The Wrong Kind of Love

“Yeah. Just a girl who knocked your ass out…” I pat the ice bag on my way back inside the house.

I pause at the end of the hall when I notice Bob by the kitchen sink, a beer in his hand.

“I heard you through the window.” His eyes narrow as he takes a slow sip of beer, then sets the can onto the counter. “The girl’s boyfriend is related to Tom? In that case, seems there’s a real simple solution to this problem” He pulls his gun from his holster, then cocks a brow. “But a pretty girl like that, her pussy deserves one hell of a fucking before she dies.”

Nuclear rage radiates through me, and I snatch the weapon from his hand, and place the tip against his temple. Regardless of her ties, I refuse to let her suffer the same fate my mother and sister did. Without thought, I pull back on the hammer, and Bob flinches at the click. “You fucking touch her, and I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

“The hell, Jude…Calm down” His hands lift in surrender before he takes a cautious step back. I snatch his beer from the counter and chuck it in the sink, using the gun to motion him toward the door. “Get outta my house.” With the current mood I’m in, If he wasn’t my uncle, I’d probably go ahead and put this bullet through his head.

He backs through the kitchen, past the table. When he reaches the door, he glances at his gun. “I need my gun back.”

I shove the pistol beneath my belt on a glare. “Get out.”

He hesitates, then leaves, the door banging shut behind him.

I stand at the window and wait for his taillights to disappear before I go back to the kitchen for a bottle of whiskey.

Then I sit on the couch and drink. I play through every encounter I’ve had with her since she set foot in my house. She pissed herself for Christ’s sake. My gut instinct says she has no clue, that she’s simply a pawn in Tom’s master plan–whatever the hell that is. But then, what if she’s not? If Tom wants to kill me, I don’t give a shit, but I refuse to let him take my brother. Caleb is too good. He has too much of a chance of getting out of this lifestyle to be taken out.

I turn the TV on and take a sip, then another.

I’m a quarter of the way through the bottle when a commercial for shampoo comes on. The woman on screen tilts her head back under the water, and all it does is remind me of shoving Victoria in the shower earlier in the day. I caught a flash of her perfect tits and her hard pink nipples before I forced myself to look away. I think about how much I’d enjoy sucking them, biting them, about how good her ass would look with my handprint over it. Then I think about how good it would feel to bury my dick in that captive pussy.

And how sick does that make me? Sick as fuck.

“Where’s Ria?”

I jump, using the bottle to cover the bulge in my jeans as I glance over the back of the couch at my brother. “Who the hell is Ria?”

“Victoria, Jude.”

Holy hell. He’s given her a nickname? My cheeks heat with annoyance, and not because he’s given a hostage a nickname. That would be rational. No, the screwed-up reason it bothers me is that she obviously lets him call her Ria.

His arms come across his chest. “She’s not in my room, so where is she?”

“In mine.”

Seconds tick by, seconds where he glares at me, where he’s clearly got something to say about that. But he doesn’t. “Whatever. I’m going to Elysium.”

***

It’s past one before I stagger upstairs, momentarily forgetting—thanks to the whiskey—that she’s in my room. But when the door swings open, there is no forgetting because she’s wide awake, in my Guns n’ Roses T-shirt, and in my bed.

Damn. That shirt looks good on her.

My gaze drifts from her long legs to her pouty-ass lips, and I fight a groan as I lock the door. She watches me fumble out of my clothes on my way across the room. “What are you doing?”

“Getting in my fucking bed.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “What the fuck are you doing?”

She gets up and moves to stand by the footboard. “I want to go back to Caleb’s room.”

She wants to go back to Caleb’s room. A little twinge of jealousy spikes inside me. “You have a thing for my brother?”

She snorts and waves a hand toward me. “Are you going to sleep on the floor like he does?”

Of course Caleb would give her his bed… no wonder she hit him with a lamp.