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When I got to my bedroom door, I didn’t go into it. I didn’t feel like it after all. Instead, I headed out the back of the estate. I found the winding gardens and wandered along the paths, my hands skimming the leaves as I went. The sun was almost set and it was getting chilly, but I didn’t mind so much. I knew I didn’t have much longer before I had to go in and change for dinner. It was nothing big, just a few clients of Archer’s coming over and we all had to dress up and play nice. Dressing up and playing nice was my life, it seemed.
Still, as used to it as I was, I lingered in the garden.
Suddenly, there was a hand on my arm and the owner was pulling me to face them. I reacted on instinct, my other hand raising to hit them away. He caught my wrist well before I made contact and glared at me with icy hatred in the depths of his grey eyes.
“What are you doing?”
I looked at my still-raised hand. “How was I supposed to know it was you?”
“If he’d come back, you think that would have stopped him?”
I blinked and looked back into his eyes. “What? If who came back?”
Valen growled. “Apollo’s looking for you.”
I wasn’t going to be distracted. “If who came back, Valk?”
He took a step forward, forcing me to take a step back. “You shouldn’t have provoked him. What the fuck possessed you?”
I still didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who? When?”
He raised his hand like he was going to put it over my throat again, but just ended up cupping my jaw. “Just keep being the good little princess you’re supposed to be, and we won’t have any problems,” he said scathingly.
“And what if I don’t want to be anymore?”
A touch of humour lit his eyes. “I know I’m good, princess, but I didn’t realise I was that good. Beg me nicely and I’ll let you have my cock one more time.”
I shoved him away from me. For once, he took a step back.
“You think you were that good?” I scoffed.
His head twitched like he was keeping his choice words at bay. “I know I was that good.”
“The only one I see desperate here is you, Valk,” I told him. “Still wanting the one thing you can’t have.”
“And, yet, I had it.”
“And the knowledge you’ll never have it again will eat you up inside,” I snarled.
The corner of his lip twitched into a momentary half-smirk. “I’m fine just walking away, princess. Can you say the same?”
“Yes,” I said, turning away to do just that.
But he took my hand and drew me back to him. My traitorous body went utterly willingly to melt against him.
“You can lie to Apollo, but you can’t lie to me.”
“Who’s lying to who now, Valen?” I asked, feeling him hard against my hip. “You couldn’t walk away for all the Callahan fortune.”
His lips twitched again, but it was a snarl this time. “Maybe not,” he conceded begrudgingly. “But neither could you.”
I forced myself to smile. “I don’t need the Callahan fortune, Valen. I have the Vanguard fortune.”
And, as rich and powerful as the Callahans were, the Vanguards were older, richer and more powerful. We just didn’t like to throw our power about quite so obviously as Archer. We were subtle. Practised. There was old money and new money, then there was older money. Callahans might have been old money, but Vanguards were much, much older.
There was the slight issue of Apollo being the one to inherit the Vanguard fortune, but that didn’t seem relevant just then.
“Admit it,” he plead.
