CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT’S BEEN ABOUT thirty minutes, give or take.
No one has come banging on the door. Not the bartender guy and not the man I’m running from.
I’m pretty sure he’s still looking for me.
I’m sure he’s freaking out. Which is the worst part in all of this.
It’s not my intention to scare him, but I also know if I tell him—again—I don’t want to stay with him, he’s not going to listen.
In fact, this time he’ll simply pick me up and throw me in a safe place until all of this is over.
So like a coward, or a sensible person who feels like a coward, I’m going to let my brother do the talking.
My brother and I, we’ve always had a complicated relationship, or rather a nonexistent one.
He was never around, and whenever he was, he used to stick to my father’s side.
That automatically meant I never trusted him to do right by me or protect me or do any of the things big brothers do.
Plus, he never came to Mom’s rescue, and that was the worst crime in my book.
But if he’s willing to work with the Graysons to nail down this bastard, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate things.
Maybe it’s time for me to actually sit down and ask him certain things point-blank rather than assuming I know the answers.
It requires a massive level of trust, and given the men in my family, it could turn really bad, but I have to try.
Because for the first time in my life, I’m in a situation where only my brother can help me.
Since the coast seems to be clear, I decide to go out there and ask to borrow their phone so I can call Brecken.
I’m rounding the corner to approach the bar when my feet come to a jarring halt.
Because on the exact spot at the bar where my soda is sitting is the very man I’ve been trying to run from.
He’s sitting on the stool, his elbows resting on the bar and his fingers wrapped around a tumbler of his own.
It’s filled with an amber liquid that I think could be whiskey or bourbon, and I watch him raise the glass to his plush mouth.
Then, throwing his head back, he downs the whole thing in one gulp.
He sets it down, signals the bartender, and asks for another one.
The bartender looks even more wary than he did when I suddenly flew through the door, and I know it’s because of Radisson’s scar.
God, I hate him immediately and feel even worse about flirting with him.
Nervous and chewing on his lip, the bartender brings Radisson the drink, and for some reason, he’s refusing to look at me. His cheeks are red and he’s deliberately trying to keep his eyes downcast. But before I can wonder about it, he walks away and Radisson turns to me.
As soon as his green eyes, looking greener now, fall on me, I draw back.
The intensity in them is that heavy and powerful.
Almost as powerful as his bulk on that tiny stool.
Crazily, I think it’ll give out any second under his dense muscles and bones.
My heart is ready to do that already, give out from how fast it’s beating.
Keeping his gaze locked with mine, he grabs the glass at the bottom, by the palm of his hand, all five of his fingers covering it, and takes a sip.
Then he dips his chin, and I know he wants me to go to him.
I’ve been standing in a corner, watching everything with wide eyes and my fingers twisting my dress.
But at his unspoken command, my feet move on their own.
I approach him with trembling legs, and he keeps me under his scrutiny the whole time I’m walking, taking another sip of his whiskey.
When I reach him, he widens his thighs on the stool, the muscles under his jeans bulging in a way that makes me bite my lip.
I know what he wants, so I keep going until I’m between his muscular thighs, his heat and scent engulfing me right away.
My body shivering, I whisper, “How did you… find me?”
His expression may be blank, but I know something is going on under his cool mask as he rasps, “Never lost you.”
I jerk and curl my hands into fists at my sides. “You knew where I was the whole time?”
He takes another sip of his whiskey as the answer.
“So you were just waiting for me to come out?”
Another sip but no words.
“Did you watch me leave the store then? Is that how you knew?”
He shakes his head no.
“So then how—”
“Always knew you were gonna make a run for it.”
“How?”
For this question, his pause is longer and his eyes are grave. He takes another sip of his whiskey before he answers, “You don’t trust me.”
“No,” I answer immediately. “That’s not why… I do. I trust you. I can explain. It’s just that—”
He stands up then, the stool screeching against the floor as he crowds me, my body.
I try to take a step back, but he doesn’t let me go anywhere because he grabs my hand.
And he drags me away from the bar. I’m so shocked at this turn of events, at the fact that he’s holding my hand, all I can do is stare down at where we’re joined.
He’s not only holding my hand, but he’s rubbing his rough thumb over my skin as if trying to memorize the feel of it.
Every couple of seconds, he also squeezes my hand, tightens his fingers around me like he never wants to let go.
Whatever it is he’s doing, though, I like it so much that my heart is about to burst out of my rib cage.
God, Peyton, you need to find a way to get away from him.
We finally come to a stop at one of the tables, or rather a booth, with deep burgundy leather seats and a walnut-brown table.
It’s slightly toward the back but has a direct view of the bar.
I notice the bartender turned toward us, his cheeks still red but his eyes firmly averted.
He looks focused on mixing a drink, even though there isn’t anyone else here but us and we didn’t place an order.
Again, I think he’s deliberately avoiding looking at us.
My attention is diverted when I feel Radisson take a seat, our hands still joined.
I notice he dwarfs the booth just as much as he did that stool.
His shoulders cover half of it, and his thighs sprawled wide cover the entirety.
But that’s all I get to notice because he tugs at my hand and before I know it, like his thighs on the seat, I’m sprawled across his lap.
My back to his front. He goes ahead and adjusts me, grabbing me by the waist. As always, his large hands span the entire length of it as he maneuvers me so that my butt is firmly secured against his pelvis.
And God, it feels so right, like I belong here, on his lap, that I can’t help but adjust myself until I’m firmly tucked against him.
Then I feel his face come down, his nose nuzzling the side of my neck, smelling my hair, my skin, and instead of focusing on the important things, I whisper, “You did that. Before too.”
He takes a whiff of my hair again, his hands on my waist, squeezing. “Did what?”
I arch my back against him, grabbing his heated forearms. “Smelled me. The night you took me. For the first time.” Then, “Actually, you’re always doing that. Smelling me.”
He hums, doing it again, his chest vibrating with satisfaction. “Scented your lotion, when I broke into your room that one time.”
“To plant the camera?”
He hums again, both smelling me and telling me yes. “Watched you night after night after night, rubbin’ it into your skin before you went to sleep.” He squeezes my waist again and my eyes almost flutter closed. “Wanted to see if you smelled like it. Like bergamot and hyacinth.”
“I—”
“You don’t,” he goes on.
“I don’t?”
He shakes his head, rubbing his nose into the crook of my neck. “You smell better. Your blue fuckin’ lotion’s got nothin’ on the scent of your skin.”
To demonstrate, he takes another whiff and this time, groans loudly.
So much so that I know the bartender heard it.
Because he goes even redder in the face and abruptly turns around.
God, it makes me so wet. So shamelessly wet.
It turns me on that someone can hear us, hear him being all unhinged and crazy.
But that’s exactly why I ran away in the first place.
It’s not that I don’t trust him; it’s that I don’t trust myself when I’m with him.
I dig my nails into his forearms, arching up against him again. Then, “I-I think we should talk about why I ran. I need to—”
He hums again, his fingers kneading the flesh of my waist, starting to create a burn that brings me this close to moaning just like him. Then, “You do that. While I try to check somethin’ else about my wife.”
I go still. “What?”
He keeps nuzzling the column of my throat as he replies, “That’s what I told him you were when I came in after you.”
I know he’s talking about the bartender, and I ask, in an almost hysterical voice, keeping my shocked eyes on the guy’s back, “You told him I was your wife?”
He nods, his stubble rubbing against my neck.
“But I don’t… Why?”
“If I’d told him you were mine, he wouldn’t have believed someone as pretty as a princess would ever agree to belong to an ugly monster like me, not willingly.
” I open my mouth to object, but he keeps going, “Couldn’t have told him I was your brother, ’cause the way I’ve got you sittin’ all snug in my lap and the way you like it, like this is the best seat in the house and not my hand that you were sitting on with my finger stuck in your princess pussy, no brother would ever touch his sister that way.
And I’m old, darlin’, but I ain’t old enough to be your daddy. ”
Every word out of his mouth is filthy and sitting heavy in my belly.
I want to say something, tell him to stop, but I don’t know how.
And this is one of those times when he has no problem with saying all the things he wants to.
I think he knows how crazy it makes me, his deep and rough, nasty words.