Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Daisy
Beckett is slouched in the wingback leather chair squeezing the stress ball in his hand with his eyes on the ceiling. A book is open, face down on his lap.
He looks over at the doorway and gets to his feet, shoving his hand through his hair. “Are you okay?”
I nod, my gaze lowering to his gray sweatpants and plain white T-shirt then back up to his face. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just got thirsty.” I hold up the bottle as if I need to show proof. “Why are you still awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He shrugs. “Just have a lot on my mind, I guess.”
“Like what?” I ask, boldly venturing farther into the room and stopping in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “Maybe it will help to talk about it.”
“At one in the morning? I doubt it.”
I run my finger over the spines. Hunter S. Thompson. Burroughs. Faulkner. And laugh under my breath when my finger lands on a Voltaire novel. “So you’d rather just sit there brooding over it, huh?”
“I don’t brood,” he scoffs.
“Oh, yes, you do. You brood, sulk, skulk, glower, glare, scowl.”
He leans his shoulder against the far wall, crossing his arms and ankles. “Your command of the English language is impressive.”
“Not bad for a girl who could barely read.” I meant for it to sound lighthearted but fail.
“That wasn’t your fault,” he says. “Did you ever get help for your dyslexia?”
I shrug. “Yes and no. I eventually learned how to read and grew to love it.” Robert gave me that. He was the one who got me the help I needed. And through reading I got to experience the joys and wonders of other worlds.
I loved being transported to Narnia, to Manderley, to pirate ships, and Gothic mansions.
What I didn’t love was textbooks and learning by rote.
“But the schools I went to never served me, so I dropped out. I never made it past the eleventh grade.” I look over at him to see his reaction. He doesn’t look shocked by my admission. His face is shuttered. Blasé.
I continue moving toward him, one tiny step at a time, my hand lovingly caressing the volumes on the shelves.
Tolstoy. Kundera. Garcia Marquez.
“I bet you got straight A’s, didn’t you? I bet you were the valedictorian.”
“I was.” He starts from his end of the bookcase and mirrors my actions, running his fingers over the spines.
If we keep going, we’ll eventually meet in the middle.
“I was driven to excel academically because I had a chip on my shoulder and something to prove.”
“You? A chip on your shoulder? I can’t even imagine that.” He laughs. A low, rumbling sound that makes my stomach do cartwheels.
I tilt my head, curiosity getting the best of me. “What were you trying to prove?”
“That I was better than everyone. Better than the assholes who bullied me at boarding school. Better than my father. My best defense was to rise above. To be smarter. Richer. More successful.”
I can’t picture him being bullied. Just a few days ago, I would have called him the bully. But after the way he reacted tonight it makes sense. It’s not unusual for people who were bullied to turn into bullies themselves.
“So when you grabbed that guy by the throat tonight…You didn’t only do it for my benefit, that was for you, too?”
He thinks about it for a moment, his hand stroking his jaw. “Probably, yes.”
I run my finger down the cracked spine of The Count of Monte Cristo , pull it off the shelf and flip through the yellowed pages.
Holding it close to my face, I breathe in the scent, and it transports me to another time and place.
Beckett was reading this book the summer he was thirteen. I remember how he used to sit down by the creek with his back leaning against the trunk of a willow tree and read for hours.
I would beg him to read aloud, and then I’d reenact the scene, jousting with a stick or strutting around in my pretend cape like I was a count while he laughed at my antics.
“You’re Dantès,” I say. “Driven by revenge.”
Beckett was also my Heathcliff. My Darcy. My Edmund. My first crush. The first boy who ever stole my heart.
I would have followed that boy anywhere.
I had hearts for eyes and flowers blooming from my chest and I wonder if he ever noticed.
“You think that’s the only thing I care about? Revenge?” he asks, and now he’s standing before me, close enough to touch. Close enough to inhale his singular scent. Warm spice. Leather. Pheromones.
“I think it’s the only reason you agreed to this, yes. I don’t think you’re here for the money any more than I am. You want to find a way to make your father pay even though he’s already in the grave.”
His gaze flits over my face. “So clever.”
I return the book to its spot on the shelf and turn to face him. “So what’s your plan?”
“To sell this place to my father’s enemy, of course.” He tilts his head. “Are you going to try to stop me?”
I smile. It feels like another game. “Is that what you’re hoping I do? Save you from yourself?”
“I fully embrace who I am. Who I’ve become. I’m not looking to be saved, Daisy.”
“Well, at least we have one thing in common, Beckett.” I lift my chin. “Neither am I.”
“Good. Because I’m not in the business of saving people. Especially not the daughter of my sworn enemy.”
It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself that it still holds true. His words don’t hold their customary bite.
“The woman who ruined your life,” I remind him, throwing fuel on the fire. “If it’s any consolation, she didn’t treat me much better.”
“It’s not.”
That might be the sweetest thing he’s ever said to me. His words compel me to take another step closer. He doesn’t try to put any distance between us and I don’t move a single muscle.
It feels like the air has shifted and all the molecules have rearranged.
I inhale a breath and exhale a shaky one.
Neither of us moves. The air is still. Quiet except for the sound of our breathing. Mine sounds ragged.
I want him.
It hits me with a sudden force and I nearly stagger from the weight of it.
This has nothing to do with an erotic dream.
I want the guy standing before me. The one made of flesh and bone and muscle.
Beckett Heyward with his arctic eyes and sharp jaw and rippling abs.
The cold, infuriating, arrogant, rude man who charged in on his steed to rescue the damsel in distress.
The feminist in me is raging against it. You don’t want him. You don’t even like him half the time. You know how to take care of yourself. You don’t need a man to do it for you.
He’s not the guy for you. Cease and desist.
But my raging hormones are arguing. But come on, that was sexy. Did you see the way he charged in and took care of business? Who doesn’t want a man defending their honor?
“Beckett.” My voice is hushed like we’re in a church or a public library.
“Daisy.”
I lift my hand to his face, cup his cheekbone, and brush my thumb over the stubble on his jaw.
His Adam’s apple bobs on a swallow and I can feel his body tensing, that’s how close we are. “If I kiss you, will you turn into a prince?”
He looks at me through hooded eyes. “Would you like that?” he asks, his voice low, raspy.
“No. Not even a little bit.” It feels like the point of no return. A moment I should be running from, not inviting. But I’ve never had the best impulse control and I’m honestly questioning how I’ve resisted him for this long. So I look him right in the eye and give him a little smile. “I’ve always preferred the Beast.”
His blue eyes darken, and I have no idea how I could have ever thought they were cold. They smolder . “Then you’ve come to the right castle.”
He yanks me against his hard body and grabs my chin forcefully, almost punishingly. “Last chance to run, princess.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
No sooner are the words out than his lips crash against mine like a thunderstorm.
It feels like my body is going to burst from the rush of adrenaline as hot, expert lips claim mine.
His hands grip my hips as he deepens the kiss and sucks my tongue into his mouth, releasing a feral groan that has me clenching my thighs.
I grab his face in my hands and press my body flush with his, desperate to erase every inch of space between us.
There is nothing sweet about this kiss. It’s raw. It’s feral. It’s filled with weeks of pent-up frustration and anger.
Our tongues are dueling, fighting for dominance. I claw his shoulders. He fists my hair, yanking it hard to expose the column of my neck.
He brands my skin with his lips. His teeth graze my jaw.
I sink my nails into his shoulders through the cotton T-shirt as his hands coast down the backs of my thighs and then he’s lifting me off the ground.
My legs cinch around his waist and he spins us around and pins me against the wall of books.
He’s hard, everywhere. So hard that my back arches off the wall and my core clenches as he rolls his hips.
I moan. He groans.
I sink my teeth into his full bottom lip to punish him. For what, I don’t know. For being him. For making me want him when I know I shouldn’t.
He growls in response and bares his teeth like the beast I was trying to awaken and gives me one more bruising kiss before pulling away.
We’re both panting and it takes a moment to come back to earth and remember where I am.
I can’t say if that kiss lasted minutes or hours but I’m still pinned between his body and the wall of books, so I see the moment when it hits him.
Regret washes over his face, and I can almost write the script, that’s how certain I am that he’s going to make me wish I’d never asked for this.
“Fuck.” His forehead drops against mine. “This was a bad fucking idea.”
“The absolute worst,” I agree, although I don’t sound nearly as convincing as he did.
“It was a mistake,” he says, lowering me to the ground and backing away. He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.”
Of all the things I would have wanted him to apologize for, this kiss certainly wasn’t one of them.
He’s composed himself and looks like his cool, unruffled self again. Just as if that kiss never happened.
I’m not about to make a fool of myself again if that’s what he’s worried about. But I’m not going to let him get the last word in either. I’m not going down without a fight.
“Let’s just put it behind us and forget it ever happened. Not like it was all that memorable anyway,” I toss out.
Normally, I would look to see his reaction but I opt for a graceful exit instead and walk out the door with my kiss-bruised lips, his scent on my skin, and my head held high.
Fuck you, Beckett Heyward.
I refuse to be any man’s mistake.