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“None of your damn business,” she retorts. Standing, she moves back to her desk, opening the laptop and trying to make herself look busy.
“Everything that happens here is my business. Do you need a reminder?”
I move from the bed, and I know she can see me out of the corner of her eye. I stand directly behind her, but I can see her reflection on the laptop screen. Her chest rises and falls as I run my finger down the side of her neck, following the line of her collar bone.
“I’m going to eat you alive, and you don’t even know it,” he says and then whispers. “So damn precious.”
“Seriously, is that supposed to scare me?” she snaps, swinging her chair so she faces me. I stop the chair with my leg, so the chair stops abruptly.
“If I wanted to scare you, I would burn the whole damn building to the ground.” A sadness washes over her features but is quickly replaced with fury. She has a fire inside her, and she hates to back down when backed into a corner. She stands from the chair and tries to bring herself to my height by standing on her tippy toes.
“Make sure you kill me if you do that, the last people who left me for dead in a burning building didn’t do a good enough job.” She pushes at my chest with one finger. Her fight sets me off every damn time, like they say, you can’t fight fire with fire.
“Clearly, if they did, you wouldn’t be here, messing with my life.” I snarl. She takes a step back and clenches her fists at her side.
“I have zero intention of wanting anything to do with your life,” she throws back. I close the gap she put between us.
“Yeah, well that choice isn’t yours,” I mumble, sliding my hands around her face, hooking my thumbs around her ears as I pull her into me and press my lips to hers. She tries to pull back, but when my tongue pushes through her plump lips, she relaxes into my arms, opening her mouth to let me in.
She groans as her fingers slip under my shirt, but I grab her hand and pull it away. The sleeve of her shirt pulls up, and I rub my thumb over a thick puckered scar on her wrist. She instantly rips herself out of my arms.
I open my mouth to tell her she doesn’t have to hide her scars from me, that I might not have any on the outside, but I have enough emotional scars to understand how messed up her life is. But before I can even get the words out, my phone starts vibrating in my pocket, and I pull it out, grimacing at the sight of my father’s name on the screen. Tonight isn’t a night that I can ignore his calls, no matter how much I want to.
“What?” I answer abruptly, watching as she crawls back into bed and curls into a ball.
“Where the fuck are you? I told you to get here early.”
“On my way.”
I turn my back on Cyrus, it was better for her that we stopped anyway. I grab my keys and take the elevator down to the basement where all of our golf carts are stored. I gun it to the auditorium, going off-road since my father is so impatient.
Some of the others that were invited are here already. I park my cart next to Rebel’s and head inside. The school auditorium is massive, seats line every free space of floor tonight. My father must have had a crew set up today. A lot more people will be arriving via the front entrance tonight and using the bridge to drive across, the small airport here can only accommodate so many planes. My father would have given special priority to his business contacts. Anything to make it benefit himself is how my father rolls. Speaking of the devil, he gestures for me to join him up on the stage. I jump up from the front, bypassing the stairs.
“Where the hell have you been?” he snaps, looking at his Rolex as if it drives home his point that I’m late.
“Making nice with your little project. Clearly you have business with her father to go to all this effort. Oh, and bringing Sax back was a nice touch.”
“I thought so, too. That, and your aunt has been on my ass about him. So it kills two birds with one stone.”
“You know that he doesn’t have anywhere near enough points to fight against me, so what are you planning?”
“You seem to forget that after the first fight, he can challenge anyone, and if he wins, he takes their points, which will bump him up to your level. Giving him a shot to trade his bid and fight against you in the last fights of the season.”
I scoff at him. “No one has done that in years, this is the one place where our last names mean shit.”
“Listen to me, son, your last name always means something. Don’t mess with me on this.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Go and help the boys finish setting up, people will be here soon.” I salute him and jump from the stage. Rogue nods his head at me to meet him over by the hallway that leads up to the second level.
“We have a problem,” he says, looking around to make sure that no one is around.
“I don’t have time for problems, my father is already breathing down my neck.”
“I’m fairly certain that Lux told Cyrus about tonight.”
“Fuck,” I say, running my hands through my hair. I can’t have her storming her way in here.
