On The Rocks (Love After Midnight Book 3) Read online

  And I couldn’t resist the temptation, couldn’t stop from taking what she’d unconsciously offered. I delved my tongue into her mouth, rubbed it against hers, steeled myself against the heat that prickled down my spine, that arrowed toward my cock and made it impossibly harder.

  She moaned, shifted closer, and I got lost in the feel of her. I cupped her jaw, felt the softness of her skin, so smooth and delicate when mine was roughened with calluses. I sipped at her mouth, tasted the slight bitter of coffee mixing with the sweetness of her lips, her tongue, and sifted my fingers through her hair, imagined what it would look like when it was draped over my pillow. Then I kissed her until I forgot about everything and everyone else in the world.

  I kissed her until the guilt wasn’t so heavy.

  I kissed her until I could pretend what I’d done wasn’t shattering to those who loved me.

  But I was also cursing giving in to that temptation of her lips because of the fucking console between us—the hard, plastic corner jabbing me in the stomach when all I wanted was to pull her into my arms and kiss her properly—when she pulled away.

  One second, she was back to clutching the steering wheel.

  The next, she was out of the car, disappearing down a steep path, her black hair flowing behind her like a cape.

  I let her go.

  Partly because the keys were in the ignition, her purse at the floor near my feet, her jacket and a blanket slung across the back seat.

  But also, partly because I had the boner to end all boners, and if I didn’t take this moment to breathe, I was going to chase her down, strip her bare, and get us both arrested for indecent exposure.

  That thought tempered my desire, and I took a few seconds to grab everything I thought she would need. Purse off the floorboard, jacket and blanket from the back, cell phone from the cradle . . . just in time to have it buzz as I grasped it. Instinct had my eyes dropping to the screen, reading the message before I could rein in my manners and slide it into Anabelle’s purse.

  You’re disappointing Dad.

  I froze, heart clenching. I didn’t know who the fuck Tom was but considering he was talking about Anabelle’s dad, I, unfortunately, had a sinking feeling.

  The phone buzzed again, and I didn’t even pretend to have manners this time.

  I read that message as it flashed onto the screen.

  Are you trying to kill him like you killed Mom?

  Red hazed my vision. I heard the phone case creak ominously, and I had to resist the urge to launch it at the windshield. Instead, I sucked in a breath, calmly put it into Anabelle’s purse, and tugged the keys from the ignition. A few seconds later, I was out of the car and heading down the path.

  It was almost a sheer cliff face. The stairs made of rickety wood, its rope railing not holding up well from the onslaught of the ocean. I could see Anabelle below, her hair whipping around in the wind, the bright blue of her sweater standing out sharply against the tan sand. It didn’t take long to make my way to the bottom, but I found myself hesitating at the final stair.

  Are you trying to kill him like you killed Mom?

  What the fuck?

  One text message, and I got it.

  Understood why she had the steel around her, why there was barbed wire and No Trespassing signs.

  Kill him like you killed Mom.

  “Fucking hell,” I muttered before crossing over to her.

  As I strode through the sand, slipping and sliding because I hadn’t bothered to take off my boots, I knew I should pretend I hadn’t read the message, pretend we were back in her car and I was coaxing, prodding, poking at her until she stopped icing me out.

  Instead, I moved over to her at a rapid clip and blurted with absolutely no finesse, no care, no gentleness, “Why the fuck does your brother think he has the right to text you like this?”

  Anabelle had been staring out at the waves, but my question made her spin slowly, jaw falling open.

  I opened her purse, yanked out her cell, and shoved it at her.

  She took it, eyes dropping to the screen, jaw clenching as she read.

  Then she shrugged.

  Just shrugged.

  And that red on the edges of my vision? It went crimson. “He sent that like it was normal, like it was no big deal.” I grabbed her arms, shook her lightly. “Why?” I demanded. “Why the fuck would he say that?”

  She went stiff, a fucking statue in my arms.

  Then icy words. “Let. Me. Go.”

  I didn’t let her go. Logically, I knew I should have, knew I should have stepped back and given her space. I didn’t have the right to demand an explanation. We barely knew each other.

  But . . . we weren’t strangers.

  “Look at that,” I said, nodding at a wave crashing along a boulder perched on the sand, its bottom eroded from the constant pounding of the water. “It’s inarguably strong, but it’s still worn down by the waves, still being reduced, broken down until one day it will be reduced to sand.”

  Anabelle was quiet, but she’d turned her eyes toward the rock.

  Then she sighed. “Are you trying to be a poet?”

  I grinned at the tart question, temper fading. “No, Rocky, I’m not.”

  “Good, because you suck at it.”

  I was still chuckling when she surprised me by taking my hand and tugging me toward an isolated corner of the beach. “Come on,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  She stopped in between a pair of rocks, near a visible line between the dry and wet sand where high tide came in but didn’t cross.

  Shooting me a glare, she tugged the blanket out of my arms, then spread it out before returning for her jacket. “You think you’re so handy, don’t you? Grabbing all my stuff,” she muttered, slipping on her coat and taking her purse. “Don’t think I’m going to say thank you. You’re the one who all but drove me from the car.”

  I lifted a brow. “Because I like kissing you?”

  “Because you’re a stranger who’s trying to push your way into my life.” A slice of guilt slid through me, but before I could get out an apology, she sat on the blanket, patted the spot next to her, and ordered, “Stop towering over me and sit down already.”

  Since I wanted to be closer to her, I followed the order.

  She sighed when my shoulder brushed hers, then reached down and slipped off her shoes and socks. I caught a glimpse of gold sparkle polish on her toes before they disappeared beneath the sand, and the idea of this woman covering herself in glitter made me smile. She may want to hide beneath sharp edges, but that wasn’t all she was.

  I looked forward to uncovering the soft, the sparkle, the light beneath.

  “Now yours.”

  Another order, but another instance where I didn’t mind listening to this woman’s commands. “Anytime you want me to take off clothing around you, I’m game.”

  A snort. A roll of her eyes.

  “Look,” she said after we’d sat there for a moment. “I’m going to level with you. Partly because you’re Brooke’s brother, but partly because you kiss really well.” Humor in those brown eyes, and I couldn’t stop myself from stroking her cheek. She nudged me away, not necessarily gently, but also not with any real fire, and I understood why with her next words. “Look, it’s nothing to do with you. I don’t do relationships. I don’t do ties. And I especially do not do them with men like you.”

  God, this woman was good at pushing people away.

  “That’s bullshit.”

  Imperious silence as she turned her head and stared at me, brows raised.

  “You made ties with Brooke, with Kace, and Brent, and Iris.” I tugged a strand of her hair. “You might like to pretend you’re isolated, but you have connections.”

  She glanced back at the waves. “I didn’t do that,” she murmured after a long moment. “They . . . pulled me in under their collective wings and just included me to death.”

  I snorted.

  Anabelle turned the full f
orce of her gaze on me. “I’m fucked up, Hayden. I mean it. My head is a mess. My real family can’t stand me.” A shrug, eyes returning to the ocean. “Until your sister got a hold of me, I didn’t have any friends. I’ll protect them till my last breath now, and I-I love them. But they don’t know all of what is inside me, and if they did . . .”

  “They wouldn’t want you anymore.”

  A sigh. “That makes me sound melodramatic, something out of a bad dramatic film, but . . . yeah. I haven’t had good results with people liking the person I am inside, so it’s not like I’m going to start now.”

  My heart clenched. “That’s sad, Rocky,” I said softly.

  Narrowed chocolate eyes darting to mine, and I watched as they filled with sparking fury. “You don’t know me.”

  “I know enough to know I want to know you more.”

  “And that’s two fucking knows too many.”

  “I know I like when you snap at me.” I tugged another unruly strand of hair, this one being swept up by the wind, being drawn forward over her cheek. Gently, I tucked it back. “And I do know that my sister has good taste in people.”

  “If by good taste you mean loving a brother who pretends to be dead for years then randomly shows up on Christmas,” she muttered.

  A bolt of fury darted through me. One, because she was right. Two, because sometimes the truth really fucking stung. “Trying to hurt my feelings?” I asked, deliberately lightening my tone against the guilt that made me want to snap out at her. “Think it’ll push me away when it’s worked on so many people?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m just telling the truth. You leaving would just be icing on the cake.”

  I leaned close. “And what about me kissing you again? More icing? Or more deterrent?”

  Her lips parted, and she couldn’t hide the shaky exhale, the heat in her eyes.

  “No sharp words back?” I cajoled.

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Cliché and difficult.”

  “Do you thrive on being an asshole?” she snapped.

  “No,” I said, cupping her cheek. “I thrive on being with you. I thrive on your scent, your body”—my thumb ran over her bottom lip—“this mouth.”

  Hot air against my skin, a rapid pulse beneath my fingers.

  “I didn’t feel anything for close to ten years. Not since I agreed to join an organization for the so-called greater good and left everything that ever meant something to me behind. I didn’t feel anything because I couldn’t let myself, not when I knew that Brooke and Brent were out there hurting. And then when I finally managed to get out, I found that nothing was the same. I can’t just be who I was before.”

  “It’s not easy to go back,” she murmured.

  “That,” I said.

  Brows pulled together. “What?”

  “That is why I like you—besides the snark, besides the barbed wire, besides the fact that you’re doing your best to push me away. Even putting aside the glorious way you kiss.” Her expression didn’t relax, and I tapped her nose lightly, smiling at her softly, because this woman was quite simply more. “Putting all of that aside, you understand what’s in here”—I tapped my temple—“and here”—my chest, just over my heart—“it doesn’t make sense, and I don’t know how I know, but I stare into your eyes and . . . I know you’ve felt what I’ve felt.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said, but her tone didn’t hold any conviction, and I knew she was feeling what I was feeling.

  “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

  She sighed.

  “Am I right?” I asked, tracing light circles on her jaw.

  Another sigh.

  “Anabelle?”

  That jaw clenched, and fuck if my lips didn’t twitch at her stubbornness.

  “Rocky.”

  Eyes on mine, warming from the inside out. “I think the only way we’re alike is that we’re both stubborn and really fucking like being right.”

  Since that wasn’t untrue, I didn’t bother arguing.

  Instead, I leaned forward and gave into the temptation of her sexy mouth. But this time instead of letting the instant heat searing through me overwhelm my control, instead of kissing her with all the intensity that was in my gut, my heart, I took it slow, gentle, coaxing.

  Like a roly-poly, though I knew she definitely wouldn’t like the analogy.

  Still, it was apropos. Go too fast and she curled up on herself, covered her soft insides with overlapping armor. Slow and steady and persistent was the only way to move.

  “I’m not going to ask you about your family again,” I whispered against her lips, trailing my fingers down her arm. “I won’t bring up the text messages—”

  “You just did,” she grumbled, trying to pull back.

  I held her tight. “I’m not going to bring it up because there’ll be time for that later. Now. Today. I want to know everything else.”

  So still.

  This woman could hold herself absolutely, perfectly still. “It matters though,” she said quietly. “What happened.”

  “I know, baby.” I stroked a hand down her hair.

  “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t kill her. I—I—” Her words cut off on a shake of her head.

  “I know.”

  Wide brown eyes. “How?”

  I touched the spot above her heart. “Because whatever you’re feeling, I’m doing the same.”

  And more.

  I was feeling all that and more.

  But I didn’t say that.

  Instead, I slipped an arm around her and cuddled her close, relieved when she let me, relieved enough to ask, “Great, now that that’s settled, want to know why I faked my own death?”

  Eleven

  Anabelle

  My breath caught and I chanced looking up at the gorgeous man who should not have a direct line to my heart and yet somehow still did.

  “Yes,” I said, honestly.

  I couldn’t lie and say I hadn’t thought about doing the same more than a few times when my family surpassed overbearing and held tight to the notion that they should have the right to control everything in my life, from my clothes to my food to my job to my fucking sheets.

  Yes, my sister had actually sent me sheets the other week, saying I needed eight-hundred thread-count or I’d get wrinkles.

  And a new hairbrush because my hair looked ratty.

  But at least that type of motherly intervention—too much and overbearing and had oftentimes felt stifling until I’d moved to Europe, until I’d come back to California when they’d moved to the East Coast—didn’t make me feel like shit. Not like my brother, not like the anger that he still held on to, the way he blamed me for my mom dying.

  Flat out.

  Illogically, I knew.

  But the anger was still there, and it still fucking hurt even though I understood logically that I couldn’t have been responsible for an illness that had slowly killed my mother by inches.

  Not my fault, and yet he still blamed me.

  If you didn’t keep Mom so busy with your activities, she would

  have gone to the doctor sooner.

  This was your fault.

  Angry words. Untrue words. Illogical words.

  Too much so for a successful rocket scientist, one whose strength was thinking linearly. But perhaps it wasn’t so strange, not when that strength—grabbing on to an idea then forcefully seeing it through to the end—made him so good at his job.

  Yet that same deliberate anger had sliced me to ribbons for far too long.

  I was stronger now, could handle it, wouldn’t let it break me, and . . . I wasn’t feeling that guilt inside because I’d been a difficult pregnancy, a colicky baby, a needy toddler, an overly energetic kid, a demanding teenager.

  The baby of the family.

  The one my mom had doted over.

  The one who’d tried so hard to not disappoint my parents, and couldn’t manage it in the end anyway.

  Fingers
on my cheek, pulling me out of my brain, dropping me back into the present, the sand beneath my feet, the cold whipping my hair around.

  “We don’t have to talk about anything serious,” Hayden murmured, those deep blue eyes on mine. “We can . . . talk about movies.”

  “Movies?” I asked.

  He lay back on the blanket, crossed his arms behind his head, and I immediately missed his warmth, the gentle way he’d held me. I shouldn’t . . . but there were a whole hell of a lot of shouldn’ts when it came to this man.

  “Yup,” he said. “Movies. You’re not a rom-com girl, I’m guessing”—he glanced at me and I snorted in answer, making him grin—“action?”

  I shook my head.

  “Dramas?”

  Laughter. “God, no. I’ve got enough drama in my life.”

  “Yeah?” he asked. “You gonna tell me about that?”

  I sighed, lay down next to him. “How quickly you’ve changed your tone. First, promising to give me details on your fake death—and don’t think I haven’t missed the fact you haven’t given them yet—then switching your tact to not having to discuss serious stuff, then movies.” I rolled to my side, propped my head up on my hand. “Then immediately pumping me for info again. You’re a whirlwind, and it’s giving me a headache.”

  “Well, I have been dead the last decade,” he said, rolling onto his side to face me. “I’m out of practice with the charm offensive.”

  I chuckled, glared.

  He bopped me on the nose.

  “I don’t want to be amused,” I grumbled, “and I definitely don’t want to like you.”

  His smile was a visceral thing, hitting me in the gut, stealing my breath.

  “I’m guessing there’s a but coming.” He glanced up at the sky. “But I can’t help myself,” he said in a poor imitation of my voice. “I now pledge my undying loyalty to you here and now!”

  I shook my head, biting my cheek. “You’re ridiculous.”

  A warm chuckle that slid down my spine. “But you’re the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on and now I will prostrate myself at your feet?”