because I don’t think she’d be able to find a partner. I mean, India might be an acquired taste, but for the right guy… “But I saw you, what, four months ago? Who is this guy?”

  The little voice in my head has piped up again, and I want to smash the hell out of Jiminy Cricket. Is he good enough for her?

  “Well, I got married a couple of weeks ago, and I’m sure you don’t know him.”

  “Was it one of the guys in the picture?” The memory of seeing a photo of her, flanked by two men as she ducked into a town car, jumps to the front of my brain. From when she’d been assaulted in New York after uncovering some shady dealings at the transit authority. Our office had sent flowers and I’d wanted to call, but I couldn’t. Is it one of them? There’d been a Latino guy in a suit and a guy in flip-flops and jeans. My money’s on the guy in the suit.

  “What picture?”

  “Never mind.” Because she doesn’t need to know I’d kept a copy of that picture in a drawer of my desk and had studied it, trying to figure out who the fuck those guys were and how they’d managed to be the ones India let into her fortress of a personal life. “But who is he? Or is this some state secret?”

  “It’s not a secret,” she says, though her eyes go slightly wider as she avoids my gaze. But then she straightens her shoulders and looks me in the face. “His name is Cris Ardmore.”

  Dismay pulls my mouth into a frown. “I don’t know him.”

  She half-smiles, and for some reason it makes me more annoyed. “That’s what I told you.”

  “What is he, some hotshot attorney? Doctor? CEO?”

  The half-smile morphs into a full-on smile, and she gets this dreamy look in her eyes that confounds me. India is a lot of things; soft is not one of them.

  “He’s a political cartoonist.”

  “Seriously?” A cartoonist? What the hell? I picture some nebbishy wonk with ink-stained fingers who’s always been fascinated by politics but didn’t have the balls to get in the game. Add some coke-bottle glasses, adult acne, and a stutter because I’m feeling vindictive. Not one of the guys in the photo, then. She must walk all over that poor schmo. I guess some guys are into that. And if you have to pick a woman to leave stiletto prints on your back, you could do a hell of a lot worse than India Burke.

  She wrinkles her nose. “Slade, don’t be a dick. I’m not going to apologize for not fucking you again. And this is neither the time nor the place to discuss it any further. Or at all.”

  “But I—” I haven’t been able to ask her. What did you mean there are people who are into this shit? I need to know.

  “Cynthia, good to see you again.” India’s tone is bizarrely chipper, and she gives me a pointed glare as she greets Cynthia over my shoulder. Her voice is welcoming, but her face is all don’t-fuck-with-me. My jaw flexes involuntarily.

  “Well,” I say, more loudly than necessary, “we can discuss this matter further at a later date, Ms. Burke.”

  “Happy to, Mr. Lewis.” Now she’s using that forced, bright voice. I want to tell her not to—it’s ridiculous to pretend when she’s had my cock in her mouth and I know what she looks like when she comes.

  Instead I walk away, grabbing the closest person I recognize as being on my staff. “Fix that fucking door before it gives me a migraine. Why the hell did we get put in this piece of shit excuse for a room anyway?”

  “Yes, Mr. Lewis. Right away.” He practically bows before running out the door.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  I see him in the line at the buffet in the Grant-Arthur’s banquet hall after the first day of meetings. At first I can’t quite figure out why he looks familiar. Roughly my height, maybe slightly broader across the shoulders. He’s wearing a suit, but for some reason he doesn’t look like he wears a suit every day. It fits him well, though, not like a lot of these people who put on decent clothes and look like they’re suffering, as if they’re wearing a hair shirt instead of a notch above business-casual. But there’s something about him that gnaws at my brain.

  It’s the hair that finally gives it away. Washington is a fairly polished, conservatively dressed town. You don’t see a whole lot of men with a riot of curls springing from th
eir heads. Especially at events like this. I’ve seen that hair before.

  That’s when I place him. Swap out the suit with a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and you’ve got one of the men who were escorting India into the town car in the newspaper picture.

  The plate I pick up at the start of the line is hot to the touch. Annoying. Especially since so much of the food on the table is crudités and a raw bar. They should know better. I pick my way through, heaping food on my thermally inappropriate dish.

  My glance flickers down the line to where Muppet-hair is also selecting things from the spread. I keep an eye on him as we work our way down the buffet. Is this who India married? I haven’t seen him in any of the sessions at the forum.

  I skip over a few sections of the buffet to catch up with the mystery man, and when we’re picking over the same tray of sushi, I notice he’s got a wedding ring on. We look at each other and raise our chins in a dude-acknowledgment kind of way, and I offer him a hand.

  “I don’t think we’ve met. Slade Lewis.”

  He shakes my hand, but his eyes glint with something dangerous. “Cris Ardmore.”

  The confirmation makes me wonder what India’s said about me because it doesn’t look like it’s anything good, and then there’s a flare of jealousy licking up my esophagus. I hope he knows what a lucky bastard he is, getting to fuck India all the time. But of course he does. Maybe that’s why he tolerates the bitchiness.

  “I fucked your wife.”

  I can’t believe I said that. Apparently jealousy makes me stupid. I wish Cris Ardmore was the scrawny geek I’d been picturing, but as things are, we’d be pretty evenly matched in a fight and he’d be well within his rights to punch me in the face. That’s what I’d do if someone had said that about Pressly. But it would’ve been a lie. We were each other’s firsts, and whatever else we might’ve done to each other, we were never unfaithful.

  Cris Ardmore, though, with his stupid hair, shrugs and reaches for a spicy tuna roll, putting it on his plate. “Lots of people have fucked my wife.”

  Seriously? I study his face and his body language, looking for a sign he’s actually pissed off and going to put me in a chokehold any second. But he honest-to-god doesn’t seem to care.

  “I fucked your wife, and you don’t care.”

  “Not unless it was within the past…” He checks his wrist for a watch he’s not wearing. “…four months or so. We’re all grown-ups. We’ve all had sex with other people. And if you’ve been with her, you know as well as I do India likes a good fuck. So, yeah, as long as you were safe, I don’t care.”

  “Safe is a relative term with India.” I’d had marks from her nails and teeth for over a week after our little assignation, the vicious little minx. What kind of marks are under that suit of his? Scrap that. No need to picture another dude naked. But god knows I left my own marks on her. Freaky little masochist, begging me to beat the crap out of her.

  His eyes narrow, his fingers tighten around the chopsticks he’d been using to serve himself. “True.”

  I think he’s going to go on, but instead he ducks his head. “Slade.”

  “Cris.”

  Then off he walks into the checkerboard of tables, finding the one with India, Jack Valentine, and the guy who’s been showing up on more JVA calls and emails lately. Evans, maybe?

  I stand stupidly at the buffet, wishing someone would look at me the way India looks at Cris. The way Pressly used to look at me before everything went slowly to hell. Or even with a modicum of fondness. But for the most part, I scare the crap out of people. Maybe that’s why I’d been so hard on India. She hadn’t been afraid of me. We’re cut from the same cloth, she and I. We get the job done by any means necessary, and sometimes that means people don’t like us very much. Or at all.

  That’s all right. I don’t like them either. I shake the thoughts from my head and wander over to my table where I make inane conversation with other industry people while I try to keep my cool. These things bore me, but at least they keep my mind off exactly how sad my life’s become and keep me from drowning my loneliness in a bottle.

  That’s the price of success, I suppose.

  *

  I’m on my way to the restroom after several glasses of wine, feeling a little less in control than I’d like, when someone grabs me and shoves my back against the wall, a forearm pressed against my throat.

  Holy fuck.

  I can breathe, but barely. My hands scramble at the iron bar across my neck and my eyes bug. I’ve had enough to drink that I’m uncoordinated and not in any shape to effectively defend myself. I cough and struggle, flailing, before I realize it’s none other than Cris Ardmore pressing me hard against the hideously patterned wallpaper so common to these hotels.

  “Decided you didn’t like the idea of my dick in your wife so much after all?”

  Why does this guy erase the connection between my brain and my mouth? If he felt like it, he could kill me. And, as if he’s reading my mind, he leans in harder and I choke.

  We’re in a public place. He’s not going to choke me to death in public. Probably. I can tell his nose has been broken at some point because it’s crooked. I hadn’t thought much of it in the buffet line—people get broken noses a hundred different ways—but now I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s been in a bar fight. Or a dozen.

  “Shut your mouth and listen to me, asshole. I told you I don’t give a shit that you had sex with India. She’s a grown woman and it was consensual. If I went around getting into fights with everyone she’s fucked, I’d never have time for anything else.”

  “Is this because I hit her? She told me to. Begged me,” I splutter.

  “It’s not that either. What I care about is you don’t hit people if you don’t know what you’re doing, and you obviously don’t. You could’ve really hurt her, done some permanent damage. So this is your warning. Unlike you, I know what I’m doing. You’re still getting air and you’ll feel the sensation of me choking you for a few hours, but you’re not going to pass out and I’m not crushing anything. I’m not going to leave any marks.”

  His eyes are flinty hard and laser-focused, and I suddenly rethink my ideas about who’s in charge in that relationship. Is he saying—?

  Another nudge brings me back from my mental wanderings to this insane situation I’ve found myself in.

  “That also means I know full well how to actually harm you. If I ever get wind of you beating India or anyone else irresponsibly, I won’t hesitate. You want to hurt people? Go right ahead. But you make sure they want it and you fucking do it properly.”

  Applying one last beat of pressure, he lets me go. I cough, dragging in a ragged breath and clutching at my throat while my mind races. Who the hell are these people? I expect him to walk off, but he stands there in front of me as I brace my back against the wall and put my hands on my knees, sucking oxygen into my lungs.

  He’s right. I can still feel him choking me, but it doesn’t hurt per se and I can draw air unimpeded. I look up to see him studying me.

  “You okay?”

  Is he joking? He’s the one who shoved me against a wall, a couple of inches away from crushing my larynx. But he’s not kidding. His thick brows are drawn slightly together. He means it.

  “Yeah.”

  I stand up more fully, but still lean against the wall for support. A few people from the dinner walk by, and we both acknowledge them with nods as they pass, like Cris and I are standing here having a conversation instead of assaulting and being assaulted, respectively. I should tell him to get the fuck out of here, call security, something. Instead, I wait, hoping he’ll do more than threaten me. I can’t deny I’m curious, and that’s overridden the rage I ought to feel.

  After they’ve passed, but before Cris walks away, I hold up a finger, asking for a second so I can take a steadying breath. I’m not an idiot, nor am I naïve. I know what BDSM is and I’ve sure as fuck seen my share of porn. But I’ve never known anyone who ac
tually does that stuff. Do people, really? And if they do, how do I get in on that?

  “What do you mean, ‘do it properly?’ How do you—”

  He shakes his head, silencing me. “I’m not talking to you about that. India’s already going to be ticked off I said anything. You ask her. But if she doesn’t want to talk about it either, you drop it. Understood?”

  His tone is casual, like he wasn’t just strangling me, but his gaze is sharp. I don’t think he’s remotely kidding about being willing to fuck me up, and I’m not especially inclined to test him. India said he was a cartoonist, but I have yet to see evidence of a sense of humor.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. See you around, Slade.”

  I nod distractedly and straighten my tie as he heads back to the dining room. What kind of sick, secret world are these people a part of? And how can I get there? Maybe India’s the key. I start running through my mind to figure out when I’ll be able to get her alone because I need to ask her. I want to follow these breadcrumbs they’ve been dropping before they disappear.

  “You want to hurt people? Go right ahead. But you make sure they want it and you fucking do it properly.”

  “There are people who are into that shit. Find them and mind-fuck them stupid.”

  Tell me where, India. Maybe I don’t have to live like this anymore. Like some fucking fugitive. The rush and the exultation when I’m haranguing someone, the sense of triumph, and god, that inevitable surge of arousal when they break. It lasts until I’ve blown my load and then the sick feeling sinks in. The guilt, the shame. Because that’s fucked up. What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell kind of sick fuck needs to beat the crap out of a woman or humiliate her to get his rocks off?

  The only time in recent memory I’ve come and not felt queasy about it or had the urge to down enough gin to get a horse plastered afterward was with India. I’d gotten at least some of what I’d wanted and I could live without the rest. Especially if I got to trade the lack of out-loud humiliation for a clear conscience. I’d do it. And I suspect she can help me. The question is, will she?