But she didn’t want to leave because she was stuck in here with me. She wanted to leave because I’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t have. Eavesdropping.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, cocking her head.
I said nothing, turning to pick up the butter knife she’d left on the desk in her hurry to get away from me. A single brow rose as I wordlessly asked the question plaguing my mind: what on earth was Jaz doing here with a butter knife?
“That,” she said as she took the knife from my grip, jutting out her bottom lip in a pout I almost found cute, “is none of your business. I’m asking the questions here.” She spoke in a bare whisper, now that she knew Oliver was still next door.
Or he was, before I’d come in. Maybe he was gone by now.
Or maybe he still sat in shock over everything Markus had said. After all, he’d found out his two sons were still alive, which was more than he’d hoped for, clearly.
“I came with my brother,” I told her, resting my ass on the edge of the desk, moving far enough away from the urn to not hazard an accidental touch like Jaz did moments ago. “What are you doing here? You the hired help?” The busboys and waiters downstairs wore mostly black, but none of them wore black quite like her.
If I was honest, it was my favorite color. I was usually not one to appreciate the way a girl’s body looked, but hers was voluptuous and curved in all the right places. Jaz really was a cut above the rest.
“I…” Jaz’s voice quieted; she sounded so far from the confident, sassy girl she normally was at lunch. Was it merely because I’d caught her out of her element, or was it something else? “I live here.”
“You live here?”
“Yeah,” she muttered, “my mom is Ollie’s maid. We both live here now.” She held onto the butter knife with one hand, using her other to run her palm up and down her arm, as if trying to stave away the goosebumps on her flesh.
Was she embarrassed at what she’d just admitted? I found it…well, color me fucking stupid, but I found it entrancing. For just a quick moment, I felt a strange pitter-patter in my chest. That pesky heart inside of me actually felt…warm?
That was weird.
I took a step towards her, slowly circling her like a vulture. She let me, her posture rigid, her lips parted slightly. Those leggings, I noticed, hugged her ass perfectly. It was impossible not to stare. Before I knew what I was doing, I was reaching for the elastic band in her hair, tugging it down and letting that thick, black hair free. I rolled the elastic band around my wrist, standing directly behind her.
My body wanted to be closer to hers. Was this what other people felt on a daily basis? Was this what wanting someone else was like—lusting after them, devouring them with your eyes and having it never be enough?
I didn’t like it.
But I did.
“So that’s why you were asking about Celeste,” I whispered, tentatively reaching a hand between us and touching the tips of her black hair. “You’re worried.” She didn’t step away from me, even though she could. I supposed that was a good thing.
“Things just don’t seem right around here,” Jaz whispered, her voice nearly lost by the time it reached my ears.
The hand I had touching her hair moved past it, running down the smooth curve of her back. I heard her breathe in sharply, and I found myself with the bizarre desire to keep touching her. “You’re right about that,” I relented, wondering why this girl had such a hold on me. So immediately, too.
It felt…it felt like fate.
“I only want to know that my mom and I are safe here,” Jaz whispered. Across the desk, her reflection shone in the windowpane, and I met her eyes there as I swept some of her hair over her shoulder, watching as she closed her eyes and shivered.
There were so many things I could’ve told her in that moment, so many things I caught myself from declaring. I could keep you safe. I could keep everyone else away. It could all be me. But, alas, instead I merely whispered, “No one’s ever safe in Midpark, Jaz.”
The truth. The truth from a liar’s mouth. My family lied for a living. If we all went around and told the world our bloody truths, we’d be arrested, put in prison, put to trial, and then executed.
Jaz then turned around, giving me the sultriest look I’d ever been given. Her expression made my lower gut burn with a yearning I couldn’t recognize. “Why do I have the feeling that you’re right?” she asked, her dark eyes raking over me, taking in my suit and how closely I stood to her. “You look good in a suit, Vaughn.”
I’d been paid compliments before, but never had any actually stuck. This one…I believed every single word she said.
I was well aware that I could spill the beans to her, tell her exactly what happened to Celeste and her mother, how my family had helped Oliver with the cleanup of not one but two wives, but I knew such knowledge would only drive her further away from me—and call me selfish, but I didn’t want this girl running.
No, no running, unless she ran right into my arms.
“You look good in anything,” I told her, meaning it.
Later that night, after Markus and I drove home, I dreamt of her. I dreamt of her skin naked against mine, hearing her flush sighs near my ear. I dreamt of her body tangled with mine under sheets that were as soft as velvet.
Until I woke in the middle of the night with a pitched blanket over me, I’d thought I was free of the obsession that tended to run in my family, but it looked like I was wrong.
So, so wrong.
Chapter Ten – Jaz
Turned out, pretending everything was normal when everything was not normal was a difficult thing to do. All day Sunday, I was lost in my own head. I tried to study, tried to do anything other than get lost in my thoughts, but I couldn’t.
That urn. Vaughn and his brother with Ollie. What kind of shady business were they in together? His older brother had sounded like some kind of beast in a suit. Anyone with a sense of self would be afraid of a man like that.
Thoughts like those carried over into the next day, at least until homeroom and first period, where I came face to face with Archer again.
Well, at least Archer was good to get my mind off things, right? Off of everything that had happened, the muffled words I’d heard about Ollie owing Vaughn’s family for something…and off of the meeting I had later today. After school, after my musical tutoring session with Bobbi.
I didn’t have the money, but I’d get a job somewhere if I had to. The consultation session was free, after all, so it wasn’t like I needed a good chunk of money this afternoon.
I actually made it to homeroom before Archer, which was a little odd, because so far the boy had been there before me every single day. When he sauntered in the room and headed towards his desk in the back near me, I couldn’t help but feel a warming in my gut at remembrance of what we did.
Hooking up with him had probably been a mistake, but…
Hell, I didn’t even know what happened, still. All these days later, and I didn’t know what came over me. It wasn’t like me to let passion take over, but damn it, if it hadn’t felt amazing…there was no denying the power he had over me.