His flat look only served to enrage me further.
“Nothing at all,” he replied with a sharp edge of sarcasm. “Only that you clearly know him so well. If you say he wouldn’t assault, rape and murder a girl, then clearly you know better than us.”
I didn’t know what the fuck had gotten into Beck, but I was too fucking tired—physically and emotionally—to put up with his drama. The heavy sarcasm said pretty clearly he thought Dantewasguilty, so what the hell had given him that impression?
It didn’t matter. He was probably just letting his dick do all the talking and seeing how jealous he’d been of my friendship with Dante since day freaking one…
But it was a fake friendship. Wasn’t it? So maybe he had a point.
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
“Okay,” Jasper interrupted, physically stepping between me and Beck and breaking the death glare staredown we were engaging in. “That’s enough of that. Weren’t you two all loved up and confessing undying vengeance on our parents a few hours ago? What the hell happened while I was making a sandwich?” His accusing glare shot between Beck and me, but it was Evan—who’d been standing behind Beck’s chair—who replied.
“I’m guessing it has something to do with Dante’s assault conviction from three years ago,” he announced, reading from the paper still clutched in Beck’s hands. I guess he must have moved on from the finance docs. “Aggravated sexual assault against a Miss Hailey Tabot, age fifteen. Looks like the charges were dropped after a healthy donation into the Tabot family trust account. Courtesy of Catherine, I’d guess.” Evan flicked his gaze up to me, but I couldn’t speak past the huge lump in my throat.
Holy shit.
Aggravated sexual assault? No way. This had to be one of Catherine’s set ups.
Still, a little voice in the back of my head whispered poison, reminding me of a night three years ago…
“What date?” I croaked out, scarcely capable of words. “What date was the report?”
“December twenty-fourth,” Beck answered my desperate question, his jaw set in anger. “He attacked that girl on Christmas Eve.”
It was like my strings had just been cut, and I dropped back into my seat when my legs gave way. Fucking Hailey Tabot. Dante’s only serious girlfriend and my arch-nemesis. We’d all been at a party on December twenty-fourth, three years ago. Dante had given me my butterfly a few months back, and I was takingeveryopportunity to race her ... to Hailey’s disgust.
Some shit about how he clearly loved me more than her, and how everyone could see it. Total bullshit. Dante freakinglovedHailey... it’s what made me so fucking sure that assault was another Catherine stunt. Except, onthatnight I’d had a huge fight with Hailey. She’d been caught tampering with my car before an impromptu race, and when I’d confronted her, shit had turned nasty. Like bitch fight level nasty.
Dante had pulled her off me and driven her home. I hadn’t given it another thought ... not really. Not when Dante showed up at my place the next morning with scratches on his face, or even when Hailey and her parents suddenly moved to live with her grandma in Florida.
Had I just been a stupid trusting dickhead?
I mean, I had missed the whole “paid to keep tabs on you” thing.
Fuck. How dumb had I been all these years?
8
Beck and I didn’t talk for the rest of the night. Eventually I ended up in bed, and I had no idea when he joined me, but he was gone by the time I woke the next morning. The only evidence he was there at all was the fact I’d had no nightmares, that comforting “Beck scent” still surrounded me, and his side was warm—I’d only just missed him.
With a groan, I pulled myself up. It sucked that we were mad at each other right now, especially when we were in the midst of trying to take down Delta, but despite all the evidence presented to me about Dante and his possibly evil side, I couldn’t bring myself to write him off completely. Not yet. He deserved a chance to explain himself, especially about Hailey. She was a bitch of the worst kind, and that in no way meant she deserved to be sexually assaulted, but it did mean that I wasn’t going to just blindly trust the allegations against Dante. Hailey had lied to me so many times that I wasn’t sure she could actually tell the truth.
Entering the bathroom, my sleep-addled brain finally registered the fact that the shower was running. Through the top of the glass, I could see his broad, muscular shoulders. Hands against the glass, his head was resting forward as the water beat down on him, and before I could stop myself, I was padding quietly toward the glass door.
When I stopped on the other side, Beck’s head lifted slowly, and he turned to face me fully. It was like he knew I was there, even though I hadn’t made a single sound approaching him. As our eyes locked, my body tightened, the tiny panties I’d worn to bed already damp. Beck fucked me with one look. The rest was a pure bonus, because there was no one in the world that could do to me what he could.
His face was expressionless, but his eyes were blazing, storm clouds building there as the gray darkened. I wanted to step inside, but I couldn’t fucking move. He slowly pushed the glass open, skimming past my body, and in a split second, I was jerked into his hard, wet body.
“Fuck,” I groaned, arching into him. Jesus fucking Christ. I needed him. Right now. We could be mad at each other later.
“You belong to me,” Beck said softly, that expression never wavering from me. “Dante might have some of your past but that’s all it fucking is. The. Past.”
I probably should have been arguing with this possessive Neanderthal, but I was beyond the wording and the sentences and the arguments. There was still some fire in me though, as I lunged forward, slamming him into the tiles, and taking him completely by surprise. I practically climbed him to get to his face, and then we were kissing, hard, punishing kisses. Sometimes kissing Beck was like waging war, each of us trying to come out on top. War with a hell of a lot more pleasure involved.
Beck’s hands wrapped around my thighs as he yanked me up into his body. I tried to wrap my legs around him, but the wall got in the way, so Beck move forward slightly. I arched again and again, rubbing myself up and down his naked body. It was slippery from the water, and I needed to get my clothes off right now.
I needed more.
