Brutal Blueblood

DM—reach out to me at all the right times. He wouldn’t forget that I existed; he wouldn’t act like I’d just stumbled out of a Dickensian orphanage. He’d kiss me and it wouldn’t be the kind of kiss I’d have to spend four months running away from because it terrified me so much.
Because it terrified me how much I wanted more.
No, Felix wasn’t the kind of guy who could unravel a girl, unspool her into threads of messy, tangled want. He was the kind of guy you kissed and then went about your day like normal.
There was something really tempting about that actually. Who wanted to be torn up over a boy when there were laidback, friendly guys like Felix around?
Sera and Aurora had melted away at some point, leaving me alone with Felix under the mistletoe.
Traitors.
He stepped closer, close enough that his brogues bumped against the sensible heels I was wearing. “So, what do you say?” he asked in a low voice. There were plenty of people crowding the room, but they were all clumped in tight gossiping circles, all in their own worlds. It felt strangely intimate to be murmuring together in a full room like this.
“What do I say to what?” I whispered.
“Tutoring,” Felix said softly, his face coming even closer to mine. “Private lessons. You and me . . .”
The kiss, when it came, was warm and pleasant. His hand settled at my waist, the appropriate blend of seductive and considerate, and the touch of his tongue to my lips was the perfect mix of enticing and polite. This was a guy who knew what he was doing.
And it couldn’t have been more different to how his brother had kissed me last summer, with his mouth hot and urgent against mine, with his fingertips digging into my thigh as he’d held me open to him.
Felix kissed me like we were playing a game together, a game with rules, a game where we’d both win. Owen had kissed me like it was a war. A war where there’d be no survivors.
Felix’s hand tightened the slightest bit on my waist, and my entire body rippled with the wrongness of it. It was too practiced, too smooth. Too . . . not Owen.
But still, I let Felix deepen the kiss ever so slightly, his tongue slipping into my mouth. It felt like kissing Cody Collins in eighth grade all over again—totally fine, but truly underwhelming.
Even though my mouth was still melded with Felix’s, my eyes fluttered open.
And they locked on Owen.
He was standing across the room, his chest heaving, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Those cold eyes were all fire now, lava hot, like volcanic fissures opening under the ocean.
And those eyes were trained on me.
With a gasp, I broke away from Felix. He looked down at me with concern and a dash of annoyance, as if I’d broken the rules of the game by ending the kiss before he was ready.
“Everything okay?”
“Um, yes,” I said, taking a step backward, trying to put more space between me and the seething Hellfire boy at the other end of the room. “I just need to—you know, I—I’ll be right back.”
Real annoyance crossed Felix’s face now, something unpleasant and entitled, but I didn’t care. I turned and pushed my way through the crowd, fleeing up the stairs and away from the furious Owen Montgomery.

Chapter 7
Owen
I did what I should have done months ago, what I should have done two days ago in front of the Preston Media building.
Not let Tanith Bradford out of my fucking sight.
Yes, I’d come to some decisions since that kiss on the sidewalk. Some very important decisions.
I shouldered my way through the room and up the stairs. A hot fury thrummed through my veins, blistering the inside of my skin. For the first time in my entire life, I didn’t care who saw. I didn’t care how I looked as I stalked through the party; I didn’t care that my usual icy control had cracked right down the middle and shattered onto the van Dorens’ imported marble floor.
I only cared about finding her. Finding her and telling her exactly how it was going to be from here on out. I was tired of her running away from me.
I caught a glimpse of ash-blond hair and pale skin, and I followed her up a second flight of stairs and then a third. I could still see Felix’s mouth on hers, could still see his hand on her waist—as if it weren’t supposed to be my hand on her waist. As if it weren’t supposed to be my mouth on hers.
Fuck.
I wanted to smash something. I wanted to hit and tear and howl. I’d finally kissed her again, and two days later, she was kissing my brother?
To prove a point?
To make me jealous?
Well, it’s working.
I crested the top of the stairs in time to see her slip into a hallway I knew led to a rooftop balcony. I doubted anybody was up here, barely any lights were on, and I caught up to Tanith in a few quick strides, seizing her hand.
She yanked it out of my grip, spinning around to glare at me behind her cute little glasses. Her eyes practically glowed with anger in the dim hallway.
Fuck. Even her glare sent blood straight to my cock.
“Leave me alone, Owen.”
“No.”
That truly seemed to surprise her. “No?”
“You owe me some explanations,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “About Felix? Fuck off.”
I practically growled then. “About Felix and so much else. About how I couldn’t find you this summer. About how I couldn’t find you this year. About how we kissed this week and then you accused me of—I don’t even know what you were accusing me of—and then stormed off.”
“You know very well what I was accusing you of,” she hissed. “You spent years totally ignorant of my existence, only noticing me when you had nothing better to do, and now I’m what? Your pity hookup? A toy that’s