Liars and Liaisons by Sav R. Miller
22
I fucked up.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that Nathaniel now wishes to vacation at the James estate. To relax, he says, though we all know it’s because he’s the only one who took my joke from the night of my “intervention” seriously and now doesn’t want me out of his sight.
Nor does it involve the missing person report Priya just slapped down on my desk or the overly familiar photograph of a man I last saw outside my barn a few weeks ago.
Jason Keller. A top-performing grad student who inexplicably crossed paths with Sydney Scott a few months before her descent into utter madness. According to my sources, he played the main role in leading her down that path, into my family’s greedy hands.
Into Nathaniel’s arms, where she inevitably found herself dead.
It doesn’t even have anything to do with the fact that I never went out to check the scene where Violet had unleashed herself on an unsuspecting trespasser, and by the time Arsen found Janus and went to the lake, the body was gone, the blood cleaned up.
As if it’d never happened at all.
No, my fuckup stems entirely from the fact that I crossed that line with Violet over a week and a half ago with no plan whatsoever in mind. I brought her here to get under my brother’s skin, to make my family mad and worsen my reputation, and now, I don’t even want them to know she’s here.
I no longer wish to share any part of my life with them and certainly not the only part that makes me feel alive.
Even that isn’t the greatest issue though. It’s that the succulent taste I got of the vixen has fully bewitched me. I’m addicted, scarcely able to think of anything other than her sweet tang and the noises she made. How soft and pliant she was, even while angry, and how I almost came in my slacks the second I felt her teeth pierce my skin.
The glow in her eyes when she realized it too. How she embraced the little drops of my blood rather than running in disgust.
I had known of course, that something dark existed within her. Like calls to like after all.
And I’m going to enjoy unraveling the threads holding her sunny exterior together.
As soon as she stops avoiding me.
Of course, she’s locked in her room right now. As yet another weekend party rages on under the moonlight outside, I can’t have her mingling and getting into trouble. Who knows what she might think she sees there and what carnage she might cause if she beats the wrong person to death?
“It really concerns me that you don’t seem to think this is a big deal.” Priya crosses her arms over her chest, shaking the long black hair off her shoulder. “Like, I know you’re living in this fantasy world out here in the mountains, but this is real, Grayson. People are really looking for this man.”
“They can look all they want.” I shrug, squinting at my computer screen as I try to configure a new score. With the mouse, I set a couple of markers within the software and let my fingers dance over the keys as I sound out what I’ve been playing on the Baldwin for days. “They’re not going to find anything.”
His bones were boiled into a broth and then crushed into a fine powder and sprinkled into the lake.
The broth was added to the soup served to my family at dinner last night. Since they insisted on returning to the estate to check up on me.
Ian, true to form, hasn’t contacted me since. A part of me wonders what he’ll tell the dean, if anything at all. He was always one of the few professors at the school I could count on for discretion.
“That’s not the point though.” She frowns, her dark red lips curving downward. “People are paying attention now. You might not be able to just get away with everything anymore.”
“Only if my team fails.” Leaning back in my chair, I pin her with a look. “You know what happens if you fail?”
“You feed us to the goats.”
“I feed you to the goats.” Nodding, I smack the wooden surface of the desk. “Normally, they’re picky little things, but I’ve found that if you get flesh to be just the right consistency for their teeth, they’ll eat whatever you put in front of them. Particularly if they’re hungry enough.”
Horror shines in her eyes. “Were you always this sadistic?”
“Who knows? Maybe I’ve grown unwell in my old age.”
Exhaling, she reaches for her drink on the coffee table. “You’ve got that right.”
Ignoring her, I pivot the conversation. “Speaking of searches, how’s the hunt for Violet’s assailants going?”
Priya glances across the room at Janus, who shrugs and rubs at the back of his head.
“About as well as can be expected,” he says. “There are no witnesses, aside from Violet, and she didn’t get a good look at them before she attacked. So, we don’t have much to go on.”
“The security tapes don’t have anything either?”
He shakes his head, his long black hair falling over his collarbone. “They were disarmed at the time due to your nephew and his girlfriend sneaking off to get high.”
Goddamn it. Next time I fly to New York, Aiden James Santiago is a dead man.
Priya swings her leg out, groaning as if I’m wasting her time. “Have we considered the possibility that she made the whole thing up?”
“She had blood all over her.”
“Maybe she fell in something or… I don’t know… fended off a wild animal. What if, because of the adrenaline rush, her mind concocted this other story about an attack because she’s too embarrassed about what really happened?”
I drop my face into my hands. “I don’t think she’d lie about something like this.”
“I’m not saying she’s lying,” Priya replies. “But the girls have said she hears things here. Ghosts and shit. Maybe she has an overactive imagination. Our minds are powerful enough to make us believe whatever they want.”
Janus doesn’t look particularly convinced. “Fiction doesn’t match up with the evidence on her though. Plus, Aiden and Riley saw it happen. They just didn’t really… see anything.”
Priya scoffs. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“She isn’t making up the ghosts,” I say after a brief pause, jaw clenched. In the back of my mind, that melody lurks, always haunting. Always tormenting. “So, she isn’t lying about the attack. Someone’s been on my property, and someone wants to hurt her.”
Pointing a finger at Janus, I stand up. “Find out who and make sure they’re not ever able to touch her again.”
I leave them and head off in search of my brother, who can’t be trusted in public, let alone in my private residence, where so many of my secrets live. Predictably, he’s sitting at the grandiose dining table off the main kitchen, helping himself to the spread Willow and Micah laid out.
I’m equally unsurprised to see he’s taken position at the head of the table, across from the massive mirror hanging on the wall between two bay windows. Watching himself eat, the only company a man like him needs.
Taking a seat at the opposite end of the table, I stare at the sunflower and rose arrangement at the center while he shovels bits of pancakes and eggs into his mouth, like he hasn’t eaten in days. Or perhaps he’s trying to erase the taste of what he had for dinner last night.
Personally, I’m inclined not to eat anything at all, as there’s one taste I don’t want to rid myself of. A certain sweetness I’ve only ever encountered with my head between Violet’s thighs, and I’m dying for the chance to sample it again.
Though maybe next time, I won’t take only the sample. I’ll pillage, conquer the way I’ve been dying to since I first forced our worlds together. Since a single kiss knocked me out of my regular orbit and sucked me right into hers.
My cock stiffens, just thinking about it—the look on her face, something between awe and determination, grit and satisfaction. As if she knows she isn’t supposed to want me, but can’t help the fact that she does.
Desperately.
That’s what I’m banking on. It’s the only reason I let Nathaniel stay—as soon as he realizes she’s here, hell will break loose.
I just haven’t decided yet when that should happen.
“Surprised you haven’t thrown a single party since I started staying here,” Nathaniel says after he swallows, taking a drink of his coffee. “I thought that was your whole shtick.”
“Forgive me for not being eager to include you in the festivities.” I lower my chin. “I tend to reserve them for the people I like.”
“And the ones you don’t? They the ones who end up missing?”
His tone grates against some distant piece of me. Like he’s asking questions he thinks he already knows the answers to.
“I don’t know, Nathaniel. Why don’t you attend and find out?”
Leaning forward, he cuts off another piece of pancake. The sound of his butter knife scraping against the porcelain plate is loud in the otherwise silent room.
“You’ve done a lot to the place,” he says after a moment, chewing with a thoughtful look on his face. “More than any of us realized, I think. It’s creepy, even with all the people you’ve hired to keep the halls occupied.”
“One man’s trash is another’s treasure.”
He snorts. “If you believe that, I have several ex-girlfriends I could pitch to you.”
My blood heats at the insult, but I don’t take the bait. “That’s all anyone has ever been to you, isn’t it? Disposable.”
“I don’t think you, of all people, should be lecturing me—”
“Oh, I’m not. Most people have to pay good money or go into severe debt for that experience from me.”
Micah and Willow enter the room, expertly avoiding eye contact as they clear a few of his empty dishes from the table and refill the mug at his elbow.
“How much did Sydney have to pay again? Or were her lessons free? I can’t remember what your agreement was after she started warming your bed.”
I smile, the gesture made of teeth and malice. My fingers flex on the table tugging at the dark green linen covering it. “You know nothing about Sydney or my relationship with her.”
He dabs at his mouth with a napkin. “As you know nothing of mine. Yet you’ve passed judgment all the same.”
“I only judge those who are culpable.”
“But I didn’t—”
He’s cut off by a sudden crash from upstairs, and the fact that the only other people in the estate that he knows of are in the immediate vicinity doesn’t escape him. I see the moment it dawns on him that there is company elsewhere. Information he hasn’t been privy to.
He leans back in his seat, placing his utensils on top of his plate. “The east wing guest room. Who’s in it?”
I stand up from the table, heart twisting in my chest. “Nobody.”
Those eyes, dark and filled with contempt, narrow. “Is it her?”
“Only if you believe in ghosts.”
That’s as much confirmation as I’m willing to give, because I don’t need him telling people in the outside world that I’m insane, thinking my home is actually haunted. They already have their minds made up about me, which is why I’m never interested in going out and proving them right.
Then, like we’ve conjured her from our thoughts alone, Violet appears in the doorway, wearing a white knit sundress, panting like she’s just run a marathon. Her doe eyes widen as she takes in the two of us, volleying so quickly that they could fall out of her head at any moment.
“Violet?” Nathaniel stammers, immediately shoving back his seat and getting to his feet. “What—what the hell are you doing here?”
My gaze drops to her outfit, the first bit of non-black clothing I’ve ever seen her wear. The scrap of fabric seems wholly out of place on her, a size too small and so short that I can practically see her pretty pink pussy from across the room.
Suspicion clouds my judgment. “Where did you get that dress?”
Nathaniel turns his head, brows angling together. “Do you even know who this is?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to inform him that I have intimate knowledge of his vexatious ex. I’m even tempted to point out that the sounds he heard on the night of the intervention were hers as I buried my head between her legs.
My mouth parts, ready to ask if he remembers how delectable she tastes—because I certainly do.
Only she beats me to it.
“I-I came for you.”
Pink crawls across her face, like a sunset settling into the sky.
Violet covers her mouth with one hand, as if shocked by the words that came out.
I’ll admit, I am a bit too. Especially since we had a fucking deal. He’s supposed to know she resides here, that she’s been here for weeks now. The nature of her visit is supposed to be the part we keep secret because I want him to think the absolute worst.
I want it to wreck him, the way his relationship with Sydney wrecked me. Only when a man is utterly devastated from the throes of love can you ruin him for good.
“Jesus, babe.” Nathaniel lets out a strained laugh, seeming to shake out of his state of confusion. He stalks across the room, scooping her into his arms and lifting her off the ground in a bear hug. “If you wanted to see me, you didn’t need to come all the way out to Duris. This is, like, a seven-hour drive from Aplana.”
“Five and a half.” I watch them, watch her, as they continue their embrace.
He toys with one of her onyx-colored braids, dusting the end over her nose, even as she tries to remove herself from his grasp.
After a second, Nathaniel seems to notice I’ve spoken. “How do you know that?”
Fire rains down my throat. I don’t take my eyes off her. “I counted.”
Remorse flashes in her beautiful brown gaze, but she doesn’t voice an apology or regret. Instead, she doubles down on the lie, and nausea stomps around inside my stomach like an elephant with a vendetta.
“Your brother told me you’d be here, so I thought maybe we could talk.” She smiles—no, beams—at him. Her face brightens like the sun itself, and I feel the impact of it deep in my chest.
“About what?”
She shifts her focus from him to me, her attention undoing something vital within me.
It’s over in seconds. Through long, lowered lashes, she blinks up at him. “Well, we didn’t exactly leave things on the best of terms, and I thought—”
“What are you talking about?” He squints at her, genuine confusion marring his features. “What bad terms, Vi? We didn’t break up.”
When her head jerks back in surprise, it happens in slow motion. Like a car crash you can’t help watching. She frowns, and, God, I fucking hate that look on her face when it’s directed at anyone but me.
As much as I want her smiling and laughing, I can’t deny the pull of her ire as well. It makes my pulse beat out of rhythm and my dick hard as fucking steel.
Nathaniel’s words take a moment too long to settle in since I’m too busy ogling the raven-haired sprite. She glances at me from the corner of one eye, and it drives a knife clean through my stomach.
“We didn’t break up.”
Red flags wave a chaotic trail in my mind, blurring my vision so everything is bright crimson. The color of my Little Echo’s lips and the color I’d like to make her turn for fucking lying to me all this time.
I stand and stagger back a step, my hand catching on a sideboard to keep me from falling. That obscene, haunting melody roars like angry water between my ears, drowning out everything else, except the knowledge that this might have all been some sort of ploy on their part.
Of course she’d be in on whatever my brother’s grand scheme is. Her initial willingness to come here should’ve been the first obvious sign.
That’s probably where the money I gave her went. Right back to lining his filthy pockets, as if he wasn’t philandering with my student and using her to fuck me over less than a year ago.
Like father, like son, I suppose. Ezekiel’s been gunning for my demise since my birth, and he enjoyed twisting Sydney’s hopes and dreams to shatter me.
Nathaniel cups Violet’s face in his hands, and red morphs to a vibrant green in my eyes. He lowers his face to hers, even as she keeps her gaze on me.
Envy and betrayal spin a hot web across my chest, blanketing my organs with their torment. My teeth clench, so hard that I’m afraid they might knock loose, until, finally, I turn away and leave them.
