Chapter 18
18
“ D id he touch you?” Reaper said it so softly, it was barely more than a whisper, but I still flinched. I’d grown so used to Kevin’s volatility that I’d been bracing for Reaper to explode.
“No,” I said tightly. “You got there just in time. Thank you.”
He nodded, rigid with tension. “Thank me by explaining how the fuck you ended up there tonight.”
If I told him the truth, I’d have to own up to how right he’d been about marrying Kevin, and he’d know how pathetic I was. He’d know I’d let myself get so desperate that I’d fled my fiancé’s house in the trunk of a car and opted to be abducted by the leader of a biker gang rather than be caught. He’d know exactly how much trouble I’d be in if I didn’t get home soon, and he could possibly use that against me. He’d pulled me out of the frying pan, but that didn’t mean I was safe from the fire yet.
Not a fucking chance I was giving him any of that information.
“Kevin’s at his bachelor party,” I said, as though that explained it.
“I’m aware,” Reaper said calmly.
I scoffed. “Why are you asking questions if you already know everything?”
He flashed a tight smile. “You won’t distract me by being a brat. Answer the question.”
“It was my bachelorette party.”
He caught his lip ring between his teeth. “Uh-huh. Where were your sisters?”
I sighed heavily. “I said I’d meet them after. We’re too recognizable together. It would actually be great if you could just take me to Jacque’s place now.”
It was his turn to scoff. “And lead the Serpents of Death who’re following us straight there?”
I whipped around, and sure enough, I could see the lights of at least two motorcycles tailing us. “Shit! No, don’t lead them there. Where are you going then?”
He looked at me like I was being obtuse. “Back to my party.”
I shook my head roughly. “The last thing I need right now is to end up in a tabloid for attending a sex party.”
He huffed a laugh. “You won’t be anywhere close to the most famous person there. My parties are…discreet.”
I hadn’t been able to find a shred of information about them, despite plenty of covert digging. That didn’t seem like enough reassurance. “Who else will be there?”
He squeezed my knee gently, and the casual contact caught me completely off guard. “It wouldn’t be very discreet if I told you.”
I looked out the window, resisting the urge to clutch his hand to keep it on my knee. I was so shaken, I craved the contact. How the hell was this night going to end now that it had gone this far off the rails?
He lifted his hand to open the glove box and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, the exact kind I’d smoked in the boathouse. Once he’d lit one, he offered it to me.
I instinctively reached for it, then remembered Kevin’s edict and shook my head. “I don’t smoke anymore.” As though smoking were worse than any of his other rules I’d broken tonight.
Reaper opened the window, took a drag, and exhaled deeply. “Neither do I. Hold your hand out.”
I had an instinctive flare of fear, thinking he meant to burn me with it, and I jerked away from him. He looked from me to the road and back again incredulously. He was too perceptive. If he examined my reaction too closely, he was going to learn things I wanted to keep private.
I held my hand out like he’d asked, and it shook violently.
“Take the damn cigarette, Juliet.”
Two deep drags, and I stopped being at risk of sobbing and pouring my heart out to a man who’d comfort me one moment and use it against me the next.
One more, and I trusted my ability to reason out of this clusterfuck.
Reaper reached over and tugged my wrist up so he could take a drag. “Good girl.”
Was he praising me for holding his cigarette or for getting it together? Didn’t matter—the low purr soothed me as much as the cigarette.
He glanced at me sideways. “You were telling me a bullshit story about a bachelorette party… Do you want to finish it or spare us both and get to the part where you tell me the truth?”
I tensed, wondering what I could say. “It was a solo bachelorette party. A last night of freedom. That’s the truth.”
And it was.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and his tone suddenly turned lethal. “You expect me to believe it’s just a coincidence you ended up at that bar and then on the back of that bike? On tonight of all nights. Tell me the truth right now, or you’re going to be introducing Jacque to Thor in a few minutes.”
Goddamn it, I had to tell him more of the truth, or he wasn’t going to buy this.
I was shaking again, livid that he’d bring my sister into this. “It’s not like I picked where I was going! I got there in the trunk of a car, for fuck’s sake!”
He jerked his head to look at me. “Explain.”
I cringed, knowing exactly how pathetic I was about to sound. “Kevin…doesn’t like it when I go out, so I snuck out with one of his men.” He could know that much without knowing how bad it was. Let him think I’d just been trying to cheat without getting caught. “I’m getting married in two weeks, and I didn’t want to only have sex with one person for the rest of my life. I wanted an anonymous fling before becoming someone’s wife.”
“So you’re a fucking defiant brat for him too. At least you’re consistent.” His jaw tensed. “And Thor. Thor was going to be your anonymous fling?”
I shrugged nonchalantly like I’d been in any way a willing participant in that scenario. “A big bad biker seemed like an adventure until he started getting rough.”
He slammed on the brakes hard enough that the seat belt hurt me. “If you’re really that stupid, I’m taking you back to the big bad bikers.”
“Fuck you.”
He punched the steering wheel, uncharacteristically worked up before going ice-cold again. “Yeah. That would’ve been a much better solution. You want sex, Juliet? All you had to do was call me.”
I had no way of calling you. Kevin monitors my phone too closely for that.
Like I hadn’t thought of calling him on a near-nightly basis since I’d moved in with Kevin—sometimes because I ached with a need to know what sex with Reaper would be like and sometimes because I was achingly lonely.
“I don’t want to have sex with you.”
Then I’ll know what I’m missing, and that might be worse than wondering.
He kept his eyes focused on the road, but his shoulders were tense. “We both know that’s a lie. But that’s fine. Makes no difference to me. But you don’t seem to understand what could’ve happened tonight.”
Oh, I knew exactly what could’ve happened, and it was going to haunt my nightmares for a long time.
“Well, it’s a good thing you were there to rescue me,” I snapped. “The knight in shining armor who plans to claim an astronomical price for his aid. So fucking noble.”
He opened his mouth to snap something back, but he closed it and tilted his head. “Wait. You’re telling me one of King’s men was at Thor’s bar tonight? That’s how you got there?”
I slowly said, “Four of King’s men were there. My driver and three enforcers.” Was that information I shouldn’t divulge?
He cursed and picked up his phone. As it was ringing, he glanced at me. “You being there had nothing to do with your fiancé? You swear you were only there for a night of freedom?”
What the hell had I gotten tangled up in? “I swear.”
The person on the phone must’ve picked up because Reaper said, “The deal is compromised. King had guys at your bar tonight.”
He floored the gas, glancing in the rearview mirror. Thor was yelling on the other end, but it wasn’t until I caught “Juliet fucking Bryson” that I realized I hadn’t finished causing trouble for the night.
Reaper’s tone stayed eerily calm. “She has nothing to do with King’s dealings. She made some poor choices this evening, but the two aren’t related.”
He was quiet for a second. “You don’t need to discuss it with her. I’m vouching for her. Go near her, and we’re going to have a problem.” The menace in his tone made me flinch.
He still wasn’t looking at me, but that was probably for the best since he was breaking a hundred miles per hour. That, and he would’ve seen my stunned expression. He was protecting me.
He took two quick turns, and I began to recognize that we were approaching his property. “You’re having some big feelings, Theodore. She’s an asset to me, and that’s as much as you need to know. This deal is too important to muddy it like this. We have to try again. I’ll send one of my people to meet with you later, but Juliet Bryson is nonnegotiable.”
An asset. Of course, he was protecting me. I was about to be a Bryson and a King, with access to information he couldn’t get otherwise.
He hung up the phone, and we sat in silence as he pulled into an underground parking lot that must’ve been attached to his property. It was well lit and spacious, but it was clearly his private parking and not widely used by party attendees because there was only a small collection of expensive cars in a row.
A massive steel gate shut behind us, leaving the bikers where they couldn’t reach us.
We both blew out a breath at the same time. “I’m trusting you, darling. If I find out you lied to me, and you were there on your fiancé’s business tonight, you’re going to regret it.”
Worry knotted in my stomach. I was hiding parts of the truth from him but not that. “I didn’t mean to make such a mess for you. I’m sorry,” I said softly, twisting my fingers together in my lap.
He lifted my chin with his thumb to force me to look at him. “You just saved our asses. If Kevin’s men were there, he’d been tipped off to what we were up to, and the deal was going to go south either way. You probably just saved Thor’s life even if the bastard can’t see it right this second.”
I frowned, trying to make sense of it all. “If I asked what was happening tonight, would you tell me?”
He cupped my face, and I leaned into his touch like a cat that was starved for affection—a pathetic cat who didn’t care if he was using me as long as he kept touching me. “It’s better if you don’t know,” he said.
For a charged second, we just looked into each other’s eyes. I wanted him to pretend nothing outside the SUV mattered and kiss me.
His mouth lifted into a lopsided smile. “I know that look. That look is trouble, and we don’t have time for trouble. I need to talk to my people.”
He opened the door on his side and walked around to open mine. I took the hand he offered to help me down, but he released me as soon as we started walking towards a tunnel. “You need to stay here for at least a few hours until I can make sure things with Thor have settled and he isn’t going to be a problem. Then I can have someone take you home.”
Disappointment sunk through me that I was now just another task he could assign to someone else. It was too similar to the way Kevin would hand me off to his people as soon as he was finished with me.
I’d been getting silly romantic ideas about Reaper, and that needed to stop. Maybe he wasn’t as much of a bastard as I’d made him out to be, but he wasn’t my knight in shining armor either. As we got closer to the door at the end of the lit tunnel, I could make out the thumping bass I’d been able to hear over the phone with him. Through that door was a sex party.
“Can I just wait down here?” I asked in a higher voice than normal. “No one will find me down here.”
He stopped and cocked his head. “You said you wanted a night of freedom. There is no greater freedom than what lies through that door. No inhibitions. No judgment. No consequences. No one will ever know.” As he spoke, he got closer and closer, seducing me with both his words and his proximity. He was close enough to reach out and touch. “You want to fuck someone before you get married?” He made an extravagant hand gesture to lead me towards the door.
I didn’t want to fuck someone . I wanted him. But I was terrified he was something worse than Pandora’s box, afraid he’d ruin me. And I knew I shouldn’t trust him.
I had to go back. Whatever happened tonight, I had to go back to Kevin and pretend none of it had happened.
Reaper misinterpreted my hesitation and tucked his thumbs into the top of his kilt. “Do you think the Juliet who threatened to shoot me in the boathouse will be joining us anytime soon? Or the one who devastated me with a kiss only to admit it was purely mercenary? What about the one who impressed me with her mind, then rejected me when I asked her to stay? Because that Juliet was hungry for life. So was the one who climbed into the trunk of a fucking car to sneak out tonight. You’re really going to waste it sitting in a concrete garage when Eden awaits?”
I was in trouble no matter what happened now. “You promise there is zero chance that my being here will get leaked either to my family or the public?”
“Darling, you could murder someone in there, and no one would ever hear about it.” He flashed me a grin. “But don’t. It’s against the rules, and I’d hate to have to punish you.”
The idea of being punished by him shouldn’t have sent a nervous thrill swooping through my stomach. I raised my chin and pulled open the door.