Page 50 of All Bets Are Off
“Yes, I did. And your mortgage is paid off. Good night.”
“My…my…mortgage?”
“Tripp, you didn’t,” I gasp, reeling from the revelation while also wondering why I’m surprised at all.
His long strides take us to the waiting town car, where he slips me off his shoulder and kisses me soundly on the mouth.
“If you recall, angel, you said I was free to spoil Peggy.”
“I guess I need to be careful with what I say from now on,” I murmur, dazed, while Tripp buckles me into the back of the plush, black leather car, the chauffeur turning to tip his hat at me.
Tripp doesn’t get into the limousine with me right away. He walks a distance down the curb while speaking on his phone, and I only catch one snatch of the conversation, the wind carrying it back to me.
Is everything prepared at the house?
Minutes later, I’m still wondering what he meant as we’re flying down the expressway toward Boston.
One thing is for certain. I’m going to find out soon enough.
SIXTEEN
Tripp
By the timewe pull up in front of my townhouse in Beacon Hill, my blood is flowing so hot, I can barely think straight. I hardly recognize who I’ve become since fate brought me Vida. I’m jealous over some kid proposing to her when she was twelve, which makes absolutely no sense, but there it is. I watched the chauffeur’s eyes in the rearview on the entire drive because I could have sworn he checked out my girlfriend when I first put her into the car.
Who could blame him? She’s so fucking sexy tonight in her white sundress and sandals, it took all my self-control not to settle her into my lap, push her panties to the right, and bounce her on my cock for the entire forty-five-minute drive. Still, if he’d checked her out again, there would have been hell to pay, so it’s a good thing he kept his eyes on the road.
I don’t allow the chauffeur to help Vida from the car now. My pulse erratic, I block her from view with my back, longing for ablanket or a jacket to wrap her in so no one looks at her. No one but me. And oh Jesus, school is going to be a challenge, isn’t it?
My possessiveness of this girl grows by the second. I’m going to be an absolute tyrant when she’s attending classes without me.
Roaming the campus, stirring up lust wherever she goes.
As I let her into my townhouse and she passes me, her gorgeous face glowing in the lantern light, I’m thinking of ways to put out a warning to the entire male population of Yale.
Touch her and die.
If I do that, won’t it only make her more fascinating than she already is? Suddenly, she’ll be the girl who made Tripp Sterling obsessed, and the men will want to know why.
They’ll want to find out for themselves.
“Tripp?” Vida whispers up at me in the darkness, alerting me to the fact that we’re standing in the vestibule and I haven’t made a single move to turn on a light. I’m standing there in silence, murdering imaginary men. “Are you okay?” she asks softly, skimming her palms up my chest. “You’re so tense.”
With that single touch of her hands, my dick is rock solid, stiffening up against the zipper of my pants. But my pulse won’t stop beating that soupy, weighed-down rhythm, the tendons in my throat strained. Jealousy green is actually bleeding into the edges of my vision.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, angel,” I rasp, backing her into the closest wall and crushing her there, breathing hard into her neck. “I want to kill the driver because he stared at you a beat too long. And that’s not hyperbole. If he’d looked at you again, I think he’d be dead.”
“I see.”
Her nails spear into my hair and rake my scalp, the pitch of her breath never changing, the tempo of her heart steady against mine. Even after the dark thoughts I just revealed, she’s notscared of me—and thank God. That is the only reason we’re able to play rough tonight. She knows I’d never really hurt her.
Men who covet her?
Not so much.
“Tripp, men might look at me?—”
“No.”
