Cruel Seduction (Underground Kings 2)

“Come on, let’s go swimming.”

“Do you know how?” I ask her, remembering all those years ago when she said she never learned. I always wanted to teach her.

“No, but I have a feeling I’ll be okay,” she says as she walks away. She pauses when she realizes I’m not following her and looks back, extending a hand in invitation. Her strength, something I know she always had, surprised me. Her shoulders are back, her chin is high, and she has this wisdom in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. It isn’t fear or sadness, but endless determination peering at me through the depth of her honey-colored eyes.

Gabriella is an earthquake, expected and strong. If she wants, she could destroy someone with her wit, but she couldn’t do it with my brother. If there is one thing that drowns the aftershocks of an earthquake, it is the tsunami caused by the force.

A man who drains a woman from what makes her uniquely unlike any other woman in the world deserves to die by the hands of that woman.

How could she effortlessly bounce back after everything? Maybe…My dreams get the best of me again. Maybe Kendrick wasn’t as horrible as I thought.

No, I know that isn’t right, or he wouldn’t have hidden her away for so long. He was afraid to get caught.

A light switches on in my head. Kendrick is afraid of me, and he didn’t know the place he wanted to hide her is the place she was meant to be found.

I slide my hand into hers, still in disbelief that she is here, and follow her lead. My eyes lock on to the heart-shaped ass, watching the slight jiggle of each cheek in the tight pants. Fucking hell, I want to sink into her from behind and fuck her until her throat is raw from screaming my name.

If there is one thing I know that needs to be reality, it’s the way she cried my name as I drove into her repeatedly in my dreams.

I'm not the kind of man to give up either.

She opens the door, and I slide it shut behind me. The night is beautiful, starless, but still beautiful. The dark skies look gray from the clouds, and the moon is behind them somewhere, shining its light. I walk to the pool’s control panel and flip on the lights. They change different colors, blue, red, green, and yellow. I also make sure the temperature is warm.

Instead of getting in like I thought she would, she rolls up her pants to the knee and sits along the edge, placing her feet in the pool. She leans her weight on her hands. “Come on, sit next to me.”

Like I’d turn down a request like that.

I roll up my pants too, feeling like a dork with capris on, and sit beside her. I suddenly feel drained, and my hand hurts from hitting Heaven across the face.

“You look sexy in your outfit, Gabriella.” I don't want her to think I think she looks horrible. She could never look horrible. The woman could put on a witch’s nose and a trash bag, and she’d still be the prettiest woman in the room.

God, I am fucking gone for Gabriella. Lost in her.

And I have no way out.

Chapter Fourteen

GABRIELLA

I feel like a teenager all over again.

Sitting next to Sebastian has my stomach matching the tempo of the waves beneath us. Which reminds me, the house they live in is extraordinary. There is a view of the cliffs and the sea in every room. It screams wealth, but secrets too. I have a feeling every person in this house has secrets that makes them able to afford a place like this. What are Sebastian’s?

“It was Quinn’s idea. She wanted to get me all dolled up and if her plan failed, she was going to sick Heaven on me, but he beat her to it.”

Sebastian flexes his hand and winces. “He really did.”

“Are you going to tell me why you hit him?”

“Does it scare you that I did?”

I bark out a laugh. I throw my head back to let it all out, but then it come to a slow end, trailing off on a huff. “You think that scares me? Nothing scares me anymore, Sebastian. Well, Kendrick does, but anything else? I’m numb to it.”

His hand lands on mine, lacing our fingers together, a sweet habit that I didn’t think existed anymore. “That makes me angry. You said I had no reason to be angry, but he is the reason why I’m angry,” he says, staring up the vast sky that looks like it is about to swallow us up and never spit us back out.

“Don’t be angry. It isn’t worth it. He isn’t worth it.”

“Are you not?” he asks, his jaw opened, flabbergasted.