“You know you’re beautiful.” She lifted her hand and slapped my cheek playfully. “It’s your fatal flaw.”
“My beauty?” I chuckled.
“Your arrogance.” She blinked up at me. “My stepbrother has it too.”
I hated that she compared me to him. I fucking despised it. I was nothing like that piece of shit.
“Your stepbrother has more than one fatal flaw then.” If she thought his arrogance was the worst thing he possessed, then he had her fooled. But I knew she couldn’t be that far in the dark. I knew she had to be aware of the demons that hid in her house.
“He’s not as bad as you think he is.” She let her head fall back again.
She was wrong.
She was so fucking wrong, and my heart pounded in my chest as she defended him.
We reached the door, and I pushed inside. Joseph Vos was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn’t surprised. I rarely saw the man here when I was still friends with Lucas. If I did, he was always on the go.
Her father wasn’t the kind of man that could stay in the same place for long.
I shifted her in my arms as I climbed the steps.
“You hate me because of him. Don’t you?”
I looked down at her, and she was staring straight back up at me. There was a look in her eyes that I couldn’t quite place, something that dared me to be honest with her, but I refused to let my guard down because some pretty girl was in my arms and looking at me like she needed me.
Especially some pretty girl who was nothing but a pawn to me.
“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, and it took everything in me not to kiss her. Her bottom lip had the perfect little arch, creating a shadow beneath, and I wanted to run my tongue across it. I wanted to run my tongue across every damn inch of her.
I made it to the top of the stairs, and I stopped in my tracks as I stared at Lucas’s open door. He stood there in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, and I was certain that he had been asleep before we arrived.
He ran his hand through his blond hair, then his sleep-filled eyes opened in shock as they met mine. I stepped forward with his sister in my arms, and I couldn’t stop the way my hands tightened around her.
My fingers could have been bruising her, and I wouldn’t have cared.
Whatever chance she had of escaping me was long gone the moment he looked down at her in my arms and I saw fury take over his features.
I ate it up, the feeling of power it gave me. I had barely even touched his sister, but he didn’t know that. All he knew is that she laid in my arms like she fucking belonged there, and she was staring up at me like she never wanted to leave.
She was staring up at me like she felt more at home in my arms than she ever would in these fucking tainted walls.
But he knew better.
He knew that I would use her in any way I needed to fuck with him. To pay him back for what he did to me. For what he did to her.
“What are you doing here?” His words were threatening as he stepped toward me, and I prayed he came closer. I prayed the motherfucker gave me the slightest reason to wreck his face again.
“Just taking care of your sister.” I cocked my head to the side as he stared at her in my arms.
He took a step closer to me and held out his arms as if I would ever just hand her over to him.
“I’ve got her.” He nodded his head, but he was out of his damn mind.
I would have never given her to him, especially not with the way she clung to me. Not with the way she was begging me with her eyes not to let her go. The tips of her fingers were turning white with the force of her hand clinging to my chest.
“That’s not going to happen.” I stepped to move past him, and he blocked my path. If she wasn’t in my arms, I would have knocked that damn look off his face, and no one would have been able to stop me. Not like last time. They would never have been able to pull me off of him again. “Get out of my fucking way, Lucas.”
“What are you doing with her, Beck?” His nostrils flared, and his chest puffed as if he was going to do something about it.
He had the nerve to act like he fucking cared.
Lucas didn’t care about anyone but himself. We both knew that.
He had proven it to us both.
“That’s none of your business.” I tightened my hold on her. “What I do with her is between me and her.”
Her fingers spasmed against me as her body squirmed.
My cock strained against my jeans, and I wanted to do everything to her. Everything.
Especially when I looked at the fury on Lucas’s face.
“Let him go and go to your room.” He spoke to her as if he was her real brother or even her father. He spoke to her as if he knew her intimately.
And it only made me want to destroy him even more.
“Get out of my way, Vos. I won’t tell you again.” I meant it too. We both knew it. We both knew that I would seize any opportunity to take a shot at him.
He backed out of my way, but he stood by her door watching me. I didn’t give a shit. He could watch whatever the fuck he wanted. He could watch while I destroyed his sister the way he had mine. While I destroyed him.
Carson had already laid Allie in Josie’s bed, and even though he would never admit it, I knew that he had been so gentle with
