Chapter 13 Riley
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Riley
It was Thursday night. Book club night, and I was a mess.
This week’s book had been Margo’s suggestion.
A dark romance with scenes so explicit that I’d blushed just reading them alone in my apartment.
BDSM elements. A possessive, borderline obsessive hero.
A heroine who discovered she liked being claimed and owned.
Being the sole focus of a man’s consuming, all-encompassing attention.
The problem was, every time I read those scenes, I didn’t picture the book’s brunette, nerdy male lead.
I pictured a certain tall, blonde Australian with gray eyes and red knuckles…And I may have done things while picturing that. Things I wasn’t proud of and which involved my hand and my bed and gasping his name into my pillow at two in the morning.
Multiple times.
At three in the morning, in the shower, even once while eating breakfast, which was a new low even for me.
I’d been reading a particularly intense scene involving a wall and creative use of restraints, and suddenly my cereal was soggy and my hand was between my thighs and I was imagining Caelan pinning me against my kitchen counter.
I was a disaster. A horny, confused, emotionally compromised disaster who apparently couldn’t eat Cheerios without having sexual fantasies.
And I may have dressed for tonight’s book club with a specific audience in mind.
The blouse was tighter than my usual choices, hugging my curves, the neckline dipping low enough to show a lot of cleavage, the kind that said “please look at my breasts” while maintaining plausible deniability.
I’d tried on four different bras before settling on the one that created maximum lift.
My shorts made my ass look amazing. I’d checked approximately seven times in the mirror, twisting around to verify from every angle.
I’d even put on perfume, the one I saved for special occasions.
I was absolutely, definitely trying to get Caelan’s attention. God, I was pathetic. I was a grown woman who wrote romance novels for a living, and here I was, a teenager trying to get noticed by her crush at the school dance. Next I’d be “accidentally” dropping my pen so he could pick it up.
Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. I made a mental note.
The wine bar filled up with the usual crowd. Thessa arrived with Jade, the two of them practically glued together, Jade’s hand in Thessa’s back pocket in a way that made me simultaneously happy for my friend and jealous of their easy intimacy. Thessa caught my eye and grinned.
“He’s running late,” she said, because apparently my face was an open book. “Some errand. He’ll be here.”
“I wasn’t...”
“Sure.” Thessa’s grin widened. “Nice shirt, by the way.”
My cheeks heated. Was it that obvious?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. And I’m not sleeping with your best friend.”
Jade choked on her wine.
We were all starting to settle down when the door opened and a new face walked in.
Mid-thirties, brown hair, dimples. Boy-next-door cute in a very conventional way.
The kind of guy who’d look good on a dating app profile but forgettable in real life.
He scanned the room, spotted me organizing the charcuterie across the table, and headed over.
“Hi. Is this the romance book club?” His smile was friendly. “I’m Sam. I saw the flyer.”
“That’s us.” I gestured at an empty chair, a brief flashback of the time another man showed up unannounced to book club. “You’re welcome to join. We’re discussing...”
“His Darkest Desire. I know.” Sam’s eyes traveled down my body, slowly, taking in the cleavage I’d specifically put on display, the legs my shorts were showing off, every inch of skin I’d strategically revealed.
When his gaze came back to my face, he smiled wider.
“I’ve already read it. Twice. I have a feeling I’m going to love this book club. ”
He sat in the chair beside me, the one that was usually empty until Caelan arrived.
The one Caelan always took. I had a bad feeling about this.
The discussion began and we soon learned Sam asked good questions, had clearly read the book, and had thoughts about character motivation, narrative structure and the author’s use of tension.
He was also sitting way too close to me and kept finding excuses to lean in.
“What do you think about the hero’s possessive behavior?” he asked, angling toward me as if I was the only person in the room. His knee brushed mine under the table. “Do you find that attractive?”
“It depends on execution,” I said, shifting away. “There’s a difference between protective and controlling.”
“Absolutely.” He shifted closer, his hand landed on the table near my elbow, fingers drumming casually. “I think the key is consent. The heroine wants to be possessed. She asks for it.”
“That’s true.”
“So it’s romantic.” His hand moved closer to my arm. “To be wanted that much. To be someone’s everything.”
I shifted away again, but he shifted closer again. A slow-motion chase around the table. We were ten minutes into a debate about the hero’s possessive behavior when the door opened and finally, Caelan walked in.
He was wearing a dark blue button-down, sleeves rolled to his forearms in a way that should be illegal. His hair was slightly disheveled, like he’d been running his fingers through it. He looked good, like always. It was genuinely offensive.
Some people noticed his entrance. Sloane’s head turned. Margo looked up from her wine. Sam didn’t notice at all. He was too busy making a point about consent in dark romance, his hand creeping toward my arm again.
Caelan’s eyes found me immediately. His face lit up with the smile that made my stomach flip, the one that made me feel I was the best part of his day. He started toward me, his whole body oriented in my direction.
Then his gaze slid to the man sitting beside me. To Sam’s hand, hovering near my elbow, and the way he was angled toward me.
The smile disappeared.
What replaced it was an expression I’d never seen on Caelan’s face before, cold, predatory. The look of a man who was calculating exactly how much damage he could inflict and how quickly.
And then something odd happened. Jealousy flooded my chest. Possessiveness, hot and bordering on unhinged. The urge to rip Sam away from me, to stake a claim, to make it clear that she belonged to me and no one else was allowed to touch her…
Wait. What the fuck? She, her?
I wasn’t feeling jealous. I had nothing to be jealous of.
Sam wasn’t touching any woman I cared about.
He was touching me, and I found it annoying, not threatening.
But I felt it anyway. In my chest, in my blood, like someone else’s emotions were bleeding into my own. I rubbed at my sternum, confused.
Sam noticed the movement. His eyes dropped to my chest, specifically to my tits, highlighted by the rubbing motion, and stayed there, lingered, appreciated in a way that made my skin crawl.
Caelan noticed too.
He was across the room in three strides, stopping directly beside Sam’s chair. His expression could curdle milk, could freeze water. Could make a grown man reconsider every life choice that had led him to this moment.
“You’re in my seat.” The words came out in a low, threatening growl.
Sam looked up, eyebrows raised. He glanced between Caelan and me, a cocky smirk playing at his lips, completely unaware of the danger he was in. “Sorry, man. Finders keepers. Better luck arriving on time next time.”
The temperature in the room dropped approximately fifteen degrees.
“I’m going to give you one chance,” Caelan said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
“Get the fuck out of that chair, or I’ll break your legs and put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your miserable existence.
You will never walk again. You will never sit in a chair you weren’t invited to sit in again.
And every time you look at the useless stumps where your legs used to be, you’ll remember this moment and wish you’d made a different choice. ”
Oh my god. The room was silent now, and everyone was staring.
Margo’s wine glass was frozen halfway to her mouth.
Sloane looked like she was watching the best show on television, popcorn practically manifesting in her hands.
Thessa had her face buried in her palms, shoulders shaking with what might be laughter or mortification.
Sam’s face had gone pale. His smirk was gone.
“Additionally,” Caelan continued, still in that calm, pleasant voice, as if discussing the weather or making dinner plans, “if I ever see you look at her that way again, I’ll remove your eyes with my fingers, one at a time.”
“Dude, what the fuck...”
“And if you ever. Touch her. Again,” Caelan leaned down, getting into Sam’s face, “if you so much as brush against her accidentally in a crowded room, I will hunt you down. I will find you wherever you hide. And I will take you apart piece by piece and enjoy every second of it. Do you understand?”
I was speechless.
“Okay, okay, Jesus Christ.” Sam scrambled out of the chair so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. “She’s all yours, man. Fucking psycho.”
He relocated to a seat on the far side of the room, giving Caelan a ten-foot buffer.
And me? I felt it again. That surge of emotion that wasn’t mine. Satisfaction, the pleasure of victory. And underneath it, flooding my chest the moment Caelan’s eyes met mine, a warmth that made my throat tight.
Happiness. Just from looking at me.
What the hell was happening to me?
Caelan dropped into the chair beside me. His jaw was still tight, his shoulders tense, but he reached over and gave my hand a brief squeeze before pulling back.
The warmth that flooded my chest at the touch wasn’t mine either.
Or maybe it was. I couldn’t tell anymore. The line between my feelings and these other feelings, these external feelings, was getting blurrier by the second. I was so damn confused, but I decided to test my theory.