“I’ll see you back to the house.”
“No, no and hell no.”
“What?” He supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by her response, but he was. He’d never pleasured a woman so completely then had her deny him anything.
“You think we’re just going to walk back to the house like this didn’t happen? No, you get to tell me what the hell just happened.”
“If you don’t know, I think maybe someone was remiss in your education.” He couldn’t help the smirk that curved his lips any more than he could stop enjoying the taste of her that lingered there.
“Not funny. You know exactly what I mean.” She pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear.
“If you want to stand here and talk about it, it’ll happen again. The flower has a certain… effect.”
“Fine. Talk while we walk.” She grabbed his arm and he led her toward the exit.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. I hate you. You hate me. Yet you ran me down like a deer and…” She gestured as if she could pluck what she wanted to say from the space around her and give it breath.
“And you didn’t say no. You didn’t tell me to stop.”
She paled. “No. No, I didn’t.” They walked through several turns in silence. “What I meant was, why would you do that?”
“The answer to that question should be obvious. I wanted to.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “And do you do everything you want to do? You get everything you want?”
“Mostly.” He fought his instinct to touch her again. “Are you saying I did something to you that you didn’t want?”
Randi exhaled heavily. “No, I’m not saying that at all.”
“You’re saying you feel like you’ve already lost our game.”
Her head jerked up, and she studied him.
“I’d feel that way too. But you haven’t had all your plays, little lamb. The best part is still to come.” He leaned down, his lips so close to hers. “When I have you, you’ll be begging me to mount you, to take you, to own you. And you’ll fucking love it.”
She blushed. “That was just crude.”
“But no less true.” He grinned.
“Just because I like your body and you might happen to be good with your tongue, that doesn’t mean anything like this will ever happen again. I’m your employee, remember?”
“Things are more complicated than you know.”
“So tell me.”
She was open, receptive, but he had no way to prove anything to her. Anything he could tell her now, anything he could prove, well, he’d seen how she’d run from him at the first glimpse of his wolf.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“No, I guess it wouldn’t.” Her steps slowed as they neared the edge of the maze.
“If you asked to go home, I’d let you.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Oh, but he could and, if she stayed much longer, if things progressed farther, he’d never let her go. “Very often in this life, things are not what they seem.”
“Like you?”
“Yes,” he nodded solemnly. “Very much like me.”
“I can’t tell if you’re threatening me or flirting with me.” She laughed.
He found he liked the sound of it. He wanted her to do it again.
“Maybe a bit of both, but you like it. Don’t tell me that when I chased you, your blood wasn’t as hot as mine.”
“You really frightened me at first,” she confessed.
Her words startled him. “That’s a powerful weapon to give me, isn’t it? You shouldn’t tell the enemy the power they have over you.”
“Just like I shouldn’t tell him I’m coming.”
His cock was still very much at attention. “I didn’t need you to tell me. It was all over my mouth.”
She blushed again. “Bastard. You knew what I meant.” Randi looked away from him, almost shy.
He stopped walking again, knowing that as soon as they’d stepped past the borders of the maze, everything would change again. “Can’t you trust me just a little?”
“You know how you said it doesn’t work like that? It’s an all or nothing prospect, Woolven.”
He nodded. Blake hadn’t expected her to say yes and then they’d run off into the sunset together. But he’d had to ask. “If you need anything at all, my quarters when I’m in residence are in wing B.”
She smirked. “I half-expected you to tell me you’d be in the room next to mine.”
“I can arrange that.”
“No.” She rushed to add, “I’m fine where I am.”
Just like that, the spell broke as they emerged onto the grounds. He turned north and headed toward the wooded part of the estate.
“Where are you going?”
“There’s no point in tucking you safely into your room. We both know you’re not going to stay there.”
She laughed again. “And you don’t care?”
“Anything I have to hide, you won’t find until I want you to find it.”
“So sure of yourself.” She shook her head. “The arrogance.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe I just know my secrets.”
“It’s not very chivalrous, leaving me in alone in the dark. I seem to remember you saying something about manners? How, just because I don’t have them, it didn’t excuse you from proper conduct?” She cocked her head to the side.
“You are as safe wandering the dark at Aphelion as you would be under lock and key. Nothing that walks these grounds would dare touch you.”
“You say that like I should be on the lookout for monsters.”
“Maybe you should.” Because they looked for her. Especially his personal beast.
“And these monsters, do they all fear you? The great Blake Woolven?”
She obviously teased him, but he couldn’t leave it at that.
“I’m king of the monsters, Randi. But I thought you knew that.” He left her standing there, haloed in the moonlight and the remnants of her pleasure.
He ran toward the woods, toward the solace to be found in shedding his skin and running free into the darkness. The soft loamy earth beneath his paws, the sounds and scents of the night, they wiped his senses clean of her.
Blake couldn’t think about her anymore or he’d turn around and devour her, just like she wanted him to. He ran faster and faster. When he was sure he was out of sight of the main house, he let the wolf have sway.
A scarred old wolf, his fur dirty and sparse, met him halfway. The animal was covered in scars from battles fought and won, battles lost, and prices paid.
Warner always knew just what to do, and the scarred wolf had been his constant companion, his teacher, his friend.
He needed his guidance now more than ever.
Drew always joked that his idea of therapy was deer hunting with Warner. He admitted it in boardrooms and at cocktail parties, while the rest of the guests remained oblivious to the true nature of his statement.
They ran the property line, then farther out to cover the surrounding territory that was all Woolven land, whether the naturals knew it or not. They searched for signs of intruders, of strangers encroaching their territory. Of rogue wolves, or any sign of other factions.
And, tonight, they found one.
He recognized de la Luna scent, hastily and shoddily covered by natural wolf urine. The old trick worked about as often as it didn’t.
It smelled of a young wolf who bore the markers of an Alpha, but wasn’t quite ready yet. He stank of rage and fear.
They patrolled the grounds, finding where the scent stopped. It appeared one of the fences had been tampered with—cut, with a small device which still relayed the signal back to their security sensors.
Blake knew exactly what it was and what it did because Woolven Industries just applied for its patent.
He’d been wrong to assume Randi was safe simply because she was on the grounds.
&n
bsp; He knew from the scent that wolf hadn’t gotten any further than the fencing, this was what he’d come to do, but an attack was imminent.
Blake turned and ran back toward the main house.
Chapter Six
Blake Woolven wasn’t like she’d imagined him.
He wasn’t even the same person as she’d gathered in her first impression of him.
Admitting it didn’t mean she would suddenly trust him because he gave good cunnilingus. She would admit, he was good with his tongue in more ways than one. Not just bringing her off, but in the things he’d said, too.
“There’s our little doom doll now,” Parker Woolven said as she approached the front door to the manor house.
“You’re the baby Woolven, right?” She asked it even though she knew damn well who he was.
“Baby Woolven, that’s me.” He offered her an affable grin. “But I still bite.”
“Of course you do. All handsome men bite.”
“You think I’m handsome?” He straightened. “I can be downright dapper if I try.” He held the door open for her. “Out exploring?”
“You could say that.”
“Alone, or did you go walking in the moonlight with my big brother?” He eyed her. “You know, some women, in certain circles, call him Big Bad.”
She was determined not to blush, as if she had any control over it. She could see how he’d earned the moniker, thinking of the way his cock felt pressed up against her. “As in Big Bad Wolf?” Randi snorted. “To his face? Lord knows, that man doesn’t need any more of an ego.”
Her mind was drawn back to that moment outside of the maze when she’d thought she’d seen something inhuman looking back at her and, when she’d fled, run as if her life depended on it, what had she thought followed her?
The Big Bad Wolf? And it had been.
She shook her head, trying to shake the stupid thought out of her brain, and suddenly became aware of Parker’s intense scrutiny. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
The tension should’ve shattered or cracked, but it didn’t. “No, Randi. You don’t.” He continued to study her.
“Then just what the hell are you looking at?”
“You, obviously.”
“Obviously. What about me has so captured your attention, Baby Woolven?”
“Just wondering if you got my gifts. A certain crossbow and a handy-dandy bit of candy in a can.”
“The pepper spray was you, too? You should know, I have no experience with a crossbow and I almost killed your brother with it.”
Parker actually laughed. He laughed so hard, he snorted. It wasn’t the least bit attractive. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard in years.”
“That I almost killed your brother?” She was incredulous. They had a strange relationship, these brothers.
“You might’ve given him a shiny scar to show the ladies, but he’d have survived. And he would’ve bitched the whole time.” He laughed some more.
“He thought the estate security had been compromised.”
“That’s…even…better.” Parker couldn’t breathe.
“Now you’re just being mean.” Randi continued her progress toward her room.
“One would think, Randi, if you were trying to burn his company to the ground, you’d want him to suffer.”
She didn’t answer but kept walking. She didn’t want to think about it.
“So one walk in the moonlight with Big Bad changed your life, did it?” he called after her.
She didn’t answer him, but rejoined with her own question. “What is with your family and celestial bodies? You even named your estate after planetary movement.”
“Did we? I didn’t realize. What does it mean, Aphelion, I mean?”
“It’s the place in the orbit of a heavenly body when it’s the farthest from the sun.”
“Huh. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know, answering my curiosity…that saved you the joke about your heavenly body. But only this time.” Parker winked at her.
She rolled her eyes. “I know what I look like. You don’t need to turn on the charm with me. I know how this works. If ‘Big Bad’ can’t seduce me then maybe Baby Brother can? Not a chance.”
He cackled again. “You mean he didn’t? Oh, Goddess. That’s just too much.” Parker was laughing so hard he was practically crying. “Oh, oh. But wait, wait.”
She lifted a brow and waited for him to finish cackling.
He took a breath and managed to speak. “You really are a beautiful woman, Randi. If he hasn’t told you that yet, he’s been remiss.”
“You act like we’re engaged or something. Are you all insane?”
“Or something.” Parker shrugged and cheerfully took himself off toward another wing of the estate.
Randi bit her lip with indecision. Her plan had been to go back up to her room, take a nice long shower and then go to bed. But her father’s notes were within reach. She was exhausted, so it was unlikely she’d be able to decode anything until tomorrow anyway… but she was hungry for a piece of him. To touch something he’d touched, to trace her steps over his and feel like maybe the veil of death wasn’t so heavy after all.
She wanted to scrub away the guilt too. Randi shouldn’t have let Blake touch her, she shouldn’t have wanted him to touch her. She certainly shouldn’t be thinking about when he might touch her again.
This was what he intended, to distract her.
To do something to break her.
He’d build her up, make her think that he wanted her, then he’d crush her. Like it mattered. She didn’t matter. Only avenging her father mattered, and she couldn’t let herself forget it.
While she’d been distracted with long walks in the dark, she should’ve already been in the laboratory going over her father’s notes, figuring out just what he was working on, and why it was worth his life.
Where had Woolven said the lab was? She pulled out the ID card in her pocket and set off in search of the secured wing.
Almost as if she’d sensed Randi’s need, the rounded, graying Mrs. Westwood appeared. She brought with her the scent of sugar cookies and tea, like someone’s grandmother. To have corralled all of the Woolven boys, Randi rather imagined the older woman’s sweetness hid something lethal.
Or it could just be that she’d been swept away to a country estate, with a brooding and enigmatic billionaire and had been chased through a maze, run through secret passages… that was like every gothic romance she’d ever read. She just needed to be out wandering the woods or some cliffs in Dover in a filmy white nightgown and she’d be all set.
It comforted her that in most of those books, the hero who’d seemed so terrifying always had some horrible, heartbreaking secret and it was never his fault. He was never really evil.
Unless she went really old school and this was one of those where the anti-hero turned out to be the devil. Literally. She used to read those way too often.
“Can I help you find something, dearling?”
“The lab. I’d like to get started on my father’s notes.”
“Industrious little thing, aren’t you?” Mrs. Westwood gave her a cheery smile.
She’d never been called a ‘little thing’ and certainly never by a woman who was half her size. “That’s what I’m here for, Mrs. Westwood. I’m not here for a vacation or a house party.”
“You can call me Eleanor. I insist the boys call me Mrs. Westwood because, well, you know how little boys can be. They’re adorable little beasties, but mostly made out of noise and dirt.”
She found herself smiling. “That they are.”
Eleanor fiddled around in the pockets of her dress and produced another canister of the pepper spray. She tucked it into Randi’s palm. “This is for you. Keep this on your person at all times.”
“First the bow and arrow and now this? What am I missing? Blake told me that I was safe here, but all of this cloak and dagger stuff with those sad, pitying
smiles… what’s that about?”
Eleanor patted her hand. “You are safe, but it never hurts to be prepared. Corporate espionage has been known to happen. Sometimes, people like the de la Lunas will try to get other people to do their dirty work.”
Randi cocked her head to the side. “So, if Woolven is at direct odds with de la Luna, why was he fucking Marchessa? In his office of all places?” She clamped her hand over her mouth—both because she’d just dropped the f-bomb on someone’s grandmother and because of the cold wash of guilt that skittered down her spine at the mention of corporate espionage. Wasn’t that why she was here? To bring Woolven down?
These people had welcomed her and—stuff it, honey. She reminded herself that if she didn’t have the chops for revenge, she shouldn’t be there. All that stuff about Woolven wanting her, it was to elicit exactly such a response. He’d brought her in to the bosom of his family when she was the most vulnerable.
By giving her what she needed and wanted most—he’d turn her.
Screw that.
And screw him.
“Oh, he’s done with that now that you’re here.” She inclined her head toward the far hall. “This way.”
Randi couldn’t help but remember what Blake had said earlier: What did you expect, Wuthering Heights? She was so disappointed when they turned down an institutional hallway. Mrs. Westwood—Eleanor, she didn’t seem to fit. She was an anachronism—a throwback to an old world with old traditions and this setting almost seemed like it would be anathema to her.
“Are you okay, child?” Eleanor asked her.
“Wool gathering.”
Eleanor nodded and swiped her security ID. A set of doors opened with an audible hiss. She led her through another security measure and what seemed like another maze before she swiped her ID on one final door.
Randi knew they hit the end of the road then—she knew it was her father’s lab even before she’d stepped a foot inside. She could feel his presence and she pressed her lips together hard, holding back the emotion. She missed him and she knew going in this room would be the last of him.
The alchemy of the room would change: the scents, the presence, the air… it would all be transformed once she’d entered and she didn’t want to let that part of him go. But it wasn’t as if Woolven would let her turn it into some kind of memorial. This was a place of business. Or work.
Big Bad Billionaire (The Woolven Secret Book 1) Page 5
