Page 65 of Brutal
Her breath catching.
Her body betraying her.
Mine betraying me.
I close my eyes for a second. It’s enough to see her.
A tiny tremor in her breath when I crowd her space. A pulse beating hard in her throat. Not surrender. Not fear.
Want. Desire.
That’s what’s going to destroy both of us if she keeps this up.
I open my eyes and start the car.
I should go home.
I don’t.
Instead I drive east, toward one of the old Vexley properties the family still owns but rarely uses. It used to be a private dining club decades ago, the kind of place where men in dark suits made decisions over brandy. My father kept it after the membership fell apart.
Now it’s mine. For all intents and purposes, I live here. Nate shows up now and then, though.
The building sits back from the street behind wrought-iron gates. No sign out front. If you squint hard enough, it looks like a castle.
Every beast should have a castle.
I park in the private drive and head inside. The place is mostly dark, only the low amber sconces lit in the hallway. The air smells faintly of old wood. My footsteps echo on black-and-white marble as I cross the foyer.
I know Nate is here before I see him.
He has a way of occupying a room without disturbing it. He doesn’t press his presence outward the way I do. He lets a place fold around him until it looks like it belonged to him all along.
We both know how to own a room, just in different ways.
I find him in the back room, standing near the fireplace with a glass of whiskey in one hand. The fire is low, and the dim light hits his face. Dark hair. Green eyes. Our mother’s eyes, colder in his face than they ever were in hers.
He doesn’t look surprised to see me.
That pisses me off before he says a word.
“You took your time,” he says.
I shrug off my coat and toss it over the back of a chair. “You were waiting for me?”
“Yes.”
I pour myself a drink from the decanter. The whiskey burns all the way down. When I turn back, he’s watching me over the rim of his glass.
Does he notice the slight swelling in my lower lip where Delaney’s teeth caught me for half a second?
“Interesting,” he says.
I set the glass down. “Try finishing a sentence.”
“You went to see her.” He draws in a breath. “After her apartment was searched.”
“And?” I say.
