by Holly Renee
If I brought Frankie out here and that bastard was to walk by, I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
“Who is that?” I turned back to Frankie, and she was mostly blocked by Olly’s body. But I could still see a small jolt of terror that tore through her.
“I don’t know.” I pushed myself back toward the beach. “I’ll check it out.” I looked at Olly, silently telling him to watch out for her, and he gave me a look back that I knew meant he was offended that I felt the need to say anything.
He would protect her as wholly as I would. He wouldn’t let a thing happen to her.
I stepped out of the water and moved down the beach as I clenched and unclenched my hand. Water was dripping down me since I didn’t dare stop for a towel, but I didn’t care. The breeze was cold, but I welcomed it.
I stopped in my tracks as soon as I could see the figure enough to know it wasn’t a guy. Instead, there was a girl moseying down the beach with a book in her hand and her eyes on the water. She didn’t once look around her, not an ounce of self-preservation visible.
I watched Josie’s dark hair blow in the breeze, and she bent down to pick up something out of the sand. She hadn’t even spotted me coming closer to her, and somehow that fact pissed me off more than the thought of her brother.
This girl lived with two fucking devils and she still walked through the dark as if there was nothing to fear. It was the same way she looked at me. She looked at me like she didn’t care that I was the villain in her story, and I would take advantage of that fact. I would take advantage of every error she made.
I was only a few feet away from her when she finally looked my way. She jolted back as if I shocked her, and the fear that flushed her face in the moonlight gave me far more pleasure than it should have.
“What are you doing?” She stood, her fingers covered in sand, a dull seashell in her hand.
“What are you doing, Josie?” I pushed my hair out of my face and water trickled down my hand. She stared at me as if she was watching every fraction of movement it made. There was no shame in her gaze. She openly gaped at me as her eyes slid down my body.
She didn’t look like a girl who hated me.
Not at all.
She looked like a girl who was staring at something she couldn’t have.
Because no matter how gorgeous she was, she couldn’t have me. No matter what I led her to believe.
No matter how badly I wanted her.
She pulled her gaze away from me and looked down at the book in her hand. “I was just going for a walk.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Her fingers tightened around the paperback. “You’re out here in the middle of the night.”
“Not by myself.”
She looked behind me as if she hadn’t realized anyone else was out here, and I hated that her lack of self-preservation bothered me so much. She stepped back, looking back to where her house stood, and I should have let her go. I should have let her walk away and head back into her nest of vipers.
But there wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to let that happen.
I had her within my grasp. In the middle of the night, my prey was staring up at me like she wanted me to strike. It was as if she was begging me to make my next move.
I gripped the edge of her book and pulled it from her hand. She gasped and tried to snag it before I could get too far, but she didn’t stand a chance. She jumped at me, trying her hardest to get the book back, but I held it higher, completely out of her reach.
“Stop, Beck.” Her chest pressed into mine as she tried to fight against me.
“The Duke that Saved Me.” I read the title of the book and couldn’t stop laughing as I looked at the cover. “Josephine, you little scandalous thing.”
The cover was tattered, and it was clear that the book had been read time and time again.
“I swear to God, Beck. Give it to me right now.”
I didn’t listen to her. I flipped open the book and read a line aloud. “Her hands trembled as she fumbled with his buttons. Not only was he her first, but he was also her only.”
Her elbow smashed into my ribs, and I groaned as I leaned forward, knocking myself farther into her. Her cheeks were stained red as she snatched the book out of my hand.
“I didn’t realize you were such a dirty girl.”
She huffed and tried to push away from me, but I pulled her closer. I may have been her enemy, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like the feel of her against me. I could afford a few moments of her skin against mine.
She was so warm and soft, and even though she pretended like being next to me was the absolute last place she wanted to be, she was pliable under my hands.
“This was my mother’s book.” She said it like it was somehow supposed to make a difference to me.
“Your mom is a dirty girl too?” I licked my lips, but she froze. Everything that was soft about her moments before had now gone hard.
“Don’t talk about my mom.” She pushed against my chest, and I let her. Even though it was the last thing I wanted. I stumbled back a couple inches from the force of her hands.
“She was with your dad, right? She can’t be all that innocent.” Because anyone who was a Vos was evil to me.
“Well, she’s dead.” Her voice shook, as did her hands.
I stepped back and tried to think of what to say. I didn’t know. I had not a single clue. If I had, I would have never said what I had just said. I may have been cruel, but I wasn’t that cruel. I wasn’t so fucked up that I would tease her about her dead mother.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” When everyone had been talking about Joseph Vos’s daughter that had arrived in town, they said they thought she had been sent to her father because of her behavior. She was his black sheep.
His fucking blemish on his otherwise perfect life.
I didn’t know the truth.
“Why would you know that?” She took two steps back, and her face had morphed from sadness into anger. “It’s none of your business.”
She had a point, but people in Clermont Bay made a life out of knowing everyone else’s business. Normally, I would have known everything about her by now, but it seems Joseph Vos was keeping more than one secret.
“It’s not, but I’m still sorry. I wouldn’t have said that.”
“Wouldn’t you?” She cocked her head to the side and held the romance novel to her chest as if it was the most precious thing in the world to her. “Let’s not try to fool each other here, Clermont. You’re as cruel as the rest of them.”
She was right. I was. I would use her to get my revenge on her family, and I wouldn’t feel bad about it. I had decided the day I first met her that I would refuse to feel anything other than hate.
I had already let that slip with the way I wanted her physically. I refused to let it go to anything beyond that.
I refused to let her convince me to not use her. I would. I just hadn’t figured out how yet. I had thought that being cruel to her like Lucas had been to my sister would have set him off, but he had barely reacted.
Unless she hadn’t said anything to him.
But I didn’t suspect that to be true. This town had secrets, but everyone still whispered. Nothing truly stayed secret for long. Everyone had their own version of how things went down. Even if it wasn’t the truth.
The truth rarely mattered. Not when there were plenty of lies to cater to what they wanted. To what they cared to believe.
“I am.” I watched her mouth as she pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. “But I wouldn’t have been cruel about that.”
“Hi.” I jolted forward as my sister’s voice sounded from behind me. I had almost forgotten that they were still back there. “I’m Frankie.”
She smiled at Josie, but Josie was still looking at me like I had ruined her entire night. She looked at me like I had wanted her to only moments ago. Like I was the villain.
“Hi.” Her voice was shakier than before
. “Josie.”
“I remember you.” My sister’s voice was calm and kind, and I didn’t know how she could stand here and talk to the sister of the guy who had ruined her life like that.
I didn’t know how she wasn’t screaming like I had heard her do night after night.
“I met you at the club,” Frankie reminded her. “It has to suck being around this one all the time.”
Josie laughed as Frankie nodded her head toward me.
“He is a bit much.” She didn’t even glance in my direction as she spoke about me.
“That’s putting it mildly.” Frankie bumped into my side gently. “I’d say he’s an asshole a good fifty percent of the time.”
“That too.” Josie smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear before she looked behind her. “I should really be getting back home.”
I could tell she felt uncomfortable with the two of us. Olly was still wading in the water behind us.
“Do you want one of us to walk you?” Frankie asked, but I already knew the answer.
“No.” Josie finally looked at me, and the hostility instantly came back in her eyes. If she didn’t hate me before tonight, before everything I had done, she did now. “I’ll be fine. It’s not far.”
“I’d rather walk you.” I took a step toward her, and she took a step back.
“And I’d rather you not.” The false calmness she held in her voice since Frankie arrived was now gone. She didn’t care who heard her or the way she felt about me.
“Why don’t you at least let Beckham walk you to the back of your property? It will make me feel better.”
Josie looked like she wanted to tell her to go to hell, but she didn’t. She nodded her head once, then took a few more steps away from me. “It was nice to officially meet you, Frankie.”
“You too.”
She didn’t wait for me. She took off in the direction of her house, and I followed behind her step for step.
“I really am sorry.”
She huffed and started walking a bit faster.
“I don’t need your fake-ass apologies.”
I sped up, trying to look at her, but she looked out toward the ocean. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
Her head jerked in my direction. “And what about earlier? Do you want to say you’re sorry for that?”
I knew exactly what she was referring to. She wanted an apology for the way I touched her earlier. She wanted me to say sorry that I turned her on and made her ask me for it.
I wouldn’t though.
I wasn’t sorry for a second of it, and I wasn’t lying when I said that I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.
“I’m not sorry for that.” I shook my head and watched her anger rise. “I’m just sorry we didn’t get to continue.”
She stepped toward me suddenly and a wave of her sweet scent washed over me. “That will never happen again.”
“It will.” I pushed a piece of brown hair off her shoulder, and her chest rose and fell like the ocean behind her. She could lie all she wanted about what happened earlier, but we both knew she wanted me.
Even if I hadn’t noticed her chest, it was impossible to ignore the way her eyes clouded over when I stood this close to her or the way her lips opened just slightly.
It was enough to make me want her just as badly. It made me want to prove to her how easily it could happen again.
“You think that you can have anything you want.” She had so much volition as she spoke. She meant what she said. Every single word of it. She truly believed that she could stop anything from ever happening between us. “But you are not a fucking god, Beckham.”
I hated that my sister had used my full name in front of her. No one used my full name outside of my family.
“You’d be shocked to learn what I am, princess.”
“Don’t call me that.” She didn’t look like she wanted me to stop calling her that. She looked like it made her want me more.
“Or what?” I couldn’t stop testing her. The thought of her pushing back, of her fighting me, it turned me on far more than anything else. Even more than the way her fingers dug into the book or the way her bare feet pushed into the sand as if she was trying to get herself closer to me without taking a step. “What the fuck will you do about it?”
I touched her collarbone with the edge of my fingertip, my touch barely a whisper, but it felt like I was screaming at her. I was begging her to make me stop or make me go further.
If she made me stop, if she pushed me, I would only push harder.
“What do you want from me?” She was staring up at me, and I knew that she would let me take this further. If I wanted to, I could easily lean forward and take her mouth. I could take anything I wanted.
“I haven’t quite figured that out yet.” I was lying straight through my teeth. I wanted to taste every single bit of her, then I wanted to ruin her. I would. Regardless of the way she was looking up at me or the lecture I knew Frankie was bound to give me once I got home.
I moved my finger from her collarbone to her neck, and I loved the way I could see her pulse hammering against her tan skin. I made her nervous.
“Well, I’m not here for you to toy around with while you figure it out.” She lifted her hand and slapped my fingers away from her skin. “You can go fuck yourself.”
I wanted to reach out and stop her. She was here for whatever I wanted her to be. We both knew it.
But I let her go instead.
She looked back at me as she pushed through the gate at the back of her property, her mansion of a house towering over us.
I knew that Lucas and her dad were probably both in there, and they probably didn’t even have a clue that she was gone.
I wondered if she was as disposable as everyone else in their life.
She shared Joseph Vos’s last name and his blood, but I wasn’t sure that any other part of him ran through her. She seemed so different from the rest of her family, but I wouldn’t let that stop me.
I was already too far gone, and nothing could stop me at this point.
Chapter Eleven
Josie
I could hear yelling the moment I woke up. I pushed the hair out of my face and sat up.
My father’s voice was practically vibrating off the walls. He was angry. That much was perfectly clear.
I pushed out of bed and looked at the time. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and I had only been asleep for about five hours. I couldn’t sleep after I got back to the house last night.
A run-in with Beck on the beach was the last thing I expected, and it kept replaying over and over in my head every time I tried to sleep. His annoyingly handsome face kept appearing no matter how much I told myself that I needed to hate him.
The yelling was getting louder, and I opened my door to see what the hell was going on. I saw no one in the hall, so I took hesitant steps toward the staircase.
“I don’t give a shit what you think, Lucas. It’s not your place to think anything.”
Lucas’s mom, Amelia, said something back to my father, but it was too quiet for me to hear. I leaned over the stairwell and there they all stood in the foyer. Lucas looked like he had just got home, and I was almost certain he was drunk.
“So what, you got your daughter home and now you don’t give a shit about me anymore?” His voice was sharp and full of venom, and my heart skipped when he mentioned me.
“My daughter isn’t your concern.” My father stepped toward him, and if I was Lucas, I would have cowered away. I may have hated my father, but even I wasn’t stupid enough to not see how intimidating he was.
“But she is.” Lucas stumbled slightly on his feet. “She’s been hanging out with Beck Clermont. Did you know that?”
My breath caught in my throat. What the hell?
I hadn’t really talked to Lucas since the night we ran into him in the hallway, but I had thought we were closer than him talking about me to my father behind my back.
“You knew she would be around him. She’s working there.” My father’s voice was even lower than before. I had no idea what their problem was with Beck, but it was clear that there was one.
“Since when does the boss’s son carry girls home drunk from work?”
That fucking traitor.
“What’s the issue with Beck Clermont?” All three of their eyes snapped up to me as my heart raced. I knew what my issue was, but I wanted to know theirs. I needed to know.
“Oh, Josephine, you’re awake,” Amelia said as calm and nice as could be, but I didn’t care what she had to say.
“There is clearly an issue.”
My father straightened himself, becoming the perfect image of put together, and attempted a small smile. “There is no issue.”
“I’m not an idiot.” I waved toward his drunk son. “Lucas hates Beck, and Beck clearly hates Lucas.”
“What the hell did he say now?” Lucas bit out, he had never spoken to me that way before.
“He didn’t say anything.” I crossed my arms over my chest and made my way down the stairs. It was a lie, but it wasn’t. He had admitted how much he hated Lucas, but none of them had told me anything. “He didn’t have to.”
“He’s trash,” Lucas spit. “That entire family is trash.”
“You’re drunk,” I said out loud what everyone else was thinking. “I think you may need to sober up.”
“Fuck you.”
My heart ached as I looked into his blue eyes that were so full of venom and anguish.
“Hey.” My father jerked him by the arm and forced him to face him. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
I hated that he was defending me. He had never defended me before, and I didn’t need his help now. “It’s fine. He doesn’t mean it.”
I hoped he didn’t mean it.
My father stared at me, his eyes were the perfect twins to mine. I could see the storm brewing beneath the surface, and I knew he was probably looking at the same thing in mine.
“Why don’t we eat breakfast?” Amelia was still trying to calm the situation, and I felt sorry for her. Here she was with her asshole husband and drunk son who was acting like an even bigger asshole, and I wondered if this is what her life had been like.
