Page 24 of Two Chambered Heart

He was so fixated on her that he hadn’t paid a sliver of attention to all the looks he got from other women. But Corey had noticed. Everywhere they had gone, heads turned. She knew the twins were stunning, but to see it confirmed by the general public made her think her raw sexual attraction to them wasn’t just some perverse form of Stockholm Syndrome.

The panic on Kayden’s face when she’d taken off had been priceless, second only to the look on his face when he’d chased her into a dead-end alley. His prey drive was all over his face, his smile all teeth and promise. He’d looked absolutely feral, and genuine fear had gripped her body as he’d backed her against the wall, molten heat building through her faster than she’d ever experienced, the adrenaline from running sending her blood singing in her ears.

It was a similar heat that was gripping her now in the pool, and she needed to cool down.

Kayden was prattling away about how they’d built the two bikes parked downstairs. “We have a workshop, tons of bikes in there. Definitely enough bikes, but Jase, he compulsively buys them, new and used ones. He collects them and takes them apart. We use the parts to build new bikes. We can customize them that way—make them faster, louder, handle sharper turns, sleeker body. Whatever we want, really. The ones we keep here are our favourites. They’re the fastest. We’ve taken them over 300 kilometers per hour.”

That seemed insane to Corey, but she guessed when you had that much money, side hobbies became more excessive.

She wasn’t really that interested in all the details Kayden was divulging, if she was being honest. Before he’d left, her eyes had kept wandering over Kayden’s shoulder to his brother. But now that Jason was gone, she tried to tune back in. There was no harm in learning more about motorcycles and how they worked. Knowing about cars had been lucrative. Maybe there was something there for Corey with bikes.

Corey sipped the last few drops of her whiskey and set the glass on the edge of the pool. She put her hands behind her and hoisted herself out. The cool evening breeze was a pleasant shock to her heated skin. She leaned back on her elbows, keeping her feet in the pool, mirroring the position Jason had been in when they’d walked onto the rooftop.

Kayden watched her from where she’d left him inside the pool.

“You’re not really that interested in bikes, are you?”

Corey blushed. “Not really.”

“More interested in my brother?” he asked with an eyebrow cocked and half a grin on his face. So he’d noticed her wandering attention then. She expected him to be mad or jealous, but he just looked amused.

Corey’s blush deepened, and she cursed her cheeks for constantly colouring around them. She wasn’t usually such a doe-eyed, blushing thing. She couldn’t even blame it on the heat anymore, since she’d taken herself out of the pool.

Corey didn’t bother denying it. “What’s his deal, anyway?”

“What do you mean?” Kayden asked, leaning his elbows on the pool deck beside her.

She wanted to ask why Jason seemed to detest her so much. Why he kept looking at her like she was a gross stain on his suede couch. Why he hadn’t uttered more than a few words to her, spitting them out like venom from the back of his throat. She didn’t know what she’d done to elicit such a reaction. Sure, she’d slept in his car, and made herself at home in their condo, but they were the ones now keeping her here. If he’d expect her to fold and grovel, he was sorely mistaken.

Whatever had him lifting his nose at her every opportunity he got, the sentiment was not mirrored by Kayden, which made it difficult for her to pinpoint what had gotten her written down on his hate list. But she didn’t want to divulge all of that to Kayden. She didn’t want to seem like she cared at all about what Jason thought of her. Because she definitelydidn’tcare what Jason thought of her.

“Is he always so broody?” she asked instead.

“Yes.” Kayden replied simply, the breath he let out seasoned lightly in melancholy. There was more there, she was sure of it.

“Are you guys close?”

“Yes,” he said again. It was a happier reply, leaving a smile in its wake.

Corey had a million and one questions she wanted to ask him. She wanted to know how old he was, where he was from, where he landed in the criminal underworld, and how he’d gotten there. But as she watched the steam rise from the pool around his body, rivulets of water running down his neck and over the swell of his brawny shoulder cap, she decided not to ask.

She had already shut him down from asking questions about her life earlier. She didn’t want to owe him anything in return.

Ultimately, none of those things mattered anyway. She’d learned early on that age, demographic and job were not what defined a person.

She ran her foot along his hip, distracting him from the somewhat stilted conversation they’d fallen into. She did it again, this time digging her toe into the muscle there. She really did enjoy antagonizing him.

Kayden dove his hand into the water and grabbed her by the ankle, yanking her so her ass dragged along the deck to the edge of the pool.

Corey wrapped her legs around his solid waist and squeezed him, grinning.

“Your legs are strong,” he said, impressed.

“I’m a runner.”

“So I’ve noticed.” He pressed his face close to hers. “The question is, what are you running from, Little Fox?”

Corey preened at the nickname. She’d always just been Corey, some made-up name that a stranger had given her. It wasn’t like she didn’t identify with the name, but it felt good to have something uniquely hers—a name given to her with intention, not some random name chosen because she had been nobody, and they had needed her to besomeonebefore they entered her into the system.

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