Chapter 2
2
I know you won’t let me down again.
Again had punched me in the gut just like he’d known it would. That word had driven me to go for a walk before the gala, which in hindsight was a nonsensical idea. It had taken a team of people two hours to make me look like my supermodel sister. The diaphanous peach layers of the gown they’d chosen perfectly complemented the pearls they’d used to pin my hair up in soft curls and the subtle pink tones they’d picked for my makeup. The vintage couture gown probably had more business being in a museum than it did being dragged across a hotel lawn.
And that was before it started to pour.
I stood in the boathouse, watching rain come down outside in torrential sheets, wondering how things could possibly get worse. Being a Bryson had taught me that they could always get worse. People said my family was cursed—too many tragic deaths and bizarre accidents. Some days I wasn’t sure they were wrong.
With no phone, I had no way of getting back without showing up to the party a disheveled, soaking-wet mess. How was I supposed to explain being stupid enough to get caught in the rain…or why I’d been in the boathouse in the first place?
No matter what excuse I came up with, Daddy would conclude it was because I’d thought about running away. He’d be even more disgusted to know I’d really just sought solitude and been too freaked out to use common sense. In his eyes, at least running away would show some initiative. He’d have no tolerance for this kind of pointless emotional weakness.
I didn’t have any illusions about what would happen if I ran. As though Nathaniel Bryson wouldn’t hunt me down. There was nowhere I could hide from his power and influence.
If his enemies didn’t find me first. They’d executed his son. They’d be far more creative with his daughter.
I shuddered, fighting back tears. The boathouse wasn’t technically off-limits, but since it was far from the main property, all the way across the hotel grounds, it was outside the perimeter my father’s security team expected me to adhere to, especially after what had happened to Geoff.
I was fucked.
The gala would already be starting. If I got soaked, there’d be no way to fix my appearance before I was supposed to meet my prospective husband.
I glanced around the interior of the boathouse, looking for an umbrella, a tarp, anything that might make this less bad. Because I was definitely going to be able to carry my shoes and the enormous skirt of my gown while I held a tarp over my head and ran across a wet lawn.
Solid plan, Juliet.
Lightning split the sky, and even though summer storms were a near-daily occurrence, it still felt like a bad omen. I’d never believed in fairy tales, but I’d also never expected to become a cautionary tale.
My gown swished as I walked to another window, as though there’d be some magical solution in the other direction. They’d gone old-school and laced me into a corset underneath the gown to make the bodice of the gown sit better, and the combination of it squeezing me and the heavy weight of the dress was making me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
I wasn’t going to cry and mess up my makeup, but I couldn’t seem to slow my breathing. I was already light-headed. I needed to take deeper breaths, but I couldn’t expand my ribs enough, which was exacerbating my anxiety.
In a moment of desperation, I reached back and managed to contort myself to push the zipper down, then pull it the rest of the way to reach the corset underneath. I tugged on the only part of the corset strings I could reach, but it didn’t seem to want to come loose. I was used to shape wear that didn’t tie, and my fumbling fingers seemed to be tightening the knot instead of releasing it.
I can’t fucking breathe!
I frantically tangled my fingers between the strings until I felt what I thought could be a knot, but all that seemed to do was tighten the corset further. I almost fell off my heels but leaned against the wall and kept tugging, well past being able to use reason.
“ Goddamn it ,” I said aloud, giving voice to all the frustration and fear that was knotted inside me. This wasn’t really about the corset, but fuck if it wasn’t the perfect metaphor for being trapped in a world where I didn’t belong.
“Need some help with that?” A deep voice rumbled in the darkness behind me, and I jumped with surprise.
I was mortified someone had been sitting there, witnessing my breakdown. My family couldn’t afford to show any more weakness. I dropped my hands to my sides and whipped around. “Absolutely not.”
My panic didn’t conveniently vanish just because I had an audience, but I knew a thing or two about hiding my feelings in front of other people, no matter how extreme they were. I breathed through my nose as I peered into the darkness.
A man sat in the shadows whose long hair was such a white blonde, it caught even the limited light from the muted boathouse sconces. He was shirtless and relaxed, his legs sprawled wide like he was entitled to as much room as he wanted. He didn’t need to stand for me to know he was tall. Wiry, chiseled muscles covered his torso and corded his arms, but he looked more like some kind of rebel prince than a warrior. His nipples were pierced, and tattoos wound across his skin in disorderly patches.
He certainly wasn’t the type of man who’d been invited to this gala. It was all upper-crust and political types.
Was he from a rival territory, and he’d somehow managed to get past security?
He reached into his pocket and flipped out a knife.
Years of training overrode my fear, and before I’d even consciously decided to reach under my skirts, I dropped my clutch and pulled a handgun from my thigh holster.
I aimed at his chest. “Drop it.”
I might’ve been the refined granddaughter of a former president and the niece of the current one, but I was also the daughter of a ruthless territory leader. My father had made sure I could defend myself.
“Easy, princess,” the guy said with laughter in his dark eyes, holding his palms up and gesturing to my cinched waist. “Just trying to help.”
The adrenaline made my heart race more than it had been before, and I still couldn’t breathe. I was pretty sure I was going to pass out.
The reckless motherfucker walked straight towards the barrel of my gun, not even hesitating as he stepped into the light and got close enough that I could see scars marking his body along with his tattoos. If he’d wanted to attack me, he would’ve used the element of surprise that he’d freely given up, so surely that wasn’t his intention.
“Just trust me,” he said, like he was asking me to try a new food and I was being ridiculous about it. Not like he was attempting to cut off my clothing.
He turned me around with one hand on my shoulder, and his huge palm felt shockingly warm against my bare skin. With one quick slice, he relieved the worst of the tension. He pocketed the blade and tugged on the strings, causing the garment to come loose. When he started to pull it off for me, I nudged him away. “Enough help, thank you very much.”
He shrugged and returned to the bench he’d been sitting on, making no effort to pretend he was doing anything but watching me. It was tricky to get the whole corset off without removing the dress, but after some completely undignified wiggling, I was free.
He was still staring, his expression unreadable from where he was in the shadows.
I took slow, deliberate breaths, marveling that just taking the corset off made a world of difference. “The knife was a little overdramatic, don’t you think? You couldn’t have just untied the knot?”
He shrugged. “If my sub’s panicking in bondage, I don’t fuck around. I cut the rope.”
“It’s hardly the same situation,” I said, as though I knew anything about bondage.
“Are you denying you were panicking or denying you’re a sub?” he asked, his voice edged with teasing humor.
I wanted to snap at him, but all comebacks eluded me. I just stared back at him, fighting not to look at his body again. I was pretty sure the pile of clothes next to him was a server’s uniform for the gala, but there was an arrogance to his features that made him seem more like a territory leader than staff. His high, pronounced cheekbones gave him an almost elfin quality, but the intensity of his dark eyes was more devilish than ethereal. He wasn’t quite smiling, but his full lips lifted just enough to tell me he was amused, which made my heart flutter nervously.
Great, now I’m ogling one of Daddy’s employees. Could this get any more embarrassing?
I turned my back to him to make myself stop staring, set my gun on the ledge in front of me, and picked up the clutch I’d dropped when he’d taken out a knife. My stupid clutch was too small to hold a phone…but there was one cigarette and a lighter in there, hidden in a special pocket in case of emergencies. Tonight certainly qualified. What did I care if this guy saw me smoking?
The one time I’d been photographed smoking outside an event when I was in college, it had made tabloid headlines: Bryson Heiress Lights Up.
The Bryson heiress has bigger problems right now.
With shaking hands, I slid the cigarette between my lips and struck the lighter again and again, but it only sparked. The more I tried, the more I looked incompetent, but I also became more determined to make the damned thing work. I could feel the smug bastard smirking behind me without even looking.
I sighed and dropped the traitorous lighter back into my clutch. If the guy was silently enjoying my struggle with the means to put an end to it, I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of asking for help.
“Am I supposed to feel sad for the poor little rich girl?” he said, the amusement in his tone mocking me now.
“Fuck off.” It felt good to snap at someone, to lash out with a fraction of the anger I was feeling.
Dark laughter rolled out of him. “The princess has a mouth on her.”
“Keep it up and I’ll have to mention to my father that one of the staff was lurking in the boathouse, disrespecting his daughter instead of doing his job.”
Why the hell did I say that?
“That how you solve all your problems? Running to Daddy?”
It wasn’t. I didn’t think I’d ever gone running to my father over anything, not since the third grade when I’d told him that Charlie Robertson was mean to me, and the next day, my brother beat the hell out of the kid on the playground. Charlie’s dad had then been fired from his job, and Charlie had gone to public school after that.
If he heard the way this guy was talking to me, my father would have one of his enforcers cut out the stranger’s tongue.
The threat had just slipped out. This stranger had seen me exposed, and I was out of my element, flailing as I fought for steady ground.
“I’m sorry.” I sighed. “But I don’t need this right now.”
I heard him stand, and by the time I picked up my gun and turned to see what he was doing, he was crowding my space. I gave ground too easily, so he backed me into the wall, seeming unconcerned that a gun was pressed against his stomach.
He reached up slowly, holding eye contact with me as he struck a match on a piece of metal above us to light it.
He was tall and dangerously good-looking.
And he knew it.
Lord , did he know it.
The light of the match made the lip ring in the center of his bottom lip glint, drawing my eyes to a mouth made for sin. His bottom lip was fuller than his top, and it looked pillowy soft as his mouth lifted into a nearly irresistible smile.
I had nothing to smile about. My life had been falling apart before I’d somehow ended up trapped in a boathouse with fucking Lestat.
When he held the flame to the tip of the cigarette still dangling from my mouth, I automatically puffed gently to light it. I knew smoking was bad for me and unladylike and generally frowned upon by society at large, but something about it soothed me like nothing else could. It was a choice between smoking to steel my nerves or sobbing until I felt empty.
I held the cigarette and exhaled slowly, turning my head to the side so I didn’t blow smoke in his face, even if he deserved it.
He was still in my space, watching me too closely.
“What?”
His lips quirked. “They teach you to pull a gun like that in princess school, but they don’t teach you manners?”
I gritted my teeth. “Thank you.”
He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and tugged it towards himself, taking a deep drag of my cigarette while still holding me, his face only inches from mine.
Irrationally, all I could focus on was that his mouth was exactly where my mouth had just been, where my mouth would be again in a moment.
His thumb drew a tiny circle on the inside of my wrist, and my heart instantly started to pound like he’d touched me somewhere far more intimate. He released me, but I could still feel the heat on my skin where his hand had circled my wrist.
I angled my head up to meet his eyes, and we stared at each other for long, charged seconds. He was a complete stranger to me, and yet I was drawn to him on a level I couldn’t understand. I wanted him, and I didn’t even like him. I had far bigger things I should’ve been focused on, but there was no focusing on anything with this guy in my space.
It wasn’t like I’d never been around shirtless men before—we spent summers on yachts and at beach houses—but something about this man shirtless felt inappropriately intimate. Maybe it was the scars marking his body that made me feel like I was seeing more than I should.
As though my fingers no longer belonged to me, I reached out and traced a round scar on his rib cage. The muscles on his stomach tensed, but he didn’t pull away. “Someone shot you,” I said, like a fuckwit.
He smiled, slow and arrogant. “It was worth it.”
Wait, what does that even mean? “What could possibly be worth getting shot?”
He huffed a laugh and picked up my wrist again to steal another drag of my cigarette, effectively making me his cigarette holder. It shouldn’t have been hot.
“What are you running from?” he asked as he exhaled.
“I wasn’t running. I went for a walk and got caught in the rain. Who would try to run in this?” I gestured to the frothy layers of my peach gown.
He pinned me with a look. “Someone desperate.”
Someone like him wouldn’t have freaked out and just started walking across the grounds in a frantic effort to be alone for five minutes. Someone like him certainly wouldn’t have any trouble seducing a stranger. He could probably seduce a light pole if he so much as leaned on it.
I let out a shuddering sigh at the mess I’d made for myself.
The man’s smile fell, replaced with a deadly stare. “You need me to slay a dragon for you, princess?”
I wanted to tell him to stop calling me that, but then I’d lose our unspoken game. Instead, I said, “Would you?”
This was dangerous. He was dangerous.
He cocked his head, considering. “What kind of help do you need?”
There was a challenge in his tone, like he knew what I was going to ask for wasn’t what I really wanted.
“Can you help me get back to the party without getting rained on?”
“Even if there’s a price?” he said.
Somehow, I knew he didn’t mean money. It felt like I was making a deal with the devil, but I nodded anyway.
I looked the dangerous man in the eye and said, “Please help me.”
I meant to sound assertive, but it came out breathless and laced with desire.
He turned me around again, so my back was to him, and then he slowly pulled the zipper back up on my dress, letting his fingers brush my bare skin as he did. It was shockingly intimate.
With a hand on my waist, he spun me to face him, standing close enough that I was almost against his chest. His eyes were so dark, they were nearly black, and they swam with unchecked intensity. In my world, feelings were worn like outfits, specially selected for the occasion and honed to be appropriate and polite no matter what.
There was nothing polite about this man.
With his face so unguarded, I saw the moment he decided to kiss me. I closed my eyes, my heart racing, and arched up, ready to feel the first brush of his warm, soft mouth against mine.
It never came.
When seconds had passed, I opened my eyes and found he was no longer standing so close. His expression was scathing, like he couldn’t believe I thought he was going to kiss me.
What else is a girl supposed to think when you lean that close with that stupid smoldering look?
Had he done it on purpose to make a point?
I’m going to die of embarrassment!
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering, but it wasn’t just because I was cold.
“Come on,” he said, pulling a door at the back of the boathouse open. One of the staff golf carts was parked there, and he pulled a key from his pocket.
I slid behind the wheel, getting a little wet in the few steps I had to take into the rain, but it wasn’t bad. He followed me out, standing in the rain, letting it soak him like he didn’t even notice. He leaned over me to drape a well-worn black leather jacket around my shoulders, enveloping me in his scent.
Just as I was about to protest, he brushed his mouth against my ear. “Go back where you belong, princess, before you get yourself into trouble that Daddy can’t solve.”
I turned my head, leaving our faces so close, we were almost kissing. So I saw the flash of amusement in his eyes when I said, “Go fuck yourself.”
The bastard was still laughing as I drove out of earshot.