Dropping my head forward, I let the tears finally fall, dripping down my cheeks in hot torrents of pain. Tonight I wished that I wasn’t so alone.
He appeared soundlessly, which was always his way, and wrapped me up in his arms. I didn’t fight him, letting him lift me from the cart before he jumped in to drive. He never let me go the entire drive back to his place.
I expected him to take me straight to that generic bedroom again and fuck me, use my body because that’s all it was good for. I would have even welcomed it, in my current state of mind. But when I finally lifted my head from his hard chest, I realized that we were in a completely different section of the house.
Beck dropped me gently into a large chair, one with a reclining footrest. We were in a cinema room. One which had like twenty luxury seats and the biggest screen I’d ever seen.
“What … why?” I asked, my voice husky.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, brushing a thumb across my cheek, collecting stray tears. “Pick a movie.”
He dropped a complicated looking remote in my hand, and then strode toward a bar at the back of the room. It took me a few failed attempts but I finally figured out how to get the files open, and then I scrolled straight to Fast and Furious 4. Might as well pick up where I left off.
When Beck returned, he had two heavy glasses, filled with ice and an amber liquid.
He handed me one before settling in at my side, his muscled thigh and arm pressing right down my body.
Everywhere he was touching was on fire, and I gulped down a mouthful of the alcohol, recognizing the flavor from the last time I was there. The fancy old scotch that I’d been too unrefined to appreciate. “Nice choice,” he said, and I had no idea what he was talking about, until his eyes shifted to the screen.
I laughed. “Yeah, I was half way through a marathon tonight. They’re classics.”
He didn’t ask me why I was crying. Why I was sitting in a cart in front of his house again. He didn’t ask me one thing as we sat together, watching the screen, sipping on our alcohol.
“Where are your parents?”
The question slipped out, and I expected him to do his usual evasive half-answer bullshit. The silence felt heavy, but surprisingly he answered. “My mother is in France, living with her lover. The secret everyone knows. I haven’t talked to her in five years. My father’s in New York. He basically lives in the office there, doing … business.”
“Are they divorced?” I asked, trying to understand.
Beck snorted. “Delta doesn’t do divorce. We keep it all in the family and the ’til death do you part is literal.”
Knowing everything I did about them, I wasn’t surprised. “How long has it been since you’ve lived under the same roof as them?”
Beck took a drink, finishing it in one long swallow. “I’ve been on my own, off and on, since I was ten.”
Ten? What the actual fuck. What sort of monsters would leave a child alone? Oh, right, Delta sort of monsters.
He must have read my expression in the flashing lights of the movies, because his lips tilted into a cynical smirk. “It was for the best. They’re a fucking mess, and whenever I was in the middle of their fights, I had to watch my father beat the shit out of my mother. Lucky they took off before I was old enough to fight back, because I probably would have killed Dad.”
Fuck. Fucking fuck.
“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.
He didn’t reply, and at that moment, his jaw was like cut glass. Rigid and sharp. I fought against the urge to trace my fingers along those perfect, dark planes of his face. He’d shut off from me again, so I focused on the movie. Enjoying the thrum of cars as they raced at stupid speed, doing impossible things, and yet somehow still making it work.
Neither of us spoke again, but the silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable. This Beck ... the one who found me crying outside his house in the middle of the night and offered me comfort ... this wasn’t the infuriating king shit of Ducis Academy. He wasn’t whiplashing my emotions, pushing and pulling me until I felt like an old piece of elastic.
That Beck was sexy, dangerous, enticing and terrifying. But this one? This was the kind of guy I could easily fall in love with—and that scared the shit out of me.
Clearing my throat, I awkwardly shifted away from him in a lame attempt to distance us. But it wasn’t our physical closeness that was making my skin crawl with fear and anxiety. It was our emotional closeness and that wasn’t something I could easily run from.
“What are you doing, Butterfly?” he rumbled, not taking his eyes from the movie screen. His fingers curled a little tighter around my hip and tugged me back into the gap I’d created.
Licking my lips, I desperately resisted the magnetic pull of him. “I should, uh, I should go home.”
This made him shift slightly, turning his attention from the screen to peer at me with those intense gray eyes. “Why?”
Bullshit excuses flitted across my mind, but none made it past my lips. Eventually, I let out a frustrated sigh and opted for the truth. “Because I just accused you of sending crazy mixed messages and yet here I am in your house in the middle of the night. Again.” I shook my head, breaking eye contact with him and fidgeting with my robe.
There was a long pause before Beck replied. Long enough that I was bracing myself, ready to run from the thick tension between us. “I like you being here,” he finally admitted in a soft whisper. His hand picked mine up from where I was twisting my robe and tangled our fingers together. “I keep pushing you away, hoping you’d hate me. That you’d stay away, because being near me is a death sentence.” He paused, and I was too much of a coward to look up at him, even though the heat of his gaze was setting me on fire. “But you’re a part of this, whether we like it or not. So, maybe instead of pushing you away, I should hold you tighter.”
The air all rushed out of me from a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding. “What are you saying, Beck?” I asked, my voice holding an edge of pleading. “This shit between us is exhausting.”
He shook his head, looking down at our linked hands. “I don’t know, Riley. But I don’t want you to go.”
Slowly, I nodded. I didn’t want to move from this spot. “So where does that leave us?”
Finally I found the courage to look up, meeting his conflicted gaze as he, too, raised his face. “I don’t know,” he repeated, soft and confused. “I just know...” He trailed off with a frustrated sigh, then leaned forward and touched his lips to mine. For a hot second, we both froze.
Giving over to the moment, I brought my hand up to his cheek and returned the gentle kiss, slowly, carefully moving my lips against his.
Beck let out a small sound, a pained groan as our lips parted and our tongues met. It was such a stark contrast from the rough, demanding, possessive way he’d kissed me until now. Still, he didn’t push it any further. My whole body was flushed with heat, greedy for more, but he pulled back and swiped his thumb across my lower lip.
His gaze was drenched in lust, need and ... something more confusing. It scared me, and I wasn’t emotionally prepared to explore it further. Not yet.
“Just watch the movie, Butterfly,” Beck ordered me in a husky voice, settling back onto the cozy chair and wrapping his arm around me.
I hesitated only a moment longer before sinking into his embrace and losing myself in those deliciously fast cars on the screen.
19
I must have fallen asleep sometime during the sixth Fast and Furious, and when I woke up I was curled up in the cinema chair at Beck’s house. He was nowhere to be seen, but there was a pillow under my head and a cashmere blanket was tucked over me.
“Dammit,” I groaned, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. “I need to stop doing this.”
Stifling a yawn with the back of my hand, I peeled myself off the chair and stretched the kinks out of my back. Part of me wondered why he hadn’t woken me up to send me home, but a bigger part suspected he knew I couldn’t sleep alone right now.
Pressing a button on the remote, I checked the time and gasped.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed. School started in less than thirty minutes, and I was still at Beck’s ... in my jammies. Tossing the soft blue blanket onto the chair, I rushed out of the cinema in search of the way out. Why was Beck’s house so fucking huge? Last time it had been a clear shot down the stairs and out the door, but I hadn’t paid any attention to how we’d gotten to the cinema last night.
Frantic, I rushed through the marble tiled halls and rooms, then came to a skidding halt in the enormous kitchen.
“Oh,” I blurted, finding Beck sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. He was dressed in fitted workout clothes—I tried really hard not to drool over all the muscles on display—while casually sipping a cup of coffee and reading something on a tablet. Beside him, another place had been set with fresh, steaming coffee and a plate of waffles. “I didn’t ... uh...” I awkwardly shifted from foot to foot as he watched me like a predator. “I need to get home, did you see the time?”
A smile teased at the corners of his mouth, but he shook his head and indicated to the seat beside him. “Sit down and eat something. Your clothes are in the guest bathroom.”
There was no room for negotiation in that statement, and I was still too sleepy to even try and argue—despite the fact that my clothes had no reason to be in Beck’s guest bathroom. Mute, I slid onto the stool beside him and took a long gulp of my coffee. It was exactly how I liked it—pitch black.
I was starving, so I didn’t put up a fuss about eating the waffles in front of him. They looked like they’d been prepared by a chef, topped with sliced bananas, fluffy mascarpone, and drizzled with maple syrup. Mouth-watering heaven.
“Jesus Christ,” Beck muttered on a laugh, looking at me from the side of his eye. “If I’d known, I would have fed you waffles sooner.”
“Hmm?” I frowned at him, my mouth full, then blushed hot when I realized I’d been moaning my appreciation of the food. How. Embarrassing. I swallowed, then cleared my throat and took another sip of coffee to cover the awkwardness. The bitterness of my black coffee contrasted perfectly with the sticky sweetness of the waffles, and I needed to bite my lip to keep from making anymore borderline sexual noises over my breakfast.