Where the Sun Hides (Seasons of Betrayal #1)(38)

Violet barked out a laugh. “Why, because you don’t like it? But it’s completely okay for you to grab me like a piece of property and haul me the f*ck around. Right.”

She poked him again.

“Fuck you,” she muttered.

Kaz’s jaw clenched, and his gaze narrowed. “Stop.”

Violet didn’t drop her hand, but she didn’t poke him again. The heated anger in his tone was enough of a warning to say she had pushed him to a line and he was teetering on it. His fists, balled tightly at his sides, said he was holding back.

“I did not lie,” she said quietly. “I told my father what happened at the club with the drinks and Amelia.”

“With the addition that my brother was the one to do that, yes?”

Violet’s frustration exploded again, but this time, she didn’t let it blow up at him. She turned away, throwing a hand high in his face as if to wave away his stupidity and his assumptions.

She didn’t even get to turn around completely or drop her hand before Kaz had grabbed it tight in his own and spun her back around.

“Don’t you f*cking walk away from me right now—don’t put your hand in my face like you’re f*cking dismissing me!”

Violet’s back met the wall with a hard smack. The air left her lungs with a gasp when he grabbed her other hand and pushed it down at her side. Kaz clouded her vision—all of him—dark, angry, and ready to hurt.

Strangely, she wasn’t scared that time.

Swallowing hard, Violet refused to meet his gaze. “Let me go.”

“I like you right where you are.”

But he was too close to her.

Close enough for her to smell his cologne and see the flecks of blue in his gray eyes. Close enough that she could feel the tremor crawling over his arms and the way his muscles jumped when he pressed against her.

Too close.

She shouldn’t be turned on by a man who did to her what Kaz had done.

“Tell me the truth,” he demanded. “You lied.”

“I didn’t.”

Violet didn’t even know how to begin explaining her situation to Kaz, but his assumptions were entirely wrong.

“Do you understand the gravity of lying about a man like that in this kind of business?”

She blinked. “Yes.”

His hold on her wrists tightened to an almost painful point. “And you still did it!”

Violet’s head snapped around, her gaze cutting to his. “I did not!”

“Standing by and doing nothing as someone else lies is the same thing, Violet.”

“I didn’t do that either, *.”

He released her one arm, and pointed a finger right in her face. It almost reminded her of a gun ready to blow as it came closer.

“You did, you f*cked us over when all I did was try to help you that night. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, right? Rich little sukas like you have to get your kicks somewhere when you’re bored of draining your daddy’s pockets dry.”

Violet’s mouth dropped open, and a pain sliced straight through her heart.

He didn’t know her.

He knew nothing about her.

And his words ached.

Reaction from pure fury alone was the only excuse Violet had for her next actions. With her hand free, he had left himself exposed. Before she could properly think over what she was doing, she smacked his hand out of her face with a huff.

Kaz dropped her other hand, surprised.

She was raising it just as fast.

When it cracked across his cheek, the sound reverberated in the condo.

Nothing else made a noise.

He didn’t even breathe as he took a single step back, his thumb stroking his jaw as his stare focused in on her again.

She didn’t move an inch.

Violet knew better than to hit a man when he was in a rage. A normal man would walk away, but a man prone to violence might not.

She opened her mouth to speak—not to apologize, but to tell him to leave—but she didn’t get the chance to say a thing. Kaz was on her before she had even blinked.

His hands were at the top of her throat, forcing her head up as he crowded her to the wall again. Violet’s eyes widened, her heart racing as she felt his long fingers tighten just enough to scare her.

“Don’t hit me,” he said.

Violet tensed as his hands began to move down her throat with a slowness that made her shudder. Maybe it was the roughness of his skin, or the heat of his palms dragging down the column of her neck, but his touch didn’t quite feel threatening like it first had.

She sucked in a deep breath when his thumbs rested against the hollow of her throat. He didn’t press to cut off her windpipe, but rather, just let his thumbs rest there like they could hurt her with her next blink.

“I didn’t lie,” she told him. “And I didn’t know she did.”

Kaz’s gray stare never wavered from hers. “It’s easier for me to believe otherwise.”

“That’s something you’ll have to deal with, I guess.”

Her words were bravado, and very little else. It was getting more difficult by the second to ignore the shake in her hands or the pulsing ache between her thighs.

This was not good at all.

“This could be so easy,” Kaz said, still watching her in that way of his. “Just a little press of my fingers right here, and then what you did is answered for.”