Every nerve in my body was tingling, every part of me focused on how he tightly fit inside me, the heat as he slid in and out, the escalating response of my body to his, while we moved in tandem. I was close, so close, but my orgasm kept flitting out of reach.
Then he pushed me down into the bed and hooked my leg under his arm before slamming into me. The angle was perfect, and he drove in deeper than before. I squeezed my eyes shut, determined to feel nothing except Forge inside me. My muscles locked up, then quivered as my climax broke free, the sensation roaring through me, my core tightening up, my back arching off the bed, my fingernails digging into Forge’s shoulders.
He laughed in my ear, low and sensual, before pulling out and slamming home a final time, his guttural groan as he came making my toes curl up.
Weeks, Selena, he murmured in my head as he collapsed beside me and gathered me up. I’ve been waiting weeks for this.
Selena was sound asleep when I left her in bed, tugging on a pair of sweats.
I materialized in the library, rounding the desk as the monitor came to life. I’d been too distracted on the drive home to be a hundred percent focused on our surroundings, and wanted to confirm we didn’t have any undead intruders tonight.
A quick scan of the video footage told me we’d made it through another night untouched, then I navigated over to the program I’d had running in the background for days. Human financial institutions were easy enough to hack into these days, especially since the Society had come up with a program to research potential prospects. Pages of financial records cascaded on the screen, but there was only one I was interested in.
As I saw the name on the top of the screen, I blew out a deep breath.
An offshore account, with lots of recent activity, mostly withdrawals.
Selena had done a good job of shielding herself from hurt. Fuck knows there’d been enough of it in her life.
But this was going to break her damn heart, and I only had a couple of hours to decide how I was going to tell her.
26
As I coasted down the dark driveway in neutral, I congratulated myself on sneaking out of the house without Forge noticing. A small but significant accomplishment, when your opponent seemingly knew everything.
“Not this morning, Forge. This morning, I’m going to surprise you for once.”
There was a bakery less than a mile away, and thoughts of fresh cinnamon rolls and coffee danced in my head as I made the turn onto the main road, starting the engine as I did.
Since I’d woken up all alone, I was salty enough to not leave a note, figuring if he’d wanted to see me this morning, he should have stayed in bed.
Last night had been…
Well, last night had been the best ever, but with Forge, I’d learned not to get too comfortable, since life with him always seemed prone to change. But damn, that man could kiss. As well as several other skills I’d like to repeat. Just to make sure last night wasn’t a fluke.
Truthfully, I didn’t know what to make of the two of us. In a matter of weeks, Forge had wormed his way into my bed. Into my heart, damn it.
It was so early that no one was on the roads, and when I pulled into the bakery, the streetlights were just turning off. Forge and I had stopped here before for coffee on our way into work, and I was dying for a huge cinnamon roll dripping in frosting.
It occurred to me that if Forge and I spent our nights tangled up in each other, I’d probably burn off enough calories to have sweets whenever I wanted. A total win, in my opinion.
I dropped the keys into my pocket and pulled on the door. Locked.
“Well, it is early,” I told myself, turning to get back in the car, but then my feet stopped moving completely, and the keys fell from my hand. What I was seeing couldn’t be real. I blinked to make sure, and still saw the same thing. It just couldn’t be.
Brandon—my dead brother—was leaning back on the hood of the Rover, arms crossed over his chest, a gloating expression on his face.
“Ah, there she is, the good Langston. Been a while, Selena.”
That conceited, self-congratulatory look was the last thing I saw as I was grabbed from behind and a hood was thrown over my head.
27
Brandon was an asshole, but he was a chatty asshole.
He and I had never developed the usual brother-sister bond that siblings have, mostly because he was either in jail, or on the run during my formative years. The few times I’d seen him, he’d come looking for Dad to bail him out, or, when that failed, breaking into the safe at work and taking whatever he needed.
Right now, he was detailing his latest scam. Namely, kidnapping me for the Elder.
“…then all I had to do was disappear for a few years. Piece of cake.”
One more thing: my brother had been born without a conscience. Its absence was especially apparent to me as he described how much money he’d be making off me, without a care of what would happen to me in the process.
People who said blood was thicker than water had never met Brandon Langston.
Since my hands were bound behind me and I had a hood over my head, I had no choice but to listen to his verbal diarrhea, although I made it a point to kick out every so often, happy when I finally heard him grunt in pain.
“You always were a little bitch,” my brother snarled. “Which was why it was so easy to put the company up as collateral. I almost wish I’d stuck around to watch you
