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“I don’t like you. I can’t stand you, honestly. You hate me, too, so I’m sure you can appreciate the feeling. It’s mutual, the hate between us…That’s good. It puts us on the same page. But here’s the thing. Your brother asked me to watch out for you.”
Her eyes widened. She was clearly surprised that Asher was trying to protect her, even from thousands of miles away.
“Yep, watch out for you, make sure you don’t get taken advantage of, make sure you don’t make any mistakes you won’t recover from. I wasn’t going to bother. Honestly, I figured you deserved whatever came your way…But now that you’re here, I have to say – ignoring you all year for what you did would’ve been far too easy a punishment. I see that now. Ignoring you was only letting you get away with treating me like dirt and leaving me to rot.”
Her eyebrows scrunched in confusion. I ignored it.
“And since I’m disinclined to have you shack up with any other hockey players, you’ll stay right here, where I can keep an eye on you. Because I see it now, Eve. The best punishment for you is tobe right there, ruining your fun, every single day. You think you can party and be a cheerleader and have a boyfriend, since Asher isn’t here?”
I stroked her hair, and she flinched away from it, her fury shooting out at me.
“You’re wrong. You can’t do any of that, because I’m here. I’ll be your judge, jury, and executioner…the prison warden of your worst nightmares. My control and discipline will make your brother look like a saint.”
She mumbled against the gag, no doubt cursing my name.
“You need to pee?” I asked her.
She protested indignantly and shook her head, embarrassed to be asked.
“Okay, fine. Don’t say I didn’t check,” I murmured to her and got up, heading for the door. “Take some time and think over what I said,” I told her, just before flipping off the light and shutting the door.
Eve
That fucking asshole.I was going to murder him when I got free. MURDER. Any lingering sympathy I’d had for Beckett, or guilt over helping put him in a position to get hurt, evaporated as I stewed for an hour, the sun falling outside the window. My stomach growled at the smell of food in the kitchen. I could hear Beckett, Marcus, and Cayden talking.
He hadn’t come back yet.Dickhead.Cursing him made me feel marginally better, but really, there was nothing I could do until he untied me. Once he did, I was going to kill him.
I closed my eyes. I had to be ready to strike as soon as I was untied. I had to save my strength. I had to prepare. I took deep, calming breaths and waited.
Unfortunately, deep calming breaths were awfully close to my go-to method for falling asleep. When I jerked awake, I blinked disbelievingly at the pale sunlight flooding in the window.I’d slept all night?
I turned my head toward the bed across the room. Beckett was still sleeping. The urgent need to pee demanded attention.
I shouted behind the gag. He didn’t move. He was sleeping without a shirt on, just boxers, and during the night, he’d kicked his covers down. I could see a lot of his body in the weak morning light. A whole lot.
I screamed as loudly as I could and kicked my legs against the mattress.
Beckett shifted, stretching, though his eyes were still closed. An alarm suddenly blared beside him, and his arm stretched out and shut it off with a practiced motion. Hockey players got up early to train. I knew that from my brother’s high school schedule.
Beckett sat up, rubbing at his eyes and stretching his arms over his head, a move that made his firmly packed abs shift invitingly. But I didn’t care how hot he looked in the morning; he was a psychopath.
He stood and stretched from side to side, completely ignoring the morning wood that was straining hard at the material of his boxers. The man might need specially designed underwear with more space in the front, because Beckett was perfectly proportionedallover. No wonder he was cocky as fuck. No wonder he had filled me up inside so fully.Nope. Not going there.
“Morning, Tiny. Sleep well?” His morning voice was a deep, rough rumble.
I glared at him. He ambled toward me and picked up the glass of water sitting on the nightstand. “When I came to untie you last night, you were already out. A little tired, were we?”
Hell yes, I was tired. I’d been working like a dog all summer. I waited for him to remove the gag. He finally did, his big fingers surprisingly gentle.
I bit at his departing fingers, but he managed to get them out of the way just in time.
“Here.” He tilted the glass to my lips.
I took a few long swallows of water and then held another mouthful behind my lips.
He set down the glass and stared at me. “Have you thought about what I said yesterday? I need you to agree on how things are going to be, moving forward. I don’t have time to tie you up every night to make sure you don’t run off to Tyler’s room.”
I spat the water at his face in a long stream and hit him right in the eye.
