I stood. “Come with me.”
His eyes moved slowly over me. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t want to be alone. What if someone was outside my house? What if they saw us leave, if they followed us?”
“No one followed us.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
He hesitated, but then he offered me a hand. I took it and let him lead me down the hallway. There were four doors that opened off of the hallway. He stopped at the last and pushed it open, flipping on the light as he stepped inside. It was a large room, made larger by the fact that there were no furnishings. But the closet door was open and there were dozens of clothes hanging there of all different sizes, colors, and styles. It was like a storeroom for a retail store.
“Take whatever you want,” he said.
I clung to his hand a moment longer, not so much afraid of letting go as afraid that it might be the last time he would willingly touch me. What if they found the guy after me outside my house tonight? Then he’d be gone, he’d disappear just as I told him to do ten years ago.
“Kate?”
I turned into him, sliding my hand over his chest. There was a tattoo on his chest, just above his heart, that I hadn’t seen before. It was small, which was probably why, just two letters and a date.
I pulled my hand away as if I’d touched it to an open flame.
“Why do you have that?”
I felt him stiffen. His hands moved over my upper arms, a sort of caress that did nothing to still the battle that was suddenly going on inside my head.
My brother’s initials and the date of his death were tattooed on Donovan’s chest. There were no other tattoos, no other marks. Just my brother’s initials and the date of his death.
There was something wrong about that. Something that spoke to the impact of that event on Donovan that I’d never allowed myself to think about.
But this was the guy who set up the situation that led to my brother’s death. He was the one who put into motion a prank that he knew wouldn’t go well, the one who made it look like the most dangerous, most violent boys on campus had done it. He was the one who knew those boys would seek retribution. He knew they would likely show up to the beach party the majority of the graduating class attended that night. He knew my brother was there. Alone. Unprotected.
He had no right to grieve my brother. He killed him.
Yet…he’d lost his best friend with the events of that night.
I stepped back, shaking my head as I did, as though that movement would make my thoughts all line up and make sense. Donovan grabbed my arms again, pulling me around and pressing me up against the wall beside the door.
He made a little growling sound, like a groan that swallowed something he desperately wanted to say. And then his mouth was on mine, back exactly to the place it’d been when he pulled away from me in the kitchen of my house earlier this evening. I melted against him. I couldn’t help myself. As angry and hurt as I was, his touch just had this power over me that I couldn’t deny.
Was it wrong to want the man I blamed for my brother’s death?
I don’t know, but I couldn’t help myself. I ran my hands over his chest before wrapping my arms around his neck, pulling him closer to me, as I hooked one leg over his hip. He slid his hand along that leg, tugging me upward so that I was barely standing on my tiptoes as he held me up with the weight of his body. And then that hand slid further up the back of my thigh until he had my ass in his palm, his fingers seeking places along the edge of my panties that hadn’t been touched in much too long. I shifted my hips, giving him more access, wanting more.
It was insane. But it was also deeply satisfying to feel his need in the quick hitch of his breath and the intensity of his kiss.
Then, like before, he suddenly pulled away.
He stepped back and tugged his cell phone from his back pocket. A look of something like embarrassment slipped over his face as he read whatever the phone was telling him, his gaze shifting to something I couldn’t see high on the wall.
“You should get dressed,” he said curtly before storming from the room.
Talk about hot and cold!
Chapter 10
At the Compound
Ash was pulled out of a fairly intense dream by the insistent alarm on his phone. He didn’t even check the screen, just silenced the alarm and tugged on some pants, pulling on a shirt as he headed downstairs.
“Where is it?” he asked David as he marched toward his workstation.
“Miss Thompson’s house.”
“What is it?”