4
TOBY’S POV
What is she doing?I knew I should move. After all, I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I walked into Renee’s bedroom by mistake while I was searching for the bathroom, and now…well, now I found myself stuck here, unable to move as I tried my absolute hardest not to run my eyes all over her silky naked body as she practically purred toward me. She was like a giant cat, attracting her prey, seducing the mouse before she ate him alive. But I wasn’t a mouse, I was a wolf, and the sight of her, however hard I was trying not to look, had my primal side bursting free.
Even if I knew the best thing for me to do was back away, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was too captured by her. Intoxicated, which was insane. I couldn’t be intoxicated by Renee Vaughn, my twin brother’s ex-girlfriend. It was weird.
I’d called him last night. I wasn’t sure why, but after seeing who we were going to be working with, it seemed like the right thing to do. I assumed Trey might want to know that Renee was back in my life. Just in case he heard it from someone else. Not that he was likely to. It wasn’t like we ran in the same circles anymore or even lived in the same country, so it wasn’t like Trey would accidently stumble across something in the media. He’d moved to England not long after college to be with the woman he eventually married and had a family with. He wasn’t really interested in what was going on in America. But I still thought it better to tell him. “Who’s Renee?” That was what he asked me. Like he actually couldn’t remember her. How the hell he could forget someone so beautiful, I would never know. But he was a play boy before he got married. College was basically a playground for him. I knew their relationship meant more to Renee than it did to Trey at the time, but I didn’t expect him to forget all about her.
How could he? She was gorgeous, easily the best-looking girlfriend he ever had. The nicest as well. Admittedly, I didn’t exactly get to know the women in his life, but Renee was always incredible. She was sweet and cute, maybe too preppy for what I thought Trey’s taste was at the time, but adorable.
The fact that he didn’t remember her, even after I did everything I could to remind him, meant he wouldn’t care about what was happening now. But did that make it right? I wasn’t given nearly enough time to get my shit together to work it all out. This was dangerous and needed a lot of thought before I crossed the boundary into something really dangerous. But she was coming, and my brain was foggy. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do. I was overcome with desire, and it took every ounce of strength I had not to freaking fall to the ground at her feet. If it wasn’t for the intense animalistic desire surging through my body, I might have caved to that weird feeling. I even found my teeth gritting together, and I was pretty sure my eyes had shifted. But that didn’t scare Renee. If anything, it turned her on more. I could smell the pheromones radiating off of her.
Oh fuck.My sharp vision picked up Renee’s needy fingers edging toward me. My mouth ran dry, my heart pounded like crazy. I knew this was the moment to stop her, but I just couldn’t.
Lightning bolts surged through my body as her hand finally connected with my body. It was powerful, like a firework exploding in the pit of my stomach. Renee’s eyes had glazed over, almost as if she wasn’t really in the room at all as her fingers brushed all over my torso, my chest, my hips, and ever lower. I dared a quick glance downward because I just couldn’t help it any longer. I was losing grip on myself, losing the power to contain my wolf. She was beautiful, sexy, phenomenal. God, her body was so seductive and sultry, I almost lost my mind. Fucking hell, she might have been the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on, which definitely complicated things. I didn’t want to complicate things, I’d made that very clear, but here I was complicating things anyway.
I was hard as a fucking rock, which only drew Renee’s attention. Her eyes almost popped out of her head in shock when she pulled my pants down a little to see my thick, throbbing erection burst free. Renee looked thrilled, utterly excited. Her scent absolutely flooded the room, which was wonderful. The last scrap of control I had over myself threatened to slip away. I felt like I might actually shift into my wolf at any given moment.
And then she grabbed me. Literally wrapped her soft hand around my shaft and stroked me a couple of times. Gentle moans flew out of my mouth, hers as well, which made me weak at the knees. I grabbed her shoulders and pushed her up against the wall, my lips only inches from hers. I could breathe her in, practically taste her. The effect was absolutely overwhelming, and my heart damn near wanted to burst free from my chest now. I wasn’t quite sure how I was keeping it all inside. My eyes were locked on Renee’s, which was just about the only thing preventing me from finally closing the gap between us. I wanted to keep looking at her, drinking in every inch of her.
“Oh no.” All of a sudden, it was almost as if reality had sunk in and she was back in her body once more. “No, we probably shouldn’t, should we?”
She pressed her hands to my chest and I immediately stepped backward. Much as Renee turned me on, and I had a feeling I did that for her as well, I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries. Consent was everything.
“Oh my God.” Redness stained Renee’s cheeks as she seemed to suddenly become aware that she was naked. “Oh no!” She flung her arms around her body, trying her hardest to cover herself, but she couldn’t. I spun around so I wasn’t looking at her anymore. “Oh no, I’m so sorry, Toby. This is… It’s complicated now, isn’t it? We didn’t want it to get complicated…”
“Don’t worry.” I had my eyes closed as an added measure. I might have been able to clearly see her naked body in my mind, but I wasn’t going to look at her when she didn’t want me to. “We can just forget about this or whatever. We can just…”
“Yeah, I need to… Sorry, Toby, I need to get into the bathroom.”
I held out my hands to feel the wall so I could move into the corner of the room, away from Renee. Even when I heard her enter the bathroom and close the door behind her, I didn’t open my eyes because it just didn’t feel right. Plus, I was really trying my hardest to calm myself down. My cock was still hard as a rock, which wasn’t great. It was difficult to keep myself in check when I had the image of her gorgeousness in my brain. I was going to have to, though, because it wasn’t right. When Renee came out of the bathroom, she wasn’t going to want to see me all turned on over her.
This shouldn’t be happening, I told myself determinedly, trying my hardest to un-grit my teeth. Get yourself together, Toby. Don’t be an asshole.
Actually, was this my cue to just leave? To give Renee some much needed time and space? Finally, I managed to pry my eyes apart to take a look around while I tried to figure this shit out. Would it be better for me to just go, or would that make everything so much worse? It was with a sinking heart that I realized I probably needed to talk this through with Renee so we could get on the same page. Somehow, we were going to have to work out a way to ignore the searing chemistry between us at all times. Not only because she used to date my twin brother once upon a time, but because Stark would kill me for threatening this job. The Vaughns were important enough to him for him to work the case himself, so I couldn’t be the one to mess shit up.
Although I kind of knew the moment I spotted Renee in that library with that rich dirt bag that shit was going to get wild.
“Oh wow.” A painting by the window caught my attention. I found myself drawn toward it. This was what Renee was doing when I first walked in. Of course, I barely noticed it then because she was naked, but now, I couldn’t stop looking. What was it about this painting that made her paint it naked? Or maybe she was just standing there in the nude to admire her work, to decide whether she liked it or not. “This is good!”
There was no wondering for me. I loved it. I thought it was absolutely magnetic. I was drawn to it as much as I was drawn to her. I couldn’t stop myself from examining it closer. The painting might have been bright on the outset, but there was an intense darkness to it. The swirls, the oppressive storm, the underlying stress that seemed to come out with each and every brush stroke. I reached out and gently touched the canvas, a little like the way Renee reached out to touch me earlier. This was the opposite of the way I really saw her. She was bright and perky, sweet and fun loving. I didn’t even know she had this deep darkness within her. There was a lot about Renee Vaughn that I didn’t know. I wished there was a way I could peel back all the layers to her.
Does she love him? I couldn’t help but wonder. Does she touch him like that? Does she have desire in her eyes for him like she did for me?
Thank God I wasn’t thinking about Trey now. He hadn’t featured in Renee’s life for years, so with a bit of luck, we didn’t even need to mention him again. No, now I was worried about the rich asshole who had her pressed up against the wall in the library without her consent. At least that was how it came across to me at the time. Lucky thought so as well, although he wasn’t speaking quite so freely about it as me. He kind of hinted that he didn’t know what he’d seen now. But I knew. He wasn’t welcome, and the words he seemed to be whispering in her ear didn’t look like sweet nothings to me. He really didn’t seem like someone I could imagine sweet Renee marrying. Even if I didn’t know her too well, he definitely didn’t seem good enough for her. Although, I guess he had the money. He had the Vanderbilt lifestyle. Maybe Renee needed that because she was used to it.
Who the hell knew? I didn’t, and that was what killed me. I didn’t know and I really wanted to. I wanted to know it all.
“Oh, you’re still here.” I cringed. Seemed like Renee was expecting me to leave after all. Shit, I should have gone with that instinct. “Sorry about all of that, you know…”
She sounded so pained; I couldn’t bear it. I took the responsibility on my shoulders to change the subject and make this easier for Renee. For me as well, I guess. “What’s this you have been painting?”
“Um…” Renee knotted her eyebrows together, almost in confusion. As I darted my eyes between the painting and the artist, it was really hard for me to make them connect. “It was just the sunrise.”
“Seems like more to me,” I admitted with a one-shouldered shrug. “They say art is a reflection of the soul, don’t they?”
A sweet little smile spread across Renee’s face. “They do say that, don’t they? But I could argue that’s more in the eye of the beholder. We see what’s reflected in our own soul.”
“Huh.” I was impressed. I couldn’t stop myself from raising my brows in surprise. “That’s another way to look at it, I suppose. But there isn’t any darkness in my soul.”
“I find that hard to belief, wolf.”
As Renee winked at me, silently papering over the cracks in the friendship that we were going to have, I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling. “Oh, so you’re going to treat me like the animal I am, huh?”
“Well, why not? You are a wolf, after all.”
The wolf within me stirred once more. I wanted to shift, to become the wolf I loved being, but not here. Not in the Vaughn household. Stark was very firm about that. He didn’t want us to unleash our beasts and risk breaking anything. We couldn’t afford half the shit in this house. So that was fair. Luckily, there was a large yard out back with a pond, so we had the space to run around freely if we wanted. And I did want, but I also needed to make sure things were right between me and Renee before I went anywhere. It seemed like things were so much better between us already, but at the same time, I needed to be sure. I stayed here to talk about things. Sure, I changed the subject when Renee was uncomfortable, but maybe now it was time to…