Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(67)

Her eyes were black in the shadowed car as she reared forward and caught my lower lip between her teeth. She pulled it taut, scraping her teeth along the sensitive flesh, then flicking her tongue along the parted seam of my mouth.

“Evil tastes good,” she concluded.

The simple gesture, intensely sexual from such an innocent girl, made my blood turn to magma, scorching me from the inside out. I got out of the car without ceremony, almost scrambling in my haste to get away from the sudden siren.

I needed my head on straight.

This wasn’t about her.

This was about Bryant.

About learning the truth about my birth.

About getting peace for Grace.

About my family seeing I was a vital part of their Morelli institution.

“Tiernan,” Bianca called as I rounded the car, having opened her own door.

I tugged her out without ceremony. We were late enough that the red carpet was empty, the paparazzi dispersed, the partygoers inside deep into the champagne. After closing the door, I dragged her behind me up the shallow steps to The Met’s glittering entry where a man waited to collect our tickets.

“Wait,” she demanded, tugging back at my hand so we paused halfway up the stairs. “Tiernan, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” I growled, slowly losing my mind as I stepped down to loom over her. “What’s going on, Bianca, is that you’re driving me mad.”

She licked her lips unconsciously, aroused by the threat of me bearing down on her. “Why?”

“Because you aren’t like them,” I ground out, hating that she was nothing like her father or Caroline or any of their horde. “You aren’t like anyone.”

“And that’s bad?”

“It’s hell,” I snapped. “I had plans, goddammit.”

Something shifted in her eyes, that clever brain finally cluing in. “Plans for what?”

I breathed hard through my nose as my eyes scraped over her face, noting her loveliness, the tenderness in her eyes. I was being rude, terrifying, bullying her just because I was surly and unbalanced, but she didn’t care.

I’d only ever been my worst self with Bianca, yet she still seemed to search for something in me, see something in me that gave her hope.

No, not hope.

My chaos and aggression, it brought her peace.

Without realizing it, my hand grabbed her wrist, thumb tracing the raised skin of her dove tattoo.

“I had plans,” I repeated, clutching her chin with my free hand, angling her head so the lights from the museum spilled onto her face, honey over porcelain. “But you damned them all to hell.”

“I’ve found hell’s not such a bad place to be,” she whispered, her gaze locked on my mouth as she raised on her tiptoes in her tall heels, bringing her inches from my lips. “Not with you.”

She kissed me then, for the first time.

Taking my mouth in a deep embrace, coaxing my tongue out to tangle with hers, hands locked around my neck to bring me deeper into her. She tasted like sugar, sweet and warm melting in my mouth.

I wanted her, I couldn’t deny it.

I wanted to keep her for myself, hoard her in my cave-like home for my pleasure alone like a dragon hiding treasure.

But I didn’t deserve that.

Her goodness, her beauty, her warmth.

Even if I did, I had a plan with so many roots it was impossible to imagine digging it out of myself now.

I wrenched myself away from her, staring over her shoulder so I wouldn’t get lost in those dilated eyes, those open, swollen lips.

“Come.”

She came, following after me as I led her the rest of the way up the stairs, through the main lobby and up more stairs, following the din of the party. I accepted a glass of champagne an insistent server thrust upon me, but I didn’t follow him into the crowded hall. Bianca hesitated when I pulled her to the right instead of left down the hall toward the event, but she didn’t say a word.

Her trust burned in me.

When we entered the room where the Picasso hung, she tensed beside me and I knew she’d seen it before. I headed straight to the painting, the glean of Lane Constantine’s name glowing in the light from above the frame. She numbly accepted my untouched flute of champagne and set it alongside hers on the ground beside us.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I took my knife from my pocket and flipped it open. If I took the frame off the wall, it would trigger an alarm, so I held the frame in one hand and stabbed through the canvas at its edge with the other.

“Tiernan!” she cried, trying to pull on my arm. “What the fuck are you doing? That’s my—” She hesitated, catching herself before the reveal.

“Your father’s painting?” I asked quietly as I worked the top right edge away, then carefully followed the seam to the bottom right corner. When I peeled it back, I saw it.

Not a will.

That would have been too easy.

But a small key, taped to the lining fabric between the painted canvas and the frame support.

“What the hell?” Bianca whispered, her lax hands falling from my arm.

I plucked the key from the tape and pocketed it before turning to face her. My heart was racing, adrenaline like a drug overdose in my veins.

“Your dad left you something, Bianca,” I explained, reaching out to grab her shoulders when she took a step away. “Lane Constantine left you and Brandon a lot of money.”