Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (23 page)

Humming in agreement, I closed my eyes and smiled.

“You’ve grown to be so achingly beautiful, Jhay. You leave me impeded at times.” Pause. “In other words, I’m fucked with you. So completely fucked.”

Keeping my eyes closed, so he wouldn’t see how deeply his words affected me, I whispered, “You’ve known it was me all along, and you said nothing.”

“I was waiting for you to stop hiding,” he whispered back, his hot breath touching my skin, as if he’d drawn closer to me. “Did you
really
think I would see you again and not recognize you, Tweety Byrd?” He laughed, but the laugh was
at
me. “I thought about you
every single day
for the past twelve years. I thought you were in college somewhere, crushing on some greasy-haired drummer in a rock band or something. Having fun and living recklessly like girls your age do. Never in a million years did I think…” He trailed off, holding back.

I opened my eyes and found his eyes boring into mine with such raw emotion, I wished I could reach out and touch him.

“I guess I knew all along that you knew, but I preferred to believe you didn’t, because I liked being with you. I thought if you knew it was me, you wouldn’t kiss me the way you did, touch me, or take me. And I thought maybe you were thinking the same thing: as long as we didn’t say it out loud, it wasn’t real. I wasn’t me and you weren’t you.”

Chad let out a quiet laugh, as if that was the most ludicrous thing. “The second I saw you on that stage, I knew it was you. And I knew I
wanted
you. I didn’t see Tweety Byrd, so I never thought of you as Tweety Byrd. I saw
Jhay
. So mature, mind-numbingly beautiful and physically flawless, you booted all rational thoughts right out of me. Only two things made sense to me: I needed to steal you, and I needed to keep you. Even if I died in the process—because, I mean, you
were
trying to kill me.”

At the latter, I laughed. “Yeah…um, sorry about that.”

After a moment of contented silence, I asked, “Along with your father, who else is after me?”

This was nice. Being with Chad was nice. However, there was still a ton of unfinished business. With the unverified revelation that my old captor, The Voice, was Chad’s father, I couldn’t understand how the guy was sitting so calm and unperturbed right now. While I was there still struggling to wrap my head around the whole thing, wondering why on earth would his own father want him dead.

With an immense sigh, Chad shifted from kneeling to sitting on the ground, resting his head on the couch. “Can I just sit here with you for a while? I…I missed you every day, Jhay.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

His fingers found mine, lacing them together, and the next ninety minutes cruised by as we sat in absolute silence.

In a world like ours, a world of chaos, rage and war, turmoil and tragedy, death masks and evil veils, silence was a luxury.

Silence was golden.

It was Vivian who tugged us back to the present, beckoning us for dinner. By then, my limbs were in full function. If I ever saw that stupid doctor bitch again, I’d be returning the favor with a little twist to it.

Sitting up on the couch, I stretched, mumbling, “And just like that, another day bites the dust.”

Ta-da-dum. Day over.

In its slow and humble descent, the sun’s weak tangerine glow cast symmetric slim rays through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, the sunrays like security laser beams, slicing through and through the penthouse.

Evenings here had a different feel than back at my apartment. Evenings here were beautiful and soothing, shifting shades, especially as it reflected in Chad’s deceivingly warm dark eyes.

If only there wasn’t a hose of shit waiting somewhere nearby to start spraying on us, I could remain here with him. Because damn, no, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want the moment we were having to end. Ever.

But life was a bitch.

It ended.

Chad stood up from the floor and stretched, too. “We missed lunch. Come on, let’s eat.”

“And
then
you will tell me what the hell is going on?” I really hated being left in the dark.

“Yes.” Reaching down for me, he pulled me up by my arms and pressed me to him. “As long as you’re here, inside this building, you don’t need to worry. This place is a fortress. The windows are bulletproofed. I imagine you already know this considering you’ve been trying to get to me for months. If you could’ve gotten in, you would’ve gotten in, wouldn’t you?”

“I won’t feed your ego.”

Chad flicked a finger at my lips. It stung, but I smiled as I winced, because it was such a familiar gesture. One he used to do to me when I was a feisty little thing, always mouthing off at someone. It stung like a mofo, but it was always effective in getting me to shut up.

“I’m just assuring you of your safety here. Outside is a different story. So just breathe easy for now, okay?”

Folding my lips to quell the sting still lingering on my lips, I nodded.

Chad grinned. “Nice to see that still works.”

“Fuck off.”

Another finger flicked at my lips again, and I chucked him.

Jerking a step back, he full out laughed now. That sound, oh how I loved it.

Tapping my forefinger to my lips, I demanded, “Kiss it better.”

I was expecting him to deny me, but that expectation fled when he grabbed me and dropped his mouth down to mine in a heated hunger, like he’d been yearning for this.

Holding onto his biceps for balance, I braced myself against him and dug deeper into the kiss, giving, offering, submitting, surrendering.

The wave between us was stronger than just two people wanting each other sexually. A current that went far beyond sexual torridity was drawing us together. Like a whole that had been struck into two halves by a lightning bolt, being forced back together by a high current sea, pushing, shoving, not letting up until those two halves drew back together like magnets, until they stuck, sealing, healing, becoming a whole again. Becoming one.

Whether or not we shared fond memories of the past, it was wrong of me to be having these feelings for this man. Because following those fond memories were horrible, horrible memories also.

All of this was wrong. Me enjoying the way his tongue felt in my mouth, or wanting him to throw me down on the couch and fuck me into oblivion—wrong. These feelings, these wants, these cravings were forbidden.

Wrong.

Here, I wasn’t avenging my family. I was loving the enemy. Blood of my family forgotten.

How could I be so cruel to them? How could I betray them like this? Giving myself up, my whole body, my mind, my heart, my trust, to the person who turned me into an orphan, who threw me in the lonely darkness, who was the catalyst for my one dozen years of hell.

This wasn’t right. This was selfish. This was twisted.

Yet I couldn’t let myself stop. I couldn’t let myself
not
want the full gamut of the erection digging into my stomach. I couldn’t let myself
not
get wet from the smooth thrust of his tongue inside my mouth. I couldn’t
not
want him.

I just couldn’t.

Much to my displeasure, Chad broke off the kiss and took a step back from me, adjusting his jeans. “We need to eat.”

“We
were
eating,” I pointed out, moving in to pick up where we left off.

Chad laughed yet again, and I was loving the fact that I could make the taciturn, ever-serious, arrogant dickhead laugh. “Actual food. We need actual food.”

I crossed my arms. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not,” he denied. “Just hungry.”

Through narrowed slits, I studied him for a heartbeat and a half. “Okay. Well, after we eat, you tell me what’s going on outside this fortress. And then we fuck for the rest of the night. Deal?”

No response. Only an arched eyebrow.

Uncrossing my arms, I went up on my tippy toes and whispered in his ear, “If you deny me your cock tonight, things are going to get really,
really
ugly.”

Without waiting for his response, I shouldered past him and sauntered to the dining area. Leaving him some time to get his hard-on under control.

Vivian prepared bacon-wrapped baked chicken, with sautéed vegetables and a home-baked garden pizza on the side. The woman could cook her knuckles off, had to give her that.

It wasn’t until my dinner plate was empty and I was biting into a slice of the garden pizza that I realized how hungry I’d been.

From across the table, Chad was watching me, amused, as if to say,
I was right, wasn’t I
?

He was right. We’d only eaten breakfast, and I spent hours updating him on the last horrific years of my life. Not to mention I’d been overdrugged. So, of course, I was starved. Just hadn’t noticed how much until the first morsel of food touched my tongue.

Chad’s dish was empty, too. But he didn’t seem interested in the pizza, sipping from his wine glass. Watching me.

Polishing off the last of my pizza, I wiped the corners of my mouth and broached, “I can understand The Voice’s coming after me. I failed a mission. And I’m in cahoots with the target. But as for the other person,
that
I don’t understand. What do they want with me?”

“The Voice?” Chad asked, a sardonic arch to his brows.

“Well, your
father
,” I corrected. “I dubbed him ‘The Voice’ because we only communicated over the phone. And that’s only when he was giving me a mission, or checking up on the status of one. For everything else, like giving me cash or upgrades, he sends his henchmen.” I picked up another slice of pizza and bit in. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure any of his employers know what he looks like. But now that I know he’s Rafail Niiveux, I understand. You can’t very well be a good guy and a bad guy at the same time, can you?”

Chad’s father, along with his two other uncles, Vlad and Pavel Niiveux, were joint owners of the car brand Niiveux, which was one of the largest and most expensive car brands in the world which produced vehicles that only millionaires could afford.

From Niiveux stemmed a whole slew of other car brands, thus making the Niiveux brothers infamous billionaires. Little did I know Rafail lived a double life. Heck, they probably all did.

“Strange nickname,” Chad commented through a chuckle. “I would’ve gone with something more villainous.”

“Like ‘Veiled Demon’?”

“Something like that.” He sobered up. “My father has been spying on you long before now.”

“What?”

“He might not have trusted you—how long ago have you been assigned to kill me?”

I winced. “About seven months now?”

Chad nodded. “That explains it. Unless you’re trying to assassinate someone from the White House, no assignment should take this long.”

Appetite gone, I set my half-eaten pizza down. “So you’re saying he thought I was giving him the run-around?”

“If he sent men here to spy on you”—shrug—”yeah.”

“What a cowardly stinking piece of shit!” I erupted, tripping over my tongue in a tangle of words that didn’t make sense. “H-how many men has he given this same assignment? Twelve. And how many have you stopped in their tracks?
Twelve
! Did he seriously expect me to run in like a brave fool and make myself a number fucking thirteen?!”

“Calm down, Jhay,” Chad said in a steady, even voice.

“No!” I said, sweeping a set of utensils off the table. “I want to kill him! I want to kill that cock-sucking asshole my fucking self! First he fucks up my life, then he makes me a target because I failed a mission that a dozen men
died
trying to fulfill? Rafail Niiveux can go fuck himself!!”

“Jhay, calm down.”

“Fuck off!” I shouted at him. “Fuck right off!”

Unimpressed with my choler, Chad slammed a tight fist down on the table, swift and firm, and contents on the table danced as if a mini-quake had just licked the earth. “Calm.
The fuck
. Down.”

I shut up, but glared at him across the table, pretending he didn’t intimidate me.

Propping his elbows on the table, he locked his eyes to mine. They weren’t cold or threatening, however, but carried a gentle understanding. “Jhay, you’re freaking out because you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared,” I denied.

“Yes, you are,” he said, sticking me where it hurts. “But I don’t want you to be afraid. I want you to trust that I’ll do everything I can to protect you.”

“
Protect
me?” I shrieked in disbelief. “How are you going to protect me from two different sets of people when
you
are still a target?”

“Jhay—”

“What are we gonna do, stay locked up in this bulwark? Yeah, until someone decides to launch a big ass bomb through your ‘bulletproofed’ windows!”

“Look, you seriously need to calm down.”

“I can’t.” And that’s when the tears began to flow. Because Chad was right, I was afraid. Life suddenly meant something to me and I wanted to live. “I’m not ready to die.”

Pushing back his chair, Chad got up and came to my end of the table, crouching down in front of me. “It’s okay to fear death. But Jhay, freaking out is not gonna help.”