Page 158 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
I was ready for it.
What I wasn’t ready for was the sight of Bianca coming down the stairs.
I hadn’t seen much of her in the days following our torrid assignation on the beach of Bishop’s Landing. It seemed, if not easier, then infinitely smarter to stay away from her. My skin fuckingitchedevery time I thought about that plush mouth, that sweet, wet pussy clutching at me in the same greedy manner as her hands on my shoulders. The way she’d licked my scar like a cat grooming a sore on her young. As if she could heal me with her touch.
I didn’t need the added temptation of her in my actual presence, all the memories that assaulted my waking and sleeping hours confirmed by the feel of her in the same room as me.
I’d vowed not to take her again. This wasn’t about satisfying some carnal craving.
This was about revenge. Cold-blooded, rage-hot revenge.
Finally delivered.
I was ravenous for it.
Almost as ravenous as I was each time I thought about her marshmallow-flavored kisses.
My teeth ground as I checked my Patek Philippe watch, the same one I’d worn the day I met Bianca for the first time.
“Bianca!” I roared, my voice filling the nooks and crannies of my gothic home. “Get down herenow.”
“Jesus, old man, there is no need to yell.”
I froze at the sound of her voice floating down the stairs, but I didn’t look her way without taking a deep, bracing breath.
She’s just a girl, I reminded myself.
A seventeen-year-old too naïve for her own good.
“Wow,” Brando whispered into the sudden quiet, even Picasso still at his side.
“You look stunning, Bianca,” Walcott agreed warmly, almost proudly.
I wanted to scoff at him for being so enchanted, but fuck, I couldn’t blame him when I was almost terrified to look at her myself.
“Tiernan?” she called, a hesitancy in her voice that found its way under the crack of the locked door to my heart and made it pound madly. “Will I do?”
Slowly, my head swiveled, eyes narrowed as if I prepared to look directly at the sun.
And there she was.
Not a seventeen-year-old girl.
No.
She was all woman, all grace and subtle feminine power.
The dress that skimmed the lush curves of her lean body should have been ridiculous. The bottom half floated around her, all white feathers moving as if she glided down the stairs instead of stepped. The bodice was flesh-toned mesh and careful collections of diamonds and silver lace that made her shine in the light from the ancient chandelier glowing over the entryway. The light caught on her hair, spinning it to pure golden curls spilling down her back and shoulders, caught up at one side by a diamond clasp over her left ear.
But it was her eyes, done up in deep browns that made the blue of her irises seem oversaturated, too blue to exist in nature, that did me in. They sought mine across the expanse of the hall and asked a simple question that carved itself into my fucking chest.
What do you think of me?
I thought she was exquisite.
The most beautiful thing to grace the earth.
An angel descending the curved staircase into hell, into the arms of a man she knew to be a monster.
