Chapter 7 #2
Moving along, I head to the dining room and through the door to the patio.
Olivia Jaeger sits on a stack of cinder blocks, a drink in her hand.
Dallas won’t like me talking to her.
None of them will.
Walking up, I take her drink, seeing her straighten as I sniff it.
Something fruity with vodka. I take a sip and hand it back to her. “How are you?”
“Better than you’ll be in about ten minutes,” she replies, glancing around and behind me.
Are all five of her brothers here tonight?
I lean back next to her. “We’ll see.”
“What the hell do you want?”
I glimpse the confused expression on her face, and I notice her brown eyes. Not green like Dallas’s.
Liv and I have traded shots at school. She stands up for herself, but I never disliked her. She’s low on bullshit and refrains from wasting people’s time. I appreciate that.
I shrug. “I just want you to myself for a little while.”
Away from school and prying eyes and maybe fuck with her family for a bit.
She chuckles, about to take a drink from her cup until she remembers I did and tosses it out. “You’re not my type,” she points out.
“Yeah, I know.”
That’s why I’m talking to her, really. No expectations.
Sliding my hands into my pockets, I nudge a rock with my shoe. “What do you like about women?”
“Fuck off.”
She jumps down from the blocks, and I stand back up, grabbing her arm.
Her eyes widen and she looks down at my hand on her, and I half expect her to go feral.
Instead, she laughs. “I was raised with five brothers.” She looks at me like I’m stupid. “If you think you can handle me, come back with more guys.”
She yanks her arm away, but I speak before she can walk away. “I’m honestly asking you,” I say, softening my voice, sincere. “What do you like about them?”
Tell me, please. Maybe she can tell me what I’m not seeing.
She just shakes her head. “Everything,” she explains. “Their legs. Their hips. Their necks. Their mouths…”
A lump moves down her throat, and I think about her walking around at school and seeing people she wants but can’t have.
“Their softness,” she goes on. “Their gracefulness. Their smiles.” A little smile of her own drifts across her mouth. “The gloss on their lips—just enough to look sticky.”
The hair at the back of his head—just enough to fist.
“Her chin on her hand,” she muses.
His body under the sun…
“I’m just always looking at them,” she tells me.
I wish I could share something, too, and maybe if she asked me a question—like I had asked her—I might.
But not the thing I haven’t even said in my own head, though.
I fall back into the cinder blocks again, hands still in my pockets. “Clay’s making your life a living hell, isn’t she?”
She folds her arms over her chest, looking at me behind long black bangs with her hair in a ponytail.
We’re not friends. She has no reason to confide in me.
“I can call her off if you want,” I tell her.
“And why would you do that?”
Well, not because I’m a nice person.
I jerk my chin instead. “What are you doing this summer?”
We still have eight weeks of vacation before senior year. She’s probably working somewhere. Maybe the playhouse. Isn’t she interested in acting and theater?
“Why don’t you come with me for a while?” I ask her before she can respond. “No fucking around. We’ll just get out of here together.”
I don’t expect her to say yes.
At first.
I can convince her, though. The only thing that would hold her back is her rightfully placed distrust of the arrogant, entitled future president of the most misogynistic frat ever asking her to go with him and not only expect safety but no sex.
“Where?” she asks, oh so interested, because she thinks this is a joke.
But I’m totally serious. It’ll be fun to be the sole focus of her brothers’ attention, piss some people off, and get out of here with someone I don’t have to perform for.
“My dad got me two tickets on a Seabourn cruise,” I state. “I’d like to take you.”
“And let me guess…” She smirks, looking exactly like him for a moment. “There’s only one bed, and you’ll straighten me out?”
But I laugh. “Not likely.” I’m not interested in what’s in her pants. “But you’d get to piss off Clay.”
She looks away, and I think she still doesn’t believe me.
“You’ll be safe,” I tell her. “We’ll get some sun. Relaxation.”
She narrows her eyes on me, no longer laughing.
I lower my voice to a whisper. “I really don’t want to take anyone else.”
Not Milo. Not Vincent. Not Clay.
And certainly not my family.
“A week on a luxury boat with catered meals and eight other guests to be witnesses if I piss you off,” I go on. “And your own cabin with a door that locks. Wanna go?”
She opens her mouth, struggling to find her words and looking like she’s not sure if she should laugh or spit.
She’s not saying no, though.
But before she can answer out loud, I’m shoved from behind, and I stumble a couple of steps, catching myself before I fall.
“Go where?” a man asks in a stern voice.
Straightening my spine, I turn around, coming face-to-face with Dallas Jaeger.
My heart swims in my chest.
I smile, closing the distance between us just before I reach out and push him back. “Afraid she might say yes?” I challenge.
“I’m never afraid for my sister,” he fires back, shoving me again.
My breath catches in my throat, and I let my gaze linger on the golden skin that peeks out from the cut-out sides of his T-shirt. His body…
“She can handle you without breaking a sweat,” he tells me.
Liv tries to reel him in. “Dallas, no.”
But I don’t want her to stop this. A ball of fire grows inside me, making my stomach dip as I right myself. I lift my chin, noticing the patio has gone silent. Everyone watches us, the people in the house crowding around the door and peering out.
I saunter closer to him again. “And what about you?”
He lets me drive him back again, his hard chest under my hands.
“Can you handle me without breaking a sweat?” I taunt.
I don’t think so.
His mouth falls open, drawing in a deep breath as he smiles. “Lucky for you”—his eyes dance—“sweating is my favorite thing.”
He pushes me again, but I vault back into place, daring him. “Keep going.”
“Dallas!” Liv growls.
Neither of us pays her any attention.
Dallas slams me back again, and I fist my fingers, dying to get a hold of him.
I tilt my neck, stretching it. “Again.”
He shoves me in the chest once, and then twice.
Nerves pop under my skin, the hair on my arms rising. If I rush him, I’m on my own. It’s tempting.
Speaking of which…
“Where are my friends right now?” I ask him.
But I see the realization hit his eyes when it dawns on him that I didn’t come in alone.
He jerks his head, howling over his shoulder, “Search for those pieces of shit!”
Men spin around, squeezing past the crowd, and I can hear their stomping through the house.
“Don’t worry,” I coo. “Your women always come back to you. We don’t want them for long.” And then I smile. “Just for fun.”
I see his fist rear back. I lock in on the snarl on his face, fucking ecstatic because if there’s anything I know about Dallas Jaeger, it’s that he doesn’t care about anything other than being disrespected.
The punch slams into my jaw, rocking my head to the right, and I breathe fast and hard. The pain spreading through my face is there. I register it.
But cool water seems to fill my gut at the same time. “Again,” I whisper.
He grabs my collar, hitting me again, my teeth cutting into my lip.
And need floods my chest to the point where my groin swells with heat.
I can’t stop.
He’s so close. I have to feel him.
Barreling into him, I run him to the ground, both of us crashing as we continue to wrestle and fight. I grip his neck, expecting to feel hands hauling me off of him at any minute, but nothing comes.
Damn near straddling him, I grapple with his hands as he glares up at me. His body tenses and flexes under me, and he yanks my shirt, tearing it half-open.
Flipping me over, he pins me to the ground, pressing his forearm on my neck.
“No matter what,” I gasp as we squirm and grind, “I’m going to win.”
He growls, putting more weight on my esophagus, his groin pressing into mine.
“You’ll still be coming to my house next week,” I whisper up to him, “and mowing my lawn.”
“Don’t you mean your daddy’s?” he breathes down on me. “You don’t have anything you weren’t given.”
The scent of soap and cigarettes lingers in the air, and I struggle against this hold, feeling something hard.
I go still for a moment, holding his eyes. Then I tilt my hips up barely enough for anyone else to notice.
But he does. My cock brushes his, through our jeans, and I don’t know if it’s just me who’s hard or both of us, but we both feel it.
Inching up to get in his face, I tell him, “No one’s going to give me your wife someday. She’s going to come willingly.”
His hot eyes drop to my mouth, and the pulse in his dick feels so good. I grit my teeth. Fuck.
I slam the heel of my palm under his chin, hearing him grunt as I try to escape, but he scrambles, pinning me down again.
He starts to smile—smug—but red and blue lights flash across his face.
His grin falls, and I pick up where he left off, beaming.
Told you.
Pushing him off, I stand up and so does he. Neither of us looks, but we can see the lights of the cop car to the left, on the other side of the trees, in the street.
My father makes sizable donations to the police department, and instead of them telling me not to stir up trouble, I simply send texts to Officer Theodore Grady, informing him of where I’m at and to come look for me if I don’t text back every twenty minutes.
As I did just before I entered this house tonight.
I don’t go anywhere without protection.