Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
“UGHHH!” I growl out while fisting his leather jacket. I love you. I love you. Our foreheads touch again, our bodies searing against each other.
“Keep fucking complaining!” he yells. “Or how about you appreciate what I just fucking did for you?!”
I do.
I always do.
I cup the back of his neck. This is too deep. Too much. I’m being figuratively slammed into him in visceral, tightly wound ways. “I fucking hate you!” I scream.
“Then hate me!!”
I’ve never loved someone more in my whole life.
He holds my face. “Slap me.”
My stomach drops. “No,” I whisper-hiss.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he says like it’s nothing. Like it’d mean nothing to do it again.
I have had to slap him before. For the job. But this is different. “I’m not getting the reputation of being physically abusive toward an ex—so don’t you dare slap yourself either.”
“Yeah, I’m not your brother.”
Oliver has one hundred percent gone the extra mile by giving himself a bloodied lip, a bruised cheekbone—and not with makeup.
“I didn’t say you were,” I snap back. If this was his plan to deplete the sexual tension, it’s working.
Our limbs unravel from each other. The last thing he does is kiss the outside of my lips. It’s a hot kiss, meant to stoke, and it singes my emotions in the best way.
Rocky has a hand on the doorknob. He turns back to me. “You first. Ready?”
And I just think, It’s me and Rocky.
It’s always been me and Rocky. From the beginning. Until the end. No one else could ever take his place. I’ve told Rocky this so many times, it might as well be a nightly prayer.
TWENTY-TWO
Phoebe
Wearing a semidecent pissed face, I exit the bathroom and head to the bar. Only a handful of people are here, and three heads instantly twist toward me, then toward Rocky as he trails behind with frustration.
It’s like a court liaison announced our royal arrival. Hear ye, hear ye, here are the messy town divorcés!
As soon as I see who’s at a barstool and drinking a whiskey on ice, I force myself not to stagger back.
The urge to quit the scavenger hunt plows into me.
Maybe I can just watch Wrong Turn in the loft with Rocky. He hasn’t seen that backwoods cannibal horror flick since we were teenagers.
Watching people feast on other people is ten times better than enduring three minutes with Trent Koning Waterford.
I can’t believe he’s here right now.
The thirty-two-year-old jumps up from the barstool with a pompous grin. Arms spread like he’s meeting his long-lost friend. “Grey!”
Puke.
I don’t conceal my true feelings. I don’t need to. Disgust is all over my face as Rocky bro-hugs the spawn of Claudia Waterford.
Which must be worse than the devil’s sperm, because I’d rather hang out with Satan.
Trent is dressed like he just finished playing eighteen holes of golf. A super boring activity he did last week. With Rocky. He’s in a white linen shirt and navy slacks. Oliver Peoples sunglasses are hooked around his neck. His hair is two shades darker than Jake’s. All the Koning boys have a similar athletic build—fit to play polo and to pose for cologne campaigns in Ibiza. He’s handsome in a generic sense.
My body physically shrivels like a prune being ten feet from him, so I seek out a vacant barstool against the wall.
“I heard the auction was wild,” Trent says to Rocky. “They said my little brother was almost out fifty g’s until you stepped in.” He pats him on the bicep in pride, then he cuts his gaze to me. “Admit it, Phoebe, you’re cute, but you’re not worth that much.”
I settle a glare on him. “I think I’m worth more than whatever cheap carbon atoms you’re made of, Trent.”
“Oof.” He grins, then glances at Rocky’s nonreaction and nods toward the bathroom. “You two sounded like cats and dogs in there.” At this, his sleazy gaze drips ever so slowly down my body. “Our Phoebe, always so feisty.”
Rocky is standing behind Trent and doing his best not to have a face full of venom. His jaw tics more than it should.
“Don’t you think, Grey?” Trent asks Rocky, wanting him to pipe in about me.
“She’s not feisty. She’s unpleasant,” Rocky says, glaring at me.
I glare back. “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Unpleasant little Phoebe,” Trent tsks while appraising me again.
“The only thing unpleasant and little is your…” I swallow the biting retort. Rocky is smearing a hand over his mouth, fighting a look of rage, but it’s not toward me. My stomach is in vicious knots.
Trent is grinning. “Go on. Say what you mean.”
No.
I’m trying so fucking hard not to make this harder for Rocky.
He’s warned me ad nauseam that insulting Trent only provokes him—that Trent gets off on the hunt, on taking whatever he can’t have, and that also includes anything that remotely belongs to his youngest brother.