Page 20 of They Break Beauty

If she’d launched this investigation, it suggested that she did remember what had happened.

That had to mean that she actually remembered me too.

So her response at the party had been a load of crap?

There’d been nothing about me in the book, nor of the events concerning that fucked-up time, though.

Had the trauma made her repress the specifics of it?

Was the investigation just built on bits and pieces that she remembered?

Or had it come from what had happened to her mom, which had been closely related to that nightmare?

Had it come from her father’s reports, rather than her own recollection?

As much research as I’d done, the only way to know the answers to that was to approach her directly, to ask outright.

But given what else I knew about her—creating a new life to run from the past—it stood to reason that she’d want to continue in that vein and do everything she could to avoid venturing down that dark road.

That asshole at the party who’d tried to assault her had made things even worse in that capacity, freaking her out and causing what had looked very much like a panic attack.

So now she would be more skittish than ever.

More fucking barriers.

It was all right, I could muster patience where this was concerned for a little while longer.

It definitely wasn’t my thing, so there was a time limit on it.

But the way things were, combined with my harsher and, according to Mason, volatile, nature, this situation would require a different approach.

Rather than confronting her directly or getting in her face, she needed to be lured carefully and with a whole lot of charisma and incentive.

Fortunately, I knew just the person for the job.

And then, finally, Brianna Walker would recognize the truth I’d allowed her to avoid for far too long.

She. Belonged. To. Me.

6

~Colton~

“I’m doing some of my best work here, darlin’.”

I licked up the length of his cock again, his only semi-hard cock, then raised my head to see Mason staring pensively up at the ceiling as he laid there on the crimson sheets of his bed. He was deliciously naked with his Greek God-like musclebound torso on display, his biceps bulging as he had his hands folded behind his head, and his thighs spread wide for me.

“Mason?” I pressed when he showed no sign of hearing me, or of even noticing that I’d stopped teasing him in the way that usually drove him crazy for me and made him putty in my hands.

“Huh?” he murmured, his gaze finally leaving the ceiling and connecting with mine. “Yeah, you know I love you in those leather pants,” he said, his eyes roaming over me, my mohawk all mussed from playing with him for the last ten minutes.

“I do know that, yeah. But you’re barely reacting to that or what I’ve been treating you to.” I wrapped my fingers around his cock. “You’re only sporting a semi.”

He shifted on the bed and brought his hands to his face. “I’m sorry, I’m just distracted.”

I released his shaft. “Because of Lev?”

“Because of him suddenly being back here with no real explanation.”

---