“It’s the only thing worth being.” His voice tightened around the words, giving them weight. “Otherwise—why bother?”
I risked another glance at his hands. They rested easy, the veins standing out in relief against his skin. I wondered what he did when he wasn’t ferrying strangers through the dark. He seemed like someone for whom rest was an alien concept.
“So what brings you to London, outlier?” His eyes came up in the mirror again, softer this time, as if he’d decided to play nice.
“Business.” I stared past his shoulder at the slick blur of taillights. Rain streamed down the windshield while the wipers swept in long, lazy arcs, clearing the glass just enough to catch the glow of street lamps on wet asphalt.
“Consulting? Finance? Something in that glass tower I picked you up from?”
“Corporate assignment. I’m consulting for a London firm for the next six weeks. I got in yesterday.”
“Six weeks?” His hand flexed on the wheel. “That’s less than a prison sentence, but more than a holiday. What do you do with that?”
“Mostly work.” I tried not to wince at the familiar edge of cynicism. “I’m project lead for a marketing agency. We’re doing a rebranding for a UK client. Which means a lot of PowerPoints in windowless rooms, then a mercy killing at the pub before you want to die.”
He made a face. “Sounds dreadful.”
“Sometimes it is. Keeps me out of trouble, though.” I shrugged, suddenly aware of how the wet nylon of my jacket—more for show than for warmth—clung to my back. “Honestly, I have only myself to blame. I keep volunteering for this stuff. Guess I’m something of a masochist.”
His eyes found mine in the mirror. “That’s…convenient.”
“Excuse me?” I said, unsure if I’d heard him right or if the rain had smuggled an extra word into my ear.
He didn’t laugh. Just studied me, his reflection steady, like a man testing a fuse. “Masochists crave pain. Challenge. But they also crave the person who delivers it.”
Heat pooled under my collar—embarrassment braided with something raw blooming between my thighs. I forced a flimsy laugh. “That’s not… I meant it figuratively. The work. The grind.”
“Too bad.” The smile reached his eyes. “Because I’m something of a sadist.”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t, at first. My breath jammed up somewhere between lungs and lips. So when I managed to say, “That’s…direct,” it came out with the steadiness of a dropped glass.
He didn’t need to fill the space with talk. He just filled it with himself.
The silence that followed wasn’t inert, wasn’t passive. It squeezed, pressed, forced its fingers into all the soft places I’d learned to armor in the boardroom, the bedroom, and everywhere between.
He turned the corner, the indicator blinking like a heartbeat.
I didn’t know if he was doing it on purpose or if I’d just become the kind of person who always needed to fire back with something sharp. Either way, I cracked first.
“You can’t just say something like that and expect me to—” I stopped, hot with the realization that he absolutely could, and that I’d already walked into his little trap, mouth open.
His fingers flexed on the wheel, as if winding an imaginary cord around his knuckles. He didn’t turn, just let his voice slide back to me, coiled and slow. “I can. And I did.”
I tried to match his indifference, but my tongue betrayed me. “What’s next, you tell me you’ve got ropes and chains in the back?”
“Not in this car,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I’d never make it through the checkpoints. Besides…” He trailed off, letting the weight of the word dangle like a lure.
“Besides what?” I asked before I could smother the hunger.
He thumbed the gearshift, torque rippling up his forearm. “I don’t need those things. If I do my job right, my words are all the rope I need.”
The car’s engine whined as he took a sudden left, pinning me against the seat. “You’re very sure of yourself.” It wasn’t a question.
He looked at me directly in the rearview, eyes glinting. “Would you prefer I wasn’t?”
Before I could conjure up a response, he pulled under the portico of my hotel—marble and glass and money, honeyed light pooling at the entrance. I gathered my briefcase and purse, and he was already out of the car, opening my door, hand extended. I hesitated, then let him help me out. His hand engulfed mine. A current shot up my arm.
I stepped onto the curb and was suddenly inches from him—close enough to see the constellation of faint lines at the corners of his eyes, smell the trace of citrus and woodsmoke on his skin, and track the lines of the corded knit beanie pulled down over his ears.