Sterling (Carolina Reapers 6)

“He already knew? I’m just hearing this for the first time!” I swiveled in my chair and threw the ice pack into the trash can. “And the last.” I rose to my feet.

“The first…” Langley startled, her head swinging toward London.

London scrambled out of her chair and came around the table, gripping the sleeve of my hoodie. “Outside. Now.”

“Or?” I challenged.

She looked up at me and swallowed, a flash of fear streaking through those glacier-blue eyes. “Please,” she whispered.

I nodded. What the fuck else was I supposed to do when she looked at me like that?

She tugged me out of Langley’s office and into the deserted hallway, then closed the door and marched me right into another office.

This one was small. Windowless. She took one, sweeping look and shuddered, yanking me back into the hallway, where she dropped my sleeve so she could pace.

I leaned back against the wall and folded my arms over my chest, doing my damnedest not to notice that the sexy little black heels on her feet were the same height the others had been. I bet she barely comes up to mid-chest on me when those things aren’t on.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I did something.” She stopped right in front of me. A single step, maybe two, and she’d be right between my feet. “And you wouldn’t pick up your phone, so I just went with it, and…” She sighed, then turned those blue eyes on me. “I need your help.”

4

London

“Jansen,” I sighed his name as I tried and failed to collect the right words to explain myself to him.

Something deep inside me trembled at evidence of raw power rippling off of him—the slightly swollen cheek, the cracked lip. The way he’d slammed the ice pack down in the office moments ago, the look he’d given Maxim, all pain and rage.

It was absolutely stupid and reckless to even think ask this of him. To put myself in the middle of two thrashing beasts…

But I had to.

“Jansen,” I said, more gently this time. He had let me drag him into the hallway, trailing behind me with an eerie sort of silence as I pulled on that muscled arm.

I gazed up and up at him, those dark blue eyes churning with barely leashed hate and pain. My fingers itched for more contact, to trace the hard line of his jaw, to smooth those furrowed lines between his brow. A few blinks, and his emotions were replaced by cool calculation as he finally met my gaze.

“How deep does this issue with Maxim go?” I asked after a few moments of heated silence.

I asked that question instead of what I needed to ask him because part of me couldn’t bring myself to admit what I’d done—that I’d already booked the brother promos and had tried constantly to speak with him about it for the past month. Granted, with how easily Maxim had agreed to the promos, I didn’t think the hate ran this deep. But, after their locker room brawl, and the evidence on his face…God, I don’t know what I’d gotten myself into.

The tension practically vibrated off him, his muscles bunched and flexed beneath the tight black Reapers T-shirt he wore.

He parted his lips a few times, then shut them.

I blew out a breath, shaking my head as the adrenaline tried to cool in my blood. “Why would you go after Maxim like that? Your own brother?” Why did no one know until recently you were brothers? Why is there so much pain there?

Something ice-cold flash in his gaze—shock and disappointment. “Figures you’re worried about Maxim,” he grumbled, and my concern quickly shifted to anger.

“I’m worried about both of you!” I snapped. And the truth in those words hit me in the chest. It wasn’t just because of my job and that their cooperation depended on it—it was because of that look in Sterling’s eyes…

It bothered me.

Like an itch I couldn’t reach. I wanted to soothe that hurt I’d seen flash behind his eyes—not physical echoes from the brawl, but emotional. That pain radiating out of him before he’d had the sense to hide it from me. I wanted to know more so I could help him.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he said, narrowing his gaze. “I don’t start these things. He does. Maxim is the problem—”

“He’s your brother,” I cut him off, exasperated. How could two people bound by blood be so vicious with each other? “Can’t you cut each other some slack?”

“You have no idea,” he said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “No clue.”

“Then tell me,” I said. “Explain it to me.” He had no reason in the world to open up to me. Just because we’d shared a charged moment in an elevator didn’t make us connected. But I couldn’t help it—I felt connected to him. Like those moments together had solidified something in my heart that begged and ached for more.