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“She’s actually an amazing pianist.”
Brandon’s deep voice boomed behind me, and a hand slipped around my waist. Jared’s eyes zeroed in on the hand and back up to Brandon. His expression was not particularly friendly.
“Jared Rounsaville,” he said as he offered a stiff handshake. “And you are?”
“Brandon Sterling,” Brandon responded casually, returning the gesture without removing his other hand from my waist.
My gaze bounced nervously between them.
Jared’s mouth dropped slightly before he recovered. “As in, Sterling Grove?”
“And Ventures,” Brandon replied with a slight smirk. I nudged his ankle with my foot, but he didn’t alter his expression. “How do you know Skylar?”
“Oh, we’ve gone out a few times. We know each other from school. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”
I frowned. “Brandon and I haven’t known each other very long, Jared.”
“Didn’t you intern at his firm?”
I could feel the flush bloom up my neck at the question. These sorts of connections were always going to be made by people; I just wasn’t ready for it to happen quite yet. Especially by a guy I’d gone out with once.
“I don’t have much to do with interns,” Brandon stepped in gracefully. He released my waist and captured my hand instead, squeezing it like he somehow knew what I was thinking. “We didn’t meet until after she had left.” He smiled down at me. “Lucky me.”
“Lucky you,” Jared replied blandly. He cleared his throat, brown eyes sharp and unforgiving. “Well. I guess I’d better be going. I’ll see you, Skylar.”
“See you, Jared,” I replied weakly, giving a pathetic wave as he turned away.
“I’ll have to find out for what dates the Rounsavilles’ tickets are,” Brandon remarked dryly as he watched Jared and his family leave. “Otherwise we are never coming here again.”
I sighed, although not without relief. If that meant we were less likely to run into Jared again, I wasn’t going to fight it. Brandon looked at me to confirm, but his wry expression quickly morphed into one of overt lust as his eyes traced the curves of my body outlined in the clingy velvet. His gaze was so explicit that I fought the urge to yank my coat away from him and throw it over my head.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, beautiful,” Brandon said as he draped my coat over my shoulders and then put on his own. “If you’re not making me want to have my way with you in front of my driver, you’re making me want to punch the lights out of all the other assholes who want you too.”
“You can’t blame me when you asked for the damn thing in the first place. I thought you liked my dress.”
Brandon only perused my body again, making me feel naked even with the added layer of my overcoat. “Nope. It’s a lost cause.” He grabbed my hand. “Come on, Red. Let’s go back to the house before I get arrested for public indecency.”
Twenty-Seven
We pulled up to the house on Beacon Street sometime past eleven after lingering over an amazing dinner at the new French-American restaurant a few blocks from Symphony Hall. I was stuffed. It had been an incredible evening, and I was more than ready to continue it somewhere private. If the constant looks and increasingly suggestive pinches were any indication, so was Brandon.
“Am I already a foregone conclusion?” I teased as we stepped out of the car.
Brandon led me up the stone steps of the house and smirked as he took out his keys.
“Well, I could have tried to angle my way up to your place for a nightcap. Could we actually fit into that bed of yours?”
I giggled as I followed him inside. His long legs would probably hang about six inches off the end of my small double mattress.
“Where’s Ana tonight?” I asked over my shoulder as Brandon helped remove my coat.
“I told her to take the night off.” Brandon traced his fingertips down my bare skin, down to the fabric that fell just below the small of my back. I hummed in response and arched slightly into his touch.
The living room, with its bright fire shining a warm light over the plush white interior, looked even more inviting than I remembered. On a wine-addled whim, I slipped off my shoes and padded in my stockinged feet to the center of the room, in front of the couch, where I sank onto the floor and lay flat to feel the buttery softness of the sheepskin rug on my back.
“Mmmm,” I purred, twisting like a cat on warm concrete. “I’ve wanted to do this since I first saw this rug.”
There was no immediate response, so I tipped my head up to find Brandon leaning against one of the big wood beam foundations that guarded the entrance of the room, rubbing his chin meditatively as he stared down at me. I pressed my lips together in a sly smile.
