Wicked Game: a Billionaire Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

“Of course you did.”

“We won’t be using it though.  The security here is too good for it.  I hired someone to counterfeit some keycards for us, so getting in should be no problem.  But first close your eyes.  Your real surprise is waiting inside for you.”

“Oh hell no.”

“Trust me.”

“Damien, there is no way in hell—”

His hands clapped over my eyes.  I flailed against the sudden blindness, and my body fell back against his.  His strong arms closed around me, protecting me from knocking myself over and splitting my head on the sidewalk.  

If froze.  It felt too good, moving against the warm muscles of his chest… and other body parts.  

“Ready?” he asked, his warm breath against my ear.

Fine.  Jesus.  Just stop feeling so good.

“Yes.”

I stumbled forward with his arms around me, feeling the strong muscles of his chest moving against my back and his hips pushing mine forward.  Oh God, why did that feel so good?  A few clicks and beeps from the keycard security system sounded near my ear, and the doors opened with a squeak.  He moved us forward, guiding me by the shoulders and the protective shield of his body through the doors and into the cold, sterile air of the museum.

“Watch your step,” he murmured.

I didn’t have to.  I remembered this.

Memories flooded back as we walked, Damien leading me with his hands still clapped over my eyes.  I had walked this way so many times as a kid.  I knew it better than any place on earth.  It was the only place I could ever really call home.

Here, we were passing the front lobby, all glass and red velvet and gold like an old fashioned movie theater.  This hallway was dedicated to agriculture and the way that the flooding of the Nile helped Egyptian farmers.  This corner here was where the old statute of Anubis stood, the one that Dad slapped a Santa hat on every December.  My heart turned and twisted as every new memory—peanut butter sandwiches in the mummy room, learning math by using hieroglyphics in the Egyptian sciences display—assaulted me with emotion.  

God, I missed this.

I missed having a home.

“We’re here,” Damien said finally, snapping me out of my momentary hypnosis.  I dragged myself out of my memories and tried to focus on the now.  

“What?  Oh, right.  Surprise.”  

Of course.  I had been so distracted by memory lane that I had completely forgotten why we were here.  Besides the fact that Damien loved dragging me into as many illegal acts as possible.

The cold air around us let me know we were in a large, open room.  But something didn’t feel right about this.  It was wrong, somehow.  The floors were the same white marble, and the smell of lemon cleaner still bit my nose like it did in every other room.  But something was off.

I had never been here before, I realized.  Not this part of the museum.  

I didn’t remember these last steps.  

My brow furrowed.  How was that possible?  I had explored every inch of this place as a kid.  

Damien really was up to something.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Damien murmured against my ear.  “I want to see your face.”

My lids hurt from how tight they were squeezed shut.  The warmth of his hands disappeared from my face, and his body took a step back.  I was alone now in the darkness.

“Open them.”

I did.

Oh my God.

My lips parted in a gasp.
 

Before me, on a massive oil portrait on the wall, was my father.

“This is the surprise?” I whispered.

Damien nodded.

I realized we were in an entirely new room, one that I had never been in before.  My head turned wildly, taking it in, wondering how that could be.  The empty room was strangely out of the place in the old, 20’s era rest of the museum.  The wallpaper was too pristine, and the smell of new paint and carpenter’s glue hung in the air around us.  I glanced back at the doorway we had walked through.  That doorway had once been the back exit, I remembered.  And now, it was….

I glanced up at the portrait of Dad.

This.

Whatever
this
was.

“Surprise,” Damien said simply.

“I don’t understand.”

He handed me the tickets again.  Only they weren’t the same tickets, I realized as I brought them to my face to examine them.  The ones he had given me earlier were the general admission tickets.  But these were special event tickets.  

“I don’t understand,” I said, my mind still buzzing with confusion.  I glanced back up at the portrait of Dad.  

Help me, I thought.  

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.

“Read it closer,” Damien murmured.

I ran my thumb along the smooth blue paper, studying the tickets more closely, wondering what the hell Damien was up to.  The headline read YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED, and below that:

HARRY L. BISHOP MEMORIAL WING

GRAND OPENING BALL

“Memorial?” I asked.  “Dad didn’t have a memorial.”

He nodded, his cocky smile growing.  “Not until they received a multimillion dollar donation in his name.”  

“Damien, you can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m never serious.  Serious people are so boring.”

I looked up at the portrait of Dad and back to the tickets.  I still couldn’t understand.  Why would Damien take me here?  Why would he donate that much?  Why would he even pretend to care about Dad or my memories of this place?  This was all too much.  I felt like I was going to cry.

“Do you remember what I said?” he asked, nudging me with his elbow.  “About coming out officially as an engaged couple at a charity gala thing?”

Oh.  So that’s why.

I nodded numbly.  My eyes stayed fixed on the portrait of Dad glowing above us.  My fingers clenched into a tight fist to keep them from reaching out and stroking the soft oil paint.  The tightening feeling in my chest was growing warmer, and I could feel tears rising in my throat.

“Well, this,” he said, holding out the ticket again, “is it.  This is our charity.”

I glanced down at the fine print below the headline.  The wing officially opened next week.  A charity ball was being thrown to celebrate it.  It was being sponsored by Blackwood Enterprises.

Oh.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want,” Damien murmured.  His gaze was fixed on my face again, but this time his voice sounded worried.  He sucked on his bottom lip.  “If it hurts too much, just tell me.  We can cancel and go to something smaller as an engagement party.  A dinner or something.  But I thought you would like this.”

I couldn’t speak.  My eyes were fixed on Dad’s glowing face.  

The portrait was modeled after one of the old photos in his scrapbook.  Still the young, newly minted twentysomething Ph.D. on his first dig.  Before he had me (“the happy accident”), before he was forced to come home to raise a family, before he and Mom realized that they hated each other and the family broke apart.  Before all the remarriages and poverty.  Before he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and before the hospital visits and chemo.  Before the funeral.

God, I missed him.

“Do you like it?” he asked.  “I mean, they haven’t moved all the artifacts from his collection in yet.  And I thought you would want to donate some of his old papers and books.  And I wanted to let you be the first to see it, and I hope this isn’t too much all at once, but—”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

My fingers twitched in their clenched fist.  A tear rolled down my cheek.

We stood there in silence for a moment.

“I meant it, Cleo,” he said, reaching out to grasp my hand.  It collapsed out of its fist, and without thinking, my fingers laced with his.  We were holding hands again.  Like teenagers.  “I’m sorry about what happened to your father.  And I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you.  I’m sorry about everything.”  His voice was furious now.  “My father—”

“I get it,” I said shortly.  The last thing I wanted to hear about was Bernard.

Another tear rolled down and rested on my lips.

Absently, Damien’s hand reached out, and his thumb brushed the tear away from my lips.  His thumb remained on my mouth, the warmth of it sinking into my freezing skin comfortingly.

“Why are you crying?  I don’t want to make you cry.”

I couldn’t answer.  My eyes were stuck on Dad, and my mind was too overwhelmed by all of this to make sense of any of it.  It was too much.  I was going to shatter into a million pieces.

Damien flinched as another tear rolled down my cheek.  He gathered me into his arms, crushing me against his chest.  To my surprise, I didn’t fight it.  I buried my face into his neck, unable to hold back any longer.  His arms crushed me tighter to him, so tight that I could feel his heartbeat thudding against my own.  I nuzzled into his neck and inhaled his deep, masculine scent.

It felt so good to be held by someone again.  

It had been so long.

“Please don’t cry, Cleo.  I thought this would make you happy.”

“I am happy,” I choked in a whisper.

“Happy people don’t cry.”  

“Sometimes they do.  If they’re really happy.”

“And are you?  Have you ever really been happy?”

I couldn’t respond.  Not because I was angry at him.  Not because I was overwhelmed by seeing Dad again.  Not even because this whole situation—the sneaking in in the dead of night, the surprise memorial wing, the massive charity ball we would be attending—was crazy.  

I looked up at him, really seeing him for the first time since we’d been reunited.  

Damien Blackwood.  My stepbrother.  My ridiculous, crazy, rich as hell stepbrother.  

The one I was supposed to hate.  The one who was supposed to be a heartless psychopath.  The one who was looking at me with confused puppy dog eyes, pained by my tears, clutching me to him like his life depended on it.  I reached forward and brushed a strand of hair from his eyes, seeing for the first time how dark, deep, and seductive they really were.

A switch inside me flipped.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.

Instead of whispering an answer back, my head leaned forward, and I pressed my lips to his.

For a moment, Damien froze.

Then he melted into me.

“Oh God, Cleo,” he whispered against my mouth.  His arms wrapped around me, and he crushed me to him again.   “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you to do this.”

I didn’t have time to listen to him.  I was consumed by my sudden need for him.  Damien, who I had missed for so long.  I didn’t know if I hated or loved him.  All I knew was that I needed him at that moment.  I was too overwhelmed by the emotion of coming home, of seeing Dad again.  I needed something solid, something I could remember, something I could dig my fingers into.

Something like Damien.

Damien’s lips pressed hard against mine, and I opened my mouth for him.  His tongue darted out, licking along my bottom lip.  I moaned and collapsed into his arms, finally unable to hold myself back any longer.  His fingers dug into my thighs, clutching my hips tighter to him, bringing our bodies as close as possible.  The rough stubble of his cheek brushed against mine as he kissed me passionately.

His palm cupped my breast as he kissed me, his fingertips brushing lightly against the sensitive tips.  My breath caught, and it only made him hungrier for me.

“Cleo,” he growled.  “Tell me you want this.”

My hand grabbed his and pulled it to my skin, and he grabbed handfuls of me eagerly.  His fingers traveled down to my stomach, then to my hips, drinking in the feel of me.  I kissed him harder, needing him closer.  As close as possible.  Inside me.

“Tell me,” he ordered, his hands slipping to my zipper.  “I need to hear you say it.”

He pulled his lips away from mine.  My eyes popped open, confused.  His hand cupped my cheek, and his eyes examined mine as they looked into them.  

Oh God, I realized as clarity crashed down on me.