Dynasty (Boys of Winter 1)

I find it hard to picture the four boys living here together, and while I try to get a sense of what it might be like, I realize Carver didn’t bother to wait for my gawking and is already halfway up the stairs.

I skip up the stairs, and by the time I reach him, we’re already at the top. Carver enters a code and then swipes something kinda like a key fob and a light turns green right beside the handle of the door, letting him know it’s okay to enter.

I gape at him. What the hell happened to having a good old key to get inside your house? Since when did people start having fancy-ass locks like this? At this stage, I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaned into the door to have his eyes scanned to confirm his identity before entering.

Carver opens the door wide and I follow him in through the huge foyer and right in through the main part of the house. He stops by the kitchen before turning to me. “Hungry?”

I shake my head and watch as he shrugs his shoulders and continues through his home. He leads me to a grand staircase and starts making his way up, and for a moment, I feel as though I should wait downstairs, but it’s not as though he didn’t know I’ve been following him through the whole house. If he didn’t want me there, surely he would have said something. Besides, I’m far too curious to wait behind.

Carver leads me right up the stairs into a long hallway and I follow him into a room that I’m assuming is his bedroom. “What are you doing here, Winter?” he asks, grabbing the back of his shirt and shrugging out of it as he walks straight into his massive walk-in closet.

I find myself following him and leaning against the open door frame, my eyes roaming over his naked chest and taking in every little defined line of his abs before following it down to that deep ‘V’ that demands every bit of my attention.

Carver clears his throat and I realize that he’s still waiting for my answer. “Oh, I, umm … I was looking for some answers.”

His eyes narrow and I watch as he pulls a white shirt off a shelf before pulling it over his head and getting started on his pants. They drop to the ground and I do everything in my power to look away, but I can’t. I’m like a moth to a flame, unable to control myself. “What kind of answers?” he questions as he finds a pair of grey sweatpants and quickly steps into them, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

I swallow back the fear in my throat that’s telling me not to push him, but my determination wins out. “What were you guys talking about the other day when you said you’d handle the whole Pornhub thing?”

A smile tears across his face and he walks out of the massive closet, stopping right in front of me as he flicks off the light. “Really? Out of all the things you could have asked me, that’s the one you’re going to go with?”

“I…” I cut myself off before shrugging my shoulder and realizing what a missed opportunity that was. There are a million things I could have asked him and I chose to go with something that really means nothing at all. Rookie error.

Carver watches me a second before stepping in even closer. “Why’d you come to me and not King or Cruz?”

“I didn’t,” I tell him honestly. “I figured you all would be here, and I thought that between the four of you, I’d be able to squeeze the answers I’m looking for out of one of you. It didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t all be together.”

He nods, not giving even the slightest hint if he approves of my response or not. “The guys wanted to party and I wasn’t feeling it, so I dropped them off at that pier party, but from the looks of it, you were just there.”

I glance down my body to my rolled-up black jeans that got wet at the bottom and the little bits of sand still randomly found over my feet and ankles. “I was,” I tell him. “But I left.”

“I see that.”

I curse myself for saying something so blatantly obvious before raising my chin and getting right back into it so I can get out of here. “So, what’s it going to be?” I ask. “Are you going to answer my question or do I need to head back to the pier party and bat my eyelashes at Cruz until he breaks?”

Carver watches me for a long moment before finally letting out a low sigh. “What we meant by handling it was that we had every intention of tracking down the bastard who took advantage of a sixteen-year-old girl and beat his ass to a pulp after getting the video removed.”