I’d been so sleepy while Dante and Eddy were here. My eyelids were like lead and my brain like a ball of cotton wool. Yet the second I actively tried to sleep ... I was wide awake.
“Come on, Riley,” I whispered into the darkness of my room. “You need sleep. Just ... sleep.”
Yanking a pillow over my face, I tried to block out the world. But within seconds, the overwhelming feeling of suffocating washed through me, and I sat bolt upright, throwing the pillow across the room.
My heart thundered and my breath came in harsh gasps.
Great. Amazing. Lingering psychological effects from being nearly killed. Just what I needed.
“Fuck,” I groaned, pulling my knees up and dropping my head to my folded arms. I closed my eyes again—only for a second—but instantly I was hit by a barrage of images that I badly didn’t want to relive. The black-masked man on top of me, his hands around my throat as he squeezed the life from my body. The blood spraying from his throat as Jasper dragged his blade across it. The view from the cockpit of the plane as we hurtled toward the ground.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I was shaking now, my breath coming so fast I was sure I’d pass out soon. I needed to get out, get fresh air or space or something. I just…
Stumbling from my bed, I pulled on a fluffy bathrobe and a pair of black Uggs. It was the middle of the night, and I doubted anyone would see me or give a fuck what I was wearing, but I was amused to think a Deboise was heading out in her pajamas. Catherine would lose her mind.
Grabbing the yellow note with the codes, I made my way through the dark house. I disabled the alarm on the front door before I hobbled out to stand on the small front porch. Lifting my head I breathed in and out, enjoying a moment of silence and fresh air. My feet started to move while my hands reached for keys I didn’t actually have on me. I was desperate to drive. To feel that power under my hands. To forget everything else in a rush of speed and horsepower.
Noticing the golf cart there, I decided that would have to do, and slowly pulled my broken body into the seat, starting her up and taking off. When I reached the front gate, I programmed in the code to leave, relieved that I finally had some freedom. My foot was flat to the floor, and I must have looked like a deranged lunatic as I flew along a small road that led between the five estates that all coexisted here. I wasn’t sure why I headed in the direction of Beck’s estate, but I found myself slowing down and letting the cart just coast when I reached the impressive gates that barred his even more impressive house from the world. Coming to a stop, I just sat there, staring up at the full moon. It was a cold night, my breath visible in the air as I breathed in and out deeply, trying to calm the fractured state of my mind.
“What are you doing here, Butterfly?”
His low voice wrapped around me, and since a part of me had been waiting for him, I didn’t even jump. “How long until I can close my eyes and not see death?” I asked, not turning away from the moon.
He didn’t answer for a long time, but he braced his hands against the roof of my cart and stared down at me. His shadowed form blocked out the moon, and I shifted my attention to his frown.
“I’ll let you know when I manage it,” he finally said, his voice soft. “In the meantime, you just grow ... accustomed to it. Numb.”
“That sounds awful,” I whispered, shuddering.
Beck frowned at me a moment longer, then nudged my shoulder. “Shift over.”
“What? Why?” My fingers gripped the flimsy steering wheel tighter. “I’m not letting you drive my sweet ride.”
Beck glared, and when he seemed to accept that I wasn’t joking, let out a low grumble and stalked his sexy ass around to the passenger seat. A little clicker in his hand opened the obnoxious front gates and he indicated for me to drive in.
“Too lazy to walk?” I teased, turning my cart through his gates and beginning the long drive up to the house.
He gave me a long side eye. “More like I don’t trust you cruising around the Delta compound in this thing.” He tapped the plastic frame holding my roof up. “Knowing you, I’d find you crashed into a lake or something.”
The dark look on his face reminded me that my brother had been found dead in a lake, but I ignored the shiver of fear and huffed at the implication I was a bad driver. You lose one race and your reputation was in the shit.
“Come on,” Beck said when I pulled up outside his front doors. He didn’t even wait to check if I was following, just strode up those steps like he was Zeus and this was his Mount Olympus.
Damn him for making me predictable, but curiosity had me in its tight grip, and I reluctantly followed him inside.
“Through here,” he called out when I hesitated in the foyer, peering up at the massive crystal chandelier. Following his voice, I wandered through a fancy sitting room until I found him in a lounge area with an impressively stocked bar.
He was pouring two glasses of a deep amber liquor and as I stood there—awkward as fuck—he dropped a couple of ice cubes in each one then picked them up.
“Here.” He held one out to me. “It’ll help with the sleep thing.”
Gingerly, I reached for the glass. I probably wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol while on the painkillers from the hospital, but I was desperate.
Our fingers brushed as he handed it to me, and a deep shiver of desire shot through me. Something told me, I’d live to regret taking this drink with Beck. But at least I’d live. Not asking questions, I blocked my nose and took a huge swallow of the liquor.
At first, it just tasted sweet and smoky, and then it burned all the way down my throat and pooled like lava in my belly. Coughing, I blinked moisture from my eyes and peered into the glass. “Wow, uh, what is this?”
The corners of Beck’s mouth picked up in a small smile, and he sipped his own. “Port Ellen, forty years old.” He paused when I blinked stupidly at him. “Scotch,” he explained in plain English. “Really rare, expensive scotch. Which is totally wasted on your unrefined taste buds, apparently.” This last was muttered in a dry tone as he turned away from me. He took another sip of his fancy scotch as he messed with the sound system, flicking through tracks until he settled on one he liked. All the while, I scowled and simmered.
“Are you really so arrogant, Sebastian?” I demanded, my anger at his jab finally boiling over. “Is it really so revolting to you that I was raised in a two bedroom unit on a dodgy street in Jersey? That my best friend is in a gang, and I met my last boyfriend on community service?” Beck had tensed, I could see it in the lines of his back. He was wearing a black, short sleeve t-shirt like the cold held no power over him. He was in charge of his core temperature, not the weather.
“You should never have grown up like that,” he bit back, and I got even more riled up.
“Why the fuck not? We might have been poor, but I’ve at least never been in multiple airplane crashes. Your fucking life is a joke.”
I really pissed him off then, his eyes darkened as his full lips narrowed. “Make no fucking mistake, Riley, you are one of us. This … life, is something that you’re part of, and should always have been part of. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your trailer trash life was superior.”
“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” I shouted back before coughing at the pain in my throat. Bruised vocal cords did not like shouting. Taking another sip of the watery remains in my glass, I finished. “Oscar is the one who was a Delta successor. A true heir. I’m Riley Jameson, not Deboise, and don’t you ever forget it.”
Beck dropped his empty glass. “Maybe you’d like to just be a Beckett fuck toy then? Since you don’t seem to want to be part of Delta?”
The heavy crystal tumbler flew from my hand, hitting the wall beside Beck’s head and exploding in a dramatic spray of glass.
“Fuck you, Sebastian Beckett,” I hissed at him. “I wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole. No pretty exterior is worth the rotten interior. Call me crazy, but I have standards.”
I whirled on my heel, my dressing gown swirling like a cape, but Beck grabbed my upper arm in an iron grip before I made it even two steps out of the room. With a strong tug, he turned me back around to face him.
“You really think so, Butterfly?” he taunted. His hand still gripped my arm, holding me close enough that I needed to tip my head right back to glare at him. “You want to tell me you don’t feel this magnetic pull between us? That sexual tension that just keeps fucking building every time we’re near? That’s all in my head, is it?”
My chest was heaving, my emotions in a messy, ugly tangle that I didn’t have the energy or will to address. “M-must be,” I retorted, my voice shaking with anger, pain and arousal. “Guess you secretly love slumming it with us poor girls.”
He laughed then, a cold, dangerous sound. His eyes held me prisoner, burning with determination and I knew if I didn’t get out of here soon ... he’d win. “You’re right,” he murmured, his gaze taking a cruel edge. “Even if you weren’t one of us … Delta, I wouldn’t fuck you. Poor little orphan girls are too needy.”
Rage burned in me, and my free hand cracked him clean across the face. It was a better slap than the clumsy hit I’d delivered to Catherine earlier. This one was crisp, snapping across his face with a satisfying sound but instantly, I regretted it.
What the fuck was I thinking? This was a man I’d literally seen kill people a mere twenty-four hours ago. He’d shot them as casually as turning on the TV, and here I was ... slapping him. Had I damaged my fucking brain in the plane crash?
“Beck...” Panic gripped me, and I froze, waiting to see what he’d do. My hand was tingling from the slap, and a red mark was coming up on his cheek already, but he just stared at the wall. His jaw was so tight as his cheek ticked, and his hand still gripped my upper arm like a manacle.
Licking my lips, fucking terrified, I tried again. “Beck, I—”