Destructively Mine (Webs We Weave #2)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Phoebe

Eight Years Ago

The Rip Deal

Malibu, California

I stare wide-eyed at a pink, a black, and a bright neon-green bikini splayed on the king-sized bed—a bed that I’ve called mine for four whopping whole days. “Why is this so hard for you?” I mutter to myself. “It’s an outfit, not a math problem. Get your shit together.”

Don’t talk to yourself out loud, bug. It’s a bad tell. Keep that up here. I hear my mom’s tip and imagine her tapping her temple with a wink. These four walls don’t need to know I’m an anxious, nervous mess. Lest I slip up in front of the things that do matter.

The four-poster bed!

The joke falls flat in my head, and I let out an audible wheezy laugh. Am I really this pathetic?

No.

I’m adept. Savvy. Confident.

I won’t slip up in front of any mark. Not for this job.

Seduce a self-absorbed, self-proclaimed “rich kid” from Malibu. In the ever-moving career of swindling the rich and handsy assholes of the world, I’ve been granted a new project. Hailey’s mom and my mom are trusting I can knock the pants off Kellan Fields while they handle more complicated threads to the larger Rip Deal, which involves screwing his father out of half a million via an under-the-table cash deal and sleight of hand. I know I have one of the easier roles.

It shouldn’t be that hard.

I’m sixteen.

This really isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve batted my lashes at boarding-school boys, and they’ve fallen for every trick in the temptress handbook. I’ve made out with an older guy in his Lambo, too, even if the actual act of being lip-locked with him is hazy in my head. I can’t remember what I did.

My short time here in Malibu has been going…okay. Day one, I “accidentally” bumped into Kellan on the pier. Day two, I went on the most boring coffee date where he name-dropped A-listers and spent a solid hour listing off the specs of his Ferrari and yammering on about his father’s yacht.

It’d been fine.

Until the end of the date when we kissed, and he reacted… strange . It caught me off guard. He thinks I’m eighteen like him, and I’m afraid my mere persona screamed adolescent! at some point. This con can’t unravel because of me.

Now he’s invited me to a beach bonfire with his friends, and I’d like to open the sliding glass doors to my new bedroom, step onto the porch, fling all three bikinis at the million-dollar ocean view, and hope the wind carries them into the Pacific.

Then my decision would be made for me.

I could just go naked .

Problem solved. The fact that I’m a second from Googling whether this is a nude beach means I’ve really lost it.

A knock sounds before my door creaks open. A second opinion. Thank God. I exhale. “Hailey,” I say without turning. “I need your help. Please, please rank these from classy slut to trashy slut. I can’t figure out what I should be wearing tonight.” I pick up the black bikini with the low-cut top and G-string bottoms and whirl around to…

My face flames. “Not Hailey.” So much for keeping my inner thoughts to myself.

Rocky raises his brows. “Not Hailey.”

My entire body roasts on a spit at being caught in a distraught state about an absurdly dumb thing like clothes in front of my best friend’s older brother .

After shutting the door, he strides farther into my room. My heart flip-flops as the space between us depletes.

His gaze falls to the bikini I’m holding. “That one is fucking trashy.”

“You haven’t even seen it,” I combat. It’s balled in my fist.

He extends a hand. “Pass it then.”

Heat bathes my face ten times more, and it’s not like I haven’t worked a con with Rocky. I’ve worked most cons right alongside him, but I would greatly like to default to his sister’s advice right now because A) Hailey is a beautiful genius and B) she’s not the one I have a crush on!

Except, the idea of not giving him the bikini, of not reeling him closer and finding out what happens next—that sounds boring. My pulse speeds as I place the bikini in Rocky’s hand, and I bask in the adrenaline rush.

It’s me, deciding my fate, my next move.

It’s him, his eyes on mine for an extended beat. Like he sees who I am before he sees the shape of my body.

Our fingers brush as I retract, and a weird sensation pulsates inside me and tickles my skin. I try not to wobble at his closeness or how he’s touching the string that might go between my legs tonight. You don’t like him. He’s annoying. He’s ugly.

Yeah. Right.

He needs to do something supremely aggravating right fucking now, so I can ignore the Jupiter-sized crush I have on him.

He lifts the skimpy bottoms with one finger, almost suggestively. That’s my job , I want to say. I’m the one who’s supposed to be alluring and sexy, but the role reversal piques my interest enough that I stay quiet.

He glances at the bikinis on the bed, then back to me. “Yeah, I stand uncorrected. This is the trashiest.” His voice is coarse.

“Thanks for the assessment.” I plop down on the bed beside the pink and neon-green bikinis. “You know, some guys like it.” I’m trying to mask how attracted I am, but he’s so good at reading people, the best I can do is fuss over the clasp on the pink halter top. “Kellan might.”

Rocky tosses the black G-string to me. “He might be the kind of guy who’d be angry or mortified if his girl went half-naked to a party among his peers.”

“I’m not really his girl,” I shoot back.

“No shit.” The words are biting, but not at me. His jaw muscle tics. He cuts his gunmetal eyes to the wall. I’d like to think the idea that I could be anyone else’s girl grates on him. Disgusts him. That really, I am his . But this feels like the bigger make-believe.

It’s my stupid fantasy.

Because when has Rocky ever made a real move on me?

My face burns with more frustrations, and I exhale them out to say, “Kellan could see me like a prize. He might want to show me off.”

The award for farthest eye roll distance goes to Brayden Tinrock. He lets out a low groan that sounds sensual yet animalistic. His entire being balances between fuck and fight . Like he’s a second from doing both to me.

It’s extremely hot, but I avoid blatantly checking him out. He knows he’s attractive. He does not need my stamp of approval. I ball up the bikini and say, “I take it you’re the angry or mortified kind of guy.”

“No, I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t bring the girl I like around insufferable pricks like Kellan and whoever the fuck his dumbass friend is.” Rocky never forgets a name.

“Jackson.”

“Right.”

I smile at his dry tone.

He sees, and his lips just barely twitch upward, then he peers over at the glass double doors. The sky is a stormy gray. Aggressive sounds of gathering waves fill the quiet.

While Rocky stands only a couple feet from me, I envy his demeanor. How his navy-blue suit never wears him. How his broody disposition can’t cloud his real confidence. He presents himself like he’s powerful enough to be elected Roman consul at seventeen. It’s not manufactured. It’s not fake.

It’s a part of him.

He never really acts like being rich is a facade. He is rich, and why should I feel any different? I have the same safety net of wealth as him. I’ve grown up in the same affluent social circles. Fabrications of our own making, yes . But is it an illusion if it’s our reality?

Then why do I feel like a fake rich girl? Is it because I’m in more positions that feel…degrading?

No, no .

My mom says there is power in screwing over egotistical, vain men. The ones who act like we’re accessories to their expensive cars and overpriced toys. I don’t feel humiliated at the end of a con. There’ve been several times where I’ve felt triumphant.

In this second, with Rocky taking a seat on my bed, I feel… confused .

“Why’d you come in here?” I ask him.

“To see if you needed help.”

“Seriously?”

He gives me a hard look. “No, I wanted to take a bubble bath and braid your hair.”

I scrunch my face. “Like I’d let you touch my hair.”

Rocky leans his hands back on the mattress. Getting comfortable. He’s zeroed in on me, but I’m not his prey. I don’t care if he thinks I’m full of shit either. He can believe I have the hots for him—he wouldn’t be wrong. But I’m not going to melt all over him like ice cream on a sweltering summer day.

“Where’s your martini glass?” he asks. “The strawberry one?”

“Why? You plan to drink out of that while you’re in my bathtub and doing a piss-poor job at braiding my hair?”

“The hair you won’t let me braid,” he points out.

“Exactly.” I go to stand, but Rocky catches my wrist. He’s sitting up now, and he keeps me seated next to him on the bed.

My heart rate pitches up at the warmth of his palm on me. He lets go, and my skin goes cold. I don’t let him speak. Instead, I say fast, “You’re not allowed to touch my martini glass. I went to great lengths to secure that one.”

“You steal it from a little old ‘quirky’ lady in her brownstone?”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“I don’t really care if you did.”

I feel another smile pull at my lips. “You wouldn’t,” I mutter.

We are lawless, caustic things. Our ethics are twisted, and I like Rocky because he’s someone who will choose immoral paths when needed. Dark shadows aren’t something to avoid but something he’ll walk into.

Tension thickens in the silent beat—it’s not awkward. There is a pulsing heat that burns me alive. That tempts me to move closer to the scorch. To him.

Ignoring it, I end up explaining, “The martini glass was an online purchase. And we were on the road . It was complicated. I had to get it shipped to the front desk of the Motel 6 and it almost didn’t arrive before we left.”

“You never even drink out of it.” He combs a hand through his hair while maintaining supreme eye contact. It’s intense. Intrusive. The way he stares so deeply into me, as if he’s carving out chunks of my soul and inscribing himself there. If I weren’t stubborn, maybe I’d be shy. Maybe I’d blush.

But I want to intrude on his soul, too.

I stare him down. “It’s decoration, and martinis are gross. I hate when guys order them for me.”

“Yeah, well, maybe they should fucking ask first.”

“Ask what I like to drink?” I raise my brows.

“It’s not a novel concept, Phoebe.”

I shrug. “It is when they really don’t care about who I am. They just want to sleep with me, Rocky.”

He’s radiating with hotter heat. “Are we talking about marks or about guys you’re actually dating?”

I’m not dating anyone. Not for real. None of us have the luxury of keeping a relationship with anyone when we pack up and go so frequently. We’re basically nomads.

“Marks, I guess,” I answer.

He smears a hand down his mouth. It doesn’t wipe his anger away. He hates all marks. The people we deceive and scam. They’re not good people. Most of them would never receive one-way tickets to the pearly gates.

I hate them, too, but my anger isn’t a constant dark passenger like Rocky’s. My rage appears, then dies. In a vicious cycle of rebirth.

Rocky won’t mention my age. He won’t say how I’m only sixteen. How guys shouldn’t be ordering me alcohol. He’s been in similar situations even younger. At gentleman’s clubs with sons and fathers, he’s had to smoke cigars and sip whiskey to assimilate to wealthy elite culture.

Drink young. Ages aren’t restrictions when you’re rich. They’re just yellow caution tape, and you better have the expensive scissors that can cut it. Or else, maybe you don’t really belong.

Belonging is what we’re taught to do.

I check the tag on my pink bikini. He’s so close, hairs rise on my arms. Will he inch nearer?

He’s studying me, his eyes dipping up and down me. “Phoebe—”

“You want to help?” I ask fast.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m here.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Hailey had to leave with the godmothers.” Our moms , he means.

I can’t even remember when we started calling them the godmothers. Was it before or after we nicknamed his dad the godfather?

“Right.” I nod.

Oxygen seems thinner in Rocky’s presence, but I must like the feeling of being asphyxiated. That’s mildly disturbing, Phoebe.

“I can help you pick out a bathing suit, but I need to know more about this guy,” Rocky says. “The insufferable prick.”

“Kellan.”

“Whatever the fuck.”

I want to smile, but Kellan’s face flashes into focus, and I cringe. “He’s a show-off. He likes flaunting his family’s money, and he’s not discreet about it. It’s tacky. I think he’s overcompensating because his two friends come from inherited wealth, and his dad is just a hedge fund manager.”

“He sounds riveting.”

I reexamine the neon-green bikini. “Glad you think so, maybe you can kiss him for me.” I’m not looking forward to this cozy beach bonfire. At all.

“Is he into guys?” Rocky says casually, like he’d consider taking him off my hands.

“Straight.” I wince at myself as I reimagine my first and only kiss with Kellan.

“Phebs?”

I bury my hot face in my hand. “Ugh, the kiss. It was so bad, Rocky.” I’d rather be admitting this to Hailey and not her brother, but it looks like I’m getting this off my chest with him. So far, I don’t hate it.

“Bad how?” He clasps my wrist and lowers my arm.

My palm slips off my burning cheeks. Dark concern shadows his gaze, and I wonder if he thinks there was full-face grabbing and ass groping.

It wasn’t like that. “After the coffee date, we got up to say goodbye and we kissed. Then Kellan looked at me like I gave him a juvenile noogie to the head.”

He’s confused. “That doesn’t explain the actual kiss.” He rotates more to me, his thigh and knee on the bed now.

“Well that’s because it’s…hard to explain,” I say pointedly. I’m partially distracted by him caring about me enough to be here right now. He’s trying to understand me and this strange situation.

“So you got up to say goodbye, and in that moment, who kissed who?”

“I came in for the kiss. He looked at my lips. His hand was in mine.” I recite this with little to no emotion. The event was as mundane as toasting bread. In fact, watching Starbucks baristas pop a bacon-and-gouda in the toaster would elicit more excitement within me than kissing Kellan.

“And?” Rocky asks.

“And then I did this…” Without thinking, I lean into him, and I kiss Rocky. My lips are on his lips, and my pulse explodes.

I can’t gather enough breath in my lungs. I pull back fast—to where it lasts two seconds. Tops.

His brows arch.

Oh my God. “I’m so sorry, that was…” Unconsented? Abrupt?

“A peck,” he states.

“What?” I’m whiplashed, out of breath.

“You pecked him on the lips,” Rocky says, but that’s not what has me so flustered.

“I just kissed you,” I say, needing him to acknowledge this like right fucking now.

He gives me a narrowed look. “We’ve kissed a thousand times, Phebs.”

Am I making this weird? “On jobs, Rocky .” I force myself not to grab a bed pillow and hide—or throw it at him.

“This is about a job.” His chest rises and falls a little heavier, and he avoids my gaze for a tenser second. I’m just his partner in crime. He’s not going to pursue anything real with me. Clearly.

Stop getting your hopes up, Phoebe.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I say, and tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear. “This is basically con adjacent.” Disappointment sinks my stomach, but I try to push the awful feeling away. Especially as our eyes latch.

As a slight acknowledgment passes from him to me and from me to him. As our gazes flit a little more carelessly over each other.

There is attraction.

That is real.

But like hell am I acting on it for real . Being rejected by Rocky sounds like utter hell, and if he wants me, then maybe I want to be chased. Maybe I’d rather reject him. How about that?

I cross my arms hotly. “How should I have kissed him, anyway? It was a goodbye kiss in the middle of the afternoon in public, you realize that? I couldn’t go for tongue.”

His gray eyes lift back to mine. “I’m you,” he says, and my heart rate goes from sixty to two hundred realizing he’s going to show me.

He cups my cheek, as lightly and softly as I would another guy, and with his gaze fastened on mine, he bridges the distance slowly, gradually, and the unbearable, inescapable tension winds inside of me. His lips close against mine as he kisses me, making it feel deeper, then he nudges into a more forceful, sensual kiss. With his hand against my jaw—he draws me closer.

Holy shit. His touch sends a shock wave down my neck and arms and legs, thrumming my pussy. Lighting my core.

He pulls back, both of us searching for breath. “Like that.”

I don’t want to catch my breath—I don’t want this to end. “Like this?” I clasp his face with the same softness, and our gazes dive into one another as I drag myself closer. My lips ghost over his, and I sense his muscles contracting, his body shifting nearer. Then I kiss him with the same sensual undertones, and my heartbeat skyrockets.

I nudge into a deeper kiss without tongue, like he did.

His hand claws at the side of my face, and I feel his fingers sliding to the back of my head. Yes. I think he’s going to grip my hair. I think he’s going to plunge his tongue into my mouth. I think he’s going to push me to the bed and do dirty things to me. Please.

He cuts the kiss short.

I internally groan. Why, why, why? No, no, this is good. We shouldn’t be together. My mom will be intolerable about it. She’s obsessed with the idea of us—more than even I am.

This is just for a con. It’s exactly what it should be.

Rocky exhales hard and looks me over. “You okay?”

“Just waiting for my review.” I lean farther back and brush hair off my tight shoulder.

He forces a smile. “Adequate.”

“My kiss was better than yours.”

“True.”

The sudden compliment eases me, and maybe he knew it would. My joints loosen and shoulders slacken.

He checks the door. “We could keep practicing.”

Who would turn down a make-out session with their biggest crush? Not me. So that’s how I spend fifteen minutes in heaven with Rocky. I taste him on my lips. His chest melds against my breasts, but we sit upright. Never lying down.

We teeter on the edge of self-destruction, toying with the idea of French kisses and hair pulls, but we crumble under the parameters we’ve set.

Practice a public goodbye kiss.

Somehow, the tension amasses to new heights from our self-control, and these become the hottest goodbye kisses of my entire life. My lips sting against his, and my skin hums, like with one simple brush against my elbow, I might release a sudden moan.

“Brayden!” his dad calls from outside my room, and we break apart. Rocky shoots to his feet, his lips reddened, and he combs two hands through his hair. We hear his dad again. “Brayden!!”

“I’ll be there in a sec!” He’s about to glance over at me when the door just whooshes open. No knock. No true warning.

Everett Tinrock graces my bedroom like the jute rug and modern bed and beechwood dresser belong to him. I mean, they’re only temporarily mine. This place in Malibu came fully furnished, and he did help find it. So maybe they are partially his, too?

Rocky is pissed. “Whatever you want, we can do it outside her room.”

“No. Stay.” He holds up a stern hand.

“I’m not a fucking dog.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t respond to Rocky .”

I glare.

Everett dislikes the nickname and has tried to dissuade his son from choosing it more than once. The number of times he’s brought up Rocky Balboa—and not lovingly—has made me never want to watch another Rocky film again.

Still, Rocky…my Rocky…hasn’t discarded the name. Sometimes I wonder if he loves it more because his dad hates it.

Everett and Addison prefer to call him Brayden. It’s what they called him as a baby, and Rocky has let them continue to use it.

Rocky forces an acidic smile. “And maybe you shouldn’t barge into Phoebe’s room without knocking first.”

“ You were in here. Don’t act like I’m invading her privacy when you two were doing…what exactly?” He focuses on me now like he’s a strict senior detective with polished loafers and the rich stench of eight-grand cologne.

Which I actually smell on him from five feet away.

I’m pretending like Rocky and I didn’t just make out. Thanks to my above-average acting skills and my interest in these bikinis, I’d say I’m doing a damn good job, but conning a con artist takes advanced skill that I might not have yet.

“I was helping her for the job,” Rocky bites back. “That’s it .”

Everett is staring at my mouth. God, I hope my lips don’t look just kissed. I make a great effort not to lick them or chew them or draw any more unwanted attention to them.

I lift the neon-green bikini. “I was just having trouble with my outfit for the bonfire tonight,” I tell him.

He slowly nods. “You shouldn’t scowl like that when you’re with Kellan. You’re a beautiful girl, but that’s unattractive.”

I try to take the pro-tip with grace. He’s just ensuring I don’t screw up, but Everett isn’t exactly my favorite person. “I won’t scowl on a job.”

Rocky is grinding his jaw. He moves to the door. “I’m leaving, Dad, so whatever you want to tell me, you can do it in the hall—”

Everett grips his elbow, stopping him, and Rocky slides easily out of the hold. His father says, “It’s not important. You can stay here.”

“It’s not important?” He’s skeptical. “You called my name like the fucking house was on fire.”

“Later,” Everett says. “You should help Phoebe. That matters more.” So Rocky helping me is most important to him. If his dad believes we were hooking up, is he suggesting we should continue? My head pounds, and I try not to think too intensely about it.

Especially when my mom calls him and he puts her on speaker. They’re discussing logistics for tonight, and it’s all pretty routine. Things we’ve been through. I’m not shocked that Everett isn’t advertising how he caught Rocky in my room. For one, it’s not that unusual for us to be alone together when our roles are often intertwined.

For another, Everett is all business, and that reeks of soap-opera-level drama.

Mom sighs. “…this would be easier if one of them were a little younger. I miss the days when you were a baby, bug.” She’s speaking to me.

“I don’t,” I say with a rising smile. “I like being older.” When we were kids, they gave us so little responsibility, and I like being valued enough to hold the rope and be the one to pull.

“You were so cute, though.” I hear the smile inside her words, and it makes mine grow. “And babies are the best social proof. No one doubts a single lie with a cute little squishy baby on your hip.”

She’s not wrong, and hearing her voice makes me wish she were physically here and not Everett. When I see Rocky’s intense glare at the phone, I wonder if he’s thinking about his little brother.

Poor Trevor. He’s aged up out of the adorable, innocent, doe-eyed phase, but he hasn’t really locked down a specific role outside of sleight of hand—which we all can do. Every time he wants to be paired with Rocky on a job, they say no and just put Rocky with me.

I’m pretty sure Trevor hates me for it, and I can’t really blame him. But it’s not like I’m calling those shots.

Once my mom hangs up and Everett is gone shortly thereafter, Rocky stares at the shut door like he’s throwing daggers with his eyes.

“Thanks for the assist. Earlier, I mean. Us practicing,” I tell him, and I mean it. When I kiss Kellan, maybe I can imagine I’m kissing Rocky. Would that be a bad thing? Who cares, as long as I succeed tonight. That’s all that really matters.

I won’t fail the team.

He nods but says, “I can’t stay.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” I remind him. “Your dad did.”

Rocky eases a fraction. With a hand on the doorknob, he glances back at the bikinis on the bed. “The pink one.”

“What?”

“It’s my vote.”

I eye the halter top and high-rise bottoms. It’s probably the best route. “It’s the safe choice,” I say out loud.

“It’s pink.” He’s out of my room too quickly for me to ask what he means.

Then it dawns on me.

He knows my favorite color is pink. In a world of deception and aliases, Rocky is one of the few people who truly knows the real me.