Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Leo and his friend part and turn to look at Santos. When I meet Santos’s eyes, they capture and hold mine. It reminds me of our first meeting, of how he’d looked at me then. It’s a strange sensation, like a cloak draped over my shoulders.
His eyes are a rare shade, dark and endless, like an evergreen forest in winter. He’s wearing a custom-made three-piece-suit. Black on black on black. No tuxedo for him. He doesn’t conform to any rules.
He’s an Augustine. He doesn’t have to.
I swallow hard because I remember other things too—like what he’d said to me the first night. What he’d had me repeat the last time we met.
The spanking he’d threatened me with.
That part sends a flush of heat spreading from my core outward, all the way up my neck to warm my cheeks. I struggle to hold his gaze, afraid he can read my mind
Another man joins us, coming to Santos Augustine’s side. It’s Caius Augustine. He’s two years older than Santos. I haven’t seen Caius since that night in my father’s study, but he hasn’t really changed. They still look so different, dark and light, but I know deep in my heart how dangerous both of the Augustine brothers are.
“Making friends, brother?” Caius asks, voice low and deep, as much a growl as his brother’s.
Santos’s eyes hold mine. He doesn’t answer Caius but when he shifts his gaze to the hand on my arm, I remember what happened to the last person who touched what belonged to Santos Augustine. I get the feeling the man holding onto me now feels the danger emanating from the Augustine brothers, because he drops his hand and steps backward, away from me.
Leo isn’t as smart though.
Santos turns to Leo. “No, not making friends,” he says.
Leo glances at his buddy, I guess for backup. He’s not going to get it.
“Get out of here,” Caius says casually to them.
They nod, but Santos blocks Leo’s path. “What did you say to her?” he asks. “Something about taking her to your place to make things right? What did you mean exactly?” He steps so close that Leo, who is a good head shorter, has to crane his neck to hold eye contact. Aggression is practically vibrating off Santos. I feel the waves of it, know the danger he poses. Is Leo Cummings so oblivious he doesn’t sense it? “How would she make things right exactly?” Santos finishes.
“Brother.” Caius closes a hand over Santos’s arm.
I know I need to defuse this now, before history repeats itself, although I wonder how many other women they’ve cornered like this. Maybe I should let them deal with the consequence that is Santos Augustine. They’re jerks. But the image of Jason Cole the day he returned to school after prom is still so vivid in my memory that I can’t.
“They didn’t mean anything. They were just being stupid,” I say to Santos—only to Santos. “And they were leaving.”
He turns his gaze to me, the green dangerously bright. “Were they? It didn’t look like that to me.”
“Santos,” Caius says cautiously to his brother. “We’re drawing attention.” I notice how much quieter the room has grown. How, even though the orchestra is still playing, conversation has died down.
Santos’s jaw tenses, and his eyes narrow. It takes him a full minute to draw in a slow, deep breath before smiling a smile that I can only describe as terrifying, more so than anything Leo Cummings and his friend could threaten me with. He steps backward, and Caius’s shoulders relax.
Santos takes out his wallet and looks at the man who’s wearing my wine. He pulls several hundred-dollar bills out and shoves them into the man’s chest. “That should cover the cost of a new shirt and then some,” he says.
The man closes his hand over the bills I think more out of instinct than anything else, and I have Santos’s full attention again when Caius puts an arm around each of the men and walks them away, leaving us alone.
My heart hammers against my chest. Santos’s eyes remain locked on mine and there’s a palpable shift in the air around us, the dangerous zapping of an electrical current that can’t be denied. I’ve never felt so drawn to any man as I do him. It’s as though there’s an invisible thread tying me to him, binding us. It’s impossible to ignore, and I know how dangerous this attraction is.
“You seem to find trouble, Little Kitty,” he says.
Little Kitty. “I think it finds me. I don’t like that nickname.”
“No?”
I shake my head, and we stand staring at one another. I swear the scar on my palm throbs, as if sensing he’s near.
“That’s too bad,” he says.
I’m the first to break eye contact. I’d like to say it’s because I see Odin across the room, but the truth is, he makes me nervous and I can’t hold his gaze.