Page 75 of The Villain's Beast
“Was this Fletcher’s doing?” I asked.
Bellamy shrugged. “Can I stay here awhile?”
“What did Fletcher do?”
“I just don’t want to be there,” he said, taking a step toward me and flattening his hands against my chest. He walked us backward into the house, lifting onto his toes like he was chasing after a kiss.
Bellamy was a fucking siren. I’d known that since the initiation weekend, but there was definitely something more going on than met the eye. I snatched his wrists, both of them in one hand, and pushed him back. His eyes went impossibly wider and he gasped, pupils dilating into dark black pools in less than a second.
“I don’t believe you,” I told him.
“We’re all on the same side,” he whimpered, bones of his wrists slender and breakable beneath my fingers.
“I’ve known Fletcher Sinclair a very long time.” I shoved Bellamy into the banister. “The only side he’s on is his own.”
“He’s selfish,” Bellamy agreed. “He’s cruel.”
I blew out an amused breath, hauling Bellamy around the corner of the stairs and up to the library room on the second floor of the house.
“I’m all of those things and worse,” I warned, tossing Bellamy onto the floor. He landed hard on his ass, legs bent and hands splayed back behind him. He scrambled to his feet, chasing after me toward the door. His hands reached for my belt, for my hips.
“Gideon,” he pleaded.
My body filled the doorway, and Bellamy pulled his hands away without having to be told. If I thought too long about it, I could remember his smooth naked skin beneath mine, the little breathy moans that left his throat when he was scared and aroused. It would have been easy to fall for a man like Bellamy. Far easier to fall for him than it had been when I fell for Fletcher the first time. But Luca was angry and Bellamy was too compliant for their arrival to have been anything less than contrived.
I was stupid for thinking things had changed, for believing that after all this time, Fletcher and I might finally be on the same page. I’d given him the last pieces of myself I had left, my body, my fucking virginity, because I’d never been able to say noto him. I’d neverwantedto say no to him. But for the second time in our lives, he’d proven me a fool for believing his body over his words. Even though we’d sat together around a table and devised a plan, Fletcher was always going to make moves that suitedhimbest.
He was no better than his father.
But I was.
“You can stay in here until you decide to be honest with me,” I said, slamming the door closed in his face before he could look at me again with those desperate and horny doe eyes of his.
Just like the guest room Bellamy had stayed in his first night at Rose Hall, the door latched securely and automatically, ignoring his fists and his frantic fingers on the knob.
“Gideon!” he shouted my name until his voice cracked.
He yelled for me until Luca finally appeared at the end of the hallway, wearing nothing more than a pair of low slung gray sweat pants and his glasses. His hair was damp from a shower, falling in clumps over his forehead. Water trailed down the sides of his neck, his chest, and I braced myself for another come-on. It was his way.
It never came.
Instead, Luca simply licked his lips, eyes flickering from the door to my face, then he pressed his back against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. I didn’t know if the two of them were both in on whatever Fletcher’s little scheme was or if it was only Bellamy, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to wait and find out.
“It’s late, B,” Luca rasped, dropping his head against the wall and closing his eyes.
“Then go to bed.”
“I’m not tired.”
“He’s not to leave this room,” I said, leveling Luca with a glare. “And you’re not to go in.”
“I don’t have the key and you know it,” he bit back.
I carded my fingers through my hair, shoving it off my face with a frustrated groan.
“What’s he playing at?” I asked, pacing away from Luca, away from the library and toward the stairs that led to my bedroom.
“I don’t know,” Luca said, sounding as dejected as I felt. “Daren…didn’t say.”