Page 65 of Vengeful Seduction
To say I was conflicted was a definite understatement.
I didn’t know how to feel. I should be pissed off because Kaye was trying to set Brent up with someone else, but I was actually kind of relieved about it too. Confusing, to say the least.
“Hey, man.” Speak of the devil. Or, in this case, think about him. It was Brent, poking his head into my office, strangely reserved and almost sheepish as he slunk in when I waved to him.
“What’s up?” I asked, and I could tell something definitely was. I had rarely seen Brent as agitated as he was, fiddling with his own fingers and running his hands over his legs as he seated himself.
“I have a confession,” Brent admitted, and he focused his eyes on mine, but it was like he was forcing himself to do it.
“Spit it out.” I tried not to grit my teeth. Whatever this was, I was absolutely certain by his reaction I wasn’t going to like it. Better to get it out of the way so we could focus on damage control.
I had no idea what to expect, but what he said next wouldn’t have made it onto my list of ten guesses, if I had made one. It wouldn’t have made it even onto a list of a hundred.
“When I seduce Kaye, I want to keep her,” Brent spoke quietly, as though ashamed of himself, but firmly, as though resigned to the shame. As though what he was saying was worth it.
“You want to do what?” I asked, feeling suddenly quite faint, my head spinning. I couldn’t have heard him right, or he was messing with me, or I was misunderstanding.
This can’t actually be happening.
“I like Kaye a lot. I think I might even …I’ve never loved a woman before, but if I could love one, it would be her.” He looked at me, and I looked back, utterly dumbfounded.
This was Brent—the most devoted bachelor in the world, one who was never seen in the company of the same woman more than a few times. The things coming out of his mouth were absolutely ludicrous in the face of his entire personality.
“You want to keep her?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. It came out small and stifled and my heart barely seemed to be beating. My breathing was very slow as I almost held it to listen to his response.
“She’s one in a million,” Brent murmured, and he got this little smile on his face, one I could almost swear couldn’t be faked. I’d never seen him smile in exactly that way before and it would have been fascinating in any other situation. “I hope it doesn’t offend you, but I want her. I just …wanted you to know. I’m going to keep her for myself.”
He wasn’t even asking my permission, I realized. This was something Brent fully intended to do, and what he was telling me—in his own subtle way—seemed to be that he had no intention of changing his mind, no matter what I thought about it.
And I was taking it pretty well, all things considering. Or I thought I had been, until I found myself on my feet, looming over Brent’s seat, bending over the desk, and glaring at him as though my expression could somehow keep this all from happening.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I said. Well, no. I didn’t say it. I yelled it, and I was glad for the good construction of the house, which should keep this conversation relatively private.
But my voice kept rising and I fought it for a short time, but ultimately lost the battle. I was soon screaming at him, looming over him, and he rose to his feet to face me.
“You can’t just take my fucking wife, you son of a bitch,” I growled, and I only realized my hands had clenched into tight fists when I saw his doing the same. He was getting ready to protect himself against me, and I wasn’t entirely sure he had no cause.
I wanted to rip him apart. My rage roared through me, a wild beast that wouldn’t be tamed. This man dared to come into my house and tell me he was going to just keep my wife! Of course I was going to be mad.
“David …”
Brent still wasn’t backing down. The bastard was standing his ground, even in the face of my anger. More than ever before, I found myself having to fight down the urge to tear him apart.
It was another battle I was losing, I feared.
When I saw his defiance, I moved around my desk, almost jumping over it as though it wasn’t even there. It had been all there was to protect him from me, and in seconds, it was behind us both. I stood in front of him, hands still clenched into fists.
I was going to destroy this man. Maybe I would even kill him for the things he had dared to say about my Kaye.
“Shut up,” I snarled. “Don’t talk to me, you son of a bitch. You stay the fuck away from my wife.”
Brent didn’t cower back. He probably didn’t have it in him. He was naturally a dominant person, even more than I was, and he stood up straight and tall, icy cold in the face of my fiery fury.
“You’re acting crazy,” Brent commented, almost offhandedly, where most people would have been trying to get away from me. I could be sort of intense, even when I wasn’t this utterly furious.
I just snarled at him, anger robbing me of my voice. My body tensed, flushed through with a fury that actually felt pretty good and numbed everything else I could be feeling. But he was once more undeterred.
“David, calm the hell down,” Brent demanded, and I tensed up, my whole body wanting to launch itself at him. I held myself back. Barely. It was quite hard not to knock the living shit out of the man I had considered my best friend for years. “You’re acting completely insane. Why do you care so much?”
