Taboo: A Dark Romance Boxset (Stud Ranch 1)

I could be your safe place if you’d let me.

I shake my head and shove my phone in the side of my laptop bag, then I stand up to stretch my legs. Darren turns to me when the last person is finally gone.

“I could have used a heads up about this one.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I thought it would—” I gesture at the table and shake my head.

Dare frowns. “What?”

“Well I thought switching to the RISC chips was such an obvious move, I thought the meeting would just be about how to implement them. I didn’t even think about pushback.”

Darren busts out laughing at that. He’s still shaking his head when he comes over to me and claps me on the back. “Christ, Dylan. I know you’re my older brother, but I swear sometimes it’s like I’m the one shielding you from the way the world really works. Change freaks people out. You have to go slow and then convince them it was their idea all along.”

“Jesus, I hate all that politicking bullshit.” I shake my head and take a swig from my water bottle.

“Which is why you tinker and build the nice machines and I sell them. Now, enough about work. Anything happen with the babe in the red dress?”

I choke on the water and spit half of it out.

“Whoa, whoa!” Darren smacks me on the back and I cough until I can finally manage a breath.

“Christ, that bad?” Darren laughs.

I shake my head, swiping my mouth on my shirt sleeve. After another few coughs to clear my throat, I look up only to find Darren with an eyebrow raised.

“So it went well? Let’s hear it. Was she screaming your name or was it more of a dine and dash situation?”

I roll my eyes and grab my chest. “Jesus, I’m dying over here and all you can think about is whether or not I got laid?” The last thing I want to talk about is Miranda. I’m too fucked up about her in my own head to try to be able to make sense of it all in words, especially to Dare, who only sees women in terms of notches on his bed post.

“Basically.” Darren nods. “Now, I gotta know. Were those tits real?”

“Jesus, Dare.” Then I scrunch my forehead. “Wait, how do you even know about her?”

“I stopped by the conference.”

“You hate those things.”

“Not true.” He holds up a finger. “I hate the boring as fuck talks. Now the partying afterward, that I’m all about. But right as I got off the elevator in the lobby from my room, I saw you following her out.”

“You had a room at the hotel that night?”

“Yes. Unlike some people, when I see a woman I want, I’m not afraid to seal the deal.” He scrutinizes me before a smile slowly creeps across his face. “You did it, didn’t you? You dog.” He raises both hands. “Well all I can say is hallelujah, praise Jesus. So all it took was a stacked brunette to finally bring an end to the—what? year long?—dry spell?”

More like six years, not that he ever needs to know. “Shut up, dumbass. And don’t talk about her like that.” Miranda is so much more than he’s making her out to be. Even thinking about her hurts because it just reminds me of all I’ll never have.

“Ooooh,” he draws the word out. “So it’s like that? Has there been a second date? Come on, I tell you everything. In the hotel, I took Rita, this hot as fuck piece of ass from Kent Laboratories, and fucked her brains out in the bathroom. She must do fucking gymnastics, because I had her bent so far over, I swear her—"

“Enough.” I squeeze my eyes shut and put a hand to my temple. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want a play by play of your most recent fuck toy?”

“I figure I’m doing you a favor. You gotta have material for the spank bank somehow, right?”

“I’m done with this conversation,” I start walking for the door.

Darren just laughs behind me. “Never gets old. You make it too easy, brother. And it’s Friday night. Go live a little.”

I roll my eyes but right before I get to the door, I stop, remembering what happened the last time I gave in and lived a little. Miranda, cradling her arm. And that was after we acted out a fantasy of me raping her.

Like father like son.

“Hey,” I swallow down my self-disgust and turn my head back toward Darren, “do you ever miss Chloe?”

Darren’s face sobers instantly and he blinks a couple times, obviously surprised by my non-sequitur. “Yeah, all the time. What makes you ask?”

I shrug and look down.

“Do you ever call her? Or write?”

After that horrific afternoon, I took Chloe straight to a hotel. She was only a few months away from her eighteenth birthday so I kept her hidden away in the hotel until then. Once she turned eighteen, I asked her where she wanted to live. She said Austin, so we bought plane tickets to Texas. I bought her a house there with my portion of my grandfather’s inheritance I’d gotten when I’d turned eighteen.