Page 47 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Trips

I should be used to fuck fests by now.

But tonight is different. We all know it. It’s a goodbye, hopefully a temporary one, but still. So much of me wants to be downstairs with them, accepted into the fold or some shit. But I fucked up. I’m not welcome.

Clara told me I had to earn her trust before she’d try to build anything with me, and I can’t blame her. I don’t trust myself. Months of effort, but I have no idea what going back to my father’s house will do to my tentative control. I’m not ready. I’m not sure I ever will be.

But if I can’t do this, I can’t someday be a part of whatever the hell is going on downstairs.

And as much as that situation weirded me out a year ago, every fiber of my being is desperate to be there with them now.

To see what Clara looks like falling apart at my touch.

To be surrounded by the only people in the world I trust.

But first, I’ve got to know I can trust myself.

A yowl down the hall has me burying my head under my pillow until I realize it’s just the damn cat.

I free him from Jansen’s room, and he trails me to mine, weaving between my legs like his only goal in life is to trip me.

“Fucker,” I mutter, closing the door behind us, and flopping into my bed, the ceiling not entertaining in the slightest. There’s a scuffle, then a thunk , and I’m forced to sit up, finding the damn cat has opened the hidden door to the safe under my desk.

“You take after your owner, don’t you,” I mutter as he folds himself into the hollow space like it’s a box.

He mutters back something that sounds suspiciously like he’s chewing me out about my lack of control.

I lay there for a while, but then some sort of melancholy curiosity takes over, and I approach the cat. “You’ve got to move,” I tell him.

A single mew in defiance is what I get as he curls his tail protectively around himself.

“I can’t believe I’m getting back-talk from a cat. Move. I don’t remember exactly what I left in there, and if it’s anything useful, I should get it out.”

The gray beast swipes at me twice before he grumbles and hops up on the bed, taking my favorite pillow in compensation for his trouble. Asshole.

Opening the safe feels like opening a portal into a different time.

Was it really a year ago that my biggest worries were a last-minute job to verify some Van Dyke for Jasmine and counting out my cash into piles of less than ten grand so I could avoid anti-money laundering paperwork?

What I find in the safe isn’t some nostalgic time capsule, though.

Instead, I find a fucking tiara. One I’ve never seen before. “Damn it, Jansen,” I growl, the cat immediately coming to his owner’s defense in a series of chirps and yaps.

The piece is gorgeous, a perfect complement to the blood-red dress that I bought last winter, not knowing what the hell I was going to do with it, but knowing that if Summer said it was made for Clara, I’d be an idiot to leave it in the store.

That same dress, totally see through, I may add, hangs in a garment bag in my closet, along with a pair of strappy knee-high heel things that I’m sure have some fancy name, even if I don’t know it.

I get why he took the tiara. I understand the rest of my team a lot more than I used to. It turns out that sitting back and watching them gives a man a lot more insight than hiding out and bossing them around does. Funny how that works.

Based on the design of the tiara, it came from that hoard of Nazi jewelry he hit right before we ran.

He shouldn’t have, but of course he did.

I’m not the only one unable to trust myself.

Jansen just struggles for different reasons than I do.

The rest of the safe is exactly what I expect, some papers that if the asshole progenitor came across wouldn’t hurt us, and some other pieces of jewelry that Jansen must have stuck in here.

Light steps up the stairs have me on edge, terror snaking up my spine, hating that our reprieve was so short while I grapple with the realization that I’m not ready to go back, that I don’t have enough control for this hellish mission we’ve planned out.

But nobody breaks into my room.

Instead, the footsteps go past me, the cat popping to his feet and going to the door. “Fluffington?” Jansen’s voice carries down the hallway, the annoying feline answering with a few mews, leaving me no choice but to open the door.

Jansen follows the sound of the animal, and then his wide awake, buzzing self is standing in my room, scooping up his cat, his face blanching when he spies the tiara in my hand. “Oh. Shit. I forgot I hid that there when we ran.”

I just sigh. Because Jansen is Jansen. And what happened almost eight months ago can’t be helped.

Seeing that I’m not going to rip him a new one, he flops onto my bed with the cat.

“No. If you want that cuddle shit, go back downstairs,” I state.

He groans. “They’re all asleep. And I’m wide awake.”

“Should I go get Clara so she can tug on your braid and call you a bad boy?”

He laughs, rolling all the way across my bed and sitting up at the far side, adjusting my pillows like he plans on staying. “Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s the best kind of torture.”

“No, thank you. And what the hell part of ‘get out’ didn’t you understand?”

“The part where I listen.”

I groan, stretching out on the other side of the bed. “Fuck you, man.”

“What, like you were sleeping? You were chilling with my cat and fondling my jewels.”

I stare at Jansen until he gets his accidental double entendre. Once he’s laughing, I shake my head. “Like I want fuck-all to do with your goddamn ‘jewels.’”

The cat stretches out between us, the thing so giant it can coax me into scratching under its chin while Jansen gets the ass end to pet. Lucky beast. He takes his time stroking the animal before holding out his hand for the tiara. I pass it over.

“Do you still have the dress?” he asks.

“Yeah. And the shoes.”

“Do you think we’ll ever get to see her in it?”

“Maybe it’ll be her wedding gown. It’d fit the event better than any white, fluffy thing my father would want for her.”

Jansen turns to me, anger showing in the crease of his brows, and I throw up my hands. “I'm not insulting her. Not at all. I was just thinking blood wouldn’t show on that thing nearly as much as it would on white.”

He takes a moment to determine if I’m telling the truth, then settles back against the pillows, the bed rumbling from Fluffington’s purrs. “Are you planning on blood?”

“You know we’re planning for everything, blood included.”

“True.”

The silence isn’t terrible with Jansen anymore. We’re not close, we’ve never been the closest of the group. And me almost killing Clara didn’t help. But even if he hasn’t forgiven or forgotten, he’s not furious anymore.

What would I give to have my anger disappear so easily?

To go with the flow, to trust that the world and the people around me will keep the worst at bay?

He and I, we don’t have the same story, not at all, but we both had shit childhoods.

And here I am, a bomb waiting to explode, while he exudes a combination of chill yogi and manic pixie dream boy.

On second thought, maybe he’s a bomb too. It’s just that he’s handed Clara his trigger, keeping it out of his grasp.

“What’s it like, really, between you and Clara?” I ask, suddenly curious.

He stretches, the corner of his mouth lifting into not quite a smile.

“It’s…I know it’s probably not healthy, not long-term, but for now?

I don’t have to worry about losing control because it’s not my job to be in control.

I just want her happy, and my only job is to keep her that way.

It’s, I don’t know. Freeing. And man, the sex? Explosive.”

“Fuck. I didn’t want to know about that part of it.”

“Jealous?”

“Of your dick on a leash? No fucking way.”

He laughs, and I’m barely able to hear footsteps on the stairs.

But I’m on my feet, trying to figure out how much of a fight I should put up while Jansen dives across the room, stashing the tiara in my closet.

The gentle tap on the door has me releasing the tension strumming through my bones, its cadence so familiar that I know who it is before I open it.

On the other side, I find a mussed-up Clara, barefoot in RJ’s T-shirt, and I just know she’s not wearing much, if anything, under it. Fuck .

“Hi. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I heard you and Jansen up here, so I figured…”

She trails off and I open the door all the way, ending her awkward attempt at an explanation. “Might as well join the insomniac party. It was getting weird anyway.”

“Beautiful,” Jansen practically sings, then slants his eyes in my direction. “Game?”

“What game?” she asks as I take a step away from them both, my thighs hitting the mattress behind me.

“Tickle war!” he shouts, tackling me across the mattress, Clara’s laugh devolving almost immediately to snorts as she pins my legs, her fingers dancing over my skin like ticklish, torturous spiders.

I’m stronger, I’m better trained, but once I’m laughing, it’s like my arms are water balloons for all the muscle they seem to have.

“Fuck it, stop,” I yell.

“Safe word’s watermelon,” Jansen shouts, but I can’t say it. I can’t say anything at all, both of them keeping me captive and laughing uncontrollably, tears collecting in my eyes as I try to wrestle Jansen loose from my upper body.

Then, he yelps, dropping me, a whining, “Ow, Fluffington! Get off!” telling me exactly why I can finally take a full breath.

Clara keeps giggling as she crawls over me to dislodge our bloodthirsty miniature panther from Jansen’s back, and by the time Jay’s free and deemed only scratched, I’ve recovered. Mostly.

I got a glance under that t-shirt of Clara’s, though, and my assumption was right. That’s all she’s got on. I have to will my dick back down with a visual of her blue lips and shallow breaths, half dead in my arms. It works.

Clara flops down in the middle of my bed like she belongs there, and Jansen settles down on the other side of her, his cat sitting on my desk and licking his paws like a threat. Or a treat. Really, who knows with that thing?

“I needed that,” she says, drawing my attention to her. She pats the pillow next to her, and I lay down, not fighting this, even if I feel like I should.

Jansen nuzzles into her mess of curls, and she turns to him, kissing his cheek, then resting her head on his chest. And I’m so fucking jealous that part of me wants to yank her off him and tuck her up against me. But the rest of me knows I haven’t earned that right. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The three of us talk about nothing at all, the night passing in shared memories and stupid stories.

And when Clara falls silent between us, I can’t help but reach out and touch one curl, wrapping it around my finger.

Jansen shifts on his side of the mattress and I pull my finger free, inching away from the woman beside me.

“You’ve got to keep her safe,” he whispers.

“I’ll do what I can, but you know as well as I do it might be impossible to keep her unscathed.”

“I don’t care.” His voice is harsh, like it was last winter when he showed that even a chill guy like Jansen can hold fury.

“I’ll try. I don’t want her hurt. Not again.”

He closes his eyes. “It’s just…I need her.”

“I get it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Then explain it,” I say, understanding he needs to get whatever he has to say out, even if I don’t want to hear it.

He runs his palm along her cheek, his eyes locked on her lax face. “I don’t think I can do this without her.”

“She’s key.”

“No. I don’t think I can do this, any of this, without her.” He looks up, his eyes glassy. “So keep her safe.”

I nod, not making a promise I can’t keep. But the already high stakes just leaped higher.

Because what happens to a bomb when the trigger disappears entirely?