Chapter 2

two

Tav

What the actual fuck is happening right now? If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was tripping hard, high as a fucking kite. But I do know better, because I don’t do that shit.

The woman before me isn’t an apparition. She’s real. In the flesh.

Just like her sister, she’s a total knockout. From the hair on her head to the polish on her toes, she’s designed to bring a man to his knees.

I do another sweep and nearly groan. Toned legs, thick thighs, high tits, full ass, and a mouth to bust balls. But shit—this girl is even more woman than her bitch of a sister.

She has enough of—well, everything to nearly make a man forget the past as he falls into…

Fuck, no. This is Pipsqueak—not one of my groupies. She’s a child. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts about her, but those legs.

That mouth.

Fuuuuck.

I do the mental math. She’d been eleven when I left, I think. That would make her nineteen now. Legal. Barely.

Blood pools in my dick and anger sears inside my chest. I should have taken Tara up on her offer of a blowjob. She’d been all over me, in my lap, rubbing her bony ass around in circles trying to make me hard the way this unassuming girl is now.

And the words she’d said. They’re burned in my mind. Wreck her. Ruin her. Sully her. Free her.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

She can’t mean those words the way my dick thinks she means them.

Jeez.

I won’t stand here and listen to this shit from a Laurier. Anyone else, I’d give them the time of day. Her? Not a chance.

“Get in the car.”

Her brow dips, doing nothing to alter the beauty of her perfect face.

That only pisses me off more.

“What?” Why is her voice soft like that? With that husky undertone that makes me think of doing exactly as she asked, and tarnish her right here on the porch. My dick throbs. Anger rises.

“Get your shit.” I point a long finger to her suitcase. “And get in the fucking car.”

She lifts her little chin in childish defiance that would be cute if it wasn’t. Fucking. Childish. “No.”

My blood heats. I see red. I’m not thinking as I charge through the space between us, climbing the steps until I’m standing on the one below her, still managing to tower over her. She might look like she’s all legs, but she’s itty bitty.

I blame her shorts. They’re deceiving against those legs.

Hell,all Laurier’s are deceiving in everything. It’s in their nature.

“What are you playing at, Olympia?” Her name leaves my tongue on a snarl that doesn’t even make the ice princess flinch. Just like the rest of the Laurier’s, she’s cold as ice.

That ice bursts through those glacier blue eyes as she holds my gaze. At least she doesn’t share Ophelia’s eyes. They’d been a deep, dark, soulless brown.

“I’m not playing at anything, Cole. And I’m not leaving.”

“No one calls me Cole.” Did I just growl? I feel like an animal.

She huffs, her chest expanding and nearly brushing against mine. Every hair on my body stands on end, waiting—anticipating a connection that’s missed by a hair.

The girl drops her head to the side as she slams one hand on her hip, and throws me sass, “Yeah, I’ve read. It’s Tav now.”

She’s read about me?

I shake off the thought, and the unsettling feeling that comes with it. “Get in the car.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m taking you to a hotel.”

“No,” she refuses. I’m surprised she doesn’t stomp a little foot. “I’m staying here, and you’re going to help me.”

“Spoken just like a Laurier.”

She flinches at my dig. It’s the first time I’ve seen the ice princess crack to show that, maybe, there’s a woman capable of feeling human emotions beneath all that polish.

Then I think it’s a trick. Because I know just how the Laurier women operate. I’ve been burned by them before. More than once, I’m sure.

I won’t make the same mistake now. They can’t be trusted.

She can’t be trusted.

She inhales through her nose, rolling those full lips together. “I have something you want. But you’re not getting it until you help me.”

“You have nothing I want.” She pushes up onto her tiptoes and a gust of scent assaults me. It’s sweetly floral with undertones of something sad and cool, like rain. Addictive.

I shove the poetically uncharacteristic thought down deep as I pin her with a glare.

She just tips those eyes up at me in defiance as she insists, “Oh, I do.”

“And what might that be, Pipsqueak?” I know the name pisses her off by the flash of something hot I see in her cool eyes. I want to throw another match onto the spark. I want to watch her light up the night and burn with passion. Any passion. Even if it’s born of anger, if just to prove there’s more than ice and lies surging through her veins.

“Proof.” The single word falls from her lips into the inches between us, snagging air in my lungs. She presses on, knowing she’s hooked me like a fish on a line. I’m at her mercy. “I was young when everything went down. A child. But I wasn’t so young that I don’t remember your accusation. Everyone thought that, because I was a child, I wasn’t listening—but I was. I listened to everything. So, I know that you were right about Annika’s shares of Taviera Shipping and Cruise Lines. They weren’t supposed to go to your father. But Annika never meant for them to be split between you and Darius, either. She altered her will, sound of mind, before she passed. And everything she had was going to you.”

It’s like the world falls out from under me. Blood surges under my skin. Ringing sounds between my ears. My vision blurs.

I don’t think—can’t think as I shove my hand into her belly. I’m not sure if I’m trying to push her away or cage her in so she can’t run with this information. Either way, she stumbles on the step, and I catch her only to shove her roughly against the door, my hand still in her stomach as I crowd her small body with my much larger one.

I’m still not thinking as my hand moves from her belly, dragging up her torso, between heaving breasts to her throat. My fingers curl around her neck in a way I’ve never done before in my life outside of fucking a woman, and squeeze.

I’m going mad.

“What proof, Olympia?”

Her lips part, and I see another flash in those eyes. Fear and—resignation? “I have the original will. The one they say doesn’t exist.”

My fingers throb. Her pulse flutters, quickening under my thumb. I can’t help but stroke that pulse-point as I demand low, “Where?”

Goosebumps rise on her flesh. Is it from the stroke of my thumb?

No. No. Don’t think about that.

Christ.

“It’s in a safety deposit box. In North Carolina.” She juts her chin, the brave little vixen. Her skin is so smooth. “I have a photo, but you don’t get the real thing until you help me.”

My lip curls. I stop stroking, my entire being turning to ice. “And how am I supposed to help you?”

“You can start by letting me inside.”

“Fuck, no.”

“Then consider the proof I have lost forever,” she threatens coldly. “If I leave here tonight, you’ll spend the rest of your life knowing you had everything you needed at your fingertips to take your family and mine down—but you threw it away.”

“Your family?” I search her face, seeing only the same loathing for her blood that I see every day for my own when I look in the mirror. It piques my interest another notch.

This is getting dangerous.

She cocks her head. “Do you think your father could have pulled it off alone? Abe isn’t that smart.” She laughs, shaking her head as she rips her eyes from mine only to pin them back to me harder than they were before. “Make your decision, Cole. I’m not giving you anything else until I’m confident I’m getting what I need out of this.”

Well, shit. Looks like the little Pipsqueak has grown up after all. Molded into a cool, heartless beauty by the Laurier Ice Queens before her.

I say nothing as I push away from her, moving back to my SUV as she stands plastered against my front door, chest heaving with deep, sharp inhales. I lean into the cab and kill the engine, flooding us in darkness cut only by a cloud shrouded moon. Keys in hand, I move silently back to the porch. I throw the strap of her carry on over my shoulder and hook a hand around the handle of her suitcase, glaring down at her as she steps out of the way for me to punch my code into the door, opening it.

Then I walk inside, waiting for her to follow.

She does without hesitation.