Linc’s eyebrows jumped, and he only hesitated for a moment before bending down, taking his body just low enough so her splayed arms could curl around his neck.
She had to stand on her toes, even though he was bending down, but Veda got her arms around his neck, moaning softly as he circled his around her waist. A soft sound left his lips too. It wasn’t a moan, but the soft breeze carried the sound away before Veda could decide just what it was.
He squeezed her close and stood tall, his sheer height forcing her feet to leave the pier’s wood slats.
Her laughter was muffled in his broad shoulder, legs swinging through the air.
She exhaled when he returned her to her feet, his arm lingering around her waist before he pulled away completely.
Their eyes danced and they shared a quiet laugh.
Taking a healthy step away from her, Linc massaged his shadowed cheek with one hand while lifting the other into the air. A piece of paper fluttered between his clenched fingers, fighting to escape and float away with the breeze.
“I know you’re with your friends,” he said, “so I won’t keep you.”
“You’re not keeping me.” She stepped forward, shaking her head. She took a deep breath and nodded to the bar behind her. “You should join us. We’re just having some drinks. Well, not Coco, since she’s only seventeen. Though apparently, that number means nothing to some people. Particularly when it comes to illegal beverages. But I digress.” Veda actually shot a look over her shoulder and up to the second level of the bar, sure that Hope had not only given Coco a sip of her cocktail but had purchased Coco her own adult beverage altogether.
“Nah.” Linc reclaimed her attention. “Gotta get home. Lot of work to do. Thank you, though.”
“Leads on The Chopper?” Veda lifted her eyes to his, feeling them widen with excitement. “Leads on the info you swiped from the ship last night?”
“None of your business, and wow—” He raised his eyebrows. “—none of your business.”
She curled her top lip at him.
His eyes shone down at her, and he offered her the paper in his hand. “I got the names.”
And just like that, Veda’s heart fell to her feet. The lights blasting from the boat windows floating in the pier, the homes on the hill, and the bustling business lining the marina seemed to extinguish all at once.
And she was shrouded in darkness.
Shrouded in darkness, and she hadn’t even seen the names.
She stared at the paper trapped between Linc’s pointer and middle finger. She watched him shake it, clearly wondering if she had any plans on taking it.
But she couldn’t move.
Her eyes went wider as she drank in that paper. Bigger every second. Every last bone in her body trembled. She couldn’t tell if her body shook to see the names, or shook to reject them.
Maybe it was better not to know.
Maybe she didn’t want to know at all.
When Linc shook the paper again, Veda blinked rapidly, snapped out of her trance. Lifting her eyes to his, she hesitated for only another moment before she snatched the paper from his hand.
She felt his eyes burning into the top of her head as she stared down at the unopened paper.
“You’re shaking,” Linc noted.
Veda sucked in a breath, tightening her grip on the paper so firmly it made dents on either side of the folds.
She looked up at him again.
His eyes were there to catch hers. He frowned at her, licking his lips. “Full names. First and last. I even dug a little deeper and tracked down their locations on date of purchase. Only one of them lives in Shadow Rock.” He grinned at her. “I’ll give you three guesses which one.”
Veda held her breath, fighting back the beginnings of tears that she could feel burning her eyes.
Linc must’ve seen the moisture because he sobered, smile vanishing, brows pulling. “Why is this so important to you?”
Veda couldn’t answer, his earlier words playing over in her head and rendering her speechless.
“Only one of them lives in Shadow Rock.”
She unfolded the paper before she could stop herself, her eyes desperately flying down the list of names once it was open, praying not to find the name he’d already alluded was there. The name that had her skin feeling like it was peeling away from her body.
Andrew Harris-Las Vegas, NV
Nick Goldstein-Hartford, CT
Michael Anderson-Honolulu, HI
Vincent DiMaggio-Washington, DC
David Klein-New York, NY
As Veda’s eyes ran down the list, her hold on the paper grew weaker with each name. So frail that the wind nearly stole it from her hold and carried it into the water, never to be seen or heard from again.
Veda wished the wind had taken that paper from her and carried it away. She wished it had carried it to the trickling waters below, destroying it, wetting the ink and making it unreadable. Wetting the ink and making it bleed.
Anything to stop the rapid bleed of her heart, her soul, every inch of her body.
Anything but the sixth name screaming up at her right then.
Gage Blackwater-Shadow Rock Island, CA
The tears were on her like wildfire, not just burning her eyes but incinerating them. The gentle tremble to her bones turned into an all-out earthquake, making even her heavy breathing quiver under its intense attack. Her lips shook as well, the pained cry living on the edge of her throat too weak to finish the job of leaving her lips.
“Veda, what is it? Veda? Veda.”
She lifted her eyes to Linc, wondering how long he’d been saying her name. She got her answer when she saw the concern present on his face. The tightness to his jaw, the draw of his lips, and the gentle reach of his hands, his touch stopping just inches from her body, fingers appearing both desperate and hesitant to connect to her.
“Veda, what’s wrong?”
She blinked at him, unable to hear the words. Her ears were humming too loudly to hear anything. But she read the question on his lips. She saw it in his eyes. The concern.
When she heard his question—“What’s wrong?”—in her head, she took a rapid step back when the answer came right on its heel.
Linc jolted at her retreat, and the confusion on his face ebbed to a deeper place.
The first tear jutted out of Veda’s eyes, and that seemed to breathe something to life in him because his eyes, his body, his very aura was no longer hesitant or gentle. The concern on his face moved to anger, even though it was clear he had no idea who he was angry at, but had every intention of finding out.
He stepped toward her with a stronger stride, a harder foot, reaching for her with fingers splayed in determined intent.
Veda stepped out of his reach just before he could take her arm, turned on her heel, and raced away.
“Veda!”
Only when her back was turned to him—only when she was running—did Veda allow the first sob to escape her lips, followed quickly by another, and another, until the tears had filled her eyes so heavily they nearly blinded her, causing her to run into several people on the pier in her haste to race away.
But even as she had one collision after another, catching the angered eyes and words of every person she hit, she didn’t slow. She didn’t stop.
She couldn’t stop.
Even as she ran, she wondered when she would get it.
She wondered if she would ever get it.
That no matter how fast her feet moved her, no matter how fast she ran, and no matter how many people she took out in her desperate race for escape, she couldn’t outrun her truth. She’d never outrun her truth.
She’d never outrun her past.
And most important of all, she’d never outrun herself.
27
That evening, even as she sat Indian style, motionless, in the middle of Gage’s king-sized bed, Veda was still running. Running from herself. Running from the darkness. Running from her truth. Even thou
gh the truth sat before her, staring her in the face.
Lying before her on top of the white duvet was her truth, but mentally, she still ran. She ran from the photo of the sneaker prototype screaming up at her from the screen of her cell phone, from Linc’s scribbled handwriting on the list of names lying next to her phone, and from the photo she’d stolen from Todd Lockwood’s apartment, which sat on the other side of her phone. The photo where a sixteen-year-old Gage sat at the top of the staircase, peeking down into the party.
The virgin.
The outcast.
“I was sixteen.”
“Just some random girl at a party.”
The photo where he was surely wearing the very sneakers he’d purchased that same year, even though the sneakers weren’t visible in the picture. The very sneakers her number ten had been wearing the night he’d joined nine of his friends on his mother’s balcony and….
“I’m not proud of myself.”
Veda pressed her lips together and forced her eyes closed. No tears came. They’d stopped coming hours ago, now too dry, too red, and too weak to even produce another. Her ducts were dry to the bone. She didn’t even know why she’d come back to this house. How she’d had the stomach. Why she still felt like she owed Gage at least a good-bye. Why some part of her still wanted to be wrong.
Was she really such a masochist?
Apparently, she was. She’d have to be to have fooled herself for so long. And what a fool she’d been. To believe she could love and be loved in return. To believe, down to her bones, that light could be drawn from any other source but brutal, savage revenge. To believe that love could be enough to wash away the darkness and silence the demons in her heart.
Love wasn’t enough.
She couldn’t siphon peace and light from others like some starved feral animal and expect it to be enough. She had to reclaim her own. And the only way to do that was to avenge the people who’d stolen it from her.
People who apparently included the man behind the wheel of the truck growling into the driveway downstairs. The man whose keys she heard jingling in the lock of the door. The man whose leather shoes clicked against the marble floors and stomped up the staircase. The man whose sheer weight and size made the floors shake with each step he took toward the bedroom.
The man who appeared in the doorframe, so large he was able to clutch it on both ends, even though both the double doors were open.
Veda’s eyes widened at the sight of him. His scent reached across the room and, amazingly, still made her skin hum with ease. How could he still put her at ease? How could those dark brown eyes still make her heartbeat slow? How could those full lips make her center pulse with desperation to become better acquainted? How could her skin ache for just one touch of the big hands clutching that door frame? How could the smile he shot across the room make her heart swell, even as she found herself unable to smile back?
How could she still want to smile back after everything she’d learned?
How could she still want to smile back at her number ten?
Gage stepped into the bedroom and Veda collected her phone, the list of names, and the photograph, shoving them all in the back pocket of her jeans as he approached the bed, undoing his tie.
“Hey, beautiful.” He removed the silky fabric from around his neck and let it fall to the floor. His shirt was next, unbuttoned in seconds, his chiseled chest coming into view as he peeled it off his body and dropped it to the floor as well. The moonlight spilling into the open double doors of the balcony caught every deep line of his chest, making them appear darker, stronger.
His biceps pulsed as he undid his belt and pants, letting the fabric pool to the floor, his eyes never leaving hers.
With each step he took nearer to the bed, undressing the whole way, Veda scooted back on the mattress. By the time he made it to the edge of the bed he was down to his boxers, already tented with need for her, and she pressed against the headboard.
“I have news.” His deep voice boomed across the mattress as he lifted one knee and laid it on the bed. The foam sank in deep as he gave it all his weight, crawling across the duvet to the human cocoon she’d curled herself into at the very edge. “You’re looking at the brand new board member of the Terrance Gloss Foundation.” His smile bloomed. “It’s official. Just today. Hope’s got more pull at that place than I thought. The moment she deemed me worthy—boom—I got the seat.”
Veda sucked in a breath, her heart churning.
If he only knew.
Hope most certainly hadn’t deemed him worthy.
“You know he was there that night, right?”
In that instant, Veda’s tear ducts made a rapid comeback, moistening and stinging her eyes. She slammed them closed just as Gage took hold of her ankles and yanked her across the bedding, bringing her closer, forcing her onto her back in the middle of the bed as Hope’s voice infiltrated her brain like a virus.
“He was with Todd and Eugene all night.”
Veda’s body slid toward him with ease, guided by his sheer strength alone, and in the next second, he was between her splayed legs, forcing them apart.
Every bone in her body trembled from head to toe as he took control so easily. She clenched her hands into fists to stop them from shaking as he warmed the crook of her neck with his soft lips, his wet tongue, and his whispered words.
“I couldn’t have done it without you.” He braced his hands on either side of her head, grinding his hardness against the seat of her jeans. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Veda. You make me see a world I never would’ve known was possible.” His kisses slowly moved up the edge of her jaw and along each of her cheeks. He buried his hands in her hair and pulled his lips from her skin with a smack, meeting her eyes.
He held her gaze, searching her orbs with his, and frowned softly. He took a moment to try to read what he was seeing on her face, even as his fingers trailed a path down her T-shirt to the button of her jeans. He snapped it open.
Veda sucked in a gasp.
“The moving truck is waiting downstairs,” he said, releasing her zipper as well. “Picked it up earlier today.”
“How do you find the stomach to date Gage Blackwater?”
Veda heard Jax’s voice and realized she was frozen. Completely and utterly frozen. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.
“We can get started on moving your things out of your apartment tonight.” He smiled, dipping his fingers into her jeans. “Right after we make love, I mean.” His lips returned to her neck. “I’ll definitely need to have you first, to take the edge off before enduring my first relocation that doesn’t involve professional movers. Not sure I’ll make it out alive, but….” He chuckled into her neck, but a moment later he stilled. His greedy fingers froze inside her panties, just before reaching the lips of her pussy. He lifted his head from her neck and met her eyes. Then his gaze traveled her, growing harder by the second. He took in her arms, locked tightly against her body. Her fists, clenched at his shoulders. Her thighs, clapped against his waist with such ferocity she was worried they might leave dents in his skin. His face tightened, his confused gaze meeting hers. “What’s got you so tightly wound?”
Veda couldn’t answer. What could she say? “Hey, do you mind telling me whether or not you assaulted me ten years ago? Just trying to figure out whether or not to put you on my list of balls to slice out?”
Of course not. She couldn’t even show him a photo of the sneakers and passive-aggressively ask him if they looked familiar. She couldn’t risk him having the same powerful, visceral response she’d had to the sight of the shoes when she’d seen them for the first time in ten years. She couldn’t risk his mind shooting him back to that night and potentially putting the pieces together. Figuring out that she was The Shadow Rock Chopper, out to avenge him and his friends for what they’d done to her. Those shoes had the power to click on the kind of lightbulbs in his head she couldn’t risk clicking on.
She
could never ask him.
She could never talk to him.
As far as she was concerned, the man above her—the man who, just a day earlier, she’d loved with all her heart—was officially her worst enemy.
She had to believe it. She had to hate him. She had to hate him with as much fervor in her heart as she did the other nine. With as much fervor in her heart that she’d once used to love him.
She stared at him and wondered if she’d actually be able to do it.
Even with the truth weighing down her back pocket like a boulder, she still didn’t know if she’d be able to hurt Gage the way she had Todd and Eugene.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who needs to take the edge off before the move.” His eyebrows jumped when she didn’t match his smile. “Relax, Veda,” he insisted before slowly lowering his head back to her neck, passionately kissing the spot he knew was guaranteed to make her wet with vigor.
Veda licked her lips, her eyes exploding when his fingers dipped back into her panties.
“I didn’t break the lease,” she gasped when her voice suddenly began working again. The sound of the words on her lips set off a domino effect, and she took hold of his shoulders, cupping them.
Gage’s kisses froze on her neck. He pulled his head back. The frown between his brows was gone but had been replaced with a fury staining his eyes. He squinted at her, and those heated eyes shrank into slits.
“Excuse me?” he asked, his voice now devoid of the passion that had laced it just a second earlier, replaced with a smile of pure disbelief, as if he were waiting for her to tell him he was on candid camera.
Veda tried to wiggle out from under him but he clapped a hand on her waist and held her steady, making it impossible to move.
Her teeth clenched and then began to chatter, suddenly desperate to be out from under him. To escape. Not just the darkness filling her body from head to toe, but the darkness filling his eyes. For the first time, she wondered if she’d ever actually been the one transferring all that darkness to him.
Maybe, all this time, it’d been him transferring it to her.
Purr (Revenge Book 3) Page 20