Page 161 of The Rules
He leaned forward—closer, smoother than gravity allowed. The motion was sinuous, controlled, predatory. His voice dropped low, intimate.
"And yours?" The glint in his eyes was too sharp to be amusement. "They’re delicious."
A slow shiver traced down her spine.
The shift beside her wasn’t large, but it was definitive.
Ben set his glass down—hard. Not enough to shatter it, but enough to make it known. The sound cracked like punctuation in the charged air.
When he finally spoke, the words came low and deliberate, each syllable carved from stone.
“Are you finished?”
No blink. No reaction.
The stare from across the table didn’t waver. Julian’s eyes stayed locked on her, treating Ben’s voice like elevator music—faint, ignorable, irrelevant.
"Relax, big brother," Julian murmured, lips curling into something just shy of sinister. "I’m just getting to know her."
Julian leaned in further, his voice dropping into something intimate. Too intimate. Like they were sharing secrets in a bedroom rather than a bar.
"Tell me something, Winters—" his eyes gleamed with malicious curiosity. "Did you enjoy having him watch you?"
She froze. The words hit like a slap across the face.
Not because of what he said—but because of howhe said it. Straight to the vein. He hadn’t guessed—he’d known.
"What?" Her voice came out low, dangerous.
Julian drummed his fingers against the table. Lazy. Pleased.
"On that stage. The way he looked at you." His tone slithered between them. "You must have felt it."
Her pulse spiked—rage, sharp and sudden, rising like bile in her throat. He was baiting her. Poking every raw nerve with precision.
But before she could spit something back—
"Or was it better..." Julian’s voice dipped again, smooth, soft, "when you were on your knees for him?"
Katherine’s head snapped toward Ben, fury exploding behind her eyes.
"You told him?" she demanded, voice cracking like a whip. Loud enough to turn heads if anyone had been close enough to hear.
Ben didn’t answer right away. His expression shifted, carved from stone—but there was something volatile behind his eyes.
A flash of something primal, barely held back.
"I didn't—" he snapped, the words cutting out through clenched teeth. "Jesus, I didn’t."
He didn’t rise. Didn't shout. But his hands curled into fists against the table, the muscles in his forearms rigid, trembling with the effort not to lash out—at the air, the words, the man across from him.
Julian just smiled, slow and unbothered, watching the chaos he’d dropped like a match into gasoline.
And Katherine?
She looked between them both, chest heaving, the sting of humiliation catching fire behind her ribs. Because whether Ben told him or not—Julian still knew.
Her chest tightened as Julian leaned back into the booth, slow and measured, one arm resting loosely in his lap. He didn’t need theatrics—just presence. Satisfaction curled at the edges of his mouth, his ice-blue eyes drinking in her discomfort with undisguised pleasure.
