Page 118 of Plaything

I didn’t bother looking at Niko; I still couldn’t without turning a bright shade of red.

Aiden was the first to notice me. He glanced at me momentarily as I reached the bottom of the steps before doing a double take. His lips slightly parted, and I felt a wave of confidence rush through me at the dumbstruck stare I had earned.

“You look like a little starlet,” Wyatt announced with a charming smile, capturing my attention and everyone else’s.

Moving to stand next to the sofa he sat on, I smiled at him. “Niko said it wasn’t too much, but I’m unconvinced.”

“Not at all; you look lovely,” Aiden chimed in. His tone had an edge that hinted at jealousy. Amused at his sudden protectiveness, I grinned back at him. For once, I picked up on something in his tone. I found it cute. He had nothing to worry about at this dinner. There weren’t any men who’d capture my attention—none compared to them.

Vincent slapped his thighs before standing up with an old-man-ish groan that contradicted his age. “Alright, ready to head out? I brought shots in mini bottles to make the night more tolerable,” he winked.

Why hadn’t I thought of that? Oh, right—I was 20.

Dominic made a sound of disapproval before he shot Vincent an unamused glance that made me giggle.

“Thanks, I’m good, though—for now, at least. We’ll see,” I dismissed.

“I’m kidding,” Vincent rolled his eyes, but he gave me a playful look and mouthed, ‘I’m not kidding,’ as he passed me.

The man conflicted me deeply. I mean, he seemed harmless and like a genuinely good guy. He was their friend, and they trusted him, which made me want to trust him. But he was also one of Charles’ business partners...

Innocent until proven guilty was what I was trying to reason, but I was a naturally skeptical person.

“Vincent, can you behave yourself?” Dominic questioned with his eyebrows pressed in concern.

“Absolutely not,” he joked, toying with them.

“Just don’t drink and drive,” Dominic reminded.

Vincent laughed. “I’m already drunk, Dominic. What am I? Twelve? I can chaperone just fine, thank you.”

“Chaperone,” I scoffed. “I’m not the one who bought shots—”

Vincent held his hands up in surrender. “Just trying to lighten the mood. These people suck,” he justified.

I shrugged, agreeing with him. “I didn’t say I didn’t appreciate the idea,” I muttered.

“Can you behave?” Dominic jokingly questioned me.

“Absolutely not,” I repeated Vincent’s response with a gentle shake of my head.

Glancing down at the book in Wyatt’s hands, I read the familiar title: The Virgin Suicides. I’d read the book in my early adolescence and thoroughly enjoyed it. I still had a copy somewhere—”Did you take that off my shelf?” I realized. I wouldn’t have thought Wyatt would own such a feminine book, for lack of better verbiage.

Wyatt looked at the cover before looking at me. “Yes. I haven’t read it in years; it used to be one of my favorites,” he explained.

“Really?” I asked, my tone coming off a tad bit scrutinizing. I would sooner believe that the masculine man was snooping through my interest in literature than that.

“Is that so hard to believe?” He chuckled. I nodded.

He was grinning as his tongue darted out and licked his lips. The book rested shut on his lap as he shifted toward me. “We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.” He quoted Eugenides effortlessly.

By the end of the passage, my jaw was slightly slack, and I had a new image of Wyatt Wright. Pathetically, my panties dampened, and I was strangely attracted to his ability to quote one of my favorite books and my favorite passage. “Wow, okay... my mistake,” I mumbled.

My adoration for the book ran deep. When I was younger, I related to the Lisbon sisters. During multiple points of my life thus far, I’d wanted to be Cecilia, then Lux. When I decided I was going to have sex at that party in high school, I wanted to have my ‘Lux phase.’ I had fantasies of rebellion and doing something my father would disapprove of. At that time, I had no control over anything in my life and thought sex was something I could control.

In reality, I was just a stupid teenager, and Jimmy Erickson was my Trip Fontaine.

The book held so much value for me, and I was a little surprised that someone like Wyatt had read it enough to quote it from memory. If I believed in love, I would have fallen for him that very second.

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