Page 108 of Beautiful Betrayal

Eric’s the brother Grayson never had and while I know that he knows Eric can handle himself, he’s concerned for him. He has to be. I am, too. All I know about this underground group is their quest for money at all costs, and money and greed too often lead to destruction.

We arrive at the building and Axe pulls the Escalade to a side entrance. It’s not long before we’re out of the vehicle with both men standing with us. Axe is blond with a square jaw, the silent type who speaks few words. While Adrian is big and tall, Axe is a monster who towers over him a good two inches, which must make him six-five, at least.

“We’ll both be on night shift,” Adrian informs us. “We’ll be watching the building and your apartment. We’re wired into the property’s security camera with some additions we made ourselves.”

“Because we think someone is going to come and attack us in our apartment?” I ask.

Grayson catches my hand. “They’re just being cautious, baby.”

Adrian points at Grayson. “Your man here pays us, and pays us well, to be paranoid little shits.”

And a team of bad guys wants to take down Grayson and get a big payday, I think, but I leave it alone. Bottom line, they do think someone might come at us here, or they wouldn’t be here. It was a stupid question. I shouldn’t have even bothered to ask it.

Adrian motions to the door. “I’ll go first. You can follow. Axe is going to stay right here.”

And I just want to be inside our apartment. Adrian enters the building and Grayson steps behind me, leaning in to whisper, “Relax, baby. Once we’re inside the apartment, all this will melt away.”

He means we can pretend that the danger is gone, but right now, that sounds pretty darn wonderful. Adrian returns and motions us forward. The minute I’m inside the familiar lobby with shiny white marble floors with the towering ceiling, memories explode inside me and so do my nerves. I’m nervous. It’s so silly. This is my building with Grayson. This is my home, but I can’t deny the truth. My belly is fluttering.

I end up with both men framing me on the walk toward the elevator, with Grayson holding my hand. We pass the security desk, where a guard I don’t know is on duty. Grayson leans in close, near my ear, and whispers, “I never took you off the security ledger.”

My heart swells with the emotions this man stirs in me and with the reminder that he never let go of me. I thought he had. I so thought he had and I was wrong. I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong. We reach the elevator and the doors open. His hand is on my lower back as I enter the car before him. Once he joins me, his arm is around my shoulders, our bodies snuggly molded together. I don’t look at him. I can’t yet because I know that when I do, when I really look at him and talk to him, it’s going to be emotional for both of us. We’re in love, passionately in love,but we lost each other for a full, painful year and I know now that we are far from that pain. I’m afraid, too, and I need him to know that.

In what feels like eternal minutes we finally say goodbye to Adrian and step into our apartment, our home. A huge part of me wants to just see it again, to feel it again, but it’s Grayson I really need to feel. And I’m not sure he told me everything about that call with Eric. Grayson shuts the door and locks it behind us and I turn to face him, setting my purse on the entry table.

“Eric? What don’t I know?”

He shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on the entry table. “He’s not a man of many words. That’s all he said.”

“Are you worried?”

He closes the small space between us and his hands find my face. “I don’t want to talk about Eric right now.”

There’s a dark edginess to him that I know all too well. This is the side of Grayson onlyIknow. That part of him that manages to be demanding and fierce, and yet somehow tender. “You’re worried.”

“I don’t want to talk about Eric right now, baby. I want to enjoy being home with you. Do you know how many times I wished for you to be here? How many times it gutted me that you weren’t?”

Emotions do more than well in my chest and for the moment, they quake through my body. As this man I love, seeds deep in my soul all over again, and takes root. I’ve said so much to him since my return and yet not enough. There are so many things I still want to say, need to say, even. “Grayson, I—”

That’s all I manage. Suddenly he is kissing me, his hand closing around a chunk of my hair, the taste of him wild hunger with a big dose of that torment I’d sensed. I moan with the deliciously intense assault, my fears for Eric and his with them, fading into passion. Only he’s not really gone. That torment Itaste on his lips, in his kiss, is about Eric, it’s about me, and every part of this story we’re writing that he can’t control.

His lips part from mine and he scoops me up, carrying me through the apartment, our apartment, with the ease of a man carrying a feather, which I am not. I snuggle into his strong arms and the hard wall of his chest as he walks us through our gorgeous home. I have a fleeting glimpse of the wall of windows framing the living room, and overlooking a city of twinkling lights. He’s a man on a mission, and with a destination: he’s taking me to our sanctuary, to our bedroom, the place I most missed when I was gone. The place where he wraps himself around me while we sleep, and holds me in that perfect way no other man could ever hold me.

It’s a massive room, with a massive bed and a wall of windows. Once we’re just inside the doorway, he angles me to the wall and I flip on a dim light, then fire up the fireplace in the corner. Grayson carries me to our special spot, one of the two overstuffed chairs framing the fireplace. He stands in front of it and sets me down in front of him. Before my feet have firmly settled, Grayson’s hands are under my jacket and he’s dragged it down my arms again, caging them and me as he did in the office. He pulls me hard against him, our bodies flush, his lips a hot breath from mine. “You belong here,” he says, and his voice is low, rough, a command, even a demand that I agree with. “Say it.”

“Yes,” I murmur. “I belong here. I missed being here with you so very much. Grayson, I—”

He cuts me off with his mouth, his punishing, perfect mouth, and I can taste the man I know, the man no one else knows, on my tongue. This is my dark, damaged future husband, and I am certain now that we will not be sleeping tonight.

Chapter seventy-two

Eric

Two brothers don’t need to be in one dangerous place and yet Blake and his brother Luke—my brother, too, as we’re both former SEALs—insisted on raiding Brian Johnson’s house. And they did so even after Blake pinged the Dungeon communications between its members about their plan to do the exact same thing on this very night. Exactly why I’m here: to protect two brothers while protecting a man who’d become my brother in Grayson.

Dressed in all black, including a black beanie and gloves, I squat in the scrub brush outside Brian Johnson’s mansion while Blake works beside me on a MacBook he pulled from the bag on his hip to disarm the security system. He’s already frozen the asshole’s overseas accounts. The man’s got mad skills. He turned over stones Ri’s attorney didn’t think could be turned over, and did it in keystrokes, not milestones.

Brian Johnson is a low-life scum of an attorney with greed and ethics that rival my father’s. In other words, he has a whole lot of greed and very few ethics—just the kind of guy to help Ri feed these underground monsters payoff money. I left behind myfamily empire for Grayson’s to get away from that shit. Grayson has more morals than anyone I’ve ever known. I won’t allow a low-life loser like Ri or Johnson to take him down.

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