A tiny smile flickered at the edge of his ruddy mouth. I frowned at him as he reached toward me, plucking a piece of candied cereal from where it was slightly tucked into the crease between my breasts. I gasped in surprise and outrage at his audacity, but my nipples furled into hard peaks at the brush of his rough knuckles against the swell of my chest. His eyes were so clear I thought I should have been able to see straight to the bottom of his thoughts, but they were utterly fathomless. Just a color as pale as frost.
I watched with my heart beating in my throat as he took the anchor-shaped piece of cereal to his mouth and placed it on his tongue. He crunched into it, then swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his tanned, strong neck.
Heat pooled in my belly and I wondered with a flare of irritation how he managed to make eating children’s cereal sexy.
“I had a hankering for a midnight snack,” he said finally, as he snatched another piece from me, a four-leaf clover marshmallow tangled in the hair over my right ear. “But you shouldn’t eat this poison. Sugar will kill you.”
“You could use some sweetening up,” I offered pleasantly as I reached up to shake my hands through my hair and dislodge the remains of the Lucky Charms. “Why don’t I make you a bowl?”
He made a quiet noise in his throat that could have been something like laughter or a derisive snort. I watched from the corner of my eye as he leaned against the counter while I cleaned up the mess on the floor and put it in the garbage. The long, v-shaped expanse of his torso was bare, black ink forming words and outlined images here and there across his torso, thick from hands to shoulders on each arm. A pair of black sweatpants in some luxe material sat low on his hips, revealing a light smattering of hair leading from his belly to his groin, a tattoo barely visible above the waistband in the low light pouring in from the streetlamps outside. I swallowed thickly as he crossed his corded arms over his chest, abs tensing into perfectly stacked boxes.
Suddenly, I wasn’t as hungry for cereal as I was for something darker.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” he asked me. “Little girls need their sleep.”
“I could say the same about old men,” I countered with a sniff as I topped up the bowl with more cereal and then went to the fridge to get the oat milk. “I’m seventeen, by the way, and I haven’t had a curfew since I was seven. The minute Brando was born, I was on feeding duty throughout the night more often than Aida.”
“Such a good girl,” he said in a voice that made it seem like a bad thing. “Wholesome and responsible. I wonder where you got that from…your father perhaps?”
I angled a glare at him, but he was just staring at me with that cold gaze. “My father was a good man.”
It was only because I was studying him that I caught the flash of tension contracting his harsh features. Only half a second, but it was enough to express his hatred for my father.
I frowned. It was a little early in his relationship with Aida to be jealous of her dead lover and baby daddy.
“Good is boring,” he offered, and suddenly he was too close, crowding me into the corner of the countertops.
He braced his arms against the laminate, caging me in. I froze at his nearness, as the masculine scent of him surrounded me. He dropped his gaze to my chest, but when he moved his hand, it wasn’t to touch me inappropriately. Instead, he plucked the heavy locket I wore around my neck into his fingers and lifted it to his gaze.
“What’s this?”
I swallowed thickly, wrapping my hand around the chain to try to tug it from his hold. It felt wrong for Aida’s lover to touch the most precious possession I owned.
“None of your business.”
His eyes tipped up to meet mine, something working behind the icy shields. “I think you’ll find, little girl, that you very much are my business.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded, but he was already stepping away to get a glass from a cabinet to fill with water at the sink. “Tiernan, I asked what the hell you meant.”
He took a long drink of water, throat working, abdomen clenching. I averted my gaze, jaw clenched.
“Why don’t you ask your mother?” he suggested slyly after draining the glass and placing it in the sink. “She’s awake and I’m leaving.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
An arrogant smirk tipped his mouth, his scar bleaching to a brilliant white against his tan. It should have been frightful, ugly, but it only made his beauty somewhat otherworldly.
“The perks of having a private plane.”
“Fossil fuel emissions from private planes has gone up thirty-one percent in Europe alone over the last five years. Did you know a four-hour flight can emit as much as an average person does in one whole year?” When he only blinked blandly at me, I glowered. “You’re disgusting,” I said even though it was childish.
I couldn’t help it.
Being near him felt like one thousand bees buzzing under my skin. I was hot and irritated, annoyed with both of us for inexplicable reasons.
He cocked a thick, dark brow at me, but otherwise, didn’t say anything.
I was learning he was a man of few words. Cruelly, which was against my nature, I wondered if he had a high enough IQ to manage his billion-dollar businesses.
“Why are you with my mother?” I asked, then winced slightly because it seemed as if I didn’t think she was good enough for him when in reality, it was the other way around.
He raised one hand to rub a thumb over his lower lip. Back and forth, back and forth like a hypnotist’s pendulum.
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘curiosity killed the cat’?”
I blinked owlishly. “Are you…threatening me?”
He blinked right back.
Fear knocked my heart hard against my chest, but beneath it, sunk beneath my skin and bones, deep in the synapses of my brain, intrigue tangled with a strange kind of lust that made my blood heat.
I stepped closer to him, cereal gone soggy in the bowl and forgotten. “What do you want with her?”
The scarred side of his mouth lifted in a little smile. “What does any man want with any woman?”
“Her body,” I guessed, deflated by his simplicity.
“Her secrets,” he amended in that rough rasp that was somehow also cultured.
Automatically, I crossed my arms over my chest, one hand reaching to clutch at the locket he’d grabbed, the silver still warm from his touch. His gaze flitted there, brows tightening, casting shadows over his eyes that made him look almost skeletal.
Demonic.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” he said, his words icicles stabbing deeply into my flesh. “You’re too young to be interesting enough to warrant my curiosity.”
I gaped at him for a moment as he turned and strolled fluidly out of the room, the skin between his strong shoulders marked with a long line of black tally marks.
“And you’re too old to make any sense of my secrets even if you could find them,” I called belatedly, color rising in my cheeks because he continued to get the best of me.
His soft chuckle wound like a ribbon of smoke back toward me from down the hall.
Angry, I grabbed my milk-logged cereal and a spoon before taking the snack back to my room. I ate it without tasting the sugary mush, waiting until the sounds of Tiernan leaving echoed down the hall.