He sees me.
Theo slid his thumb from his lip, biting the tip. Jaw flexed and eyes hard, like he was memorizing every small movement. I can’t help but imagine his teeth on me, biting into my flesh. Marking me.
Before I even realized I was about to come, his lip curved. Then I felt it, the pulse, the ache, the throb growing and spreading deeper.
I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s spurring me further and further. I want to beg him. For what, I don’t know. I’m captive, held taut on this throbbing thread by his half smile, his bitten thumb.
Then he lowered his head, just a half nod, a quirked brow.
Go ahead.
His name was on my lips again as I come completely undone.
Theo hadn’t said a word as we came downstairs for breakfast, and I was grateful he had to walk behind me. I couldn’t look him in the eye.
What was I thinking?
Breakfast was painfully overdone, as always. Even more so, because Mrs. Harlington was now staying with us in anticipation of my impending marriage to her son.
Her presence was like seeing the executioner at the gallows.
We had every type of breakfast food available. Fluffy eggs, colorful fruit, sweet and syrupy scones and crepes all laid out on a table stretching the thousand square foot dining room. Morning light streamed in through windows like diamonds.
All the personal guards were seated at the table today, probably because Mom had noticed the Harlingtons sat with theirs, which meant Theo would sit next to me too. We’d barely taken our seats when my mother’s sickly sweet voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she asked. “That I wouldn’t know?”
“I—” I stumbled over my words. “I didn’t… we didn’t…” How could she know? How could she possibly know?
“What does this look like?” Mom continued.
“Um… a cherry?” a servant’s weak voice answered.
Conversations went quiet, all eyes traveling to where she spoke with a servant who’d gone sheet white. I practically sank into my chair. Of course she didn’t know.
I’d nearly given myself away.
I refused to look at Theo. I could feel his stare trying to force me, so I smoothed a napkin over my camel-colored leather skirt.
My mother laughed. “Yes dear, a braindead woman could see that. What does it look like?”
The girl trembled.
Opposite my mother, Gray leaned back, arms overhead, a smile growing.
“Does it look round to you?” My mom trailed manicured nails down her neck, waiting for the maid’s response.
“Um… no?”
“Are you asking me?”
“No?”
“Are you asking me that too?”
My mom’s face was pinched in the way she got when dealing with help. It’s not like I’m asking them to solve world hunger, she’d say.
“Do you want to start your day off with an ugly piece of fruit?”
The girl shook her head furiously. “No.”
“Take this,” she sighed, handing the servant a bowl of bright-red cherries that looked perfectly round. She scurried off, mumbling apologies.
Like clockwork, my mother sighed. “It’s not like I’m asking them to solve world hunger.” The room laughed, and conversation continued.
“Still seated at the end with the rejects and forgotten,” Theo said, reaching for a glass of water in a crystal goblet.
I clenched my teeth.
His cruel words shouldn’t be a surprise but after this morning… they hurt worse.
“I don’t care about her. I don’t care what they think. They can ship me off to Antarctica for all I care.” I couldn’t help myself. I spared a look down the table where Mom, Gray, and Gemma were seated together, laughing. Was I seated down here alone on purpose?
Of course I was.
He laughed, low. “You are so fucking transparent, Reject.”
I glared at him. If I thought earlier today meant something, that quickly taught me wrong.
“Well you’re pathetic,” I said. “A pathetic, lonely dog begging for scraps from our table.”
I folded my napkin neatly in my lap, pressing the silky linen, ignoring him and trying to ignore my family.
Then I felt it, his hand under the table, sliding up my thigh.
I jumped.
“Abigail,” my mother called. “Edward was just here.”
I lifted my head, trying to see past the row of people between us. “Who?”
“Your fiancé,” she answered, irritated.
Excuse me for not knowing the name of someone no one has introduced me to.
“Had you not spent the morning sleeping, you could’ve said hello.”
Well, thank fuck for that.
“We just learned you were in the same class at Rosey,” she continued. “Come share some of your stories with Mrs. Harlington.”
We’d gone to Rosey together? I tried to remember anyone with the last name Harlington. I’d had no friends, and, like most of my classmates, sobriety wasn’t really optional.
“He may join us later this week, for the Fourth,” Mrs. Harlington said.
I was getting used to the idea of having just a name for a fiancé. The idea I’d actually have to meet this Edward and actually marry him, made my throat close.
“Oh, that would be wonderful…” My mother trailed off.
I prepared to stand and make up some bullshit when Theo curled his hand inside my thigh, a halting grip. All I could focus on was how close he was. Too close, not close enough. I should’ve worn pants.
Thank God I didn’t wear pants.
“Stop,” I whimpered.
“What were you thinking about?” he whispered. “What had you saying my name like a fucking plea for mercy this morning?”
“Abigail,” my mother called out again, voice clipped, losing patience.
“Fuck.” Theo cursed low when he realized I hadn’t put on any panties.
I focused on my ugly cherry, on keeping my fork from shaking. Not his fingers almost grazing me, igniting goose bumps that invaded my core and made my stomach ache and throb. Not how I wanted him to touch me. How I wanted him deeper, satiating what I couldn’t earlier.
Why wouldn’t he just go inside me?
“Abigail!”
Mother rarely took that tone in public. I was about to stand—conditioned like a fucking dog.
Theo’s hand on my thigh tightened. “Don’t move.”
“My mom is calling me,” I said weakly.
His finger plunged inside me. The fork I was holding dropped to my porcelain plate with a clang.
“So answer.”
With him deep inside me?
“Abigail? Are you trying to make me lose my voice?” Mom had a bored, unaffected tone, one I knew meant she was close to losing her patience.
“I…”
Theo pulled out, then pushed back in, deeper, curving his finger at just the right angle. I tried to focus on my breathing and failed.
What was I going to say? The room blurred. He was hitting that perfect, perfect spot I’d dreamed about this morning. His finger was big and thick and—
Fuck.
“Abigail?”
“I spilled champagne on my dress,” I managed weakly.
Theo’s low chuckle raced up my spine and made my teeth tingle.
Mother took a deep breath. I could picture her nostrils flaring.
My thighs fell open for him, begging for more. His ruthless rhythm all I knew. More fingers, more pressure, more pace.
More Theo.
Theo who had one tantalizing, taunting finger inside me—and was focused only on his food. Eating eggs and talking to the person beside him like he wasn’t driving me to the brink.
I was going to come. I was going to come on the hand of my bodyguard, surrounded by my family and my soon-to-be mother-in-law.
My breath shook. The room faded away to nothing.
Salt. Seawater. Sunscreen.
Him.
Him.
I gripped his thigh beneath the table, trying to anchor myself.
The only way I knew he even realized what he’d done to me was the way his voice slightly roughened when my grip tightened on his thigh as I came.
I quickly excused myself to the terrace for air.
Everything was in technicolor. The salt air brittle in my nose and on my tongue. The wind biting. The sun too bright, its heat on my neck fierce.
I could still feel him inside me, a throbbing memory.
I wanted more.
I couldn’t want more. He didn’t do that to me because he liked me. He did that to me because he knew it would wreck me, humiliate me.
I gripped the railing to steady myself, when I saw it.
A single gold rose sitting on the railing, and this time it came with a note.
See you soon.
Just like that, fear eclipsed everything. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t reach me here. I lifted it and pricked myself on the stem.
“Abigail?”
I jumped at Theo’s voice, dropping both the rose and note to the sand out of sight. I spun to face him, heart pounding. Blood dripped from my finger into the velvety, soft-white dunes. His eyes sharpened on it.
“What happened?” he asked, taking a step to me. Any closer he would see the rose, the note.
“I cut myself on the railing. I don’t know.” My shaking voice betrayed me. Before he could take another step forward, I walked past him. “Come on, dog. Let’s go or Mother will throw a fit.”
I felt Theo’s suspicion coming off him in waves behind me.
I couldn’t focus on it, because all I could think was… my stalker had gotten inside Crowne Hall?
Eleven
THEO
I stayed outside Abigail’s room well into the night, not putting a toe past the bodyguard line, but I watched her. She’d been weird all day, ever since brunch. Jumpy and skittish. I played it off as what had happened between us.
But something in my gut said otherwise.
She was atop her silky white sheets now, with some kind of mask on her face, in an oversize shirt that read ADULT-ISH and black satin sleep shorts, her long sable-brown waves tied in a messy bun atop her head.
Beautiful.
“This is the Abigail I know,” I said, leaning against the door. “All her pretty makeup and lies washed away to show the troll beneath.”
She looked up, surprise flickering in her clay eyes before disappearing into a glare. “Shouldn’t you be barking at a car or something?”
She flipped a page in her book, ignoring me.
Abigail masturbating.
That’s an image I won’t get out of my head… fucking ever.
Before, I was never allowed in her wing. Didn’t mean she didn’t sneak me in. Let me lie on her bed with her in the glow of her lamp as I waited for her to fall asleep. We’d talked into the night, about anything and everything. What food we liked (she liked Crowne Drive-In Diner burgers, I liked licorice ice cream), our favorite movies (hers was Silent Hill, oddly enough), or just how much she wished her mother would love her. She never said it aloud, but it was obvious by how often she spoke of her.
Back then the farthest we went was holding hands.
Hers were always too small in mine.
I made her promises, though. Whenever we played our game, she never promised, but I made so many.
I promise someday I’m going to kiss you, Abigail.
I promise someday I’m going to fuck you, Abigail.
I’d whisper dirty promises along her neck as she gripped my hands. She always responded in the same way: Please.
Abigail looked up. “What?”
I cleared my throat. “You owe me.”
I walked into her room and threw myself on her bed. Her book went flying. Abigail bounced. She looked at her fallen book, then at me, as if deciding which problem to deal with first. She decided on me.
“Uh, get the fuck off.”
I threw my arms behind my head, situating myself against her quilted satin headboard.
She ground her jaw. “You could at least take your shoes off.”
I put one leg over the other, really rubbing my shoes into the comforter as I went. “As I was saying, you owe me. Truth or Promise?”
She scrunched her nose, and I could tell she wanted to fight it.
But she said, “Truth.”
“Why did you look so freaked out earlier today?”
Her eyes grew. “I…” She bent over the bed, busying herself with the fallen book. “I don’t think I looked freaked out.”
“Not what I asked.”
“Well, I don’t think I look freaked out so I obviously can’t answer that question.” She sat upright, placing the book in her lap, fixing the mask on her face.
I zeroed in on her nervous hands, the way she chewed her bottom lip and wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
“What book you reading?” I asked, deciding to push it off.
Abigail Crowne was stubborn and trying to force something out of her was generally fruitless.
“It’s a romance novel. You probably haven’t read it, because your brain is small, unlike mine.”
I bit back a smile. “Right, that’s it.” I shifted, throwing one of her ridiculously sized pillows off the bed. “What’s it about?”
There was so much tension in her eyes, a needling mistrust. She eyed me like I was a lion being nice to a mouse.
I was beginning to wonder myself why I wasn’t eating the mouse.
But that was a problem for another night.
“A guy,” she finally said.
I couldn’t halt my laugh. It came out of me, real and genuine. I was brought back to the old nights, when we would laugh until the black night faded into sun.
“No fucking shit, Abigail,” I said. “What’s the story about?”
Another one of her side-eyed uncertain glances, but she started telling me all about it. How she’d just started it yesterday but was almost finished. How the hero was so hot (her words) and the heroine kind of annoying, but the hero made up for it.
Romance isn’t my genre. When I read, I tend to gravitate toward nonfiction, horror, or classics. But Abigail Crowne was a romantic, and she got lost in her stories. As she told me the story, I got lost with her.
I used to read every story she loved, because I loved talking to Abigail, so it didn’t matter the subject. When we were teenagers, she got into Twilight, which meant I read four books about a sparkly vampire and had to deal with Abigail being Team Jacob.
Team fucking Jacob.
I eyed the forest green book in her hands.
She sat up straight, looking at me funny. “Why do you care?”
“Maybe I’m in the mood to read some, what was it? Stepbrother alpha…”
“Stepbrother alphahole,” she enunciated.
“Right.” Another grin I couldn’t stop. “That.”
Fuck, she was cute. It got under your skin.
Her shorts were too fucking short, showing too much of her silky thighs. The memory of her coming on my finger blasted into me. She was tight, so fucking tight. Just the thought of what she’d feel like wrapped around my dick had me shifting.
Our eyes connected.
“Theo, this morning—” she started.
A timer went off, and she peeled off the cottony mask, dropping it into her porcelain trash can. Now her skin glowed; she was too damn pretty.
I’d wonder forever what she was about to say.
“How did you do that thing to Geoff and Alaric?” she asked suddenly. “With the arm.”
I shrugged. “Training.”
She moved her mouth around, not happy with the answer. Her lips looked poutier tonight, I don’t know if she’d added gloss or what. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Moving them around didn’t help.
I wanted to bite them.
First the top one, then the bottom.
“Do you ever wonder about your mom?” she asked, dousing my fantasy in ice water. The fuck? Could she stay on one topic?
“Is that my truth or promise?”
“No,” she said. “Just a question.” She picked at the forest green spine of her book. “I know you were in foster care for a while, and then you were on your own… before me. But your mom’s alive somewhere. What if she wants to know you?”
“She doesn’t.”
I could tell she wanted to say more. She kept picking at the green edge of her spine, watching me like a turtle was in her mouth trying to burst out.
I exhaled. “Speak.”
“I’m just saying.” She dropped the book entirely. “Your mom was so young when she gave you up. She’s an adult now. You’re an adult now. What if she’s tried to contact you?”
I was dropped at a fire station with my mother’s diary and only a name—Theo. There is no record of my mother. My last name came from the firefighter who found me. His favorite Sherlock Holmes’ novel was The Hound of Baskervilles.
Abigail fucking knows this.
“Maybe she gave you her diary for a reason… I’ve never seen anything like it. The beautiful red-leather and tree burned into the face is so beautiful. I’m positive it’s custom.”
This was classic fucking Abigail. She lives in a fairy tale, and has had a fairy tale image of my reunion with my mother ever since she learned I wasn’t an orphan, but was abandoned at birth because my mother was too young to raise me.
Some days I regret showing her my mother’s diary. For me, it was something to remember her by. But romantic-fucking-Abigail had stars in her eyes from that point on.
Abigail continued. “We could hire a private investigator to find where it was made.”
I narrowed my eyes. “We?”
There is no fucking we anymore. I moved to get off the bed. I don’t know what I was thinking, coming in here in the first place. Acting like it was five years ago.
She grabbed my arm, stopping me, eyes wide. “Do you still have it?”
Heartless Hero Page 10