I did a few more breathing exercises as I dabbed at the back of my neck with a cool, damp hand towel. I was finally feeling calmer when I reached for the knob, but that went up in smoke when I pulled the door open and found Raylan leaned against the wall directly across from me.
God, it really was unfair how gorgeous he was. I couldn’t help but notice his blond hair was in his usual slightly rumpled, overly long style. This time of year, there was more pale gold mixed in with the honeyed strands thanks to all the time he spent in the sun. It tended to darken up a bit in the colder months. Now that I knew just how soft it was, my fingers itched to dive back in and grip tight.
Before I had a chance to react to his unexpected presence, his finger latched onto one of my belt loops and he used his hold to jerk me forward. I stumbled, falling into his chest, and he immediately buried his face in my neck, setting off fireworks beneath my skin. A million butterflies sprang to life in my belly. I sucked in a stuttered gasp, my core clenching desperately around nothing at the flutter of his lips against my pulse as he whispered, “You look fuckin’ beautiful tonight, Chaos.”
Chapter Eighteen
Raylan
This was a huge mistake. I was rational enough to realize that, but not enough to ignore the desperate need I had to touch her. We could have been caught at any moment, but the fear of what Zach might do to me if he walked in and saw us in this position wasn’t enough to make me stop. Not once I pulled that sweet, warm star anis scent of hers into my lungs. Christ, I’d always loved that smell. I didn’t know if it was lotion or perfume, or if it just radiated from her soft skin, but each inhale was like a hit I needed to take the edge off.
I shouldn’t have even been there, but when Zach mentioned their mom had invited some random guy he didn’t know to dinner, alarm bells started to go off in my head. So I made an excuse to crash. Turned out, I was right to have worried. Rory was trying to fix her daughter up with the golf loving douche bag. What had she been thinking, trying to pair Lennix with a loser who looked like he came out of the womb with a pocket protector? That wasn’t the kind of man Chaos needed. Not that I had much of a right to that opinion.
I could feel the tension locking up Lennix’s muscles and knew she was struggling with herself. I had a feeling I knew exactly what was going on in her head. Part of her wanted to melt into my touch the way she’d done the other night, while the other part was probably panicked at the thought of not hating me as much as she wished she did.
I couldn’t blame her. I kept running hot and cold on her, throwing so many contradictions I was shocked she hadn’t gotten whiplash yet.
Her hands came up, her tiny palms pressing against my chest and setting my skin ablaze where she was touching me. “What the hell are you doing?” she hissed. “Someone could see us. Have you lost your mind?”
I made a sound like a growl against her neck before forcing myself to release her and stand tall. “Goddamn right I’ve lost my mind. And it’s all your fault.”
She sucked in an affronted gasp, those green eyes sparked in a way that made me hard enough to pound nails. “Myfault?” she whisper-yelled. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“You’ve been dodging me for days, and it’s really startin’ to piss me off.”
She let out a scoff. Christ, she was sexy as fuck when she was furious. “I’mpissingyouoff? Oh, that’s rich.” She stepped closer, drilling her finger into my chest. She might have been a whole head shorter than I was, but the woman had more fire in her than half the men I knew. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m dodging you because I don’t want to talk to you?” she snapped, her cheeks turning rosy with emotion. But I was too focused on the stabbing pain in my chest to appreciate how that flush added to her beauty.
She wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know. What I had brought on myself by treating her so goddamn badly. Only…Christ, she had sliced right into me with those razor-sharp words. But as the saying went, the truth hurt.
I would have done anything to fix this. If only I could find the right words. If only I couldstop fucking this all up.
“Chaos,” I started, but before I could get any further, a figure popped up as if out of nowhere, giving me such a start I lurched backward in an attempt to put more distance between Lennix and me.
And there it was; my epic propensity to fuck everything up.
I hadn’t been thinking, I’d simply reacted to the fear of being caught in any kind of compromising position. Thank god it was just Rae, but I saw the moment my actions sank in for Lennix, and the pain that blanketed her expression before she wiped it clear.
For Christ’s sake. If I could beat the shit out of myself, I would.
Rae’s brow furrowed as she took me in before shifting her focus to Lennix. “You okay?” she asked, her features pulling into a concerned frown. She was worried, that much was obvious. But what I didn’t see was surprise. “You need me to stall for a minute?”
Lennix’s spine straightened, her chin hiking upward. “I’m great,” she assured her sister-in-law. The look she cast me was so cold it sent an unpleasant shiver down my spine. “And there’s no need to stall. I was over that conversation anyway.” With that, she hooked her arm in the crook of Rae’s and started walking away, leaving me behind without so much as a backward glance. And fuck if it didn’t feel like she was taking a piece of me with her.
Lennix
“You sure you’re okay?”Rae asked in a hushed voice as we moved toward the dining room.
“Of course,” I returned on a whisper. I hoped my lie sounded more convincing to her than it did to me. “Why do you ask?”
She responded by glancing down at my chest before returning her gaze to mine and arching a brow. I hadn’t realized I was rubbing at my sternum, right above my heart, until she pointed it out. I’d been unconsciously rubbing at the pain that had formed there the moment Raylan jumped back from me like I was a barracuda about to strike.
I quickly dropped my hand and cut a look at my sister-in-law. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She mimed zipping her lips as we entered the dining room where everyone else was already seated. I let out a mental curse at the three empty chairs that remained. There was one beside my brother, which was obviously for Rae, and the last two were side by side, across from Drew and my grandfather. This was the second family dinner I was going to be stuck sitting next to Raylan, all because I’d taken too long to get to my seat.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to hold it together, because right beneath the pain he’d caused me I could still feel the heat on my skin from where his lips had brushed. It was like he’d pressed a hot brand there, marking the spot as his. As much as Itried, I couldn’t get rid of thewantI felt every time I was around him.
With nothing to be done about it, I rounded the table just as Raylan entered the room, his long legs eating up the distance quickly. I returned Drew’s smile with one of my own as I pulled out the chair directly across from him.
