She looked at the Buddha, the candle flickering across its serene face. What had she been doing? She knew better. Knew control was an illusion. And yet she’d pursued it with single-minded focus for the past eight years like it would somehow undo all the shitty things that had happened. Like it would keep more shitty things from happening.
Instead all it had done was keep her from the good things. She thought about Locke and their date that night. About the black dress she’d chosen for the occasion and the new lingerie she would wear under it. She let herself savor the pleasure rippling under her skin at the thought of seeing him again.
At the thought of kissing him again. Touching him again.
She was tired of pretending it didn’t feel good. Tired of pretending she didn’t want more.
She thought of Abby and her dad at Bolton’s. She’d had enough of disappointment. Maybe it was time to let herself have something good.
16
Locke had to force his eyes on the winding road with Elle in the passenger seat beside him. He’d been stunned into silence when she’d opened the door of the bookstore in response to his knock. She had always taken his breath away, but she'd only grown more beautiful in the time they'd been apart. Her high cheekbones were even more prominent, her green eyes deeper and more mysterious than they’d been when she’d been in college. He could see all the things she’d experienced since then.
All the things he had yet to discover about her.
She was wearing a simple black dress, the hemline just high enough to give him a glimpse of her creamy knees. He knew how it would feel to hook her legs over his shoulders, turn his head, kiss the hidden skin behind her knee just before he drove into her. The image had him fighting an erection in spite of what was to come.
In spite of the confession he would make when they were alone.
“I thought we were going to dinner.”
He dared a glance over at her, wishing he could take a picture, the fading sun lighting her hair on fire, the locks pulled back to reveal her long neck, exposed and waiting for his mouth.
He smiled. “We are.”
“There’s nothing out here.” Her eyes drifted to the ocean, spread out below them. “Unless you’re planning on making me catch my dinner.”
“I would never make you catch your dinner on the second date,” he said.
Her laughter poured into all the dark crevices of his soul. “Is that something I should be prepared for on the third date?”
He should have been encouraged by her words. By the possibility that he would see her again.
He knew better.
Tonight he would lay all his cards on the table. He would expose himself like he’d never exposed himself to anyone.
He would risk it all.
She would either accept it or she wouldn’t. She would either seek to ruin him or she wouldn’t. He should have been conflicted. Maybe even scared.
He wasn’t.
She’d lost everything because of his family; he would happily risk everything for her. Would happily risk everything to prove that he had changed. That she could trust him.
He could have waited. Could have let things play out, see where they led. But he’d learned the power of a lie in the hardest way possible. He wasn’t going to repeat the mistake. She had readily agreed to dinner. He had to believe that meant she’d worked through any conflict she had about seeing him, and that meant he had to lay his cards on the table before she became more invested.
This time she would know exactly what he was.
He rounded the last corner leading up the hill and pulled to a stop in front of the familiar black gates.
“What is this?” she asked.
He looked over at her. “This is my house. Is that okay?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said. “It’s okay.”
He rolled down the window and reached for the security keypad, then punched in the code. The gates swung open and he started up the hill to the house that had been his sanctuary. To the one place he’d never shared with anyone who didn’t have as much to lose as him.
17
Elle finished her wine and sat back in her chair. The view from the terrace was breathtaking, the house perched at the edge of a cliff overlooking a private cove. They’d watched the sun set while they’d eaten perfectly cooked salmon dressed with tamari and lime, fluffy rice, tender asparagus drizzled with hollandaise she had watched Locke prepare as effortlessly as if it were oatmeal.
It had all been a surprise.
She’d known he was rich from media reports about the sale of his company, but somehow she’d still imagined him in the cramped off-campus apartment where they’d spent so many hours wrapped in each other’s naked bodies. Now she realized the breadth of her folly. He had become a formidable man in more ways than one.
She wished it wasn’t such an incredible turn-on.
“More wine?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll be curled up on your sofa in an hour if you pour me more wine.”
Or in your arms. In your bed.
“I wouldn’t object.”
The words were riddled with meaning, his eyes like fire in the dying light. He leaned back in his chair, his expression growing serious.
“I’ve never brought any woman here,” he said.
The statement took her by surprise. “Why is that?”
“I’m going to tell you why,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I’m going to tell you everything.”
The words fell in her stomach like lead. Was he married? A partner in Bolton’s taking yet another turn at ruining her?
She forced the question out of her mouth. “Alright.”
He looked out over the water and started talking. “After you left me, I felt so helpless. I wanted to take it all back. To do it all over again.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “You should have told me, but the rest of it had nothing to do with you.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it made me realize something.”
“What did it make you realize?”
He turned his gaze on her. “It made me realize shitty things happen to people every day. Some of them are random. But others… well, others are done to them, usually by people with more money. More power.”
“I can’t argue with that,” she said.
He nodded. “The only real answer is to have more money. More power.”
She couldn’t get a handle on where he was going. “And that’s where your company came in?”
He nodded. "But not for the reasons you think."
She watched the candlelight play across his features, waited for him to continue.
“It wasn’t about money to give to charity or to start a foundation of my own.” He met her eyes, and for a moment she didn’t recognize him. They were cold, steely. The eyes of someone who was far older than his age suggested. “The world is full of people writing checks, but money is no cure for corruption. For evil.”
She drew in a breath, forced herself to let it out slowly, trying to keep herself calm. “So what was the point then?” she asked. “What was the point of getting money and power — more than you already had as your parents’ son — if not that?”
“I realized there was a vacuum,” he said. “A place where traditional law enforcement can’t help people. A legal no man’s land where certain people got away with hurting others by skirting the law. By playing games with lawyers and technicalities.”
She forced herself to speak around the lump forming in her throat. “And you decided to fill that vacuum.”
“Someone had to.” His gaze was steady.
She was trying to stay calm. Trying to keep her head clear enough to ask the questions that needed to be asked. To get the answers she needed.
“So you do things,” she said. “Illegal things.”
He seemed to consider her words. “Our operations are carefully targeted to hit people who have hurt others. Any profit is given back to th
ose who have been hurt by our target.”
“Our?” It was the one manageable detail in everything he’d said: this wasn’t just Locke acting as a vigilante.
It was bigger than that.
“I have a team,” he said. “Others who feel the way I do. Who want to make a difference. Who think victims of corruption and violence deserve more than a day in court.”
“Have you ever… hurt anyone?”
A pained expression crossed his features. “We go to great pains to insure that no one is physically hurt. We had a perfect record until last year when a probationary member of our organization killed a guard.” There was no mistaking the torture in his eyes. “Turns out he had terminal cancer, not that it matters.”
“But it wasn't you.” She knew it was a foolish distinction even as she said it, but somehow it still mattered. “You didn’t kill him.”
“Regardless of who pulled the trigger, it was my fault,” he said. “It’s my job to vet the people we bring in. I’ve set up a trust in the name of the guard’s family, but I know it’s not enough. That’s something I’ll have to live with.”
She knew from the tone of his voice that it would haunt him forever.
It would have been impossible to imagine Lachlan Hunt as a vigilante. Calm, happy-go-lucky Lachlan would never hurt a fly. And the only chances he took were for the high of being alive. But that man had grown into this one.
And this one didn’t sit back and hope for the best.
“So you’ve… what? Stolen money?” She was still trying to imagine the high-stakes operation whose headquarters was perched in a multimillion dollar mansion in La Jolla. Whose founder loved the ocean and believed in peace for all.
“Among other things.” He stood. “Wait here.”
He left the room and she looked out over the water. She should leave now. Demand to be taken home. Locke Montgomery wasn’t the man she thought he was. He was dangerous.
A criminal.
Leave. Get up, Elle. Forget this ever happened.
He came back holding a thick folder wrapped with a rubber band. He set it carefully in front of her, and she caught his scent — salt water and surf wax and enough testosterone to make her wet — on the breeze.
“I wasn’t just at Bolton’s that day to shop,” he said. “I was there for Glover.”
She hesitated, then reached for the file, pulled off the rubber band, opened the folder. Locke remained standing, turning to face the sea while she started flipping pages.
There was a detailed bio (Glover had been born to wealthy parents, had attended tony boarding schools where he’d been disciplined several times, almost expelled once after being accused of assaulting a girl from a nearby school), a financial report detailing his investment holdings (his net worth had declined over the past year, but that looked to be because he’d liquidated a lot of his assets), photographs of him with his family (a wife and two daughters) and at various events as Bolton’s CEO.
But it was the stuff that came after that information that caused nausea to roil in her stomach.
The defunding of pensions in the last three companies he’d run. Allegations from small businesses that he’d played dirty to shut them down. A questionable resignation from his previous position amid rumors of fraud. Even potential ties to human trafficking in Mexico.
She skimmed the documents her eyes catching on some of the more lascivious words and phrases before she finally slammed the folder shut. Locke didn’t move, his posture as unchanging as if he’d been carved from granite. She was glad he was silent.
Glad he was letting her process everything she’d learned.
She tried to imagine the boy she’d loved turning into a man so desperate to find justice that he would funnel his billions into what was for all intents and purposes a mercenary organization.
It wasn’t as difficult as it should have been.
He had always had a powerful sense of right and wrong. Few things caused ripples in the calm waters of his demeanor like injustice, and they’d had countless conversations about the many things wrong with the modern world. She’d assumed it was natural, the kind of indignation that had prompted young people into activism for decades.
Now she saw how it could have evolved into something more radical. How his penchant for danger and justice combined with everything that had happened with his parents might have heightened his ideology, pushed him into action.
She waited for the repugnance to hit her. She’d always believed in playing by the rules. But that was when she was young.
When she was naive.
That was when everyone in her orbit seemed to be playing by the rules, too. When her parents could spend their lives building something that people valued. When it seemed impossible that someone with money and power could swoop in and take it all away with the stroke of a pen.
When the possibility of it happening twice wasn’t even a distant nightmare.
She thought of Abby and her dad leaving Bolton’s with Abby’s new book. Of the despair she’d felt realizing the decision wasn’t complicated for them. They were just people, out running errands, trying to simplify things by shopping in one place. When push came to shove, they would do — should do — what was best for them.
She thought of Malcolm Glover. Of the way he’d looked at her like she was just a piece of ass. The way he’d dismissed her like she was lint on his jacket. She’d been insulted, but after reading the folder in front of her she found her wounded ego had moved aside to make room for rage.
Glover wasn’t a one-time offender. He was a man who’d spent his life taking from others. Who’d used his money and power to gain more money and power without giving a single thing back to those who had been less fortunate. A man who wasn’t satisfied with doing no harm but actually enjoyed inflicting pain on others.
In the equation of right and wrong, was Locke really the one committing the more grievous wrong? Was his desire to neutralize Glover worse than the things Glover had done? The things he would still do if left unchallenged?
She thought of the dead guard, her chest hollowing out at the thought of his widow. She didn’t have an answer for that one. No trite stance that would allow her to sidestep the damage Locke — through his organization — had done to an innocent man and his family. Locke was right; the fact that the man had terminal cancer didn't matter. And while she was glad he’d tried to make reparations by providing for the man’s widow, it didn’t absolve him of responsibility.
She should have been alarmed by the sudden flexibility of her moral code. She’d always thought the world was black and white. There was right and there was wrong, and it was pretty easy to determine which was which.
Now the line between the two seemed muddy, one bleeding into the other until she couldn’t quite find the point of separation.
She looked up at Locke, his broad shoulders still as he gazed out over the water, and felt a powerful desire to go to him.
To tell him she understood.
Because the truth was, she did understand. Sometimes you just got tired of seeing all the shit in the world. You got tired of seeing innocent people hurt. Got tired of seeing people get away with hurting people because they had lawyers and tax shelters and offshore bank accounts.
She was still grappling with the knowledge — with the idea that she might be more closely aligned with Locke’s way of thinking than she would have admitted before tonight — when he turned around.
His face was unreadable, but his eyes were full of torment.
“I once stood by while everything was taken from you,” he said. “This home, my business… it’s all been orchestrated to be nearly impenetrable by the authorities. I brought you here to show you that I don’t care about any of that anymore. I’m letting you into my world, because the truth is, it's been fucking empty without you, Elle.” He looked around, taking in the house and the patio, the view that was worth millions of dollars, before returning his eyes to her. “Now you know everything. Wha
t you do with it is entirely up to you.”
She knew what she would do before she did it. Had probably known it all along.
Standing, she walked toward him, his position on the terrace making him look like he was standing at the edge of the world. When she reached him, she looked down, trying to find the words she needed.
“It will take time for me to figure all this out. To process it. But…”
She drew in a deep breath. Last chance to change her mind.
“But?”
She looked up at him and shrugged. “If I have to choose a side in this, I choose yours.”
He seemed to freeze, and for a moment she wondered if he’d changed his mind. If it had all been a test to determine the hold he still had over her.
Then he pulled her into his arms and smoothed her hair back from her forehead, cupped her face in his hands. “Elle… beautiful Elle… where do we go from here?”
She slid her arms around his neck, pressed her body to his, the fire already sparking to life inside her. “We go to bed,” she said. “We have time to figure out the rest.”
He groaned, lifting her into his arms. Then his mouth was on hers, frantic and hot, as he carried her into the house, toward a destiny that was beginning to feel inescapable.
18
He couldn’t keep his mouth off her. Was glad he knew the house so intimately. Glad he could navigate across the terrace, through the living room, up the stairs without breaking their kiss.
Because he never wanted to stop kissing her. Never wanted to go another day without kissing her.
She was nearly weightless in his arms, the heat of her body his only proof that she was real. That he wasn’t dreaming.
By the time they reached the master suite at the end of the upstairs hall, his cock was so hard he was in pain, desperate to free it from the confines of his jeans.
To plunge into her. Lose himself in the haven of her body.
He approached the bed cautiously. He’d waited eight years for this moment. Had dreamed about it over and over again, never really believing it would come true.
Rebel Love (Kings of Corruption Book 2) Page 8