But Reeve didn’t return the expression. His body remained still, his face even. And I knew before I put the key in the lock, before I even got close enough to feel the rage radiating off of him, that I was in real trouble.
The urge to run passed through me with lightning speed – there one second, gone the next. It wasn’t even a thought I could feasibly entertain. I couldn’t run from someone like Reeve Sallis. Even if he weren’t standing five feet from me, he could hunt me down.
Besides, there was no logical reason to think that he knew anything about my afternoon, knew what I’d discovered about him. Sure, he was obviously angry, but maybe he’d simply had a bad day.
God, I was good at lying to myself.
Or you’re just excellent at survival, my head said, in that voice that sounded an awful lot like Amber’s.
If that were true, I wouldn’t be letting this probable killer into my house. And I was. I even held the door open, gesturing for him to go on inside.
Reeve moved behind me and took the door from my grasp. “No. After you.”
Only three words spoken and yet they said so much. They said, I’m in control here. I’m the one who’s calling the shots. And you’re the one who agreed to follow them. What’s more, you like it.
Did I still like it? Now that I knew what I knew?
Fucked up as I was, I still did.
So though dread curled in my stomach like the remnants of a bad meal, I walked past him into the house, leaving him at my backside where I was vulnerable.
I heard the door latch closed. The next thing I knew, he had me pinned to the wall with my hands held firmly behind my lower back.
“Hey,” I said, wriggling to get loose. “You’re hurting me.”
He only tightened his grip. Without a word, he leaned in. Leaned in toward my mouth. Relief flooded over me, and I lifted my chin to meet his lips, more than a little turned on by his rough greeting.
But he didn’t kiss me.
Instead, still holding my arms behind me, he slowly knelt, dragging his nose down the center of my body. When he was on his knees, his face in my crotch, he sniffed. Several times. Smelling my cunt through my clothing. Sniffing at me like a dog seeking out its bitch. It was weird and vulgar and depraved.
And damn if it didn’t make me weak in the knees.
Then, just as suddenly as he’d grabbed me, he let me go. He stood and backed away, distancing himself from me as though he were Superman, and I was his kryptonite.
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What the hell, Reeve?”
“No,” he snapped. “You don’t get to ask any of the questions here.”
“If you don’t want questions, you better start talking.” Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to pick a fight with a member of the Vilanakis family, but I had a feeling we’d fight eventually whether I did or not. His anger was palpable, and if he was going to be mad at me, I at least deserved to know which of my transgressions had set him off.
His expression was ice cold, his eyes sharp-pointed swords. “Chris Blakely.”
My stomach dropped with the weight of a boulder, but somehow I managed to keep my composure. “What about him?”
Except, he wouldn’t have asked about Chris if he didn’t already know about him, so I might as well give Reeve what he wanted. “I spent the afternoon with him, is that what you’re after?”
He rushed back toward me and pounded his fist against the wall by my head. “Yes, that’s what I’m fucking after. What the hell did you think you were doing?”
He’d been calm before, in control despite his mood. Now he was raving and rabid. His hands shook. His voice rumbled.
He’s jealous, I thought. At least I hoped that’s what this was. I could defend myself easily enough for that, since I hadn’t actually committed any crime that warranted jealousy.
I forced sugar into my voice. “I was just helping him go over his audition, Reeve. He’s a friend and he’s trying to get a spot on NextGen. I gave him some pointers.”
“At his house? Alone? Wearing that?”
I looked down at the jean shorts and long-sleeve V-neck T underneath my duster. It was casual wear and not particularly sexy. “What do you want me to be wearing?”
“Something that doesn’t have your breasts falling out on display.” He was pacing now, seemingly more agitated with each thing I said.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have big tits, Reeve. There’s very little I can wear that doesn’t put them on display. And if you’re suggesting that something happened —”
He cut me off. “I’m suggesting that it wasn’t appropriate for you to be at his house, alone in the middle of the day, regardless of what happened.”
I’d definitely been with men who were controlling, but my circumstances had changed so much since then that I was out of my realm now. Reeve gave me presents, yes, but he didn’t keep me, and with several years of independence under my belt, I wasn’t prepared to have someone telling me what I could and couldn’t do.
It pissed me off.
“Jesus, don’t you trust me?” I threw my purse and duster on the couch so I could do some pacing and pointing fingers of my own. “You go lots of places with gorgeous women surrounding you and I can’t spend a day helping a friend? I didn’t fuck him.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Then what is the point? That you just want a say in what I do? That wasn’t something you ever spelled out as part of our relationship.” It was strange that he wasn’t that concerned with whether I’d messed around with Chris, just that… Unless…