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I really, really didn’t want to, but I found myself standing all the same. Running my hands down the sides of my dress, I walked around our parents’ table and stopped when I stood next to Gareth.
He’d watched me all the while, a cold amusement in his gaze. “Yes?” The word left him slowly, as if he already suspected what I was there for, and he found it both annoying and funny at the same time.
“Do you want to dance?” The question left me in a hurry, and it took everything in me to not look away as I said it. It would be one thing if Gareth wasn’t an asshole, but that’s exactly the kind of vibe he gave off.
When he said nothing, when he did nothing, I let out a sigh. My mom was still watching the interaction as she danced with Alistair, so I shoved a hand at Gareth, adding, “I’m sure our parents would love to see us getting along.”Technically Alistair wasn’t Gareth’s parent, but whatever.
Gareth took a moment to look at them, and then he muttered, “You’re right.” He did not take my hand as he got up, nor did he walk with me to the dance floor. He just… he went, and not once did he ever look back at me to make sure I was following him.
Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.
I was a few seconds behind him, and when he reached the corner of the dance floor, he abruptly stopped and turned around, causing me to walk right into him for the second time today. He didn’t give me the chance to recoil and put some space in between us, though; the moment I hit his chest, his hands went to my sides, keeping me there. We were about as close as our parents were. I could feel every time his chest expanded with a breath, just like I was certain he could feel mine.
We were too close.
“Gareth,” I hissed out his name, but he didn’t loosen his grip on me. The only thing he started to do was sway to the beat of the music, acting like everything was fine and he wasn’t making me uncomfortable. I didn’t put my hands on him at all, save for on his chest in an attempt to get myself away from him.
He was stronger than he looked, the asshole.
“Stop,” Gareth warned, his voice low and menacing. “You wouldn’t want to make a scene at your mother’s wedding, would you?” Around us, everyone else was dancing. No one paid attention to us, but that might change if I continued to fight him.
In vain, I might add. Fight himin vain,because nothing I did made him loosen his grip on me. Those hands on my waist were like iron, like steel. I couldn’t pull myself away from him regardless of what I did. He had me and he wasn’t letting go.
“This is too close,” I whispered back, slow to lift my hands and place them on his shoulders. I let myself scowl, only because his chest was right in front of my face, so it blocked out my expression, stopping anyone else from seeing it.
“Is it? I’ve never had a stepsister before, so I don’t know the rules.”
I shot him a glare only to find he was gazing down at me, those eyes of his narrowed. If looks could kill, I’d be a goner, but so would he. “Don’t play games. You know this is too close. You know I’m uncomfortable. I bet you get off on making people uncomfortable.”
His eyebrows lifted, a faint flicker of interest filling his eyes as he asked, “Do I? You seem to know all about me, Brianna, even though we just met. So tell me, what else do I like? Tell me more about me, and then I’ll do you.”
This asshole thought he could read me like a book or something? Please.
But I decided to play his game, anyway, saying, “You’re a rich, entitled asshole who always gets his way. No one’s ever told you no before in your entire life. You think everything is owed to you just because you have money, because you’re a Montgomery, and if someone tries to deny you, you take it anyway, consequences be damned. You’re used to people tripping over themselves around you because of who you are, and you’ve probably never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a month. How am I doing?”
I couldn’t stop the acid from creeping into my voice as I spoke; this guy… oh, he rubbed me the wrong way. Living with him was going to be torture.
His chest rumbled with what must’ve been a laugh. “My turn,” he said, ignoring my pointed question. “You’re a loner. You don’t have friends because you think you’re too strange for them. You’re not like other girls, because you think there’s something about you that no one else could understand. You think you’re special—but you know that makes you the opposite. Everyone thinks they’re special, and more often than not, there is nothing special about them.”
Gareth knew exactly what to say to piss me off, and I ground my teeth, ready to tell him off, but he wasn’t quite done sizing me up, yet. He went on, “You try to put on a brave face and do what your mom wants, but deep down, you hate her. You hate everyone. You pretend because that’s all you can do.”
The more he said, the faster my heart beat. When I looked into his eyes right then, I wasn’t scowling. I couldn’t. There was no way he’d picked up on all of that in our brief interactions. Just no way.
“How did I do?” Gareth asked, tilting his head at me.
“Fuck you,” I whispered, “you asshole.”
He smiled at that… and, as dark and menacing as that smile was, it was the first genuine smile I’d gotten from him. “You’re not supposed to use that language with a stepbrother, are you?”
I turned my head away, staring at the floor next to us instead of at his face. The longer I looked at him, the more aggravated I got—I could feel my blood pressure rising with each passing second.
“What? Did I say something wrong?” Gareth asked. “Have I offended you somehow?” When I didn’t answer him, he went on, “Well, since I already hurt your precious feelings, let’s move on to something else. The hair. What the hell is with the hair?”
I pursed my lips together, whipping my head back at him and glaring. “For your information, I like my hair, and I don’t give a shit if you like it or not. I’m not here to impress you or kiss your ass. I’m only playing nice right now because of my mom, otherwise I would’ve kneed you in the dick a long time ago.”
His chest reverberated with a chuckle. “Oh, you’ll have to do a lot more than play nice with me if you want to keep your mom happy. I could destroy you, you know. Destroy your mom, too. Get her fired, blacklist her name, make you homeless… do you think you’d last long on the streets?”
Wow. Okay, just… wow. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to that.
