Chapter 8 Angel
Chapter Eight
ANGEL
“Let’s go,” I said, plucking leaves and sticks out of my long blonde hair. “I’ll drive,” I added firmly, as his motorcycle came into view under the dim streetlight. But Hunter picked me up around the waist and sat me down in the front.
So I’d be right between his legs again.
“You will not. Just tell me where to go.”
He got on behind me, his hip brushing mine as he put on his helmet.
“That was just a stress response back there in the forest,” I said, feeling my sore lips gently. Damn, he had been big. “Nothing more.”
A tiny drop of Hunter’s cum slipped down my throat and slid with sticky depravity across my oversensitive nipple. Wriggling uncomfortably, I tried to ignore it.
Had I really just sucked off my brother-in-law?
“I’ll be sure to be around the next time you’re stressed,” Hunter said.
“Jackass—” I sputtered, but he popped my helmet back on and squeezed my hips between his thighs, in such an obscene gesture that I was struck silent with indignation.
I didn’t want to speak to his arrogant ass anymore, but I was forced to point out where to go as we headed back to the city.
It had taken me one second after Hunter told me about Henry’s little blackmail scheme to know exactly who could help me.
Our destination was my best friend Jasper Sinclair’s penthouse suite in town.
Even though it was late at night, I knew Jasper was a night owl, and would still be awake, so I sent him a text on Hunter’s phone as we pulled down a dark city street and Hunter parked in between two massive Mercedes.
Jasper was my age, pale-skinned, with messy light brown hair and an auburn moustache. He was shaped a bit like a bowling pin, and we’d been best friends ever since struggling through a cycling class in college together.
He buzzed us up, and appeared in the doorway in a beautiful silky bathrobe.
“Shh, Terrell is asleep,” he said, “I swear, that man is like a machine. He’ll be up at 5 am, wanting to make me some noxious green smoothie.”
Then he saw Hunter and instantly shook his head.
“Hell no. Hell no. Baby doll, you are always welcome, but I told you Henry is not!”
“This isn’t Henry,” I said. “It’s his twin brother, Hunter. Hunter, this is my best friend Jasper. He’s a cybersecurity professional.”
Hunter stuck out his hand.
“We’ve met,” he said. “At your friend Rachel’s wedding last summer. Henry didn’t want to go, so he sent me.”
Jasper’s eyes bugged out and I felt like I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Henry had been so sweet on that trip, too. Dancing on the floor with me for hours, even staying after to help box up the wedding cake.
If that had been Hunter, what else had been Hunter?
I didn’t want to think about that.
“Well, if you’re Hunter, then come in.”
How many times had Henry outsourced doing things with me to Hunter?
I knew that had been the first time he’d fucked me, because Henry never fucked like that. But what other mundane, daily memories had been Hunter?
My stomach turned over uncomfortably.
“What’s the problem?” Jasper asked when we were seated around his kitchen table. His penthouse was a mix of his and Terrell’s styles—Terrell’s love of the sleek and modern, and Jasper’s love of thrift story doilies.
“Henry has been secretly recording us having sex and using it as blackmail material to make Hunter do what he wants. How can I stop him?"
“What a creepy little rat face,” Jasper said. “Let me grab my laptop. What’ve you done so far?”
“I’ve done everything I can think of,” Hunter said, running a hand through his dark hair until it stuck straight up from his head.
Even casual motions like this betrayed how different he was from Henry—my husband would never have any worry or anxiety like this over me.
“I’ve broken into his office multiple times.
Searched all his damn filing cabinets. Taken every fucking flash drive I saw.
But I never seemed to find the damn things.
I don’t know how many copies he has. I don’t know how many flash drives I’d have to destroy.
I’ll go back, though. As many times as I need to make sure he can’t do this to her anymore. ”
Hunter folded his hands together on the table, and I saw a muscle throb in his jaw. There was a slight tremble to his hands, and the muscles pulsed in his big forearms. Like he was holding himself back with a massive effort.
Hunter had done all that for me?
Jasper hmphed disapprovingly, then turned back to his laptop.
“Baby, you might look like a snack, but you are clearly not the brains of the operation. Sit down and let Daddy handle this.”
“You mean—you can figure out where they are? So I can destroy them?”
Jasper only snorted. “Unless Henry actually secured his shit, yeah, I’ll be able to do this in about two seconds.”
Hunter glanced over at me, an expression of such hope in his face that it almost took my breath away—his one deep brown eye and multicolored amber eye both gleaming at me.
The thing was. . .the more I knew Hunter. . .the less I saw Henry when I looked at him. . .because my husband had never looked at me like that. . .
"Your husband is a moron,” Jasper said, breaking into my chaotic thoughts. “Look at how easy it is to break into all his shit.”
“Be careful!” I begged. “I don’t want you to do anything to get in trouble!"
He made a rudely dismissive noise. “Poppycock! As if he’s going to turn me into the police with all the illegal things he’s doing with his business.”
Jasper made a few quick little tippity-taps with the keys, and then said, “Done.”
“What do you mean done?” Hunter asked incredulously.
“I mean, I just deleted any video he’s saved for the past 10 years. If he so much as took a video of a motherfucking hummingbird, it’s gone now.”
Hunter’s massive shoulders slumped. “I’ve tried to get those videos for years,” he said. “I’m sorry, Angel. I should have told you years ago, I guess. I just—couldn’t bear the thought of hurting you.”
Something flip-flopped inside me again as I saw his mouth tighten in pain.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Besides, this isn’t remotely over. I want revenge. Dark, dirty, nasty revenge.”
“Well, say no more,” Jasper said. “Let’s see what else I can find.”
We were silent for a moment as Jasper’s keys went tippity-tap again. If only Hunter wasn’t so big. It seemed like there was nowhere to look to avoid him.
“Looks like he’s using his business as a front for various illegal activities,” Jasper said.
“A little blackmail here. A little tax fraud there. What a naughty boy. Oh, looks like one thing he’s doing is working with a psychiatrist who verifies an ‘insanity defense’ for certain criminals.
Then once they go to a psychiatric facility, they are smuggled out and go back to their crimes.
A nice little scheme, if you ask me. But not exactly on the up-and-up. ”
“What’s the psychiatrist’s name?” I asked.
“Dr. Willoughby-Horton. Looks like Henry’s been paying her out of company funds, too.”
Of course. Our marriage counselor.
Jasper whistled. “That’s a nice packet she’s making out of it.”
I began to pace around the room.
“Fucking bastard. I’m going to go over there and burn down his house. I want my shit back and I want out of this marriage.”
Furious, I grabbed my shoes, only to feel Hunter’s hard fingers on my elbow. “Wait a minute, spitfire! Get some rest now. We can figure out what to do tomorrow.”
“Who is we?”
“He fucked me over too, you know. I’m doing this with you.”
My heart was pounding. Hunter was so close that I could smell him—mouth-watering mixture of cologne and heat and salt and something intensely, disturbingly feral and masculine.
Jasper had miraculously stayed silent during this interchange, and I could feel him simmering with mischief. “Good idea. Let’s sleep on it and think about revenge in the morning. You two can take the spare bedroom,” he added, disappearing down the hallway.
“Don’t you have two spare bedrooms?” I whisper-yelled after him.
“Nope, the other one is getting renovated. Byeee.”
I did not look at Hunter as I headed in the other direction, flouncing into the spare bedroom and trying to shut the door behind me.
“I’m coming in there with you,” Hunter growled, one big foot in the doorway.
My heart pounding, I tried to shake off the arousal that was growing inside me.
“You think you can just barge in and have sex with me? Well, you’re wrong, buddy!”
“I’m not going to sleep in the bed,” he said, closing the door to Terrell and Jasper’s massive spare room. “I’m going to sit in that chair in the corner and make sure you don’t try to run out of here and do something stupid, like confront Henry on your own.”
“Were you sitting in the dark outside my house watching me sleep?” I demanded, clenching my fists.
“Yes,” Henry said.
He did not volunteer any further information, but I felt a tingling sensation all along my arms, sizzling across my chest and down past my belly, heating up between my thighs.
“That’s messed up,” I said. “That you were just sitting there watching me like a creeper.”
Hunter was still watching me, his arms crossed across his big chest, that dark pitch-black hair curling over the collar of his dirty T-shirt.
Why had he cut his own face?
“I know it’s fucked up,” he said.
My breath was coming in heated little pants.
Had Henry ever given this much of a fuck about me?
Since Jasper was being a dick, I grabbed one of his nicest, silkiest shirts to wear to bed and I changed in the bathroom.
When I came back out, Hunter was in the chair, and his eyes instantly met mine, flicking down my body to where the bottom of the shirt hit me at the top of my thighs, brushing like a whisper past my pussy.
I bent to close the curtain for the big window that looked out over downtown, and Hunter groaned.
“Angel, you need to move away from me,” he bit out. “Or I won’t be able to control myself.”
My heart was pounding at the way his big hands were digging into the side of the chair.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked.