Chapter 31 #3
“But it started to hurt in my chest just to look at you,” he tells me, “and I got scared! I was twenty fucking years old, Callum! I was a kid, too, and it was inevitable that I would fail. I knew myself enough to know that I’d do something stupid to hurt you eventually.”
I clench my teeth as he still holds me, forcing myself to not give in. There are better men out there.
I enunciate every syllable. “I’m going to love pinning your fucking neck to the bed when I ride you after he’s already had me an hour before.”
He bares his teeth, his eyes practically turning red just before he covers my mouth with his, pulling me into his arms. Oh, fuck.
An electric current spreads from my lips to my chin and down my neck, and I can’t help it. I lean in, kissing him back, the music in my car switching to “enemy.” Of course.
Why is he doing this to me? Just fucking torture me for the treasure. I was reconciled a long time ago to the fact that he’d never be mine. Not the way I wanted him to be.
Holding the back of my neck, he breathes over my mouth, our lips so close.
“It was different when you came back, though,” he explains. “I couldn’t not look at you.”
I know it’s not true, but I let myself enjoy the thought.
“I knew I wanted you,” he whispers. “The way you look at me. The way I’m aware of only you when you’re close. The way I hated when you were cold or unaffected by me.”
I’m always affected by him.
“The way I can’t let you become him.” He meets my eyes. “You’re mine, and I want you to go back to how you were that last morning in bed five years ago.”
The morning he told me about his mother and became enamored of the muscles along my spine. I remember everything about that morning, because it was finally like he was starting to see me. I wasn’t just some interchangeable piece of ass to him, maybe.
“I trusted you that morning,” I say, my voice raspy.
I can’t get that back. He destroyed it.
Dropping his arms, he pulls out his phone, quickly bringing up a file. Moaning and grunting hit my ears, and I look down as he holds up a video between us.
My father’s in a tux as he bends Gabriela Cadena over a mahogany table in the cigar room at Fox Hill. She’s in a low-cut red sequin gown, her long dark hair hanging over one bare breast.
Oh, shit. This must be from the annual fundraiser event in April.
How could he be so stupid? He can screw anyone. Why her? Edward Cadena could kill him.
That man wouldn’t stop there, either. Lessons need to be learned. He could take Anna-Katherine as payment. He could kill me for being his son.
That’s why my father does it, though. Nothing gives him a rush, so he keeps pushing the envelope.
“We knew you had surveillance around town,” I murmur. “What are you going to do? Blackmail me?”
“Could I?”
Damn him. Yes, he could.
I don’t really care about protecting Garrett Ames, but Edward Cadena is ruthless. I don’t want his attention on my family.
Dallas tucks his phone away. “If that’s what I wanted, I’d be doing it already.” He takes my face in his hand again. “I won’t hurt you. And I’ll stop anyone who tries.”
He could get the treasure back with just that video. And God knows what else that family has on us.
The realization hits me, though, that he knew he had that video when I took the treasure. He knew he had it all weekend and yesterday in my bed.
It was never an option to use it, though, because he knew what Edward Cadena was capable of.
Tears fill my eyes. Fuck.
I kiss him, moving over his mouth and slipping my tongue in, the feel of him reaching down through my stomach to my legs.
I want him. I never stopped, and he’s right. Nothing feels better than when he touches me.
We kiss, and I haven’t heard a peep from Anna-Katherine. She’s probably struggling not to look.
I hold his face, brushing his lips with my thumb. “The fucking lengths I have to go to in order to get you to chase me.”
He breaks into a laugh, and we kiss again.
“You were breaking my heart,” he pants. “This weekend sucked.”
No matter what happens, though, I can guarantee him one thing. “I’ll never run from you,” I tell him.
He gazes into my eyes, dipping in for kiss after kiss after kiss. “I dare you,” he breathes out. “Every fucking day. For as long as we both shall live.”
He dives into my neck, and I need to get my sister indoors, but I can’t seem to stop fucking holding him and kissing him.
Horns honk in the distance, though, and we pop our heads up, seeing a vehicle bounding off road, around the Jaegers’ trucks. I recognize the Audi. Jerome, and he’s followed by Vincent’s Land Cruiser and a BMW. The Jaegers spin their trucks around, chasing after them.
It’s better the treasure wind up in Jaeger hands than winding up in my father’s.
Looking Dallas in the eye, I tip my head to the building out in the field behind me, about a hundred yards away.
“Treasure’s there,” I tell him.
He glances, confusion spreading across his brow.
“Anna-Katherine!” I shout. “Out of the car! Let’s go!”
The three of us run before the cars reach us, across the muddy field in the storm and the wind.
He’s going to love this.