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Because behind those pretty blue eyes, there was a certain brand of crazy I recognised.
The sort of crazy that matched mine.
“She doesn’t date,” a sharp voice broke into the tension building between us.
Chloe went blank.
As though all emotion swirling across her face a moment before dampened down, her expression–the things that made herherthat I’d seen in our two short meetings–it all disappeared.
I got the blandest version of Ice-Princess Chloe that the media had ever seen. The one who made front pages and did press interviews.
That’s not my version, Princess. And I’ll do anything to get you back.
Extract her from whatever personal hell she just devolved back into.
Her hand slipped from mine and she was back to being an island, a habit I got to break for her if only for a few seconds.
“Are you listening to me?” The same sharp voice banged on, but I only had eyes for one girl at the moment. From the way she mentioned her manager before, I had a good idea who just interrupted the best conversation I’d had with her so far.
“You’re the sister.” I said it flatly, more than borderline in the realm of rudeness, but the woman behind me didn’t even flinch when I shifted, facing her.
“Chloe. You skipped another class.”
Another one? She’s making a habit of this?
No wonder the girl was failing. Suddenly my previous assessment of her regarding course choices ripped straight down the middle.
Who are you really, Chloe Duke?
The girl I studied could have been a carbon copy of the one seated beside me, albeit with a harder edge. Her face was all angles and where Chloe’s slim body filled out just right in all the places that made my cock twitch in my pants, this girl looked like she hadn’t eaten a full meal in several years.
I glanced at Chloe, but she didn’t seem any more likely to answer her sister than the sister who refused to acknowledge my presence standing smack between the two siblings.
“You must be the author of the infamous schedule.” I rose, putting myself further between this angular fury and the girl who shut down so completely she could have been mistaken for an ice carving. “Nick Jessop.”
The girl stepped around me as though I didn't exist. “Come on, Chloe.” She clicked her toneandher fucking pincers of fingers like she was talking to a dog. “We don’t have time for this. Plus you have a sesh with the trainer to work on your injury before coaching this afternoon.”
Chloe nodded, unfreezing like the ice princess I no longer suspected her to be. “Yeah, ‘kay. I’ll be right there. Give me a sec.” Her words came out stilted, like she hadn’t used this persona for a while.
Glad I got to see the real you, Chloe Duke.
I pivoted in full on my heel, catching her eye. “We weren’t done tutoring.”
Chloe sent me a look that could have shrivelled cocks all across the eastern seaboard, had it not been for the flicker of fear behind those sea-blue eyes.
Like she was begging me not to get involved.
Like a fucking martyr.
Or a girl whose control had been stripped away, layer by layer, until she forgot what it was like to have any.
That’s not happening on my watch.
Unsure how I fell into the toxic mess of her family politics so fast, I reached out, catching Chloe’s hand again and tugging her forward so her weight fell gently against me. Her breath hitched, though she didn’t push me away, those pretty aquamarine eyes that were wide as a scared little kitty a second ago fluttering beneath thick lashes. Surprise, perhaps, that I lifted her so easily, held her tight to me. Something there that responded to me, with an awareness that shot to every extremity in my body.
“Are we done for now, Chloe?” I asked softly, making the conversation a private one, despite the jekyll of a sister huffing around us.
I blocked all that out, trailing my fingers along her spine to trace patterns at the nape of her neck. Soft hairs rose beneath my touch, and she gave me the perfect little shiver I appreciated enough to almost push her against the wall and kiss the shit out of her right in front of her unwelcome audience.
