Chapter 7

seven

Olympia

My supposed new boyfriend ignored me on the drive to the event—something fancy for the label—and has ignored me since arriving. After introducing me to the rest of the guys, who I, of course, know from my online stalking of Cole, I was left with their women. At first, it was awkward, but I’m used to awkward. I can fill blank spaces like a pro, so that’s what I did.

Wrenlee and Nevaeh were the first to warm up to me, but after explaining that I had every intention of going to school in the fall to hopefully take an active role in the company my great grandfather started, and handed down to his daughter, my grandmother, whom I loved dearly and miss with a pain that is excruciating, Candace started coming around, too. I think she was mostly worried I was here with Cole—Tav—everyone in this new life he leads calls him Tav—I think Candace worried I was here for his money.

In a way, that is true. Broke as I am, it’s not like I can fork any massive bills. But I will be able to pay him back when my inheritance comes in.

Until then, I’m kind of at his mercy when it comes to the life I live, and the things I have. As it is, I need to buy a car with the little money I’d been able to pull from my cards to fluff my personal, secret account.

Even before I’d known where I’d run, I’d been stashing money in my getaway account.

I’d been unhappy for so long, dreaming of escape.

A big presence appears at my back, and I know instantly by the scent of spices and shaved wood that it’s him. Trying not to stiffen, I ignore the way the hairs rise on my body as Wrenlee stops talking about her twins long enough to give me wide eyeballs and shifty brows.

She can’t possibly be trying to be covert. If she is, I’m never taking her on any mission to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. She’d oust us all.

Slowly, I turn to face my fake boyfriend, who is doing a real damn crappy job of acting the part and smile sweetly up at him. “Hey, you.”

He bends low until I feel hot breath whisper across the shell of my ear. Goosebumps rise on my flesh and a shiver snakes through my body as my breath catches in my lungs. My response to this man is anything but fake.

“The cameras have arrived.” His breath on my flesh might be warm, but the words he says fill me with ice. Still, I’m nothing if not excellent at acting.

I’ve been doing it for years.

So, I lean into him, placing my hands on his chest as I tip my head back to look up at him, pushing all the past adoration I’ve ever felt for this man into my eyes as I peer up at him. “Should we dance?”

He swallows hard before he gives me a single nod. Then his big hands are on my waist, and he’s tugging me in close. My breath catches and warmth spills into my cheeks that I don’t bother trying to hide. It’ll make this show we’re putting on look more real, anyway.

Still, as he tugs me onto the floor with a twirl practiced in another life—definitely not a rockstar’s life—Cole spins me around the dance floor before he settles in the center, like he wants to be seen with me. I suppose, by the way he dips his head and smiles affectionately at me, he does. In response, I let the blush I feel tint my cheeks deeper as I smile shyly up at him.

His hand on my waist pulses as his fingertips dig in just enough to have air escaping from my lungs in a rush. I hate that I love how it feels to be here in his arms. I’ve had this fantasy so many times in my life, it’s pathetic. What’s more pathetic, is that in order to have this, to experience this, I had to blackmail him.

Gosh, don’t think about that, Olympia. Thinking about the reality I’m living, is surely going to wipe the glow of an infatuated woman from my face, replacing it with something sour and telling.

Cole pulls me tighter into his chest until my front is pressing against his as the song switches to something slower. My heart rate kicks up a notch, as the warmth of his body seeps through our clothes and into my skin. Around the back of his neck, my fingers curl over the short line of his buzzed hair. The dark in his eyes darkens as he watches me. Studies me. I fight my shiver as I let my eyes drift closed, praying he can’t feel the thundering of my heart against his chest.

When he drops his head and I feel the warmth of his breath against my temple, my silly heart flutters like this is real.

“You’re good at this.”

“I’ve had a lifetime of practice.”

“Of playing the men you’re meant to be closest to?”

“Of playing everyone.” I pull back to lock his eyes with my own. “But I’m not playing you, Cole. You know the terms of this deal. I’m only filling them.”

He grunts a response, but I do notice how he pulls me close again to devour the space I put between us.

After a long moment of silence, I feel his mouth by my temple. “I think you might be the best actress I’ve ever seen, Pipsqueak. Because you might even fool me in the end of this.”

That flutter in my heart turns to a full-out flip. It’s not a nice flip, either. It’s the kind of flip that precedes a quick sink.

I hate how he thinks I’m out to dupe him.

I hate how his feelings for me are crafted around his hate for her.

I let my fingers toy with the short hair at the back of his neck as I tip my head back to gaze in what I hope looks like adoration up at him. “Truce?”

A single brow raises. “For what?”

“I call you Tav and you call me Olympia? Or even Pippa? Charlie calls me Pippa and I’ve always loved it.”

His body tenses, jaw turning hard. “Who is Charlie?”

“My best friend.”

A muscle in his hard jaw throbs, but his eyes never slide from my face. “You want a truce?”

I nod softly, flashing him a slow, sweet smile. It’s not practiced. There’s genuine hope in this smile. “Yes.”

“Fine. I won’t call you Pipsqueak anymore. You remember to call me Tav.”

“One last thing.” I pause.

He waits.

When I say nothing, he prompts, “Olympia?”

I suck in a breath for bravery. “Why do you hate being called Cole?” When that dark in his eyes darkens, I hurry to ad, “I only ask because I’ve always loved your name.”

His hand begins to move aimlessly against my back, finding bare skin from the low dip of the gown. His thumb makes a few passes, igniting a warmth that flushes every inch of me. I don’t even bother trying to hide it. Another couple passes with his thumb, and goosebumps are called to the surface of my flesh. I watch as his eyes drift from mine to my shoulder, down the length of my bare arm to the hand that rests on his chest, before cutting across the space to my full cleavage, currently on display by the cut of the gown. I know exactly what he’s seeing. The pebbles of proof for just how affected I am by his touch.

“Are you cold?”

I think of lying, of telling him I’m freezing, but I don’t want to lie to this man. Lying to him feels so incredibly wrong, even though the truth, in his hands, I’m confident could harm me beyond anything any member of my spiteful, cruel, devious family could ever do to me.

“No.”

I think his eyes flare. I’m certain he inhales a daggered breath. “My father named me Cole. It was his pick. Just like Darius was his pick. My mother gave him that play when he agreed to take the Taviera last name, even though he used to whine about how it emasculated him. Funny now, with her gone, he’s continued using her last name. Funnier even that he gave her last name to his new whore of a wife.” I can feel the anger simmering under his flesh, but it’s doused by the hurt I see flashing in his eyes. I think, if I look deep enough, I can see through the looking glass into his soul. “Tav is the name she gave me, so it’s the name I go by. The only name I go by.”

Rising onto my tiptoes, uncaring of the fact I know without doubt if we were alone, he’d shove me away, I let my lips whisper across the underside of his jaw in a feather of a kiss. Rough stubble touches supple, soft flesh before an even rougher throb of need pulses through my body that I do my best not to broadcast as I lower myself.

Holding his eyes, I vow, “I’ll never call you that name again. From here on out, it’s Tav. Truce or otherwise.”

The hand resting at the small of my back, with the thumb gently sweeping flesh, presses flat against skin, before it slides beneath the fabric of my dress to curl around my side as he pulls me close in an embrace I’ve died to experience since I was a girl.

“Yeah, you’re good. Very good, Olympia Laurier.” He dips his head low, his voice impossibly deep. He bludgeons my heart with words that drip distrust and—and I think sadness. “You might even be better than her. But at least I know the score this time. I won’t be fooled by sweet venom, and I won’t bend over for pretty promises. You can try to play my heart all you want, but the strings on that guitar were snapped a long time ago. I advise you not to waste your time.”

When I try to pull away, Tav holds me tighter, his embrace no longer a thing of beauty, but something much darker. Sinister. “Oh, no. You don’t get to run now.”

“Tav.”

“The cameras are watching.” I stiffen in his arms, and he chuckles as he runs his lips over my temple. “We may as well give everyone back home something to chew on. Since you want them all to think I’ve sullied you.”

My mind is beginning to spin, and it has nothing to do with the way he’s still guiding me around the dance floor, locked in the prison of his embrace I’m not sure I even want to escape. “What are you saying?”

“I’m going to kiss you, Olympia.” He pulls back to gaze down at me with a heat I know is fabricated. Still, it’s no less affecting. “And you’re going to kiss me back.”

He doesn’t give me a moment to gather myself, to prepare myself for the assault on my heart that is his mouth on mine, before he’s dropping his head and—oh, my! Plundering is the only word.

Tav is plundering my mouth.

Everything and everyone in this fancy hotel ballroom falls away as though they were never here. My heart—that silly, precious, girlish organ inside my chest comes alive with the feel of this man’s mouth on mine. I’ve wanted this, dreamed of this, since I was a girl. Never, not in my wildest imaginings, did I think he’d kiss like this. Like a man unhinged. As though he’s standing on the other side of control, hovering at the edge of something chaotic and all-consuming.

I’ve experienced one sloppy, terrible kiss, that I’d paid for so dearly, I wear a scar in memory of it even today. That kiss had left little desire inside me to repeat.

This kiss—I’m not even sure this is a kiss.

His lips are searing hot against mine, and rough in a way that commands me to soften beneath him. To let him in. To let him devour, and capture, and own.

Pinpricks of hard stubble brush against my smooth skin, reminding me that this man is no boy. This man stealing the second kiss I’ve experienced to date, is all man.

But he doesn’t just press his mouth to mine. He doesn’t simply move his lips against mine, fitting to me, moulding to me, making himself an extension of me…

This man invades.

With a hand holding the side of my face, cradling me as long, thick fingers spear into the waves of my hair, he demands access to a place no one has accessed in my life, with a practiced sweep of his tongue against the seam of my lips. With my gasp of surprise, he slips stealthily inside. The feel of his tongue against mine is unexpectedly smooth, and entirely dominating. He tastes like a warm breeze, and a sinful inferno intended to trap me in this delicious devastation for eternity.

When a low sound suspiciously like a growl rumbles from the deep of him, spilling into my mouth, my body shudders against his. My awareness of him is primal. It’s rooted deep, woven into the fabric of me as though it’s always been there, formed with me from the very beginning.

He deepens the kiss, tongue sweeping against mine as he stokes a fire in my core, I don’t think I’ll ever be capable of dousing. It’s so deep, I think he strokes my soul even as talons shred into my heart, spores imbedding in the soft tissue, infecting.

God, my heart hurts. My mind—thoughtless.

Nothing beyond this kiss exists.

Nothing beyond the ache in my body, in the very core of me, exists.

I’ve never been so empty as I am now. So acutely aware of the hollowness expanding inside me as my body shifts closer, seeking more.

I’m driven by this primal overtaking. Consumed by this kiss. This man.

“Tav,” I gasp in a deep breath as he pulls away, my starved lungs filling with air I didn’t realize they lost. Heat flushes my cheeks, the violent pounding of my heart in my chest surely something he can feel against his own as he steadies me of my wobble with his body.

When my eyes drift from the dark dress shirt covering the wide expanse of his chest, to land on his dark eyes, the cotton candy weightlessness in my belly solidifies in one quick whoosh. I might not be expecting to see affection there in the deep, but I don’t expect the raw flash of disgust that exposes the truth of his feelings regarding this stolen kiss.

A splinter roots deep inside my hijacked heart.

Hurt unlike anything I’ve experienced in my life swells. It takes everything I have in me to dip my head in an act of shyness to conceal the tears that threaten to fall.

He chuckles, the sound ugly as he slides a finger under my chin, forcing my head back before I’m able to blink away the shimmer of wet that tells too much.

His body stiffens, jaw clenching, as his eyes lock on mine, wading through the shimmer of emotion I wish I didn’t feel.

Gathering all the strength I possess; I curl my lips into a smile Darius would have devoured with dark excitement in his eyes. He would have delighted in the way it trembles.

Tav isn’t Darius, because I swear, I see a little of the hatred he holds for me chip away as he slides the pad of his thumb gently over my bottom lip. He mutters, “Say your goodbyes. I’m taking you home.”