Rule (Marked Men #1)(51)

“Rule, Alex is the State Attorney General. He’s the most influential legal person in all of Colorado. My mother helped get him elected.”

I ate another slice of orange and noticed Shaw’s mom was looking at me totally different now. “Weird. He’s tatted up like crazy, under that suit and tie is some serious artwork.”

“That’s just too funny.”

“Hey how much longer do we have to stick around here?”

“Let’s finish eating and then I need to pack my stuff up in my room. You can come up and help me.”

“You think the queen of the castle is going to let me in the ivory tower?”

She leaned in closer to me and moved her hand up even higher on my thigh, it made me almost choke on the orange I was chewing on.

“She might not want you in there,” her green eyes twinkled up at me with merriment, “but I sure do.”

This stupid brunch couldn’t end fast enough. I popped another piece of orange in my mouth and tried counting backward from a hundred to get my libido in check. I thought brunch with my folks was rough, I was starting to see why Shaw was so interested in pulling my fractured family back together, even as messed up as we Archer’s were, these rich people had us beat in crazy and nasty by spades.

Chapter 10

Shaw

I was doing my best to get away from my mother’s house but even though the plan had been to escape as soon as we were done eating Alex had shown back up at the table and hijacked Rule. He claimed one of his coworkers was interested in some custom artwork for his man cave and he thought Rule might be the perfect person to produce it for him, so there I was again the odd man out at one of my mother’s awful events while my tattooed, pierced boyfriend was making the rounds like some kind of celebrity. It was kind of funny and I was secretly thrilled it had to be getting under my mother’s skin, but I wanted to go. I wanted to get him alone and make up for lost time. It felt like things had shifted dramatically between us and I needed time to put it in perspective, need time to figure out what it meant to him exactly because to me he had defined the relationship by showing up here to apologize and I needed to know he felt the same.

My mother was working the room and Jack was tied up with the kids, Gabe was hanging out with the other future business leaders of America shooting killer looks at Rule, and my guy was in the middle of elegantly dressed men describing something with his hands that had them all nodding eagerly and chattering away at him. I saw my opportunity to escape for a minute so I slid through the kitchen and made my way up to my room. I shoved all my stuff into the bag I brought and tossed my broken phone on top. I think I would hold Rule to buying me a new one since he was the reason I had tossed it against the wall in the first place. I was looking around the bed for anything I might have forgotten when warm hands slid around my waist.

I knew Rule’s touch and this wasn’t it so I jerked upright and shoved hard against Gabe’s chest.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed my arm, hard, and tried to pull me towards him. “Get out of my room Gabe.”

“Well I figured it all out Shaw.” He kept pulling on my arm hard enough that I knew there was going to be a bruise. I was trying to push him away from me but he was exerting a lot more force and he was stronger than me. “You dumped me so you could have sex with Archer, well by now you should have screwed him out of your system. You never gave me a shot to show you what I can do. I think you need a fair comparison before you totally shut me out.”

I felt my eyes spring wide as I renewed my efforts to get free. “You’ve got to be kidding me! I didn’t sleep with you because I’m not attracted to you. I didn’t want to have sex with you then and I don’t want to have sex with you now. You need to go or Rule is going to murder you.”

He pulled my wrist tight behind my back so hard I yelped. He lowered his face until it was right in mine and grabbed my jaw with his other hand. I was starting to actually panic, my room was upstairs and on the other side of the big house, sure someone would hear me scream if I yelled but I wasn’t sure how the fall out of that kind of scene would be. I struggled to be released and he just laughed.

“I’m not scared of the street thug nor am I impressed by his artistic genius or whatever Carsten was going on about. He’s trash and not going to get in the way of what I want, and Shaw you belong to me you should know that now.” He gave me a hard shove back so that I fell onto the bed I immediately scrambled across the other side so that the entire mass was between us. “You better get on board with this, Shaw before it gets ugly.”

I was breathing hard and had a hand to my throat. It was shaking and so was I. He threw my keys on the bed. “I’ll get my own ride back to Denver, wouldn’t want you to spend any more time alone with tattoo boy than necessary would I?”

He strolled out of the room like he hadn’t just assaulted or threatened me. I shook myself out of the shock and gathered my stuff and bolted down the stairs. I found Rule wandering around the kitchen looking lost and clearly searching for me. I handed him my bags and hustled him out of the house without bothering to say goodbye to anyone even my mom and it wasn’t until we were on the highway headed home that I broke down. Out of the blue broken sobs wracked my whole body and I couldn’t stop crying. I was shaking so hard and making such a hysterical mess that Rule freaked out and pulled over to the side of the road. He kept asking me if it was my head but I couldn’t answer so I just crawled into his lap and cried and cried.