Chapter 8

eight

Tav

I didn’t kiss her because of the cameras. I kissed her because she stood in my arms, those big blue eyes tempting the very devil inside me, smelling like she does. Like something sweet, slightly floral, and rain. The cleansing scent of rain that you get after a wet, stormy night, and the first rays of a new day begin to warm the dew that clings to the land.

I kissed her because I’d been tempted to within an inch of my control, and that control simply snapped.

I kissed her because she’d been looking up at me like she believed I hung every last star that glittered in the night sky.

I kissed her because I had to.

Ironic, really, this little witch has brought the devil in me to his knees. He’s praying for deliverance, something I never thought he’d do. I can only hope that the rain that seems to cling constantly to her, might wash away my sins. Absolve me of every last one I know I’ll commit in the future.

Because I’m going to sin, and sin frequently, if Ian doesn’t get his shit in gear and get me that will, so I can kick this sweet little witch out of my house and life for good.

When I’d kissed her, it had been intended as punishment for making me feel anything at all. And I’d felt a whole lot I never expected to feel when she listened to why I didn’t want to be called Cole, and simply agreed to respect me on it, no questions asked. No fingers poking into the wound. No manipulations or demands or added blackmail. Just simple, sweet acceptance, as those big blue eyes blinked trustingly up at me, youthful innocence shining from the deep.

Then she smiled.

My hands tighten on the steering wheel as I fight the urge to glance at her sitting quietly in the passenger seat of my SUV.

Yeah, I’d wanted to punish her. I’d intended for the kiss to be simple, a rough press of my mouth against hers. But then, fuck, I don’t even know what happened.

If I thought she smelled good, she tasted the way I imagined a hit of ecstasy might make a man feel. Suddenly, my punishing kiss turned into something more. A craving I needed to fill. A taste I needed to deepen.

When she gasped, I invaded.

She’d tasted like apples. The forbidden fruit this devil knows damn well better than to devour. Still, if it hadn’t been for the ballroom full of other people, most surely looking our way, I’d have stripped her down and taken her right there on the floor, sullied her the way she’d begged me to only the night before on my porch.

Jeez.

I wipe my hand down my face, forcing my mind away from sweet apples and rain and the temptation to strip her of the innocence she claims to possess.

She’s delusional if she thinks I’m buying that virgin bullshit.

I’d been with her sister when we were just kids. Thinking back on it, I’m not convinced Ophelia had ever been innocent. She’d known right from the start how to drive a man wild. How to spin her words so they’d always fall sexual. How to crook her finger in that way men simply can’t resist.

I’d been fifteen when Ophelia pushed me up against her bedroom door, falling to her knees as she told me she’d suck me off if I bought her a bag she wanted. I’d told her I’d buy it for her anyway, but her hands had unbuckled my belt, and I’d been lost to the pleasure of her hot mouth. It’d only been six months later that I’d been pounding into her from behind as she lay bent over the island countertop while her parents had been off at some function, again. We’d fucked like rabbits anywhere and everywhere, until the last year of our relationship when Mom got sick, and we realized the woman I’d planned to marry was fucking my father just as she fucked me.

The memory brings a wave of acrid sick rising up in my belly, and I forget about the taste of apples as a familiar anger begins to boil in my gut.

Yeah, I need Ian to get his shit together. And while he’s at it, I’ll have him hack into Olympia’s medical files. If Darius hired a doc to check for her purity, it’ll have been recorded. At least I can fact-check something.

With the anger, I no longer have to worry that I might do something stupid. Like reach over and take one of those small hands that sit twisted tightly in her lap on a bed of blue suede, into mine. Glancing away from the dark highway, I steal a peek as my hands stay firmly fixed on the steering wheel.

Her neck is twisted and she’s looking out the window. She hasn’t said a word since she climbed into the SUV, and I slammed the door behind her. It’d been all plastic smiles and pleasantries as she said her goodbyes to my friends. My chosen family. They’d all bid their farewells as though devastated I was cutting them off from her for the night. And when Kane pulled her in for a tight hug and a loud kiss on the top of her head, I’d had to battle back the red.

I know well enough he was trying to push me. But I have no intention of letting him see just how near the edge I really am when it comes to this girl. Especially after that kiss.

Fuck, I really shouldn’t have done that.

Olympia glances from the window, catching me watching her. I don’t look away, and heat climbs into her cheeks. Her breathing quickens, I can tell by the faster rise and fall of her full chest.

Awkwardly, obviously needing to fill the silence, she blurts, “I like your friends.”

Tension tightens my gut. “My friends.”

It’s a bizarre response, I’m well aware. She looks at me bizarrely for it. Then she dips her head to her lap, eyes focused on those twisted hands as my own bounce between the dark road lit by my headlights, and the little distraction in my passenger seat.

What is she thinking?

I don’t like that I want to know.

She finally speaks, “I’m not going to steal them, Tav.”

“That’s right, you’re not.” I force myself not to look at her again as she makes an incredulous sound. We sit in silence for another few minutes. “What about your friends?”

She pauses, but finally says, “I only have one.”

That can’t be. Ophelia had been insanely popular, constantly surrounded by people vying for her attention. Olympia is just as beautiful, if not more so.

“Only one?” She makes an affirmative noise. I respond with a grunt of disbelief.

I can feel her eyes on me when she reminds me, “You don’t know me, Tav. You think you do, but you don’t.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Charlie.” She smiles when she says the name. I know, because I can’t seem to stop myself from looking at her. “Just Charlie.”

Charlie again.

Who the fuck is Charlie?

Something hot and unpleasant spreads in my chest like an unchecked plague.

It’s jealousy. I’m not unfamiliar with the feeling, but I am surprised that I feel it for this girl.

It spreads in my chest, expanding until it’s infected every inch of my body. I feel hot under my skin. Like my blood is boiling. The idea of her one person being another man makes me feel crazy. Last night, I wouldn’t have cared.

Except maybe I would have. Maybe I’m lying to myself now, because when she told me she was engaged to my brother, I’d wanted to take down this whole fucking world.

I wanted to slay every man, until the only one left was me. That thought—it’s pure insanity. I am not an insane, irrational man. I am slow and decisive. I pride myself on that. But this tiny woman, this girl, she affects me in a way I struggle to admit even to myself.

“Who is Charlie?”

Her eyes bounce to mine. “My friend, like I said.”

That hot thing in my chest, it gets hotter. It feels like it’s boiling under my flesh now. Bubbling. About to burst.

I don’t know how to question her about the gender of her friend without making my new obsession with her obvious.

Jesus, is this how Cash felt about Wrenlee? How Kane felt about Nevaeh?

Those women had my friends so wrapped up in chaos, they’d nearly lost their minds. Hell, they’d both manipulated the women into falling in love with them. Trapped them, even. I’d stood back and watched the show, vowing that I’d never do crazy shit like that. Lunacy.

Look at me now.

“Why only one friend?” I ask, hoping for more information about her. If she feeds it to me, I’ll devour every scrap.

I hate her for this.

“Mom didn’t like it when I had friends.”

“But she liked this Charlie, person?”

She lifts a small shoulder. “She knew about Charlie, kind of. But Charlie never came around, and I never went over to Charlie’s. We text, and we saw each other at school. That’s pretty much it.”

The life she paints for herself isn’t a life I can imagine.

I know Remira Laurier. I know her parents. Well.

I knew them.

Remira wouldn’t have given a shit who Olympia spent her time with, as long as Olympia hadn’t been invading on her time.

They’d never been home. Never been present for their children. They had nannies and cooks and maids, and anything money could buy that their little hearts desired. But what those girls never had, was a mother and father. Not really.

It had been the one thing my own mother hadn’t respected about her best friend. The one thing she had told me over and over that she did not like. Unlike Remira to her girls, my mother had been present for me and Darius. She’d been around. She’d wanted to spend time with us, made time for us. She had loved us, and I had loved her. Losing her is still my worst pain.

“Tell me about Charlie.”

The skin between her eyes wrinkles. She’s confused, and she doesn’t trust me. I can see that plain as day.

She shouldn’t. The first chance I have to get rid of her, I’ll do it. I really don’t care where she lands, if she lands on her feet or on her ass, as long as she doesn’t land in my space.

I feel my jaw tighten, and work to relax it.

Her voice sounds smooth like honey as it spreads through the dark. “Charlie knows me. She understands me.”

My chest depresses. Charlie is a she.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

“Are you saying no one else understands you?”

She looks out the window again. “I think that no one cares to understand me. They just don’t want me to embarrass them. Like she did.”

Ophelia. Of course, it had embarrassed the Laurier family when their eldest daughter ended up fucking not only their best friend’s son, but his father—the close family friend.

“Why do you say that?”

“Do we have to talk about this? You don’t believe anything I say, anyway, Tav. There’s no point.”

“What if I tell you I’ll believe you?”

She laughs. It’s short and bitter. It doesn’t suit her, and I don’t like it.

“I’d say, I don’t believe you.”

“Fair,” I answer honestly.

She laughs that bitter laugh again, but she says nothing more as I pull into my drive. Before I can exit the vehicle and round to her side, she’s shoving open her own door and sliding from the seat. She doesn’t wait for me as she walks up my porch, waiting by my front door. I punch in the code; aware I’ll have to give it to her if she wants to leave and return at any point. Still, I don’t do so now. I just hold the door open and watch as she walks inside.

She kicks off her shoes with a moan that shoots straight to my dick.

If somebody told me years ago that I’d be here, hard for Pipsqueak all grown up, I’d have knocked their teeth out. And yet here I am. Hard.

“Oh.” She makes another noise that’s fit for sex as she lifts a foot and rubs her thumb into the pad. “It’s so nice to be out of those shoes.”

I need a beer.

I say nothing as I move to the kitchen, to the fridge. I pop the top, tip the bottle to my mouth, and drink deep.

I’d deprived myself of drink all night, because I hadn’t been willing to trap myself in a hotel room with her. It could have been fun, I think now. But fun has consequences, and I’m not sure I’m ready to pay that toll.

She’s clearly done rubbing her foot, because she’s followed me into the kitchen. She’s standing on the other side of the island in that blue dress that was made to tempt men everywhere. Drumming a rhythm into the countertop with manicured fingertips, she asks, “Do we have popcorn?”

I blink.

Popcorn.She wants popcorn?

My voice is gruff. “No.”

Disappointment has her bottom lip pushing out. The urge to round the island, dip my head and bite that lip, is strong. Painfully strong. Again, I feel it in my dick.

This fucking woman.

“Oh well.” She shrugs, but the look on her face is crushed as she glances over her shoulder in longing at my couch. “It’s late anyway, and I’m tired. I should probably go to bed.” She starts that way, but her steps stutter and she turns back to me with a smile that is killer sweet and way too soft for the likes of a man like me. “Have a nice night, Tav.”

I don’t reply, just watch as she disappears to her room.

I pull my phone out of my pocket, tapping into Ian’s name. I send him a text.

Me:

I want her medical records. Specifically, any notes from a recent exam.

I don’t get a reply.