The guy had the decency to finally drop the act. Thank fuck for small miracles. "I didn't fuck her."
And maybe he had to be more careful about the uptake on the miracle shit.
"So she went from kicking your ass last night to gazing stardust at you today, because you-what?-let her use most of the armrest in the plane? Brought a copy of the rom-con starring the dude with the dreamy hair and sat through it with her? Gave her the best foot rub of her life?" A gape took over as Reb looked away, his expression clouding over. In return, Rhett took his own turn at confusion. "Christ. So what the fuck did happen?"
Rebel poured more water and gulped a giant swig. Elbows on the chopping block, he stared out into the herb garden. "She turned applesauce on me when she saw the Piper. Turned white as a ghost as soon as Sam fired up the engines. So I … distracted her."
"Distracted," he echoed. "Without your cock?"
Reb's fingers, flattened on the wood counter, compressed until the nail beds whitened. "I didn't say that."
A chuff escaped. "But you didn't fuck her."
Rebel shoved up. "Does it matter? I got her here, didn't I?"
He had no idea what re-sparked his rage more: the dickhead's callousness, or his righteous claim to it. Did it matter? His anger was back, blistering and hot, firing into his arms, ramming them into Rebel's shiny chest. "It does matter, you arrogant prick. In case you haven't picked up on it yet, Brynn Monet isn't a panting little thing who wants to bow at your feet and beg for your flogger."
Reb stumbled back but cocked a smirk through every step, his moves like an insolent rag doll. "Buddy, you might be very surprised at what that girl wants."
"Woman. She's a woman, damn you-one who's had her heart fucked with enough by players like you."
The guy stopped. No more rag doll. The grin fell away, too. "Right." His eyes narrowed, all traces of color gone. "Because a catch like you is what she's looking for, huh? Love songs and long walks on the beach, with sex on the side? A Dom who's willing to settle on limits that keep her ‘happy' because the alternative just may be-oh, gasp-losing her and being alone. And God help poor little Rhett Lange if he's alone, discarded again by the world, wandering the Earth in search of his lost, broken-"
One fist. Driving straight for that asshole's face.
Stopped midair, skin smacking skin, sweat exploding.
The monster who stopped him-
Now the friend who stared at him, unblinking and unrelenting.
Daring him. Like so many times before.
Drawing him closer. Like so many times before.
"Let. Go." His lungs shook on the syllables. He twisted his wrist inside Reb's.
Rebel just kept staring, with those eyes as fathomless as midnight. "I won't ever discard you, Rhett."
Rhett. Not Double-Oh or dude or dickhead. His name, so simple, nearly sanctified … rasped with that baritone intimacy. Yet asking for even more.
"I said let go."
"Why?"
The fucker tugged harder, bringing him eye-to-eye. Breath to breath. Heat to heat.
"Because I'm pissed at you."
"Pissed?"
He had the nerve to say nothing else. To say everything else. To arch one black brow, turning it into the curve of a question mark … without the finishing dot.
Beckoning Rhett to be that completion.
Firing every drop of his blood with the same goddamn need.
Making him wonder … once more … what it might be like. To reach out, to touch, to fill his senses with this sun who'd been lent to the Earth as a man. Just once …
No.
A matching sound, low and vicious, clawed up his throat. He finally shoved free, chest laboring, eyes glaring. That was the trouble with dreams about touching the sun. They could only be dreams. Taken to reality, they incinerated a man.
He wheeled around, heading back toward the door out to the grounds. "Take a shower," he growled in the doing. "You stink, asshole."
His own plans?
He was going to jump in the lake.
And hoped, when he got out, that his mind and his cock wouldn't still be raging beyond any semblance of control.
Chapter Five
‡
Peace in our souls.
Paradise in our hearts.
Brynn gazed at the framed needlepoint, hanging on the wall in the little den next to the office, and wondered whether to laugh or cry.
Or cut to the chase and scream.
The temptation bubbled from her belly into her throat as one of the guys-at this point, they were both being such ogres that it didn't matter which-slammed a door off the living room. It had been like this for hours between them, increasing as the afternoon turned to twilight, pushing through the whole house like a pressure cooker about to blow. She counted on the night bringing an equally murky mood between her mission mates.
What the hell had happened since this afternoon?
She certainly didn't have anything interesting to report. After stomping out on them, she'd found one of the guest bedrooms with the intent of sulking away her frustration for a while. Instead, a wall of exhaustion had hit.
Two hours later, she'd been yanked from half-asleep to fully alert by the sound of skin smacking skin, then a duel of low growls. She'd been too far away to distinguish the cause of the fight, only knowing it ended in Rhett's escaping toward the lake at a jog, the tension in his torso turned to ironic beauty beneath the sun. Half a minute later, she'd heard rushing water and the clack of a shower door.
Process of elimination led her to think of Rebel beneath that spray-and the heated temptation to join him there. But unnerving instincts had held her back. She couldn't help but remember Shay's words from last night.
You go through a different submissive each month, asshole.
Though Shay's rage had spawned the words, Rebel sure as hell hadn't denied them-meaning the "diversion" he'd given her on the plane was exactly that for him. A pleasant way to pass the time No more, no less.
But as the minutes passed, even that truth had been eclipsed by the cloud that spread through the house, undeniable and thick, the aftermath of whatever had gone down in the kitchen. The toxic aura was an affront to every gold and pink thread of the needlework on the wall. Brynn could practically feel the tenderness put into every inch of the piece, and wondered what special lady in Dax Blake's life had created it. Mother? Sister? Wife? And what would that woman think about the way the males in this place were acting now, avoiding each other in stony silence-when they weren't grunting profanity under their breaths or abusing every piece of furniture they could?
Whump.
A lot like that.
She pegged the perpetrator of the cabinet slam as Rebel, since the rat-a-tats on the computer in the next room could only be Rhett's. In the kitchen, plastic crunched. A soda can thwopped.
Rhett cleared his throat. "Hey. The Sriracha chips are mine."
The cabinet creaked. "There's two bags."
"Right. And they're both mine."
A gritted curse in French. Steps that pounded so hard, the walls jittered.
Brynn exhaled as the needlepoint bounced on its hanger. So this was what it felt like to referee three year-olds.
She swung out of the chair, setting aside her e-reader. Just when she was getting to the best part of the novel, too. The rock star and the geek scientist would have to deny their desires for a few minutes longer.
Maybe longer than that.
Deciding to hit Rebel first with the censure about playing nice, she rounded the corner into the office-
Just as Rebel entered from the other door, already dressed in head-to-toe black for his subterfuge tonight. He had a bag of Sriracha chips in each hand-that he suddenly turned over, raining the spicy contents onto the floor.
"What the hell!" She gaped at Rebel, who glared only at Rhett-who simply leaned back in the chair and rolled his eyes.
What the hell?
The internal echo didn't dilute the shock. Was this kind of shit normal for them?
"Here you go." Rebel tossed the bags back over his shoulder before whirling back toward the kitchen. "Have at it, pal."
"Rebel!"
Brynn hurried after him, catching up only after he'd stalked out the front door of the house itself. It was then, while pulling him by an elbow, that a wave of energy poured off of him-jolting her with a crazy new awareness.
The violence he'd just hurled at Rhett … wasn't just violence. She knew it because he redirected all of it at her now, and a lot of it was already familiar to her. A force she'd already experienced once today-in the depths of his gaze and the magic of his fingers-during the flight down here.