Cullen pulls up in front of a wide iron gate, the vast fence looking like it surrounds the property.
“Where are you taking us?”
Cullen shoots me a quizzical glance. “To Eli’s barbecue.”
“I thought you said it’d be at his house.”
“It is at his house. This is it.”
I whistle softly. I saw a number of high-end homes in New York, but everything there is stacked up on each other. With the space available in Colorado, Eli’s mansion has the room to sprawl and unfurl its wings. The bottom two stories are built with what appears to be the native red sandstone, the reddish-orange hue going beautifully with the upper story’s cedarwood finish. Two sections on either side of the house rise into octagonal structures, almost like castle towers, with the middle and largest part elevating into a peaked roof with floor-to-ceiling windows. My favorite part, though, is how the house backs up into one of the lower hills before they become steep Colorado mountains.
As Cullen punches something on his phone to open Eli’s gate, I shake my head. I knew the Trident gods were all well-off, but I never connected the tailored suits to quite this level of affluence. Not in someone as good-natured and laid-back as Eli. Granted, beside Cullen, a cactus would come off as good-natured and laid-back. Still, I’d never have guessed that after checking and wiping down the Rescue’s equipment at evening’s end, this is where Eli heads home every night.
“So is Eli related to the Rockefellers or something?” I mutter as Cullen leaves the car on the semicircular driveway and cuts the engine.
“Something like the British version of that. But don’t bring it up,” says Cullen. “They’re not close.”
I can relate.
“Cullen. Sky. Glad you could make it.” Walking around the corner of the mansion, Eli is dressed down in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved button-down, a beer in his hand. “We’re all out back. How are you feeling? Do you like your new place?”
For a moment, I just stare at Eli in utter confusion, wondering if he somehow found out that I spent my night in Cullen’s bed. Whether this offhand jab is a shot in the dark or…
“You did tell her.” Eli’s gaze narrows, cutting to Cullen. “I mean—”
Cullen rubs the back of his neck, a tell of his that I’m beginning to catch on to. “Of course I told her.” He turns his head toward me. “The guys moved you into a new apartment, Reynolds.” He turns back to Eli. “See. Told her.”
“But… I don’t… How could… When?” I stutter out, a million thoughts bubbling through me, not one of them making any sense.
“This morning.” Cullen starts toward the back of the house as if the conversation was over instead of just starting.
Quickening my step, I get in front of him and turn, cutting off his path. If possible, he’s somehow even more beautiful than usual now, the light playing off his fitted sweater to sculpt the muscles beneath. Looking at that strong jaw and those mossy-green eyes, I can’t help feeling my thighs tingle even as I really, really want to put my fist through that perfect mouth.
“Eli, could you please go host somewhere else for a moment?” I ask, my eyes gripping Cullen’s like iron spikes. My pulse quickens, my hands opening and closing at my sides. This morning, after we held each other in the night and had a companionable breakfast, the man had gone and upended my life. And he’d lied to me to boot. “So now I know the truth about your bogus admin stuff. How did you even get inside my apartment?”
“Liam owns a security company,” says Cullen, not flinching one bit from my ire.
Seriously?
“And that somehow gives you the right to break in?”
Cullen sighs and shifts his weight as if his patience is running low. “No one broke in. Liam handed the landlord a hundred dollar bill, and the ass was more than happy to open up the place. The movers packed you out carefully and brought everything to a safer location just down the street from the Rescue. There’s no sense in you living in a drug den when it’s unnecessary. If you’re really that nostalgic, I’ll go back and get the mice for you and bring them over. Should I grab the cockroaches while I’m at it?”
My hands curl into fists, which I place squarely on my hipbones. “How do you know whether I can even afford this so-called better and safer location?”
“It’s rent controlled. It’ll cost you about the same as your current monthly payment.”
“And how the fuck do you know what my current rent is, Cullen?” The swearing, which I usually try to keep in check when I’m talking directly to someone, escapes in a possibly Freudian slip. Before this moment, I would have sworn that being murderously furious and ridiculously horny were two utterly conflicting sensations, but my body is proving that wrong.
Up above, the clouds shift, letting a new ray of sunlight play across Cullen’s much-too-old-for-twenty-eight face. “Security and background checks were run when Catherine employed you. You signed the forms.”
“Yes, I signed some forms, but not one of those forms said anything about digging so deeply into my financials that you can recite my bank account number. I also never authorized you or your Trident gods to go through my personal effects. What is wrong with you? What gives you the right to ride roughshod over all my boundaries?”
For the first time since I cut him off, Cullen’s eyes flash, his voice changing from indulgent to machine gun fire that sends a jolt of energy down every single one of my nerves. Suddenly, the man standing before me isn’t a business executive or even a rowdy paramedic, but a predator in a man’s skin. The kind that could give an order and have hundreds of men follow. And now the whole of that power is turned on me. “When you decided to risk your life.”
“That’s my decision,” I snap right back at him, my heart pounding so hard that it must be bruising my ribs.
“Welcome to the world of consequence.”
I swing my hand at his face, all my common sense rushing from me.
Cullen catches my wrist in midflight, his strong fingers going easily around my wrist. Something primal and predatory flashes in his eyes, turning the moss green to a dark, dark brown just as he presses his mouth against mine, the heat of him rushing through my whole core.
21
Cullen
Cullen felt Sky’s mouth yield to him and pressed onward with all the frustration and need that was ripping him apart inside. His tongue raked over her mouth, deep and rough and punishing, even as his cock grew so hard, he was ready to scream from the pressure. Sky’s mouth gave so beautifully, so generously as her small body vibrated in his arms, that Cullen felt absolutely drunk on the taste of her.
Inside his grip, Sky’s wrist was pulsing hard enough that he felt the rapid rhythm of her heart. Pinning her wrist against her body, he wrapped his other arm around her back, his mouth devouring her softness. Live currents of electricity sang through his veins, as if Sky’s passion and determination and everything that made her unlike him now flowed through his blood, mixing with the fury that woman sparked with such damn efficiency.
And when Sky’s mouth returned the kiss, her own body pressing against Cullen’s, the sensation seared a path from his mouth right to his full, full cock.