She was fucking beautiful.
Beautiful, and not in that Windsor Academy kind of way. The way where, if you weren’t born with it naturally, you bought it at the most expensive price. The way where, if you weren’t contoured to perfection, you didn’t stand a chance of being part of the popular crowd. The way where, if you didn’t have the right pedigree, you didn’t belong.
She was dressed as if she were going to commit a diamond heist, with her black hoodie, black jeans, and black shoes, but the one thing that stood out more than her get-up was the fucking camera that was hanging from her neck.
I tightened the hand around her neck, the one that held her captive against the tree, while the other one latched onto her hip, digging in.
She whimpered, and my fucking dick got hard.
“Are you lost?” I growled down at her. Her eyes widened further, and she started shaking her head back and forth. “What did you see? And don’t fucking lie to me.”
“I…I didn’t see anything,” she said, lying to my face, her voice going straight to my dick.
I looked down at her chest, and though the hoodie she was wearing was baggy as fuck, the heaving of her chest, and the rise of the camera with each of those breaths, told me she had to have an impressive rack hidden underneath her clothes. And as enticing as my dick thought that was, I was more interested in the camera at the moment.
I let go of her neck, traces of Childress’ blood now on her skin, but still kept her pinned by her hip as I reached for the camera to remove it from her neck. Even if I hadn’t killed Childress, I didn’t need pictures of me beating him stupid to exist anywhere.
When I went to pull it up and over her head, the little hellcat went to fighting again. “What are you doing? That’s mine!”
I let go of the camera and grabbed her by the neck again. Only, this time, I pressed my hips against hers, holding her captive with my entire body. Her eyes flared, but she still looked mutinous.
I was going to get the camera, there was no doubt, but I decided to give her a fighting chance. “What’s your name?” She remained stubbornly quiet, so I decided to hit her with some truth. “Look, if you have any hope of making it out of here unscathed, you better start answering my questions, Thomas Blood.” She immediately looked confused, and it was obvious she had no clue who Thomas Blood was. I guess the curriculum at Windsor was better than public school.
“I already answered your question,” she fired back. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Let’s forget that you’re lying for a second, and tell me your fucking name,” I demanded, glowering down at her. When she didn’t answer fast enough, I said, “Better yet, how about I tell you who I am.”
She surprised me by saying, “I already know who you are.”
I leaned down further into her personal space. “Then you know I’m not one to fuck around.”
“I didn’t see anything!” she yelled in my face.
“Then let me see that damn camera!” I roared back in hers.
We stared at each other, a mental game of chicken, when she finally let out a deep breath, and said, “Fine.” The word came out like she’d been chewing on shards of glass, and I knew it was killing her to give in.
I let go of her neck and took a step back. While the camera looked expensive, it wasn’t very big. However, I knew I had to give her some room to remove it from around her neck.
Big fucking mistake.
As soon as I had given her some breathing room, she took off like a rabbit. My stupid ass barely got to her in time as we hit the clearing where a car, presumably hers, was parked on a dirt trail. She must have driven up after we’d all arrived because we had scanned the entire woodlands before we had brought Childress out here.
I had her slammed up against the driver’s side door, and, boy, was I fucking pissed. At my own stupidity? Yeah. But I was still pissed.
“Let me go!” she yelled, and I immediately cupped one of my hands over her mouth as my body pinned her to the car, my left hand around her neck again.
“Scream again and see what happens,” I threatened. “If you want to bring people running, you better believe I’ll give them a story to take back with them.” Her blue eyes widened again, but I wasn’t falling for it. This girl had a set of balls on her, and her damsel in distress cover was already blown.
Pressing my body against her tightly enough to make her wince, I removed my hands from her mouth and neck and pulled the camera off her. This time, her face looked panicked, and that countered her claims that she hadn’t seen anything.
I smirked. “I wonder what I’m going to find on here.”
“Give that back to me,” she hissed. “It’s not yours. That’s…that’s invasion of privacy.”
I snorted. I had been five seconds away from killing Ashton Childress, with a clear fucking conscience, and she thought violating her privacy was going to keep me up at night?
“Tell me your name,” I demanded again, this time her precious camera dangling from my fingers.
Her jaw popped, and the snarl sounded like it was coming from her soul. “Lake,” she bit out.
She was pissing me off. “You got a last name to go with that?”
“Lake Warren,” she answered in that same resentful tone.
“I want it all,” I informed her mercilessly.
“Why?” she stubbornly asked. “What does the rest of it matter?”
I stared down at the gorgeous creature, who was fuming with hate and rebellion, and my name, alone, wasn’t doing enough to instill the kind of fear I needed from her. It wasn’t that I was worried about what she knew, so much as I didn’t like how she wasn’t cowering. Again, my parents would get me out of any trouble I ever found myself in, so this was more than that.
I cocked my head. “How badly do you want this camera back?”
Chapter 2
Lake~
My heart sank.
That camera was my entire life as sad as that might sound. I had saved my allowance money for three years to buy that camera and all its components. All my life, I’ve loved capturing moments, so they couldn’t disappear, and it’s what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a freelance photographer, and that camera was the start of making that happen. The pictures on it didn’t matter because the camera was already set to automatically upload the pictures to a backup cloud, but I couldn’t replace the camera. But I also knew who he was, and Ramsey Reed Jr. knowing someone’s personal business was not anything a person needed in their life.
Least of all, me.
But what choice did I have?
There were no pictures of him and his friends on the reel because I wasn’t stupid or suicidal. When I had walked close enough to make out the clearing, the moonlight had been bright enough to make sense of the scene happening before me, and there was no way I was going to get caught up in whatever had been going down. But looking into those storming whiskey-colored eyes, I guess the joke was on me.
“Spill it,” he demanded when I remained silent.
I knew what he was asking, and I had to weigh that against the importance of my camera. But then, I almost laughed when I reminded myself that he was Ramsey fucking Reed Jr. Whatever I refused to tell him, he could find out on his own. It was no secret in Sands Cove, whether it be in town or not, that his father controlled the entire town and everyone in it. Ramsey Reed Sr. didn’t have a heart, and I imagined neither did his son, if this exchange was any indication.