“He’s not as bad as you think he is.” She let her head fall back again.
She was wrong.
She was so fucking wrong, and my heart pounded in my chest as she defended him.
We reached the door, and I pushed inside. Joseph Vos was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn’t surprised. I rarely saw the man here when I was still friends with Lucas. If I did, he was always on the go.
Her father wasn’t the kind of man that could stay in the same place for long.
I shifted her in my arms as I climbed the steps.
“You hate me because of him. Don’t you?”
I looked down at her, and she was staring straight back up at me. There was a look in her eyes that I couldn’t quite place, something that dared me to be honest with her, but I refused to let my guard down because some pretty girl was in my arms and looking at me like she needed me.
Especially some pretty girl who was nothing but a pawn to me.
“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, and it took everything in me not to kiss her. Her bottom lip had the perfect little arch, creating a shadow beneath, and I wanted to run my tongue across it. I wanted to run my tongue across every damn inch of her.
I made it to the top of the stairs, and I stopped in my tracks as I stared at Lucas’s open door. He stood there in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, and I was certain that he had been asleep before we arrived.
He ran his hand through his blond hair, then his sleep-filled eyes opened in shock as they met mine. I stepped forward with his sister in my arms, and I couldn’t stop the way my hands tightened around her.
My fingers could have been bruising her, and I wouldn’t have cared.
Whatever chance she had of escaping me was long gone the moment he looked down at her in my arms and I saw fury take over his features.
I ate it up, the feeling of power it gave me. I had barely even touched his sister, but he didn’t know that. All he knew is that she laid in my arms like she fucking belonged there, and she was staring up at me like she never wanted to leave.
She was staring up at me like she felt more at home in my arms than she ever would in these fucking tainted walls.
But he knew better.
He knew that I would use her in any way I needed to fuck with him. To pay him back for what he did to me. For what he did to her.
“What are you doing here?” His words were threatening as he stepped toward me, and I prayed he came closer. I prayed the motherfucker gave me the slightest reason to wreck his face again.
“Just taking care of your sister.” I cocked my head to the side as he stared at her in my arms.
He took a step closer to me and held out his arms as if I would ever just hand her over to him.
“I’ve got her.” He nodded his head, but he was out of his damn mind.
I would have never given her to him, especially not with the way she clung to me. Not with the way she was begging me with her eyes not to let her go. The tips of her fingers were turning white with the force of her hand clinging to my chest.
“That’s not going to happen.” I stepped to move past him, and he blocked my path. If she wasn’t in my arms, I would have knocked that damn look off his face, and no one would have been able to stop me. Not like last time. They would never have been able to pull me off of him again. “Get out of my fucking way, Lucas.”
“What are you doing with her, Beck?” His nostrils flared, and his chest puffed as if he was going to do something about it.
He had the nerve to act like he fucking cared.
Lucas didn’t care about anyone but himself. We both knew that.
He had proven it to us both.
“That’s none of your business.” I tightened my hold on her. “What I do with her is between me and her.”
Her fingers spasmed against me as her body squirmed.
My cock strained against my jeans, and I wanted to do everything to her. Everything.
Especially when I looked at the fury on Lucas’s face.
“Let him go and go to your room.” He spoke to her as if he was her real brother or even her father. He spoke to her as if he knew her intimately.
And it only made me want to destroy him even more.
“Get out of my way, Vos. I won’t tell you again.” I meant it too. We both knew it. We both knew that I would seize any opportunity to take a shot at him.
He backed out of my way, but he stood by her door watching me. I didn’t give a shit. He could watch whatever the fuck he wanted. He could watch while I destroyed his sister the way he had mine. While I destroyed him.
Carson had already laid Allie in Josie’s bed, and even though he would never admit it, I knew that he had been so gentle with her and tucked her in like she was the most precious thing on Earth. Even if he was currently staring down at her like he hated her.
I sat Josie on the edge of her bed, and I looked around as she balanced her hands on my shoulders. Her room looked nothing like her. It was frilly and posh, and she was, well, she was the exact opposite.
I barely knew anything about the girl, and even I knew that.
I pulled her shoes from her feet and dusted sand from her legs as she stared down at me.
“Should I pull these off too?” I tugged on the edge of her shorts, my fingers grazing her thighs, and she stiffened.
“Don’t even think about it.” Her words were firm, but her body squirmed gently beneath my hand.
“One day.” I laughed and noticed Lucas still standing at the door staring me down. I leaned closer to her as she scoffed, and I held his gaze.
“I told you that was never going to happen.” She looked up at me, and I hadn’t really noticed until that moment how the brown of her eyes was encased in swirls of green. They were enchanting and vulnerable and absolutely nothing like Lucas’s.
But that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.
Josie Vos was the key to everything. I couldn’t touch Lucas without her.
And even though she was looking at me like she trusted me more than she ever should, I couldn’t let it fuck with my head.
I couldn’t let some pretty girl fuck with my plan.
“I guarantee it, princess.” I nipped at her earlobe, and she released a sharp inhale that was equal parts shock and lust.
I had planned to make her life a living hell from the moment I spotted her at the country club, and I would. But she was going to make it much easier than I thought.
She wanted me, regardless of what she was telling herself, and I would use that knowledge to my advantage.
I would use her, and I would make every moment of it worth it.
Chapter Nine
Josie
There was a pounding in my head that I couldn’t ignore. It seemed to block out everything else. My alarm was going off somewhere in the background, but I didn’t care. I just wanted it to stop. The blaring, the pounding, the sudden wave of nausea.
Shit. What the hell was I thinking last night?
The pounding fell away as memories of the night before bombarded me. Memories of me drinking, of Beck, of him carrying me all the way to my damn bed.
Nausea hit me again. This time harder.
I had let him carry me through this house and to my bed. I clung to him. I had wanted him.
Oh, God.
I blinked my eyes open, and Allie was still dead to the world next to me. Her blonde hair was stuck to her face, and she let out the tiniest little snore. I would have left her there, let her not have to worry about how she felt for a little bit longer if the two of us didn’t have to be at work.