Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (28 page)

Murderous teenagers, of course, but still…considering our past jobs, slitting throats, pulling triggers, blowing marrows and all, we should at least be acting a little more mature than this.

Catching my hair up in a ponytail, I started out of the room and stopped short when I noticed a guy moving down the hall toward Chad’s bedroom. He seemed less like an assassin looking to complete his objective, and more like a playboy in washed-out raggedy jeans, Timberlands and graffiti T-shirt.

Looping my ponytail in a bun, I directed my steps down the hall to Chad’s bedroom instead of my original path, tiptoeing behind the guy.

Unless he was here to kill Chad, what business did he have in his bedroom? And where the hell was Ronnie? I thought this place was supposed to be a fortress.

Chad’s bedroom door made only a faint creak when the guy pushed it open, and he walked in freely, like he knew the place as well as he knew the veins on his dick. Heading straight to the dresser, he opened a wooden box which was sitting on the center, and took out something jingly, like keys.

By the time he made to turn around, I was right there, my right forearm jamming to his chest, driving him back with a wretched force until he was slammed back against the wall.

“Who are you and what are you doing in this room?” I demanded.

The guy stared down at me without fear or surprise, and,
holy wow
, he was like a fucking Roman prince he was so hot. His gold eyes shone paranormally, like a mythical vampire’s, his lashes long and unnatural, his hair sandy-brown and waving loosely past his shoulders.

Full, impressionable lips curved up into a crooked grin, as he drawled sexily, “You’re her, aren’t you? The Killing Byrd.”

“The what?”

When he did nothing but stare down at me with that damn disarming grin of his, I eased my elbow off his chest, but kept my body firmly pressed against him to ensure he remained where I pinned him. I reached down the length of his right hand that clutched the thing he stole from the wooden box on the dresser and pried his fist open. He obliged without a fight or struggle.

A keyring with four regular-sized copper keys on it.

“What are these keys for?” I questioned. “What do you want with them? And how did you get in here?”

Roman Prince’s gold gaze drifted down to where my body was pressed up tightly against his, and he shifted uncomfortably, making a strange groan in his throat, like a rapacious fat kid afraid of touching the mouth-watering chocolate cake dangling in front of him, knowing he’ll get into big, big, trouble if he ever dares.

“Look,” he said in a strained voice, “you’re pretty, and you’ve got a
really
nice rack, but I’ve got a super-crazy British wife downstairs waitin’, and I don’t think she’d be too happy ‘bout the way your tits are pressed up against me right now.”

Okay, so he and his wife were the Bonnie and Clyde type of assassins—or key thieves.

Running out of patience, I jammed my forearm back to his chest, then with my other hand reached down and grabbed his nut sack through his jeans. “Listen up, you cocky shit, if you don’t start talking, I’m gonna rip your fucking balls off and feed them to you.”

Again, the dauntless SOB grinned at me, flashing straight white teeth, then suddenly yelled, “Chadrick! I’m being sexually harassed in here!”

What an arrogant shit! Irritated, I immediately removed myself from him then chucked his chest. “I wasn’t sexually harassing you!”

Brown eyebrows shot up, crooked grin still present. “No? Then what would you call all that just now? Throwin’ me against the wall and feelin’ me up?”

“I was—”

Chad came into the room just then, well-dressed, fresh and fuckable, looking between me and the insolent prick. “What—” he started to ask.

But Roman Prince cut him off by pointing a finger at me and accusing, “She grabbed my dick.”

My mouth popped open. “I didn’t—”

“Say you didn’t,” Roman Prince dared, narrowing his eyes at me.

Sticking my middle finger up at him, I looked to Chad and explained, “I grabbed his balls, Chad. His
balls
.”

When Chad bit his bottom lip to hide a smile, and the Roman Prince doubled over in a bout of laughter, my cheeks flamed from embarrassment, then got redder from anger.

“Unless a man’s hard, you can’t grab his balls without grabbing his dick,” Roman Prince said. “It’s just not possible.”

“Yes it is,” I defended, just short of stomping my feet like a toddler. He was making me feel like a dunderhead. “You know I didn’t grab your dick. I don’t even like men!” I turned to Chad, who was just standing there with his arms crossed, lips folded. “I thought—I thought he was—who is he?”

Flicking his gaze over my head to Roman Prince, Chad shook his head in frustration as he spared, “That’s JK. My best friend.”

“Well, you need a new best friend, Blood,” I fumed, “because this one’s a despicable asshole.”

Like a petulant adolescent, I stomped out of the room, down the hall and into the kitchen. There was no sign of Vivian so I grabbed myself a cup of coffee, plopped down at the breakfast bar, and stewed. Not long after, I heard the two men ambling down the hall and talking about some hill house.

They entered the kitchen and the JK dude took residence on the bar stool beside me. Retrieving a box of raisins from his pocket, he shook out a palmful, then began popping them into his mouth while he stared at me. Blatantly. Unapologetically. Impertinently.

Doing my best to ignore him, I focused on Chad instead, who was puttering about the kitchen, doing
his
best to ignore me.

He was still mad. Could he be any more unfair? How could he compare what he did to me and what I did to him, and think
my
sin was greater?

As much as he didn’t have a choice, I didn’t have a choice either. And once I learned the truth behind the whole thing, I forgave him. Easily. Why couldn’t he forgive me? He didn’t kill my family and I didn’t kill his aunt. His father did.

Sipping at my coffee, I stared him down. I wouldn’t stop staring until he looked at me. Apparently I was going to be left here again today, because he was fully dressed, not in his usual semi-formal fashion, but in black on black: black boots, black jeans and a tight-fitting, muscle-hugging black T-shirt, his silver cross pendant dangling on his chest.

The man was so fucking hot it was unimaginable.

“Are you leaving me here again?” I asked his back as he fished for the bowl of washed fruits from the fridge.

He kneed the fridge door shut, set the bowl on the countertop, plucked a strawberry and popped it into his mouth, still ignoring me.

“Whoa,” JK mumbled from beside me. “Snowflakes in hell.”

A bitter scowl twisting my features, I shot him a sidelong glance. “Didn’t you say your wife was waiting for you downstairs?”

“Yeah, but she also loves couple talk. So if I go back down there without some sweet news about Chad’s new…whatever this is…she’s gonna be more pissed at me than if I tell her you grabbed my dick.” He shook out more raisins into his palm. “Go on,”—he motioned at me with the raisin box—”kick him in the nuts, strip him down and fuck him on the countertop, coldcock him with a gun. Do
somethin
g. For two heartless monsters who kill people for a living, you’re kinda boring me. Ya-a-a-aw-wn-nnn.”

Oh Jesus, I hated this guy. “If your wife’s so interested in our biz, why isn’t she up here with you?”

Something passed over his arresting features, but it was fleeting as he quickly donned that cocky-boy expression. “‘Cause my boy Chadrick over there fucked her. And the three of us bein’ in the same room is just fuckin’ awkward.”

That bit totally caught me off guard, and I swung my gaze back to Chad. “You fucked your best friend’s
wife
?” I asked in disbelief. “Oh my God, do you just have a penchant for screwing over the people you say you love?”

Chad fired a death-glare at JK. “Do you always have to be such a fucking dick, man?”

JK held his hands up in defense. “I told the truth.”

“Why are you still friends with him?” I asked JK, while still looking at Chad.

“‘Cause he needs me,” he said simply. “I’m the only one who’ll put up with his constant betrayal.”

Saying nothing, Chad kept his head down, as though he either was ashamed or couldn’t be bothered trying to refute that.

I turned to JK, seeing him in a different light, because if he knew all of Chad’s ugly, dark tales and still stuck by him, his loyalty deserved to be commended. “You know, like,
everything
?” I inquired. “About me? About what he did? About—”

“Everything,” Chad voiced. “I tell him everything.”

Looking JK over, I nodded. “I guess behind the shit ton of asshole you wear, you’re actually a worthy person, huh?”

Then came the crooked grin. “Does that mean you’ll apologize for grabbin’ a married man’s dick?”

Oh hell. “I. Did. Not. Gra—”

“She killed Alina’s parents, JK.” This was from Chad. Blurted out, as though he would’ve exploded if he’d held it in any longer, just needing to tell someone.

My gaze traveled over to him and he was gripping the countertop, restraining himself.

“Whoa,” JK muttered.

“And I’m just so fucking conflicted right now because I think I’m falling in love with her, but at the same time I just wanna cut off all her fingers then put a bullet in her heart. How do I choose between loving her and killing her? How do I choose between destroying her heart and keeping it to myself?”

Dead silence, then, “Look, man, this shit’s a hundred and fifty shades of fucked up. Way over my head.” To me, he directed the question, “Did she see your face? Alina, that is.”

I shook my head no. “I was wearing a mask.”

“Good,” he said with a single nod of his head, his expression grave now. Like this was his no-nonsense face. “Considerin’ I’m practically Alina’s guardian right now, and Chad’s incapable of makin’ any rational decisions since you popped up, I’m
tellin’
both of you to keep this shit to yourselves. Alina doesn’t need to know her favorite cousin’s new girlfriend is her parents’ killer. She’s in a happy place right now, and I’d like for her to stay there.”

As he pushed up from the bar stool, readying to leave, I suddenly didn’t want to be left alone with Chad. “As for you two…”—pause— “this is toxic. Dys-fuckin’-functional. Wrong. I swear this is the most screwed-up ‘relationship’ I’ve ever witnessed. And in my honest opinion, you don’t belong together. You two need to split and fuckin’ run before one of you ends up killin’ the other.”

When he turned to leave, Chad grunted, a sound that clearly read “I completely disagree with you”, and JK stopped and spun back around. “Like I said, that’s my honest
opinion
. But lemme ask both of you this: How many times have you thought about knocking the other the fuck out?”

I looked at Chad. He looked at me. And then we both looked away. Don’t know about him, but I thought about knocking him out quite often, he was so arrogant and frustrating.

When nothing but silence met JK’s ears, he uttered, “‘Nuff said,” then turned and left us in our mire.

I envied JK, because if I could get away from us, I would, too.

After discovering how strongly I still loved Chad, my drive and desire to kill him had waned until it completely vanished, replaced with an all-consuming, all-encompassing burning desire to fuck him all the time and love him into eternity. But now
he
had a blazing urge to kill me and—

Holy shit… his words came crashing into me, as if they’d just flown by me as a jumble of irrelevant letters when he’d said them, but only now did they make sense.

Because I think I’m falling in love with her
…

He was falling in love with me. But hell, he also wanted to kill me. So should I be afraid or fucking flattered? Should I pick up my skirt and run for the hills or throw some imaginary dices, gamble, and hope to God he chooses to love me?

Of course, I knew the sane option to go with, but here I was once again deliberately playing stupid, because I didn’t want to lose my Blood again.

I was loving all wrong. So fucking wrong.

Across the kitchen island, Chad now had his back to me, facing the fridge, popping strawberries into his mouth. One after the other. One after the other. One after the other.

Easing off the bar stool, I rounded the kitchen island and gingerly walked up to him. When I pressed my body up against his, he just stared over the top of my head, refusing to acknowledge me. At least he wasn’t pushing me away.

I reached up and pried the fruit bowl from his hand, setting it on the countertop.

He let me.

Taking his right hand, I brought it up to my neck in a strangulation hold, then put my other hand over it and forced him to squeeze.

Chad’s eyes finally snapped to mine, confusion waltzing within them. “What—”

“Choose now, Blood,” I whispered. “We can’t go anywhere from here unless you choose. We can’t be running from our adversaries and from each other at the same time. So choose, now…love me, or kill me.”

Brows drawn together, Chad eyed me like I was a madwoman.

“I’m yours either way,” I told him. “Whether to love or to kill, I’m yours.” Not like I had anything to live for anyway. Despite his betrayal, Chad was the closest thing to a family I had left. I had nothing and no one. Nothing but a shit-ton of guilt, fear, nightmares, and ghosts that haunted me.

Chad made me hope. He made me forget. He made me believe there could be better. He made me smile, and he made me feel. He restored something within, dragged it to the surface and made me feel alive again. No longer finding comfort in the darkness, but wanting to see the light. I needed him there to tell me he would protect me, that I’d be safe, that I had nothing to fear, nothing to worry about.

On a deep inhalation, Chad closed his eyes, but made no attempt to remove his hand from my throat. I waited, lungs tied in knots, heart hiding in my throat, to see what he would choose.

Until he chose…

His fingers tightened around my throat, ending my flow of air as he drove me backward and slammed me to the refrigerator, the contents inside sounding off a muffled jumble of rattles.