Chapter 122: Angel
- RAYA -
"You’re still angry," I say, twisting the noodles around my fork while I’m perched on a stool over the kitchen island watching Dex on the opposite side, serving himself before coming to sit next to me.
There is still tension in his shoulders, across his brow, in his forearms. I can almost trace the line of it—see where his brother has invaded his body and dug in, roping himself into Dex’s muscles. And I’m not sure how to fix it. If mind-blowing shower sex wasn’t enough to take care of it at least for the night, then I’m not sure there is anything I can do. The time alone cooking must have allowed Dex’s mind to wander back to the fact that Lawson read what I wrote.
Dex doesn’t answer, avoiding my eyes for a beat too long so he can try to get the truth to fold back away from view. When he does look at me, his smile has been corrupted—not entirely free to reflect the joy I usually see there—and it makes a corner of my heart shrivel like it’s gotten too close to a flame and been singed by it.
"He didn’t even do anything. How about we just forget it?" I try, stabbing my fork into the noodles that were so good a second ago and that I have now sadly lost an appetite for. "The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems to even be upset. In the grand scheme of things, I mean."
"The fact that you would allow yourself to think that is why he has gotten away with this shit for so long," he groans, twisting the noodles around his own fork, the metal glinting in the kitchen light. We have been home long enough that the light has slowly bled from the sky, now leaving only pink wisps of clouds out the window, hovering over the house like the page out of a children’s storybook—another detail that makes this time with Dex seem unreal.
"In that grand scheme of things... like what? War and famine?" Dex asks. "It doesn’t make Lawson any less wrong for the things he does."
My brows knit together. I’m not sure how to feel about Lawson anymore. I’m repulsed, of course, and I think he’s probably a horrible human being through and through. But beyond that the anger and trouble he is causing Dex when it comes to just me—it’s not worth it.
Lawson needs to be stopped from sabotaging the company and taking over, because he’ll obviously do a horrible job of it. And he needs to be kept away from women entirely. I would never want his preying eyes roving over anyone I care about. I wouldn’t want his preying eyes on anyone.
But my thoughts keep returning to him showing up here. He did it because he thought I was still committed to helping him with this ’favor’ he asked of me. He thought I was doing all of this for him. If he had known that I wasn’t, he never would have been here. Hopefully. I guess I can’t know for sure.
It’s still really messed up that Lawson would have even considered the idea that I was sleeping with Dex and manipulating him in order to create ammunition for Lawson. I don’t know who would ever be capable of something like that, but for him to even imagine I was is... nauseating. Still, I don’t want it burrowing into Dex’s sanity and making a home there.
"I just don’t want you dwelling on it like this," I offer in a soft voice as I push the food around my plate.
"I’m not going to dwell on it. He will be taken care of, and then it will be done," he says, offering me a smile. But it’s forced. I can tell that there is the lingering desire to punish his brother pulsing within. Reading those journals only solidified Dex’s anger and let it settle in deeper. "Please eat."
I sigh and take a bite, not wanting to taste how good it is because of how sour the topic of Lawson has made me feel, but the flavors explode across my tongue nonetheless. A seductive moan breaks in my throat, and Dex’s gaze lands back on me. His lips twitch and eyes heat, and THAT is genuine.
"I’m sorry. I can’t help it. How do you do this?" I ask, fork sliding back into the food, Lawson completely forgotten.
"I’ll teach you," he says, his sexy smirk back.
The fire crackles in the air between us again, and it’s a relief. Whatever mess Dex’s brother creates is not more powerful than this—the connection between us. Which is so crazy considering that he has known his brother his entire life and me for only a short time. How can loyalties shift so quickly?
Maybe Dex always knew on some deep, unconscious level that his brother was extremely fucked up. Sometimes we avoid what we don’t want to see even when it’s family—especially when it’s family.
"I keep hearing that you’re going to teach me, but it hasn’t happened yet," I tease.
"We cooked together one night. You chopped the vegetables very well," he smirks, earning a soft chuckle from me. "We have plenty of time. Small steps. Plus, if you start cooking, how will I treat you like a princess?"
I groan, unable to avoid voicing my distaste for that idea. "Please believe me when I tell you that I have no desire at all to be treated like that." I don’t even want to say the word princess. It’s hard to explain my visceral reaction to it.
"Why? Why is that so bad?" Dex asks.
"Poofy pink skirts and ballrooms and pompous, cruel, arrogant people dripping in jewels are what come to mind. And when it’s not those images, it’s delusional little girls who are feasting on impossible dreams that are fed to them as a form of control: ’This is what you should want. To be helpless and locked away, content with your powerlessness because there might just be a man who comes to save you from it one day. And if there’s not, well then too bad. You bought into the dream. Now you’re locked in the tower anyway.’"
No. Thanks.
"It’s unrealistic," I go on. "It’s demeaning. And whatever realistic aspects of royalty exist in our world is not anything I want to be associated with either."
Dex watches the mounting feelings behind my voiced objection in apparent amusement before he finally nods, bowing to my reasoning as he stares at his plate.
"Okay," he relents, offering me his raised hands, "I won’t call you that again. I promise."
"Thank you."
"I suppose ’queen’ is out of the question as well."
I glare at him, my lips forming an unimpressed line.
"Got it," he chuckles. "Hmmm..."
"You don’t need to think of anything else." My nose crinkles. "My name is fine."
"Okay. Whatever you say, angel."
He is teasing me by adding another nickname, but there is something truly genuine about that choice of endearment. He means it. I suppose he meant ’principessa’ too, but the soft, breathy way ’angel’ sounds on his lips is so natural, it makes it seem like he has been calling me that in his mind the whole time. It makes it sound like he has been praying for me—thanking God for me, even.
"That’s the one then," Dex says, abandoning his plate and leaning across the small distance between our stools, resting a hand on my thigh before dragging my stool closer to his. "Your cheeks just turned the prettiest pink when I said it," he whispers seductively against my neck, sending a thousand butterflies dipping straight from my heart into my belly. Then his lips skate lightly across the skin under my ear.
"I want you to finish your dinner so that I can take you to the police station to file your report against the fucker who sliced open my arm," he whispers, and why the hell that sounds sexy, I don’t know. Maybe because Dex can make anything sound sexy. "And then we are coming back here so I can send you back to heaven where you came from, angel. Every scene in that journal, we’re doing it. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if both of us have to call into work tomorrow."
His hand runs up my leg and grips my thigh centimeters away from where I am now on absolute fire from wanting him, and I have to swallow roughly, because I have no words to reply to that. That’s... a lot of dreams.
Dex pulls my ear between his teeth, and I swear I have zero responsibility for the whimper that escapes when he does. My thighs press together, trapping his fingers between them as the growl erupts in his throat and his lips drag back down my neck.
"Better get eating, angel," he rumbles. "You’re going to need the energy."
