Oh, God. Where is he taking this?
I bow my head so he can’t see the panic on my face and I feel the bed dip under his weight. He sits beside me, sifting his fingers through my hair.
I take a shuddering breath. “You can’t.”
Jayce’s hand makes trails through my curls and he hesitates, but then resumes the gentle stroking. “I’m not someone who likes to be told what they can and can’t do. Try me.”
Jayce reaches across my lap, threading his fingers through mine. The sweetness and simplicity of this gesture rocks me. I want to make him go away, this man whose fame could explode my Internet secret, and at the same time beg him to stay. I sigh heavily.
“I’ve tried, Jayce. My name and number got out on the Internet, and that’s how the creeps got my number to text me.” It’s the truth, but not nearly half of it.
Jayce pulls my hand to his mouth. Slowly, deliberately, he locks his eyes on mine and kisses each of my pale knuckles laced between his own. “There’s more.”
I open and close my mouth, not wanting to give him more. He releases my hand and fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Do I need to Google you to find out myself?”
“No! God, no, don’t …” I squirm, desperate for an excuse, but his fingers fly over the screen and he starts scrolling through results. My words tumble out, trying to reach his ears before he finds the Sexy Bitches site.
“It was a mistake. I didn’t want—I never wanted these pictures to be public. Or to happen. I swear. My boyfriend took them. Ex. Ex-boyfriend. He took my camera and he tied me up and he shot them.”
I see Jayce land on the site. The photos load on his screen. Even just a few inches wide, I see myself clearly and cringe at what he must think of me.
“I broke up with him. And this is his revenge.”
Jayce’s face is hard and angry, his jaw ticking as his shoulders tense. His hand in my hair is tighter, almost painful, but I don’t think he even notices. I hold my breath for Jayce’s reaction and after a long moment, he drops the phone on the bed beside him and turns to me.
His eyes are on fire and he twists, his hand pulling me back against the bed, his body following until it’s hovering over mine. “You never wanted this picture to be taken?” His voice shakes with anger.
“No.” I bite my lip, his mouth inches from mine.
“You never wanted to be tied up?” His voice is lower, more gravelly.
“Not like that,” I whisper.
“What do you want, Violet?” There’s an edge of danger in this question, a demand, and his other hand digs into the flesh of my hip.
My heart beats loudly in my ears and I tear my eyes away from his eyes, to his lips, his pulse pounding in his neck, his body so close above me. He could crush me if he’d just let go.
And that’s what I want in this moment, to just let go, to let someone else share this secret that’s haunting me.
I wrap my arms behind Jayce’s head and pull him closer. “You.”
More powerful than instinct, more immediate than pain, his mouth is on mine, his lips demanding, his body descending. His hand leaves my hip and moves up my ribcage while the other remains buried in my hair.
I let him in. Let his tongue tease apart the seam of my lips, let his hips settle into mine, let his arousal between my thighs draw out an ache of my own.
I kiss him back with swirling, cacophonous feeling—the need to be protected, the need for comfort, the need for release.
And yes, even if I deny it, the desire to be dominated. Seeing those pictures of me brought equal parts lust and terror boiling to the surface. “Wait. Stop.”
Jayce pulls away from me lightning-fast, as if I’ve bitten him. “What?”
He looks so alarmed that I brush his cheek with my hand to reassure him. “Don’t freak out. Just … just give me a moment, OK?”
“Are you freaked out?” His eyes are serious. Worried.
“No. Are you?”
He sits up and helps me sit up beside him. “Maybe a little. The pictures explain a lot. And the stalker—that’s some serious shit, Violet.”
I wince at the curse. “I know that’s serious stuff, but I can’t let Brady ruin my life. That’s probably his intent. I can’t let him get to me like that.”
“So he’s enlisted others to do the dirty work for him,” Jayce says darkly.
He’s right. Brady is cowardly enough to hide behind an anonymous photo upload and an anonymous email to my principal—if that was him. He’d never get his hands dirty with an overt act that the public could see. He wants to win this election too badly, and the primary is less than two months away.
The sun slants through my window and my stomach growls. Jayce cocks his eyebrow and grins. “No dinner?”
“Lost track of time. How about you?”
“Let’s go get some.”
I balk. Smoldering hot kisses aside, I still don’t want to be seen with this guy in public. “Nah, I’d rather just nibble on something here.”
Jayce pushes himself off the bed and chuckles. “If you’re talking about nibbling something from your frighteningly bare refrigerator, I’d say you’re having ketchup with a side of soy sauce for dinner.”
My laugh is cut short by the familiar text tone of my old phone.
Tonight, Violet. Ready or not, here I come. Before I’m done with you, you’ll be screaming my name.
CHAPTER 13: JAYCE
My eyes bounce around Violet’s room until they land on a gym bag. I throw it on the bed and pull open a dresser drawer.
“Pack,” I say, plunging my hands into a tangle of frilly things that I’m positive I’d want to peel off her body with my teeth. They go in the bag. Next drawer: shirts. I lift out a stack of them and add them to the bag.
Violet stares, still seated on her bed.
“Can you go get your stuff from the bathroom?” I open another drawer. Shorts and skirts. They go in, and I swipe a pair of sandals and some running shoes from her floor. Socks. Nearly forgot.
“What are you doing? Why are you—?”
“You can’t stay here. I won’t let you. We’ll call Neil and tell him to stay away, too, at least until the police can catch up to this guy.” I scan the room and add a hairbrush to the bag.
She’s not moving so I roam to the bathroom, grabbing a makeup bag, shampoo and body wash. Out of Violet’s earshot, I place a call to my car service and request publicity transport. That means I’m getting a driver who doubles as a bodyguard.
When I return, Violet’s at least standing, but her face is set. I’m in for an argument.
“You can’t just hide me away.”
“I can for now.” My voice is rough, a command. I stuff the toiletries into the bag, zip it, and hoist it onto my shoulder.
“Where are we going?” Her face is a mixture of confusion and resistance, but I’m not slowing down.
“Follow me.” I’m out of her room and halfway to the door when I see her hesitate. I’ll grab this girl and carry her caveman-style if I have to. But Violet bends and picks up her fat camera gear bag instead, nodding once.
I tell her to stay back from the street-level door of her apartment building while I scan the street for the car. There are people out—it’s a gorgeous summer night and normally I’d be out, too. I don’t see any men walking alone or anyone lurking around the block.
In minutes, a town car with opaque windows pulls up. The linebacker-sized driver emerges wearing a full suit, an earpiece, and a sidearm concealed as a bulge beneath his jacket. He bustles us into the back seat.
As soon as the car starts rolling, I hold out my hand. “Give me your new phone.”
“So you can take that away, too? No way.” She sets her chin and I want to bite that pink lower lip again, to taste her, sweet like apricots.
“I’m going to text Neil from your phone to let him know the situation.”
“I can do it. I’m a big girl,” she pouts. But then she taps out a terse message.
&n
bsp; We spend the rest of the town car ride in silence, and she follows mutely as I escort her through my apartment’s lobby. The doorman, to his credit, hides his surprise. He’s never seen me bring a girl home.
It’s one of my rules, part of my no-strings-attached mantra. I don’t need a one-night-stand showing up here—or worse, a bunch of fans. I’m not about to get my balls busted by my co-op the way Gavin’s nearly kicked him out.
But this is different. Special circumstances because of a stalker.
Special circumstances because of Violet.
I lead her inside and wait for the reaction. My place isn’t big like Tyler’s loft, or opulent like Gavin’s. It’s the smallest unit in the building, just a one-bedroom, but it has two things going for it: it’s got a big terrace with a view of the East River, and it needed a lot of work, so I pretty much gutted it before I moved in.
Tyler was a champ. Let me crash at his place for a couple of months while the renovation crew went crazy. I had the kitchen built out the way I like—wide open counters and unobstructed views to the living room and river.
The wood floors, fireplace, and high, pressed-tin ceiling are original, but everything else is new: light, modern, steel and granite.
Violet doesn’t comment on my pride and joy, and I deflate a bit. I wanted to wow her, but she’s in a trance, probably still quaking from the way I swept her out of her East Village apartment and here to the Upper East Side.
I pull a couple of beers from my fridge, unsure if she’d even like one, and follow her to the terrace.
“It’s nice here,” she says quietly, and accepts the offered beer with a nod. My ego gets a little lift. Maybe she did notice. We sit and drink in silence as the night air reaches that perfect temperature where it blends with the heat of our skin. Her stomach growls again.
“Don’t worry, I can do better than ketchup and soy sauce,” I promise. I fire up the gas grill and scoot back to the kitchen, pulling a couple of steaks out of the fridge and some random veggies for a salad. I dry-rub the steaks and carry them back to the terrace.
The steaks sizzle and Violet’s soft voice floats behind me. “You can’t keep me here forever. You can’t keep me safe from—”
“I can try. Until you get this crazy figured out, I don’t want you to be a sitting duck, wondering when he’s going to come at you next.”
“Then what am I doing here? You can’t keep me locked up like I’m Rapunzel.”
I chuckle and nudge next to her on the couch, intentionally crowding her so I can get another whiff of that hair. I tease a strand through my fingers, then flick it up like a little brush and tickle her cheek with it.
“I promise you, if you let down your hair, you’d have a million princes trying to climb it to get to you.”
Violet blushes again, and I love how she’s so responsive, how emotion colors or clouds her face at every turn. My cock stirs at the thought of how responsive she could be in bed.
“And what about you? You going to try to climb up my hair?”
“I’d climb just about anything to get to you,” I tell her, and alarm bells go off in my brain. What kind of mushy shit am I saying? And—fuck. The steaks. I shove myself off the terrace couch and flip the meat.
Violet’s sad eyes are in her lap. “You can’t.”
What’s so wrong with telling her she intoxicates me? Just the slight touch of her sends electricity zinging up my arm. This girl has some kind of magic in her body that I’m not sure she knows exists.
“I can’t, or you don’t want me to?”
“I can’t—I don’t. Want you to.”
A steel-toed boot to my gut couldn’t hurt worse than the words that slip through her lips. I snap my gaping jaw shut and spin around to busy myself with the steaks, furious at myself for putting it out there like that, only to be shot down.
I’m not the guy who makes the first offer.
Tits on a plate. That’s a first offer.
A phone number. A few willing words. Those are the ante to get in the game.
And somehow my stupid brain forgot that Violet never asked for this, never said she wanted me.
Wait. She said it once. And now she doesn’t.
Women are so fucking confusing. So much for keeping it simple, no strings attached. Violet’s messing with my head when I’m trying to be a Good Samaritan here. There’s truth to that old saw that no good deed goes unpunished.
I plate up the steaks, toss the salad, and we eat, mostly in silence. “I won’t touch you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
Violet’s eyes spark with annoyance. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Never said you were.” I struggle to keep my voice mild and even. “Just, I’m not going to touch you. Like you want. Not going to hurt you the way your ex did, or the way your stalker keeps threatening to.”
“I never said you were.”
Now I’m annoyed. “Good. Then we’ve got that settled. No touching.”
“And nothing public,” she adds.
I grimace but agree. She wants me about as much as a bad rash. Buh-bye ego.
When we push back from the terrace table, dinner finished, I show her my room. It’s simple—just a platform bed, a trunk and some drawers. No art on the walls, even. I put her gym bag down on the bed. “You’re sleeping in here.”
Her eyes widen in alarm. “With you?”
And there goes the rest of my ego. What did I say that made her so spectacularly repulsed by me? “Um, no. You’re in here, I’m on the couch.”
“In here on the bed where you’ve done it with I don’t know how many women? No thanks, I’ll take the couch.” Violet’s bratty side is showing and I grab her arm before she can prance out of the bedroom in a huff.
“Stop it, just stop it.” I hiss. “You are sleeping here. For the record, you’re the first woman to sleep in this bed, though it’s definitely not going down the way I’d imagined. You can be pissy about it all you want tonight, but it’s not changing anything. We’ll go to the cops tomorrow and I’ll check you into a hotel until they find this creep. But you are not going to sass me about my track record. Are we clear?”
Violet’s body goes limp beneath my hand and for a moment I’m afraid I accidentally squeezed her too hard. But her expression says otherwise—eyes wide, lips parted. She looks just like she did the last time I kissed her.
“Are we clear?” I demand again, to snap her out of this weird haze.
“Yes.” Her eyes drop to her toes. “Sir.”
My cock jerks in response. The sass, then the compliance. Calling me sir. What kind of game is she playing? I grab her chin roughly, tilting her head back to see the answer in her eyes. Is she trying to fuck with my resolve?
My other hand goes to her hair like a bird to its nest. The smell of it, sweet and floral, like cherry trees in bloom, crowds sane thoughts from my brain. My chest rises like I’ve just run the NYC marathon. If I were an inch closer, my chest would brush hers and I’d feel the warmth of her breasts through her T-shirt.
I’m way out of bounds, but she’s not pushing me away. “Does this count as touching?” I rasp, one hand still buried in her hair, one skimming her jaw and stroking her cheek.
“I’m not sure yet,” she whispers. “Try something else.”
I take a small step toward her so I can feel the heat of her body across the length of me. My shorts are uncomfortably tight as my hard-on becomes more apparent, and I’m not sure if I want her to know this.
She leans in. She knows.
Her chest moves slightly and I feel her nipples brush against my chest through the fabric of our shirts. I move my hand from her cheek to her mouth, tracing a finger across the seam of her lips, the delicate curve above it, the slight crease in her lower lip that’s so ripe, so begging to be bitten.
“How about this?” The question rumbles from my chest.
“Jury’s still out,” she murmurs as I continue tracing her lip. And then in a swift movement, she takes my fin
ger between her teeth, her green eyes sparkling.
CHAPTER 14: VIOLET
He tastes like steak and salt. My lips close around his index finger and I watch his caramel eyes darken. My teeth keep a subtle pressure around his first knuckle, holding him as I suck.
What am I doing? His erection presses into my belly, hot and hard like the rest of him. Jayce could be my own personal furnace, his blood runs so hot beneath the taught skin that makes me tingle with every touch.
His hand fists tighter in my hair, drawing my head back, exposing my neck to him. If we were in a vampire movie, this is the precise moment when he’d bite.
Our eyes lock together, a battle of wills without words, as I try to decipher what he’s saying to me. He promised he wouldn’t touch me, then he grabbed me when I wouldn’t sleep in his bed. And now we’re touching—God, we’re doing a whole lot more than touching. With every brush of our bodies the friction sparks more electricity.
I suck hard on his finger, willing him to understand the conflict warring inside me. I want him, but I can’t have him. Not on my terms, not ever. The threat of my pictures going public because of my association with him would blow away every shred of my reputation, and most likely my father’s as well.
The sad truth is that the best I could ever be to Jayce is some casual, closeted one-night stand. Considering his reputation, that’s probably all he wants from me.
And I don’t want that. I want more.
I want the kind of depth that lets me trust someone to tie me up without the fear of a camera. I want the kind of person who would protect me first, last, and always, damn his reputation.
Brady wanted me for what I could do for his reputation. When I left him, posting my naked pictures was his insurance that I’d never undermine him. They’re an ever-present threat to keep me silent about all the things—the ugly things—I learned about him in the ten months we were together.
Revenge Bound Page 6
