“This girl I know once bought me a chocolate milkshake,” I whispered, loving how she squirmed against me. “After this, I’m thinking you should help me find out how it tastes when I’m licking it off your stomach.”
Her hands gripped my forearm, nails digging in. “You just had cupcakes,” was her half-hearted protest.
“Then I must be developing a sweet tooth. Good thing I’ve got you to satisfy my cravings.”
The slightest blush turned her cheeks pink, and I hid my grin in her neck before raising my head to deal with the task before me.
“A truce goes both ways,” I told Lake. “You stay out of our shit and we stay out of yours. That was the deal.”
His eyes narrowed. “Tell that to your boy here.” He nodded at Chrom. “Maybe he’ll get it through his thick fucking skull to stay away from my sister.”
Chrom’s head swung around, his easy grin dropping. “Is Megan here? Tell her to stop avoiding me.”
“Not the time,” Baron muttered, unease creasing the corners of his mouth.
I squinted at him and got a head shake in return. Great. Something else I was out of the loop on. I knew it was my own damn fault. Didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow.
Lake’s nostrils flared.
Fletcher’s eyes hardened.
Chrom’s shoulders tightened.
“Alrighty then,” Emily sang, sliding from my grip, drawing everyone’s focus. “As riveting as it is to watch y’all go in circles, I can think of better amusement. Like watching paint dry. Or, you know, enjoying the actual party.”
She turned and peered up at me, a tempting curl to her lip. Emily crooked a finger and I leaned closer without a second thought.
Raising up on her toes to meet me halfway, she whispered, “I want that milkshake, and the rest. Hurry up before I have to indulge by myself.”
With a taunting pat to my chest, she swept around me, leaving me with a twitching dick and the sweet smell of her in my lungs.
She’d also left behind a choice for me to make. Drag this out or have her.
A hard decision?
Fuck. No.
Grabbing my phone, I said, “I need your numbers.”
Lake rattled off his and Fletcher’s. I sent them both a picture, waiting for them to look at it before I skipped to the point.
“One of yours took a watch that belonged to one of ours,” I said, shifting on my feet with the urge to hunt down Emily.
Fletcher rasped, “Have the kid buy a new one.”
Such a pain in my ass.
I glared at both of them. “If it was that easy, don’t you think I would’ve done so by now? The thing’s a relic from his great grandfather, effectively one of a kind.”
Lake sighed. “What makes you so sure it was one of ours?”
I fought my first response, which would’ve been to point out all the drugged-out lunatics around us. I went with something productive instead. “I already checked all the pawn shops and auctions in our territory.”
That I was actually Baron and Erik doing the majority of the legwork, but that wasn’t a relevant detail. What mattered was that the two sides of town hated each other. Asking around out here wouldn’t get me anywhere. They’d hold their tongues just to spite me, and I’d have to either let it go or employ less than savory means of getting my answers.
Mom, Dad, and the rest of the previous Tarots had forcibly ended generations’ worth of bad blood and established the truce we now enjoyed. We all kept our distance and were happier for it. A much better alternative than the streets running red like they had before I was born.
But it was a frayed cord held together with super glue and a bit of luck. It couldn’t take much stress without snapping completely, and the warning Mom had given me about the coming storm made me wonder if I wouldn’t be able to stop that cord from breaking despite my best efforts.
Troubles for another time.
Lake and Fletcher exchanged a long look before the former nodded and faced me.
“Assuming you round up the rest of your privileged entourage on the double, we’ll look into it.”
“Good.” I craned my neck, searching the room for a striking redhead that was nowhere to be seen.
Fletcher snapped his fingers, distracting me. “What are you waiting for? Lay out the or else that’ll happen if we don’t find it.”
“Find it and I won’t have to,” I said, voice dry. “When you do, you know how to reach me.” We spent some time ironing out a few more details before I couldn’t wait anymore.
Turning on my heel, I didn’t bother excusing myself as I went in search of what I wanted much, much more than a request fulfilled.
Baron and Chrom followed my lead, and a sneaking suspicion sent me toward the rear of the house where cheers and whistles echoed from the backyard. A rock landed in my gut as the sounds grew louder, and try as I might, I couldn’t shake it.
We haven’t been here an hour, I told myself. There’s no way Renata managed to start some shit already.
Circumstances being what they were, I had to eat my words about the same time we stepped into a crowded yard lined with an unnecessary number of tiki torches to find Emily and Renata gyrating on top of a table, cast in yellow hues from the bright flames.
Emily shimmied and dipped, hips doing a twirl at the bottom I felt intimately acquainted with. My blood pressure skyrocketed, and the completely sane urge to start plucking eyeballs rode me. What the hell were they thinking?
Muscles coiling with readiness, I managed a step before Chrom caught my arm. I sliced my head his way and the look I wore would’ve made the average person cower and beg for mercy. He laughed in my face.
“Dude,” he started.
“If you tell me to chill, I swear to God I’m going to—”
“Chill,” he said, belting out another loud laugh when my eye twitched.
I tore my arm out of his grip. “This is idiotic,” I hissed, waving a hand to the display happening. Another whistle rang out and I wondered how hard it would be to tear someone’s lips from their face. “All it’ll take is one picture on somebody’s social media, and Renata’s dad will lose his goddamn mind, again. She has to know we can’t cover for her here.”
There. That was a perfectly logical reason for my imminent meltdown. At least it would’ve worked on anyone who didn’t know me well.
Baron pushed his glasses up his nose. “Right... I’m sure your concern is for Renata and not the hand on Emily’s ass.”
“What!?”
Whiplash, meet my neck.
Thankfully, there weren’t any limbs near her other than Renata’s, so I didn’t have to add a butcher’s cleaver to the mental inventory of evil deeds I was making.
“That’s what I thought,” Baron added, earning himself another glare.
Chrom clapped me on the shoulder. “Knowing you, you’ve been a complete dick more than just the times I witnessed it. Maybe you should let her have this. Look at her, Ro, and ignore the salivating idiots. That’s what she’s doing.”
I took a deep breath and did just that. I watched how she swung her hips. How she leaned into and away from Renata playfully. How she closed her eyes and moved to the music blasting over the speakers before throwing her head back in a laugh like the rest of the world didn’t exist.
Her happiness was catching, a balm to the part of my ego that couldn’t stand the idea of sharing her in any way, shape, or form.
And when her eyes opened, they found me without delay.
The screws in my chest loosened, then fell away completely when she winked and blew a kiss that sent her admirers into a frenzy.
They didn’t know it was just for my benefit.
They didn’t know she was mine.
But she did.
Emily danced until sweat glistened on pale skin. Until the music changed over and over again. Until Erik came from beyond the torches, pushing a brunette away from him as he zipped up his jeans and glanced at the girl he was s
upposed to be wrangling and the sister he liked to pretend didn’t exist.
He pushed through the crowd from one side and I moved into the fray with him. When we reached our two misfits, we exchanged a nod. He snaked his arms around Renata’s waist and hauled her from the table kicking and screaming. Emily let her movement come to a rest as she glanced down at me, a slow smile spreading across her face when I offered my hand.
She looped her fingers through mine and let me help her down. My free hand gravitated to her lower back, pressing her body close to mine so I could bask in the warmth of her skin. So I could dip my head and seal our lips together in a kiss that had her hands climbing my neck to grip my hair.
I tried to remind myself why I couldn’t keep her.
I tried to remember why this was a bad idea.
I tried to hold on to the burden that was my calling, my mistake, my penance.
Except I couldn’t feel or think or care about a damn thing that wasn’t the girl in my arms.
“Ready for that milkshake?” I asked on a low rumble, pulling away before I mauled her right here in the open.
Her lashes fluttered as her eyes opened, and she nodded without ever looking away from my lips.
“My eyes are up here,” I said.
“And I’ll look wherever I damn well please, LaCroix.”
“What am I going to do with you?”
“Right now?” She glanced over my shoulder. “Probably get me out of here before we get glared to death. I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”
I turned to find Lake and Fletcher near the back of the house, scowling. In their defense, I’d claimed we were leaving almost twenty minutes ago.
“Ignore them,” I told her, shooting a quick text to everyone that we were leaving before I started walking. “They’re just pissy that you and Ren stole their spotlight. Speaking of which, do I want to know how you two ended up on a table?”
Emily shrugged. “She was already up there. I reached out to catch her at one point because it looked like she might fall, but she pulled me up instead. She’s way stronger than she looks. I guess I should’ve known that after seeing her ass earlier.
My mouth opened. Closed. “I’m not even going to ask.”
She snickered. “That’s probably for the best.”
We made it back to the Escalade in time to see Erik and Renata behaving like children. He’d manifested a joint from somewhere. At this point, I no longer bothered to ask or care where he kept them. Even if I did want to question it, I would’ve been too distracted by the sight of him holding it over his head while Renata jumped to try and reach it.
Emily shook her head as we parted, climbing in. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.”
“Same.”
Baron and Chrom saved us from listening to their antics for much longer. I threw the vehicle into gear and pulled onto the street, glad to put this behind us for a while at least.
None of us completely relaxed until we were back in familiar territory. Then the sense of comfort spread, conversation flowing easily, and Emily joined in like she’d always been one of us. I went through the drive-through of a local spot so we could order milkshakes.
Emily and Erik ordered the same flavor, and I felt the tension try to creep back in. Right before it settled, he leaned back in his seat and dipped his head in acknowledgment.
Baron chose that moment to launch into a speech about converting smaller investments into larger paydays that drew a loud, echoing groan from everyone but me. And the only reason I managed to keep my lips shut was because I had to in order to keep from laughing.
The drive back to campus went as fast as I could make it. When we got there, I helped Erik and Emily get Renata into her dorm and squared away in the interest of speeding things along. Emily fidgeted in the doorway when I walked out with her brother, and I didn’t hesitate to reach in and haul her ass out of there.
If she thought she was getting away from me tonight, she was dead wrong.
Finally, we returned to the townhouse. I tucked us away in my bedroom, barely acknowledging the other Tarots as they disappeared to their respective areas. Rude? Probably. They’d get over it. My attitude was a bit lighter than normal, but I wasn’t about to start tossing out hugs and kisses in the course of a single night either.
Emily walked a slow path around my room, idly dragging a finger across various surfaces while she finished the last of her milkshake. Content to watch her, I leaned against the door and did just that.
She stopped at my massive shelf of movies and seemed to consider something. But when I thought she was about to ask a question, what actually came out of her mouth was, “Do you have a t-shirt I can borrow? I need to get out of all of this if I’m spending the night.”
I tipped my head toward the dresser.
She grabbed a shirt and disappeared into the bathroom, peering out at me from the crack in the door before it closed completely.
I almost made the mistake of trying to figure out what was on her mind before thinking better of it. That girl consistently defied my expectations. Better to direct that energy elsewhere, like getting out of my own clothes that smelled like beer and smoke.
By the time she reappeared from the bathroom, looking like a dream come true with her hair loose and curling around her shoulders and nothing but my white t-shirt on that stopped at her thighs, I was on the bed in just my boxer briefs, propped up against the headboard.
I took my time looking her up and down, feeling my dick stir even before I noticed how easily I could see the dusky buds of her nipples through the thin cotton.
“Come here,” I growled without thinking.
Surprisingly, she crossed to the bed and climbed in without complaint before scooting close to me.
Soft hair spilled over my chest as she got comfortable and I nearly forgot how to breathe. When I remembered, I let my arm go around her, fingers walking an uncoordinated path up and down her side.
We stayed like that for several minutes, and it surprised me how comfortable I was holding her. I usually couldn’t wait to get away from situations like this. They were always one caress away from wanting to talk about feelings or labels or when we’d see each other again.
Not Emily.
And damn me if this wasn’t the one time I would’ve liked to know where we stood. Except I didn’t dare ask. If we weren’t on the same page, I was liable to do a complete one-eighty and bring the asshole inside of me to the forefront once more. This had been a day—and night—I didn’t want to sabotage.
For what felt like the first time since I’d fucked up and ruined everything, life was good. I wanted to hold onto that for as long as possible.
“The movies,” Emily said softly, snuggling closer to my chest as she adjusted her arms where they’d wrapped around me. “Tell me about them.”
I didn’t share anything with anyone.
And yet...
“What do you want to know?”
She rolled her head back and forth. “Are you a filmmaker in the making? Or maybe a snobby critic? Not many people would be able to quote the lines from a movie that’s more than twenty years old.”
“Snobby critic?” I scoffed. “Do I look like a balding old man with no life?”
Emily pinched me. “That’s mean!”
“And true.”
“Well...maybe. You’re still a jerk though.”
“I never claimed otherwise. But the answer to your question is nowhere near as fascinating as you’re probably imagining.”
She glanced up at me, blue eyes all I could see. “Guess I won’t know until you spit it out.” Her giggle floated between us when I glared. “Come onnnnnn,” she pleaded. “This has been bugging me for a while.”
I wet my lips as my pulse picked up. Was there really any harm in telling her? It’s not like it was top secret information, I just didn’t share anything with most people as a rule. But she wasn’t most people now, was she?
One way or another, sh
e’d burrowed deep, latched on, and I had no idea how to shake her or why I’d even want to.
“My life has been stuck on the same track for years now,” I started, focusing on her freckles so I wouldn’t be consumed by the curiosity in her eyes. I swear there was never the same number of them each time I looked. “I do the same things over and over to reach a goal I might never be able to grab onto. Sometimes, it gets to be too much, even for me, and I need a distraction.”
I nodded at the shelves where hundreds of movies rested. Most of them, I knew front to back or something close to it.
“That’s where my collection started. Going to the theater is one thing, but there’s always too many people up to their usual bullshit.”
“Good Lord,” she muttered, “don’t even get me started. If it’s not somebody checking their phone, it’s a crying baby or some joker that opens their candy right when the characters start whispering.”
The genuine annoyance in her voice had me laughing. I knew I wasn’t alone in feeling that way, but having her on my side made it better nonetheless.
“So you know what I mean,” I said. “Having the physical copy means I can watch it whenever I want, however many times I want, in the safety of my own room where no one can interrupt me while I pretend the outside world doesn’t exist for a couple of hours.”
Emily went quiet. In the next heartbeat, she’d slid into my lap, arms winding around my neck. Her teeth ran across my jaw and one of us shivered, but I couldn’t say who.
“That’s how baking is for me,” she whispered, placing a quick kiss on my neck, right above the black rose tattooed there. “It puts all the bullshit on the backburner. I almost go into autopilot and nothing else matters.”
I nodded, resting my head against the top of hers. “So you know what I mean.”
“Except for one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
Emily swung around on my waist again until she was straddling me. Predictably, my dick rose to the occasion and my hands settled on her hips to pull her warmth closer. “Your goal,” she said. “What is it?”
My stomach clenched, forming a lead weight that rolled side to side. I watched her while she watched me with nothing but patient expectation written across her beautiful face, blue eyes earnest where they lingered on mine. I wanted to tell her, even though the thought of doing just that made my heart race.
Defiant Prince: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Black Rose University Book 1) Page 25