Chapter 8
WYLDER
I startle awake to someone standing over me, my body reacting as it was trained to do. My arm swings out and grabs on to the figure. I immediately fling them onto the bed beside me, my body flipping over as I pin them in place.
And on their neck is the blade of my dagger.
I could push it in, could end it all before they even have a chance to—
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Wylder,” Neo hisses, wriggling beneath me. “I knew you’d be into some kinky shit, but this is a little too much. I’m not into blood play.”
My eyes blink away the sleep, the adrenaline leaving my body in slow waves. I squint down at him, wishing I had my contacts in. “Neo?”
“Yes, asshole. Me.”
“What are you doing in my bedroom?” I ask before realizing it was a ridiculous question. I know he sneaks around while I’m sleeping, but still…that’s dangerous.
He continues to try to break free, but I don’t let him. His legs are pinned under mine, his arms above his head, his wrists encircled by my fingers.
I should let him go, but I only seem to lean in farther.
“You can take the knife away from my neck.”
“No.”
I can almost hear his eye roll. “Fine. I don’t mind it here. Being held down by you. It’s nice, actually. Makes my dick hard.”
My throat bobs, but I don’t release him. I do, however, remove the tip of the blade from his neck. I might want him to cry, but not bleed.
Never want to see him hurt.
“You don’t believe me,” he says when I don’t respond. “It is. So hard.”
I swallow, remembering yesterday morning in his bedroom. How it looked with his hand wrapped around it. “Shut up.”
“Mm, no, thanks.”
My jaw clicks, and my fingers flex against his wrists, feeling the speeding pulse beneath his skin.
Take him. Take him.
I tighten my hold on him. “Maybe I’ll make you.”
He wrinkles his nose and sighs. “Yeah, you might want to hold off on that.”
Oh, I know that look. My eyes meet his in the darkness, and his long lashes fan out on his cheeks. “And why is that?”
Neo’s eyes dart sideways. “Welllll, I might have gone overboard.”
My lungs constrict, my body stiffening against him. “What did you do?”
He hesitates a moment, and then shakes his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”
I sigh, leaning over to click the lamp on. Reaching into a drawer, I pull out my glasses. Thankfully, I don’t need to get off Neo to do either of these things. And now I can see every inch of Neo’s reluctant expression. It quickly shifts into confusion. “Since when do you need glasses?”
“Since always,” I say, my voice clipped.
“Why haven’t I seen them before?”
My father’s voice rings loud in my mind. “No heir of mine will show visible weakness. That includes spectacles.”
I clear my throat. “I usually wear contacts.”
“You should wear these more often.” He touches the frame gently and gives me a wry smile. “Didn’t think you could get hotter, but apparently I was wrong.” His fingers trace over the raven I have tattooed on my chest, just above my heart.
My monster puffs up his chest at the way he’s looking at me.
I ignore it. “Stop avoiding the question and tell me what you did.”
He winces. “Umm…”
I hear a commotion in the hallway, a shout of voices. What the fuck? I turn my head slightly, still not moving off him as the noise grows closer. “Neo…”
“Oh shit,” he mutters under his breath. “Just remember that I’m secretly adorable.”
Is he? There are many adjectives I’d apply to Neo, but adorable isn’t one of them.
The door bursts open, and I see it all. Or at least I think I do.
“Candace?” I ask when I see her looming in the doorway, her eyes wild with fury. She looks different, dusky, not the right color for a human. “Why is your skin…blue?”
She vibrates with unbridled fury, the feel of it pulsing across the room. It probably doesn’t help that I’m half-naked on top of Neo at the moment. And after dinner, well, she might be a loose cannon, especially as I didn’t come to her defense.
Instead, I went to Neo’s.
Her finger lifts, and her entire hand trembles.
“He…” Her mouth opens and closes as my gaze shifts to Cade and Samson, who are standing behind her. Cade is sporting a wide grin, and Samson has a hatchet raised over his head, like he may just slam it down onto her at any given moment.
I find that I don’t really mind that idea. I mean, I’d mind the mess, but not the actual murder.
“You…” she spits, her blue skin seeming to darken the angrier she gets. “Are you fucking?!” Her voice is a screech, and my ears ache. I sigh and roll off Neo, standing up and realizing that my cock is half-hard in my boxer briefs.
The adrenaline, I tell myself.
Not the dreams or the fact that I liked what I felt beneath me. Or the memory of what happened yesterday.
What almost happened.
“Why is your skin blue?” I ask, ignoring her question. I’m obviously not fucking Neo. I still have my briefs on, for a start. Even if I were, Candace and I aren’t actually a couple.
I reminded her of such when I deposited her in a guest room for the night. Tempted as I was to send her home, I couldn’t stand the idea of another argument.
Looking at her now…that may have been the wrong decision.
“She’s a Smurf,” Cade says unhelpfully.
“I always hated those fuckers. Gonna kill ’em.” Samson adds, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
It’s a good thing Candace signed several ironclad NDAs. She doesn’t know we’re The Firm, but with all the murder threats being tossed her way, she could put two and two together. I highly doubt she will though.
Neo would.
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. My glasses nudge up as I do so. “Do not kill anyone.”
As I say that, Candace lunges forward, trying to reach Neo, but I stop her with a snap of my arm. Careful not to hurt her, I restrain her kicking and screaming body against mine.
“I’m going to fucking kill him!” she screams. “He’s ruined my life!”
Red flickers in the corner of my vision. “You won’t touch him. You don’t even know it was him who did this.”
Her eyes flare. “I do. He left a note with his name signed at the bottom.”
I glance over at Neo, who doesn’t look sorry in the least. “Really?”
His head bobs. “Of course. Didn’t want anyone else taking the credit. I didn’t expect her to be so blue, but I must say I’m proud of it. I outdid myself.”
She screams again, completely unhinged. I mean, I don’t blame her. She’s the face of her family; she can’t just show up completely blue.
“It doesn’t come off! I look like a monster.” She’s sobbing now, and I should feel bad, but I don’t. Not really. She’s simply awful, and I need to end this facade sooner rather than later.
But perhaps now is not the right time. The amount of work that’s going to go into fixing this mess…
“She does look like a monster,” Samson says. “A Smurf monster.”
I glower at him, but he’s merely eyeing Candace like he wants to take her head off.
Cade, however, steps forward and peels Candace away from me, her sobbing body slumping against him as he drags her toward the door.
“We’ll get her sorted and on the way back home. I won’t even let Samson murder her,” Cade says, and before the door closes, he adds, “Blue does look good with your hair.”
She sobs even louder as the door clicks shut behind them, and I let out a slow breath. And then I turn slowly, trying to keep myself calm, but Neo is still in my bed, his shirt falling over his shoulder, his hair a mess.
His blue hair.
The color doesn’t look ridiculous on him.
It looks…tempting.
As does the fact that his legs are spread.
“You seem mad, but not as mad as I thought you’d be,” he says thoughtfully.
His lips lift, and my fingers curl into fists as I try to keep myself under control. Keep the monster quiet.
It’s not working.
Take. Take.
Instead, I exhale slowly. “How did you manage to turn her skin blue?”
“Yeah, can’t tell you that. It’s a secret recipe.”
“Is she going to die? Am I going to have to dispose of her body?”
He rubs his chin. “No. But it’s darker than I thought it would be, and to be fair, I didn’t think she’d wash her whole body with it.”
My eyes close. “So, you thought she’d just, what? Wash her face?”
He nods. “Yep.”
He starts to move off the bed, like he’s going to leave, but I stop him in much the same way I stopped Candace earlier. My arm wraps around his waist, pulling him against me. I add the other, just to keep him secure.
Instead of fighting it, he leans into me. He almost nuzzles against my shoulder, his face just about coming up to my collarbone.
My monster approves.
My mouth goes close to his ear. “And you thought you’d wake me up and tell me this?”
“Yep, because when she saw what happened, she was big mad.”
“And how did you know this?” I ask, groaning as the answer comes to me before Neo can give it. “You have a video of it.”
“Umm…” His eyes flash with mischief.
“Neo, you will not release that.”
“Too late,” he whispers, and my arms tighten around him, everything I’m going to have to do to mitigate the damage he did filtering through my mind. But then it snaps back to him when he wriggles against me. “Let me go.”
“No.” I don’t move, just keep him against me.
He sighs. “Wylder.”
“I need to think. You’ve made a mess.”
“I always make a mess.”
“This is…personal.”
He snorts. “Yeah, well, she fucking deserved it.”
My head is pounding. I can barely think straight around the feel of him in my arms. “And did you think about what I deserve?”
Because having to clean this up is going to be a huge clusterfuck. If Neo was hoping to give me a headache with all of this, then he’s succeeded.
“I mean, yeah. I thought about that a lot, actually. You deserve to be happy.”
That’s not the answer I was expecting. The way he says it, with that sass I’ve grown used to…it only fans the angry flames flaring up inside of me.
“Happy? I’m not happy.”
He wriggles against me, and I hold him closer, my nose hitting the side of his hair. He smells like bubblegum. I was never allowed to have that growing up. “Undignified,” my father said.
Much like Neo.
My father would have hated him.