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“No one calls me Cole.” Did I just growl? I feel like an animal.
She huffs, her chest expanding and nearly brushing against mine. Every hair on my body stands on end, waiting—anticipating a connection that’s missed by a hair.
The girl drops her head to the side as she slams one hand on her hip, and throws me sass, “Yeah, I’ve read. It’s Tav now.”
She’s read about me?
I shake off the thought, and the unsettling feeling that comes with it. “Get in the car.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m taking you to a hotel.”
“No,” she refuses. I’m surprised she doesn’t stomp a little foot. “I’m staying here, and you’re going to help me.”
“Spoken just like a Laurier.”
She flinches at my dig. It’s the first time I’ve seen the ice princess crack to show that, maybe, there’s a woman capable of feeling human emotions beneath all that polish.
Then I think it’s a trick. Because I know just how the Laurier women operate. I’ve been burned by them before. More than once, I’m sure.
I won’t make the same mistake now. They can’t be trusted.
She can’t be trusted.
She inhales through her nose, rolling those full lips together. “I have something you want. But you’re not getting it until you help me.”
“You have nothing I want.” She pushes up onto her tiptoes and a gust of scent assaults me. It’s sweetly floral with undertones of something sad and cool, like rain. Addictive.
I shove the poetically uncharacteristic thought down deep as I pin her with a glare.
She just tips those eyes up at me in defiance as she insists, “Oh, I do.”
“And what might that be, Pipsqueak?” I know the name pisses her off by the flash of something hot I see in her cool eyes. I want to throw another match onto the spark. I want to watch her light up the night and burn with passion. Any passion. Even if it’s born of anger, if just to prove there’s more than ice and lies surging through her veins.
“Proof.” The single word falls from her lips into the inches between us, snagging air in my lungs. She presses on, knowing she’s hooked me like a fish on a line. I’m at her mercy. “I was young when everything went down. A child. But I wasn’t so young that I don’t remember your accusation. Everyone thought that, because I was a child, I wasn’t listening—but I was. I listened to everything. So, I know that you were right about Annika’s shares of Taviera Shipping and Cruise Lines. They weren’t supposed to go to your father. But Annika never meant for them to be split between you and Darius, either. She altered her will, sound of mind, before she passed. And everything she had was going to you.”
It's like the world falls out from under me. Blood surges under my skin. Ringing sounds between my ears. My vision blurs.
I don’t think—can’t think as I shove my hand into her belly. I’m not sure if I’m trying to push her away or cage her in so she can’t run with this information. Either way, she stumbles on the step, and I catch her only to shove her roughly against the door, my hand still in her stomach as I crowd her small body with my much larger one.
I’m still not thinking as my hand moves from her belly, dragging up her torso, between heaving breasts to her throat. My fingers curl around her neck in a way I’ve never done before in my life outside of fucking a woman, and squeeze.
I’m going mad.
“What proof, Olympia?”
Her lips part, and I see another flash in those eyes. Fear and—resignation? “I have the original will. The one they say doesn’t exist.”
My fingers throb. Her pulse flutters, quickening under my thumb. I can’t help but stroke that pulse-point as I demand low, “Where?”
Goosebumps rise on her flesh. Is it from the stroke of my thumb?
No. No. Don’t think about that.
Christ.
“It’s in a safety deposit box. In North Carolina.” She juts her chin, the brave little vixen. Her skin is so smooth. “I have a photo, but you don’t get the real thing until you help me.”
