“Can I help you?” she gritted, the stark raven glow of her eyes glaring at me. Her head lowered. “Are you hard of hearing?”
The fuck?
Now, I didn’t come at this woman wrong at all. Actually, I came as a concerned citizen.
I was questioning that now, a slow raise of my eyebrow. “I suppose I wondered if you were all right up here.”
She had been up here… by herself, alone and with a bottle of wine.
I eyed it. Though, she refused to peel her gaze away from me. If anything, she watched my shoes, as if cautious for an advance. I stayed in my place. “I wanted to know if everything was okay.”
“Obviously.” Another heated jab. This woman was goddamn beautiful, but her tone certainly didn’t match. At least, not at the present. She angled a look over the side. “You can carry on now.”
Wow.
I didn’t consider myself a glutton for punishment, but this woman didn’t seem all right and was up here by herself. I shifted, and that dark mane of hers sliced the air so quick when she turned, I questioned the whiplash of her neck. She kept her eyes trained on me, obviously not wanting me to move.
Yeah, she wasn’t okay.
This didn’t feel okay. At all.
Again, I stayed where I was and to let her know I’d continue doing so, I placed a hand on the high dive’s handrails. “What are you doing up here?”
She said nothing. I guess not one for small talk, but she did face forward. Her fingers curled so hard on the edge I questioned if she would push off, go in.
Would I catch her? Go in after her? Chivalry wasn’t dead in me so I probably would, but I wondered if she’d hit me or something if I tried. This woman seemed a little unbalanced.
I lowered and found her eyes on me again, calculated and intensely observant. What I wouldn’t give to have her in front of a canvas. She actually made me want to paint, funny enough. “Can I have your name?”
A new angle and definitely going out on a limb. She hadn’t answered me the first time.
“Brielle.” An arctic bite to the word as her gaze appraised me, not completely hopeless tonight in the five-thousand-dollar suit Prinze also made us buy. He’d wanted us to match him and honestly, the cash was a drop in the bucket for most of us. Many of our fathers, uncles, and grandfathers built this town, my dad an immigrant but held so many small businesses and real estate properties under his name, he had enough to buy out many of Maywood Heights’ founding members three hundred times over. Shit, this town had even given him the key to the city.
He had been the mayor.
Not for a while now but he had been, that legacy there. It followed me to this day being his only son, and though I got the grades at Brown, I basically only had to make a call to get myself on the Pembroke University campus for the upcoming spring semester—of my senior year. It’d been really rather easy.
My father had funded five resident halls.
That’d been before he’d been incarcerated obviously, but still, the Mallick name held some clout. I used it to my advantage where I could and tossed it to the wayside in any other situation. I had, for all intents and purposes, all but disassociated myself from my father the day he’d decided to do some dirty shit with my uncle Leo. I had no problem using his name, though. I figured it was the least he could do for me.
Brielle eyed the fruits of my father’s labor now, but I wasn’t quite sure for the price tag. I’d left my suit jacket below. But in its absence, her gaze drifted over my broad shoulders and down sleeves the seamstress may have cut a few corners on, a smidgen tighter across my biceps and forearms than I would like. I hadn’t complained, the rest of the suit a perfect fit from the way the trousers allowed what could be considered thick runner’s legs to move. I did a lot of cardio, but I worked out my legs probably more than I should. It was awesome for my endurance but sucked for speed. I’d always been a bit of a gym junky, played ball in school and just liked the way my body felt when I kept it in shape. I could eat pizza like the best of them, though.
Brielle’s gaze lingered on the area of my squatted thighs before coming up, and though I didn’t consider myself shy, I was hella aware of her eyes on me. This woman was beyond a knockout, gorgeous from her soft face shape to the way her full tits hugged and swelled above her dress’s bodice. I knew way more than I wanted to about dresses these days thanks to a certain bride, and Brielle filled out the A-line in a way that allowed me to be completely observant of how the sea of black material flared widely over her thick hips and gave peeks of her shapely legs. Something told me she ran too, her calves smooth and defined, and with her tanned skin, glowed like trapped sunshine. Her feet bare and hair raven black, Brielle resembled a temptress in the night, all woman as she sat wrapped softly in the teal hue of the House’s aquatic center.
I opened my hands, placing one to my chest. “Ramses. Nice to meet you, Brielle.”
Though I wasn’t sure the sentiment was shared, her expression more than cautious, observant. That hadn’t let up since I’d arrived up here, which I suppose made sense. This woman didn’t know me at all.
A nod in her direction as she watched me, and when I lost her gaze again, I questioned my progress. I felt like I should keep her talking.
“You, uh, been drinking, Brielle?” I stated, my next question. I pointed at the bottle. “Seems like it.”
She took no notice of that. Like I said, she wouldn’t even look at me. But she did face down after I said it, her shoulders lifting.
“Bottle’s full,” she whispered, again gritted. “And I guess I suck at being alone.”
Struck me funny since, apparently, I had attempted to do that tonight too. I put out a hand. “Mind if I sit with you then?”