I shake my head. “No. There wouldn’t have been a point until now.” I wrap an arm around her lower back and pull her closer, both of us starting to breathe faster. To say nothing of my heart, which is close to beating out of my chest. “Jesus, Scout. Until…you.”
She just kind of sighs and melts against me and I realize she was right. I could have fucked her on the couch in my private box, but she wouldn’t have been pliant. Trusting. Comfortable. She would have been hesitant. Nervous. Now she knows me. I’ve already let her in more than anyone and she isn’t repulsed or scared. She accepts me.
Thank Christ I did this right.
And then she says, “Take me home, Easton.”
And I realize I was never really at the top at all.
This girl. Scout. She is the top.
4
Scout
Oh dear.
I’m falling in love with a gangster.
I feel as if I’ve unlocked a treasure that has been sitting, cold and unopened, at the bottom of the ocean. Every time he looks at me, more coins and jewels spill out in the forms of secrets and I just want to gather them up, greedily holding them to my chest.
I’m in his lap once again in the back of the SUV, driving toward his home.
No one knows where exactly Easton Brawn lives. And I get the sense that he is trying to distract me now. Every time I try to look out the window, he captures my chin and holds eye contact, slowly leaning in to coax my mouth into a surface level kiss, as if he doesn’t trust himself to take more yet. His fingertips trace up and down my inner thigh, inching the hem of my dress higher until my panties are showing, but he never touches me there. In that place I am practically buzzing, growing more damp by the second.
“I’d like to move you somewhere safer, Scout,” he rasps, massaging my knee and easing it wider in his lap. “Somewhere with security cameras, a doorman…”
“No, Easton.” I battle through the drugging sensation of his kisses, so I can tell him this important thing. Which is…? Oh yes. Right. “No. Whitney has taken care of me for so long. Now you are paying my tuition. This one thing, bringing us somewhere great to live, that is going to be my job. I want that responsibility. As soon as I get my first paycheck from NASA.”
His mouth curls into a smile. “NASA?”
I nod eagerly. “I want to help build the next space shuttle.”
There’s a tinge of sadness to his chuckle. “Well if you can get Easton Brawn on a date, cutie, you can do anything.”
“It was my first date,” I whisper, smiling at him. “And it was a great one. Thank you.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I should be thanking you.”
“Maybe on the next one—”
“Scout.” His jaw hardens to granite, whatever he’s about to say causing him visible pain. “One night, remember?”
Those three words make me flinch, a sharp throb appearing below my throat. “But…I thought you might have changed your mind.”
“I haven’t. If anything, keeping you at a distance is more important than ever. Do you know what I would do if something happened to you? Because of me?” He frames my jaw in his hand. “This city would wake up to rubble and destruction and blood in the streets.”
I search Easton’s eyes and glimpse a certain madness there. And I know that as generous and protective and deep as I’ve found him to be tonight, there is very obviously a little bit of the devil in him. Maybe even a lot. And oh goodness…maybe I’m attracted to that, too. His darkness. His unholy power, how far-reaching it has the potential to be.
“You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
He seems to be steeling himself against my words. Against the temptation to agree. “Stop to think about how I’d manage that. Do you think I’d send you to school every day with a kiss on the forehead? No. I wouldn’t. You’d be surrounded by armed bodyguards and I would still—I would still sweat bullets and fear the worst until you were safe at home. I would be jealous of everyone that came near you.” Laughing without humor, he drags a hand down his face. “And I haven’t even been inside you yet, Scout. Jesus Christ. This could be the tip of the iceberg. I know it is.”
Wow. Easton is firm on this. He’s going to let me go to keep me safe. His tone, his body language tells me there will no reasoning with him. I have no choice but to relent for now and pray he changes his mind. Hope he’ll give in to whatever is happening between us and find a way to make it last. Make it work. Because I’m already dreading the sunrise when the spell between us has to be severed.
Easton’s phone rings and I try to use the opportunity to look out the window, ascertain where we are going, but he shakes his head. He tucks my face into his throat, so I can’t see anything, and answers the call. “Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Brawn,” I hear coming down the line. “Maxim Semenov has been in contact. The Russian wishes to express his concern over your…acquisition of his girlfriend’s sister, Scout.”
I sit straight up. “Girlfriend? Whitney isn’t his girlfriend.”
Easton raises an eyebrow at me. “Apparently she is now. Sounds like he won the fight.”
“He more than won the fight, sir,” says the caller. “He ended it in seconds by giving Banner a concussion and…well, he carried the girl, Whitney, from the arena over his shoulder.”
My jaw is in my lap. Oh my God. Whitney.
Seemingly undaunted, Easton returns his attention to the call. “Since when do I give a goddamn about anyone else’s concerns?”
The man on the other end sounds more nervous than before when he answers. “Semenov requests a phone call between the sisters.”
I nod enthusiastically. Whitney has to be going out of her mind. She has no idea that Easton wouldn’t dare hurt me. A few minutes on the phone and I’ll put her fears at rest.
Please, I mouth at him.
His throat works. “She will be free to make calls when I return her home tomorrow afternoon. She’ll call her sister at…one o’clock.”
He hangs up the phone, digs the corner of the device into his eye.
And that’s when we pull up at his colossal mansion.
Easton has my wrist in his grip and he’s pulling me through a dark foyer, striding ahead of me at a brisk, no-nonsense pace. “Are you hungry?”
I shake my head. My stomach is way too full of butterflies to eat. “No, thank you.”
“Thirsty?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Then I’m taking you to bed.”
I have no time to prepare before I’m swept up in Easton’s arms and we’re traveling up the stairs. “Don’t you want to give me a tour?”
He coughs. “No.”
“Oh.” A tiny arrow of hurt arrows into my chest. “Because I won’t be here for long?”
For a moment, he pauses on the stairs. “No. Because if I don’t get you naked, Scout, I’m going to fucking snap.”
I nod, swallow, let him carry me the rest of the way.
Oh my goodness, I’m about to lose my virginity. I’m not scared, I’m more excited than anything. Whenever I’ve thought about having sex for the first time, there was never a face attached to the person, but deep down I know I’ll never think of anyone but Easton for the rest of my life. He’ll be the face above me, the voice in my ear.