Mad Boys (Blue Ivy Prep, #2)(48)

“Okay.” The base acceptance felt like a trap, but I went with the face value for now.

“Dating RJ Wallach is a bad idea.”

She snorted.

“You don’t have to believe me. I imagine me saying anything would be like waving a red flag at a bull. You’re going to want to do it even more because I don’t like it.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re obstinate,” I said, glancing at her. “Why else?”

KC rolled her eyes then shook her head. “Not why would I not listen to you. Why don’t you like him? Why is it a bad idea?”

“Does it matter?” RJ Wallach brought up a lot of bad memories. Worse choices.

“Yes. If you want me to think about it. You saying so is definitely not a good enough reason. So, tell me or shut up about who I do or don’t date.” The flatness beneath those words frustrated me more than the rolling of her eyes.

“You don’t really care what I think.”

“No, I really don’t,” she said, leaving the trail to walk up on a rock that looked down a tree-filled slope. “You’re a liar.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

With a kind of careless grace, she spun to face me. The wind tugged at her hair, pulling strands of it loose from the braid confining it. “You’re a liar. All three of you are. You knew who I was when I got here. You knew who my father was. You didn’t say a word. You played—whatever the hell that was last year and didn’t say a word to me.”

I frowned. “You were invited to the wedding. If you’d bothered to show up, you’d have met us then.”

Her snort was so dismissive it rankled. “I was on tour, and I didn’t even get the invitation until after the fact. It doesn’t matter. You knew and you kept it to yourself. I didn’t even know you douchebags were brothers until Jonas and Lachlan got into that fight. You know what…you could have said something then. You didn’t.”

No. We hadn’t. I could try to defend it, but to be honest, at this point… the why didn’t matter. Instead, all I said was, “We’ve lived with your father for years.”

“Well, good for you.” She saluted me with the cup and guilt stabbed at me abruptly. Had that been hurt in her eyes? “And now I know, so—water under that bridge?”

I sighed. “KC…”

“Oh, no, Mr. Malone. Like I said before, Miss Crosse is fine. You treated me like dogshit, you don’t get to just decide everything is fine. We’re not friends.”

“No,” I said, agreeing with her. “We’re family.”

There was nothing amused about her laughter. It was cold, empty, and jagged enough to draw blood. “We are not family. You just happen to live with my sperm donor. That makes us exactly nothing. So, if that’s all? I think I need to send RJ a message.”

The last was just a dig at me. I knew it was a dig at me. She strode down off the rock, except rather than letting her past me, I wrapped an arm around her and picked her right up. Her chest impacted against mine, and the defiance blazing in her eyes lit a match on the wood chips of my temper.

Nothing could have prepared me for how her lips parted when my mouth fused to hers. Kissing her was the last thing I had intended, but this wasn’t just a kiss. It was the activation of an incendiary device.

The rush of her tongue dueling with mine coupled with the rich taste of coffee and sweetness went right to my head. Her cup hit the ground and so did mine. I ignored the splash against my legs as her arms came around me. The press of her breasts through the shirt was a torment.

I fisted that braid, tugging her head back so she would open further. She matched my hunger with her own, the scrape of her nails against my scalp lighting me up.

Dimly, a sound registered. A crack of a branch or a twig. Voices in the distance. A bird song. I was drunk on the taste of her and when I finally dragged my head up, she bit my lip and scraped her teeth over it.

Nose to nose, we stared at each other, panting. The mingling of our breath was a tease. Her lips glistened, her face was flushed, and her pupils huge.

“Don’t go out with him,” I said. “Please.”

She braced her hands on my shoulders and when she tugged a little, I released her hair and then set her on her feet.

Nothing about that kiss had been expected. Not my reaction. Not hers. She touched two fingers to her lips then glanced up at me. “I’ll think about it.” Her voice came out all husky and tense, but it was so much better than a no.

“Thank you.”

“Is that all… Mr. Malone?”

Right. Back to our corners. “Quite, Miss Crosse.”

With that, she turned and walked away. The sway to her hips was there, but it wasn’t an invitation and she didn’t look back. Once she was out of sight, I tilted my head back and stared up at the sky.

Bad idea, Ramsey, I told myself. Terrible idea.

At the same time, all I could feel was the way her lips moved with mine and how fucking sweet she tasted.

Epically bad idea.





Twenty





KC


Autumn blew in with an unseasonable snowstorm that caught everyone off guard. I’d slowly been working my way back up to running more regularly—except I varied the times I went out to keep Lachlan from following. I would prefer to hit the trails first thing in the morning, but he’d been lingering near the trailhead so… I switched to after classes. When he figured that out, I went back to mornings.