Chapter 2 #2
“I think it’s romantic,” Aurora says. “Like Romeo and Juliet.”
“They die at the end,” Hazel replies, leaning across Maverick again.
“But that’s romantic too,” Aurora swoons. “Think about it. Two people so in love that not even death can keep them apart.”
Maverick looks like he wishes he could disappear into a hole in the floor.
“Sounds pathetic to me,” Devlin says. He gives up on reaching across the table each time he wants a breadstick and sets the tray on his plate.
“That’s because you’re a guy,” my sister responds.
He chokes on the half-chewed bread in his mouth. “What’s my dick got to do with this?”
All thoughts come to a halt when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I’ve never reached for anything faster in my life. It wouldn’t surprise me if I broke every record known to man. Just you wait. Guinness World Records will be knocking on my door tomorrow.
Jessica:
Let me get this right. I haven’t heard from you in days, and now you think you have the right to question who I spend time with?
Kane:
Sounds like you missed me.
Jessica:
In your dreams.
“Wow. Would you look at that?” Noah pokes me in the cheek. “Is that a real smile, I see?”
Devlin pretends to inspect me. “It’s actually kinda scary.”
I flip him off and stand up. Now that I’ve finally got her attention, I need to hear her voice.
“Come on, princess,” Devlin calls after me as I walk out, dialing Jessica’s number. “I think it’s cute.”
“Leave him alone,” I hear my sister say.
Phone pressed to my ear, I slip into the hallway where it’s quieter and I’m away from prying ears. Who knows where Cash has gone? There’s no sign of him anywhere.
Jessica answers on the third ring. “What do you want?”
My smile is instantaneous. “You should know what I want by now.”
I can practically hear her eye roll. “Kane, this needs to stop. We’re not a thing.”
“See, I would argue otherwise.”
There’s music in the background, people hollering and laughing, and she must walk some distance away because the sounds grow more distant. “Do I get a say in this?”
“No.” My grin is impossibly big. If anyone saw me now, they’d do a double-take.
“No?” There’s a smile in her voice, and it makes my heart flutter strangely to know that she’s smiling because of me.
“Did you miss me?” I ask.
Please tell me you did. Please tell me you thought of me.
Soft laughter floats into my ear like music to my soul. “Now, why would I miss you, Kane?”
Because you’re all I’ve been thinking about, even when I try not to think about you.
I don’t tell her any of that.
“Because you like me.”
“I don’t like you.”
The words sting a little, but the teasing lilt in her voice soothes it like a balm. What is it about this girl?
I really like her.
A lot.
“You’re into me.” I scuff the ground, lowering my voice as a man in a three-piece suit walks by. He dips his chin in greeting.
“Maybe a little,” she admits, and I straighten, wondering if this is what it feels like to have won the damn lottery.
“It was the oral, wasn’t it? That’s what convinced you?”
She’s laughing fully now, the sound warming my chest. Then she falls silent, and I hear the distant sound of waves crashing against the cliff face. “You didn’t text me for days.”
I wince and turn my back to the hallway, keeping my voice low. “I wanted to.”
She’s silent for a moment. “I thought you’d grown bored and moved on.”
“Bored of the girl who pulls a gun on me and orders me to jack off?” I’m smiling again, scratching my stubble. “Impossible.”
“You just had to bring that up, didn’t you? I’m embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Well…” She hesitates, and I listen to the waves in the distance. “It’s not something other women do.”
“How do you know? Maybe women threaten me with weapons all the time.”
“Do they?”
I chuckle. “No, just you.”
She groans the cutest sound I’ve ever heard. Yup, I’m gone for this girl. She could ask me to rob a bank, and I’d do it without hesitation. It’s crazy how quickly and easily I fell for her.
“Who’s the guy?” I ask again, resting my forehead against the wall. I swear, if that Jackson guy is her boyfriend, I don’t know what I’ll do.
“It’s Jackson. My brother’s friend.”
“Are you dating him?”
“Would it bother you?”
“Fuck yes.”
“Why?”
The man in the three-piece suit walks past again, heading back to the ballroom. I meander farther down the hallway, just a few steps to get out of earshot. “Because I like you.”
“You like me?”
“Have I not made that clear?”
“I don’t know. Have you? I haven’t heard from you in days.”
I rub the space between my brows, wishing she wouldn’t bring that up. Of course, she wonders where I’ve been the past few days. It means she cares. And that thought does something strange to me. “Something came up.”
Damn, I hate lying, but what should I tell her? The truth? Oh, by the way, I didn’t text you because I was balls deep in another woman’s ass. Then it took several days and countless showers to stop feeling disgusted.
She’ll ghost me faster than I can blink.
“Something came up,” she echoes, unsure about my response.
“I had to do something for my father.”
Not technically a lie.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
I grimace, knocking my palm against my forehead. What the hell? I need better answers, or she’ll never warm up to me.
“I kissed someone tonight,” she says.
A chill enters my flesh. I straighten. “Who?”
She kissed someone? What the hell? If I was on the fence before, I’m not now. I’m ready to jump in my car and ram my fist into the guy who thought he could kiss my girl.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it does,” I snap. “It matters a lot!”
“Why?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Count to ten. “I don’t fucking know, okay? I like you.”
“You don’t know me, Kane.”
“And he does? Tell me, does he know what you taste like? Has he licked your pussy?”
I swear if she says yes, I can’t be held responsible for what happens next. I’ll lose my shit.
“No, Kane, he hasn’t, but that doesn’t—”
“So he doesn’t fucking know you. Not like I do.”
I press my hand to the wall and drop my chin to my chest. She’s determined to test my patience.
“I’ll let it slide this time, okay? But I swear if you kiss another man, Jessica, I’ll spank your ass raw.”
“He kissed me. I didn’t kiss him.”
My eye twitches. I swear steam is coming out of my ears like a whistling kettle. “Who is this motherfucker, baby?” I bite out slowly.
When I get my hands on him, I’m throwing him off that cliff she’s on. Yup, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable response to someone touching what’s mine. See? I’ve got my emotional regulation in check for once. My grade school teacher would be proud.
“Kane, you broke a guy’s wrist for talking to me.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true. He had his hand on your ass.”
“It’s not… that’s not… never mind. I shouldn’t have told you about the kiss.” Her voice is softer now.
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know,” she replies. “I felt guilty. I wanted to be honest. No lies between us.”
A smile slowly curves my lips. “So you admit there’s an us?”
There’s that soft giggling again. “There’s no us, Kane.”
“There’s an us, baby.” I bite down on the flesh of my lip to contain my wide grin. “And I’m fucking you soon.”
Her sweet laughter drifts into my ear and settles in my chest like champagne bubbles. “Keep dreaming, Kane Ravencourt.”
My eyes widen. “Say that again.”
“Keep dreaming?”
“No, my name.”
“Kane Ravencourt?”
I lean back against the wall and bite my knuckles. “My name on your lips sounds so damn sexy.”
She repeats it playfully seductive this time, and there’s no doubt that she’s flirting.
My cock twitches.
“I need to see you,” I say, running a hand down my face.
“You wanna see me, Kane?”
She’s asking as if she’s smiling, and my lips ache from how big I’m grinning.
“Why?” she asks, fishing for answers.
“Because I want to kiss you.”
She’s silent for a moment.
A woman in a forest green satin dress walks by, heels clicking on the marble floor.
“I like how soft your skin is,” I say when the woman is out of earshot. “And how your hair feels in my hands.”
“You do?”
Why is it so hard for her to believe?
I discreetly readjust my hard-on. “It’s my turn to ask questions, little thief. Do you like it when I touch you?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t skirt around the subject, baby. Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“Touch you where?”
Airy laughter spills from her lips. “You’re impossible, Kane Ravencourt.”
I groan because I love it when she says my full name, and she giggles again.
“What is this?” she asks, her voice quieter now, uncertain. “What are we doing?”
“Whatever you want us to do.”
“And if I want you to leave me alone?”
Not a chance on this planet.
“Is that what you want?” I ask.
Movement in my peripheral vision draws my attention, and I turn to see Beverly leaving the ballroom. She notices me and walks toward me with a seductive sway of her hips.
“I have to go,” I interrupt Jessica’s reply and slip my phone into my pocket.
The witch stops in front of me, her predatory green eyes sliding down my suit as if she’s imagining what’s underneath. The food I picked at earlier threatens to come back up, but I keep my expression free of any emotion.
“Where’s your brother?” she asks, grasping my tie and letting it slip through her fingers.
She’s undressing me with her eyes, remembering the feel of my dick in her ass, no doubt.
It takes everything in me not to tell her to stop touching me.
I look away, escaping somewhere very far away in my mind, somewhere I’m not a pawn on someone else’s board.
“Look at me, Ravencourt.”
I grind my teeth. She just won’t leave me the hell alone. She could have any rich old man she wants here tonight, but she insists on touching my flaccid dick through my pants.
“Look. At. Me.”
I clench my jaw before meeting her heavy gaze. What other choice do I have at this point?
“There’s a good boy,” she whispers, scraping her manicured nails over my cock. “We had a good time the other night, didn’t we? You enjoyed yourself.”
I stay silent, fists clenched at my sides. Cash better not show up now, or we’re doomed. I’ll take one for the team if I have to. She’s not touching Cash again and sending him spiraling into that black hole he’s just clawed his way out of.
“What do you want?” I bite out.
“I would like us to arrange something between us, just you and me. In private.”
“Not in a million fucking years.”
Her overwhelming perfume makes it hard to breathe, and I look away, but she puts her hands on my chest. “I can be very persuasive when I need to be. Do you think I’m just my husband’s trophy wife? That I hold no power?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sharp nails scrape down my chest. She bites her red-painted lip. “It means you’d better please me, Kane.”
Seems she finally learned to tell us apart.
“Your husband might get off on watching other men fuck you like you mean nothing, but he sure as hell wouldn’t approve of you sleeping around behind his back.”
She pouts. “Do you know what you are, Kane?”
I bite down hard to hold back what I really want to say. She wouldn’t like it if I spoke my mind openly.
She cups me. “You’re your daddy’s pawn. And you’ll do what he says.”
My brows crash together. “What the hell are you talking about now? What does my father have to do with this?”
She’s a lunatic.
Her lips twitch, just barely. “We trade in secrets, Kane. You know that better than anyone. If I want you, I’ll soon have you.”
With those words hanging in the air like a threat, she saunters off the way she came, hips swaying, and I turn around and drive my fist into the wall.