Chapter Eighteen Blake
Chapter Eighteen
Blake
I got to the street after climbing down, and realized they’d only taken me to the building next door. Honestly. I was more insulted by their lack of effort. Or maybe they thought the genius was in the simplicity, but yeah. Next door to where I worked was where I’d been taken.
I decided to be insulted, but the benefit was that I knew where I was.
I didn’t care what happened to my watcher. He must still be alive because Creighton didn’t seem to know that I’d been taken. I could see that as I was in the shadows now, and I was the one watching him this time.
No phone. No wallet. No keys. I walked to Creighton’s club, and a part of me dared anyone to try and mess with me on the way. No one dared, sadly. I could’ve used an outlet for some of my fury. Alas, I was able to get there safely.
So here I was. In the shadows of his nightclub. Nightclub 1.
Watching him now as he moved around the edge of this nightclub, one that was catering to some very wealthy and elite clientele, the kind that liked the after-hours of the after-hours type of club, I enjoyed this role reversal.
He knew I was here. I could tell when he paused, his head inclined as if he were trying to suss out where I was, but I wasn’t letting him. I kept to the shadows, noting where his cameras would be and staying in their blind spots. He didn’t know where I was, not my exact location.
Good.
I wanted him on edge. Uneasy.
I wanted to have the power. To be in the know. Where he didn’t know.
I wanted there to be an imbalance between us.
I was breathing hard. My pulse was pounding. I was surprised others couldn’t hear it over the music blaring.
How was he getting away with running this club? At this hour? I almost snorted at myself because of course, he’d already have cops on his payroll. Duh. Creighton moved so fucking fast when he made the decision to take over an area.
I wanted to run from him. I wanted to hurt him, but damn him. Creighton knew I would want to run again. It’s why we made the deal we had. He stayed out of my life, kept a watcher on me, and I wouldn’t run. But that agreement was over because he tricked me into violating it.
This motherfucker.
I should run again, just to make him feel something.
Creighton was walking away from the last table of businessmen. He took a few steps, stopped, and seemed to rotate exactly to the direction where I was standing.
He probably had the same inside compass. A Blake compass, like I had a Creighton compass.
Right now I hated it like I hated him.
He was facing me, but I was still in the shadows. He frowned, just slightly, and moved forward. A step. Two. He was getting closer.
Jesus. He really did have a compass.
I waited, my breath held and frozen. My heart began thumping in my chest. The anger in me was a volcano, and it was close to erupting. I needed to make a choice. Right now.
Leave, make him hurt, or . . .
It was too late.
I was rooted in place as he stepped into the same shadow that was hiding me.
I knew the second his gaze lit onto me. A wave of awareness thundered down on me.
Dammit. I sucked in oxygen, feeling as if I were breathing the wind that would rush off of an ocean wave crashing onto the beach.
It was big. It was powerful. It was all-consuming, and it was threatening to completely knock me off my axis.
Goddamn. I just described Creighton. He was a storm sent by Mother Nature herself to knock out everyone and everything in his path. Except me. Or especially me because I was knocked over, just from how he was looking at me right now.
His eyes darkened.
He grew eerily still, and I knew it was because he was reading me.
He didn’t say anything. I was seething at him, wanting him to say something. Anything. Because then I’d react. I didn’t know what I would do, but it’d be something.
Anything.
I had to do something.
I couldn’t keep on this way.
I closed my eyes. Sucking in some air again, because fuck him.
One look and he knew. I didn’t know what he knew, but he just knew.
He knew more than I knew myself. He understood me more than I understood myself.
Why him? Why did he get this power over me?
No one else could read me as seamlessly as he could.
Another freak of nature power he’d been gifted.
A tear trickled down my cheek.
He tracked it, his eyes growing fierce.
He’d just been shaking hands and schmoozing with businessmen, and I could see the cut of their three-piece custom suits.
They were powerful men. They were someone in this city.
And they were here, shaking hands with Creighton, and enjoying themselves in his establishment.
I don’t know what they saw when they looked at him.
He was in a suit of his own. He looked so good. He rarely wore them.
I’d seen him in everything by now.
Jeans and a hoodie. A ball cap. That was my favorite look.
Jeans and a leather jacket.
A business suit.
Shirtless and bruised and bloody.
Shirtless and in gray sweats. Barefoot. Like what he wears when he crawls into bed with me.
I suppressed a shiver.
He was gorgeous in every way, and someone that didn’t look altogether human.
Maybe it was his dead eyes? Or the mix of how pretty he looked?
The extreme cut of his jawline? If I brought him home with me, Palma would die from how hot he was.
Marshall would die because he’d know he couldn’t compete against Creighton.
And Heath would just die, because Heath knew who Creighton really was.
Creighton wouldn’t take the risk that he’d make me feel uncomfortable in my home. He wouldn’t care that it’d been Heath’s home longer. That he knew Palma and Marshall much longer than me. He’d just care how Heath’s reaction would make me feel, and he’d do something about it.
I didn’t know I had continued crying until he closed the distance and his finger touched my cheek, soaking up another tear. He held it away. “Who do I kill for this?”
I reached out, without thinking, and took hold of his wrist, keeping his hand in front of me. My finger moved over his vein. “You’d have to kill yourself.” I waited, feeling his pulse spike as my answer registered.
He let out a soft sigh, closing the distance between us until his chest was softly grazing against mine. He brought his finger to his mouth, and he tasted my tear, his tongue sucking on his finger.
I was still a mess inside, churning and twisting and raw, but it hit me with the force of an F5 tornado. This desire for him.
I wanted him.
Now.
My hand stayed wrapped around his, and it brushed against his jawline, feeling the roughness that he hadn’t shaved away that day, but I didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to.
Everything was twisting inside of me.
I hated him.
But fuck him, I couldn’t kill him.
I couldn’t walk away from him.
What did I do?
He was torturing me.
I was so tired of the destruction that came along with Creighton.
I was doomed.
“Blake,” he whispered.
I growled, savagely, and my hand grabbed hold of his shirt. I fisted it.
I needed . . .
I licked my lips.
What did I need?
A voice in the back of my head told me to make him pay.
His eyes were glittering. He was smiling. And staring at me, still so close. He wiped away the rest of my tears. He leaned down, his forehead resting to mine, and he breathed out, “You have such hate in your eyes. What is wrong?”
I lifted my other hand, circling his wrist as he was holding my other wrist in place.
“You. You’re what’s wrong.” And because I was suddenly burning up, I shoved his hand away from me, tearing my other wrist out of his hold.
When he fell back, I moved to the side, slipping out. “Stay the fuck away from me.”