Annoyed, I roll my eyes, letting out a small sigh and giving my head a shake. “No one took it from me. I wasn’t assaulted. I freely allowed the boy to have his way with me. My tears from earlier weren’t related to any of that. Why do men always assume women cry over them? What a waste of tears.”
I was crying over my loss of freedom and a dream of a different life. Or maybe I was sobbing because I’m a weak soul who wants to buck the system but is too afraid to do so. I can talk a damn good game, but when push comes to shove, I always fall into line and allow my father to dictate how my life will be. It angers me that I can’t stand up for myself and tell him to fuck off. So, I cried like a sad little girl instead.
When I look up, I realize we’re back at our cottages. “Thank you for walking me home. It was?—”
My words are lost as Darius’s kiss silences me. It’s all-consuming, and it confuses me.
One kiss and everything I thought I knew goes up in flames.
He tastes of lust and liquor, and both are messing with my head. His short, bristly beard, a sandpaper caress against my skin, is the final push I need to cross the point of no return. I want to drag him closer, while at the same time I want to shove him away.
How can a man ruin a woman’s entire life with one simple, devouring kiss? And when it’s a man, I want nothing to do with, it makes it so much more devastating.
“Goodnight, cupcake,” he breathes against my lips, the words a low murmur before he roughly spins me and pushes me inside my room, the door slamming shut behind me.
I spin to face the wooden door, dazed. I can still taste him, feel his warm lips against mine.
What the fuck just happened?
Chapter 3
Darius
June
Two months have passed since I flew out of paradise, claiming an emergency. No way in hell was I sticking around after that kiss. I had to get out of there before I did something incredibly stupid.
Every single day, the memory of that stolen kiss outside her condo replays in my mind. Her taste—a unique blend of spice and sweetness—is forever imprinted in my core memories.
One second, she was talking, getting ready to blow me off. Next, my lips were on hers, and I was stealing those words of dismissal right out of her mouth. Devouring her with a hunger that could only be described as primal, as if she were the most delicious treat I’d ever tasted. I was a starving man determined to eat her alive. The pressure from the zipper against my hard dick was painful. Which was when I realized I was about to make a huge mistake that was much bigger than a kiss. So, I pulled back, shoved her inside, then ran like my arse was on fire.
These last two months, I’ve been all over the damn world giving my newest business venture a real go. Most of my clients are like the Reyes family. Deep pockets with something to lose if a situation gets out of hand.
I spend my days investigating exciting things like fraud, espionage, embezzlement, and treason. Governments and large corporations hire my company, Falcon Global Security & Solutions (FGS&S), because we can’t so easily be persuaded to look the other way.
So far, it’s kept me very busy. We’re the ones they call when shit hits the fan, like when someone’s been betrayed, there’s talk of internal sabotage, or when the regular team can’t be trusted. We’re a third party that stays off everyone’s radar until it’s time to send in my reports and expose what my team has found.
The best part is that FGS&S has my family up in arms. They openly scorn my decision to forge my own path, separate from the family business. Ironically, the less they approve of my lifestyle, the more fulfilling it all feels. My family and I aren’t exactly on good terms. It’s complicated, and they’re the reason I do what I do.
Given that I’m a very busy twenty-six-year-old man who’s trying to build a business from the ground up, one wouldn’t expect me to have time for my own investigating. Out of sight, out of mind, is a real thing, right?
It’s not.
That nagging gut feeling about Ingrid’s family didn’t fade. For three days it gnawed at me until I couldn’t ignore it, finally pushing me to look into matters. The truth I uncovered left my stomach twisted. Gerald Lennox was rotten to the core. I couldn’t in good conscience sit back and look the other way. Scumbags are nothing new to me. I’ve dealt with men like him before, but even in a corrupt sea of thieves, he managed to stand out.
A few keystrokes told me all I needed to know. He’d poured his personal fortune into the wrong hands. When the scheme collapsed, so did his wealth. Every last cent—wiped clean. He was penniless.
Gerald had one card left to play, the company he started twenty-five years ago. And Warren Culberson was at the center of it. Their history ran deep. Warren funded the launch of Gerald’s pharmaceutical empire, then poured in more as the business grew. For decades his money kept the company afloat.
Now that the empire was on shaky ground—the noose around Gerald’s neck tightening—the man was desperate. Selling to Warren looks like the best fix. It’d cover the debts, but the deal is dirty, layered, never as simple as it looks on paper.
Men like Gerald, blinded by ego, never take the logical path. Convinced of their own brilliance, they hunt for backdoors, weaving deals in the shadows to disguise their desperation. Until someone like me shows up to drag them back into the light and strip the lies away.
Warren is no exception. These two have years of shady ties and questionable deals. When Gerald’s world collapsed, Warren saw his chance and pushed his way into Lennox Pharmaceuticals. Together, they stitched a web of lies with the kind of precision only greed can inspire.
Deceit is a wound I know way too well. I carry its scars and refuse to let it go unchecked—not when it touches someone in my orbit. I hunt it down and then expose it.
No one’s hired me to take these two down. I’m doing this because of one thing. I blame it on the damn kiss I can’t stop thinking about. My infatuation with Ingrid Fae Lennox—she’s the reason I looked deeper and now can’t walk away.
