Then what?
A shock of old grief welled fast.
A flashflood.
I ground my teeth, trying to hold it back, to beat it down where it belonged.
This girl had no idea about the monster lyin’ next to her.
Girl nuzzled closer, her nose in my bare chest, a whisper from her mouth, “Rhys.”
Like she’d just gone and sensed the torment, tapped into my agony, and it’d drawn her from the dream.
“Goddess Girl,” I rumbled back.
She pulled back just a fraction. Charcoal eyes blinked in confusion.
I shifted so I could peer down at her better.
At this sweet siren lying in my arms who had no clue what she was doin’ to me.
Those eyes went wide when she realized she was lying on me, my dick hard and my chest bare. A grin stretched my mouth because she was just so goddamn cute.
“Oh my god.” She scrambled back. She was on her hands and knees, so much guilt on her face she might as well have committed armed robbery. “Oh. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
My brow quirked. “Tell me you aren’t apologizin’?”
Slipping the rest of the way off the mattress, she fumbled to standing on the side. “I didn’t mean…”
She gestured to the bed as if she thought just sleeping beside me had been a salacious act.
My gaze took her in where the bare mornin’ light flooded in through the drapes, the girl lit up like a goddess in the glittering, golden rays.
How she made sleep pants and a tee look like negligee, I didn’t know.
But the girl was sexy as fuck.
Enticing.
Kinda amusin’, too, with the way she danced around on her toes and shook out her hands like she’d been caught committing a few more of those crimes.
I sat up farther, slanting my fingers through the disaster that was undoubtedly my hair. I canted her a grin as I peered over at all that adorable fluster. “Let’s be clear about one thing, gorgeous…”
Her brows lifted in confusion. “What’s that?”
“You don’t ever have to apologize for climbin’ into my bed. Kinda like you there, if I’m being honest.” I let it play out like a tease. It was a shame I wasn’t joking.
She released a tiny gasp, and shit, my cock twitched, and I wondered if she’d actually felt it because those eyes were raking over me where I was sitting up with just the sheet covering my poor throbbing dick that was thinking this whole situation was totally unfair.
Far too interested in how she looked standing right there.
Delicious.
Decadent.
Forbidden fuckin’ fruit I wanted to pluck from a tree.
When she looked back at my face, her cheeks were bright red, and she went to chewing at that bottom lip, nervous and shy and still wholly concerned about me. “How are you feeling?”
This girl.
I gruffed out a disbelieving laugh and scrubbed a palm over my face, getting all spun up in who she was. “You’re askin’ me how I’m feeling?”
“Well, you did puke your guts up last night.” She almost managed a smile.
A chuckle rumbled free, and then my tone shifted back to serious again. “Well, I’m feelin’ like I puked my guts up last night. But I think the real question we should be asking is how you’re feelin’?”
She blanched. Her expression going dim. Like maybe she’d thought I was gonna ignore what I’d woken up to last night.
“I’m just fine.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Demand was out before I could think it through.
There was no stanching the rage that blistered across my skin when I thought of what’d happened to her.
Maggie’s father had been a piece of shit. Karl Fitzgerald had been the CEO of Mylton Records, a label Carolina George was set to sign with before all kinds of shit went down.
Came down to the fact the fucker had run one seedy empire.
Sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll.
Except the sex and drugs had been coercion. The artists videotaped and photographed, their illicit activities used as blackmail so the prick could siphon more from their royalties.
The real kicker? It’d been discovered women and men had been held in a house in LA. They’d been tricked, manipulated, some straight-up abducted and forced into servitude to feed the bullshit he was playin’.
Fucking disgusting.
Razors scraped my throat.
Maggie had gotten caught in it. One of the sick, twisted artists had hurt her.
Cory Douglas.
It’d been covered up until the lid had been blown off the whole thing thanks to Royce going after his stepfather.
Toppling him from his throne.
Maggie had been set to testify against them both until they had ended up dead in their jail cells six months ago, permanently silenced. It’d gone down right before I’d taken her to that bar because I’d wanted to give her a moment’s distraction from that bullshit.
Still didn’t know if she considered it a blessing or a tragedy. That it’d come to a violent, gory end.