CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
brOOKLYN
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“How did you get up here?” I ask after opening my door, wearing a sheer white cotton summer nightie.
The peephole had told me who it was, and while I should be wary after he’s lied to me, I found myself opening the door anyway.
Despite our intimate weekend, I feel extremely vulnerable in hardly any clothing, but I suppose I have things I want to say to him. Especially after receiving his legal threat.
How fucking dare he?
Not going to lie, it got my attention and even scared me a little.
But he forgot one thing—and maybe I did too.
I’ve seen the way he looks at me when he’s deep inside me.
I’ve seen the way his barriers melt away and his mouth parts just before he comes.
And those steel-gray eyes swirl with more than just volumes of arousal. There is more.
You belong to me.
He has threatened to destroy my life. I guess if he’s gone to the trouble of changing his identity, then he has a damn good reason. One he will defend. But the threats weren’t necessary.
Essentially, there were a number of paths his legal team would take if I attempted to reveal his real identity on my show. Or to anyone. There’s a lot of small print that I’m yet to read. Bedtime reading, I guess.
“Money.”
Obviously.
“Great. I’m having them fired tomorrow.” I start to shut the door, but he stops it with his foot.
“I gave the guy a thousand dollars. Very few people will refuse that.” He tells me as if that’s explanation enough, and the man who should have done his job was within his rights.
My eyes widen.
“Jesus. Who the hell carries a thousand dollars in their back pocket?”
He doesn’t answer.
Right. Billionaires do.
Which is not the point, and he needs to leave.
Now.
“Lisen Travis...Terrance—”
“Travis. That’s been my name for a long time.” He interrupts, a dark shadow crossing his face.
I fold my arms across my chest. Silly really, given he’s seen every inch of my body. He notices and shakes his head like he’s irritated by my response. “Brook, let me in. I can’t fucking think straight. We need to talk.”
That’s bullshit.
Since I left his mother’s place, he’s clearly been of sound mind and was able to put a lot of things into motion.
Can’t think, my ass.
“You were sound enough to get your lawyer to whip up a lovely letter to me in under an hour.” I snap. “Rather ironic you sent your little security guys over to protect me when you are the fucking threat.”
Asshole.
I jut out my hip and tap my foot. I really wish I were fully clothed. Standing here in a slinky nightie is not helping me to look intimidating.
Which is ridiculous.
I’m five foot five and he’s three times my size.
Luna rubs up against my ankle sleepily and yawns, not helping my tough guy act in the slightest.
Travis places a palm on the doorjamb and lets out a sigh. My gaze shoots to his bulging biceps and then back at him. He notices, but those glowering eyes don’t change.
He’s still wearing the blue jeans, Prada sneakers, and black cashmere sweater he changed into on the jet.
Then his expression softens, and I know exactly what he’s about to do.
No.
I uncross my arms as Travis takes a step forward, making me back up.
“Oh, no you don’t. Stay out there, Mr. Liar.” I yelp.
Ignoring me, he shuts the door behind him and takes my hips, moving me farther into the apartment.
“Brook. I need you to sit down and listen to what I have to say. If you still want me to leave, I will. Well, maybe.”
What does that mean? Maybe.
This is my apartment.
He’s lied. He’s used me. But as the back of my legs hits the sofa and I press my hands against the soft wool over his pecs, I hate myself for wanting him to wrap his arms around me.
I can’t tell anyone about this, but I phoned Jasmine when I got home earlier. I’d promised to when we landed and after messaging, she was awake, unable to sleep.
“How was it?” she asked quietly, clearly not wanting to wake Tony.
If only I’d been able to tell her the full truth.
“Amazing. We were in Switzerland.”
“Switzerland!” she cried way too loudly. “Tony took me to the Adirondacks.”
I chuckled.
“Well, he wasn’t a billionaire,” I offered.
“Still isn’t, just for the record.” I hear her sigh. “Tell me more. Let me live vicariously.”
“We had a view of the Matterhorn.”
“The mountain?”
“There’s that Columbia education paying off.” I laughed, even though I hadn’t smiled in hours.
“Ha, ha. What else? Did you make love all weekend?”
Ergh.
Yes.
“It, well, yes. But it’s nothing serious. I won’t be seeing him again.”
“What? Brook. The guy flew you across the world in his private jet to stay in a resort right in front of the Matterhorn. What’s wrong with him? Small dick? Can’t use it? Does he not go down on you?”
I closed my eyes, pinching my nose.
“Yes. He does it all. Well.”
“Well, while you sort it out, I’m going to work out the bridesmaid dress I’ll be wearing.” Jasmine chastised. “Unless the man is gay, I’m missing something.”
Yes, she was—a whole lot of somethings.
Despite me feeling, earlier in the day, that Travis was the perfect man (sans the sex club and no desire to commit), I’d known this wasn’t going anywhere. But he asked me to stay at his apartment. To pack up Luna and move in for a week.
Which would lead to another week...
And another.
I was certain we both knew it.
What I didn’t know was that he had an agenda. He’d lied about who he was and why he’d shown interest in me.
For the story.
Clearly.
He’s Leo Taylor’s son.
But he’s looking at me the way he has all weekend. Hungry. Craving. Dominant.
“Travis, this is wrong.” I shake my head, dipping my eyes.
“Bullshit. I had my mouth on your clit twelve hours ago. Now look at me.”
I shake my head.
“Look at me!”
Goddamn him.
I lift my face and glare at him, my nipples hard and my sex wet. I’ve fallen for this man, and I’m angry.
But there’s also the journalist in me who wants to know why. I need to know his full story.
I want to hear that he wanted me, at least a little, and wasn’t just using me completely. That I meant something. That he wouldn’t have just fucked some woman who could tell his story.
That maybe he feels something...
Would it matter?
I knew this relationship was just sex, so I never needed him to fall for me. But I never expected to learn the man I was sleeping with and let fly me out of the country was not who he said he was. That he was using me like some cheap whore.
“I need you to step away, take your hands off me, and then I’ll give you two-and-a-half minutes to tell me why you did this.”
His hands tighten around my hips, and I close my eyes for a second, drawing in the familiar masculine scent mixed with cigar smoke. When I open them again, I find his narrowed, as if in pain. Then I realize it’s the predator inside fighting to overpower me.
“Don’t kiss me,” I whisper.
“I told you who you belong to,” he rasps.
“You’re in no position to negotiate,” I say a little louder as his hard cock presses into me with his half step.
A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “I’m not negotiating.”
Goddamn him for being so sexy.
His nose presses into my hair. “You might be angry with me now, and I deserve some of it, but you know you belong to me. I never wanted this, but it’s too late. For both of us.”
I blow out a breath, and it sounds shuddered.
This man.
He thinks he can own me, claim me, and the entire world will just agree.
Not this time.
This time he’s hurt me. Betrayed me.
“I’m not a pair of shoes. Nor am I some woman who needs a man. We had good sex, I get it. But that doesn’t mean you get to plant your flag in me.”
A glint in his eyes has my brows lowering.
“I could have worded that differently...do not make it dirty.”
His lips twitch once more.
“Fine. We will circle back around to that.” He grows serious and takes a step back; the cool air replacing the heat of his body. “Now you need to hear my explanation.”
He leads me around the sofa, and we sit facing one another.
For the first time since I fled his mother’s house, I see him for who he is. Terrance Taylor. The son of the insanely famous man most of the world loves.
Someone who has endured abuse at this powerful man’s hands for years and had no ability to get away from it.
Until he did.
Travis has become an even more powerful man than his father, and while I don’t know the details yet, there must be a good reason for him change his identity.
He drapes his arm along the back of the sofa while I cross my legs and turn to face him.
“One-and-a half minutes,” I say, but we both know I’m full of shit.
“My mother died when I was five,” he starts. “I barely remember her. A shrink told me it’s because of the trauma. I shut down my memories as a protective mechanism.”
“I’m sorry.”
I am going to ask him to leave after this, but I’m not a monster. I care about him. I more than care.
But that’s my journey. I should have trusted my instincts and never gone out with him.
“I don’t know how long it took. Maybe days, maybe weeks. Time is weird when you’re a kid. But one night my father began bringing women home. I’d hear the noise and their drunken laughter. Then the women’s screams. I didn’t know what it was, but I stayed in my room.”
Jesus.
“Who looked after you?”
“Sofia. Mama,” Travis answers.
“She was your nanny?” My brows lift.
Travis nods. “Yes. For ten years. She saved my life.”
I glance away as things start to click into place. She isn’t his real mother, but the woman who likely raised him while being employed. To him, she’ll be his North Star. The only family he has.
“One night, my father returned home from a party, and there was no one with him. I closed my eyes and immediately fell back asleep.” His jaw muscles twitch as he averts his eyes.
“Then I heard the click of my door opening. A sound I came to fear and subsequently need to deal with for the rest of my life.”
PTSD.
Tears fill my eyes, my hand covering my mouth as he looks across my apartment. I know he’s gone into his memories, and I fight to stop the sound of my distress.
How horrific.
No child should feel unsafe in their bed.
No child should be unsafe in their own home.
“The first night.” Travis glances back at me, looking as if he needs me to understand everything. “I thought he was coming to say goodnight. He wasn’t.”
“Oh Travis.” My hand reaches for his thigh.
He doesn’t respond.
“He touched me, Brook.” Pale, his eyes dead, almost like he’s that little boy again. “He took my cock and made me touch his.”
Tears pour down my cheeks as I fight the churn in my stomach.
“The hardest part was waiting. Every time he went out, I never knew if he’d have company or come to my room.” Travis rubs a hand over his face.
I can’t bear it. My face drops, tears fall between my crossed legs, and a loud sob escapes me.
He keeps going.
“He taught me how to please him. Then when I was bigger and stronger, as he’d call it, he then took pleasure from me.”
I want to throw up. My hand tightens around his thigh, but I feel like I’m hanging onto him for dear life. Not comforting him.
“I was terrified to tell anyone. Leo was celebrated and loved by fans around the world. He’d told me I’d be punished, and that people would hate me. That this is what children did. I believed him.”
“Jesus,” I say softly.
His arm moves, and he drops his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands for a moment. I’m heartbroken for the child he was. For the boy he will never be because of what was taken from him.
Rubbing his face, he straightens and glides a hand through his hair, visibly impacted by sharing.
“Are you okay?” I lay my hand on his arm.
“Sorry. I’ve only ever shared this with my friends.” His voice is rough.
“You can stop if you want.”
“No. I need you to know who I am, Brook.” His eyes meet mine, and there is pain and determination in them.
“It’s not who you are, Travis. It’s what happened to you,” I say, shaking my head as I wipe away the tears.
I’ve always said your past doesn’t define you, but then again, I’ve never been through anything like he has. And that Taylor got away with it makes me angry and sick.
“That’s not true. From the age of five through to ten he fucked me in the ass at least every week.
I was his little slut. I was used like a sex toy and groomed to do his bidding.
” He shakes his head, glancing away. “That is who I was. That was what I had to run away from. Physically and in every way possible.”
My head lands on his shoulder. I don’t want to hear anymore, and hate myself for it.
“That’s why I had to become someone else.”
As a journalist, I’m trained to hear a story and not make it personal. But it is personal. We both have feelings for one another and have been intimate.
How could I not care?
“How did it end?”
“Sofia came in one night and caught him. The next day he fired her, and the next week I was sent to boarding school.” He turns to face me, our eyes having a conversation of their own before his forehead drops to mine.
“Mama saved me, Brook. It would have gone on for many more years if she hadn’t. She saved me.”
I wrap my arms around him as best I can. “God, I’m sorry. I want to kill that man.”
“I’ve spent a lot of years wanting to do the same.” Travis rasps. “I could have. I have the means to, but destroying his life and making him watch it all crumble around him is going to be so much more satisfying.”
I could have. He means he could have hired someone to do it, and no one would ever be able to find out it was him. Or link them. Not with his new identity.
“Why didn’t you?” I straighten.
I know what he said before, but I think there’s more to it than that. Killing your father, despite what he did to you, is not something someone decides to do easily.
He looks me dead in the eye. “Because that prick destroyed most of my soul. I didn’t want him to take the rest of it.”
The heat of his body draws me in. I want to be closer. Climbing onto his lap, I wrap my arms around his neck.
“And I’m not fucking letting him take you from me either.” Travis rasps.
Slam.
His mouth crushes to mine.
I don’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him. Does his story excuse the lies he told me? No.
Maybe.
I don’t know.
All I know is we both need to be connected in the most intimate way only two people can be.
Then I’ll grieve and say goodbye.