Taming the Brat

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The Voss family paid for ten years of my life.

Then tonight his father asked what I wanted for a scholarship gift.

I asked for him.

For ten years he told everyone I was a boring little bookworm playing saint.

What the hell do you think you're doing? Nico said through his teeth.

I had him pinned to the bed, kissing him like I had no plans to stop.

I looked down and took my time enjoying how rattled he was.

"Am I a good student, young Mr. Voss?"

I leaned in and bit down on his throat.

"I've been reading dark romance lately," I said with my mouth still on his throat. "Forgot to mention. Straight-A brains don't just ace the theory. We're good at the hands-on part too."

Chapter 1

"Voss says the whole bar's on his tab tonight."

"That's our guy!"

A cheer swallowed the room the second I walked in.

Nico stood on the second floor with a glass of red wine, looking down at all of them. That face belonged on a magazine cover. The rest of him cost more than anyone standing under that balcony.

He swirled that glass like the whole room bored him.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs in a plain white sundress, wrong in every way for that room.

Our eyes caught. One eyebrow went up.

I turned sideways and cut through the crowd.

A guy blocked me at the foot of the stairs.

"Voss says anyone who wants to see him drinks first."

A tray of glasses came out. A whole row of them.

"I drink, I get to see him?"

"That's the deal."

Nico had sent him down here to make this ugly for me. Nobody had to tell me that. The guy smiled.

"Pick one, sweetheart."

I picked one without looking. The wine burned all the way down. I coughed twice.

"Done. Go tell him to come to me. If I have to go up there, he's going to wish he'd come down."

I didn't leave room in my voice for a discussion. He looked at the empty glass in my hand, then at my face, and went to get him.

Nico came down while I was still leaning against the wall, waiting for my throat to stop burning.

Pressed shirt, sleeves flipped back, hair shoved every direction. On anyone else it would have looked like a mess. On him it just looked expensive.

"Wine's bad, isn't it," he said. "Go back where you came from, Vivian."

He'd said that to me before.

The first time, Uncle Voss had just brought me home from the county group home and I still slept on top of the covers because the bed felt like something I'd have to give back.

For years after that, it was his favorite thing to hit me with.

It doesn't get anywhere near me now.

"It is bad," I said. I lifted my eyes to his. "Is yours any better?"

"What?"

The question landed somewhere he wasn't ready for. He made a small sound in the back of his throat.

"You couldn't afford what I drink if you saved your whole life."

I looked at him.

Sharp brow bone. Straight nose. That cutting little smile he keeps on hand for people like me.

His mouth was pink from the wine.

I looked at it for a second longer than I needed to.

"I might be able to afford it," I said.

Then I put both hands on the back of his neck and kissed him.

He froze solid. Not one part of him moved.

I opened his mouth and took the taste of the wine off his tongue, and I kept going until his breath came apart, until his tongue went numb under mine, and only then did he snap out of it and shove me back.

"Vivian, are you out of your mind?"

The hallway was dark. He backed up three steps, then a fourth.

I wiped the corner of my mouth with my thumb.

"Your wine isn't any better," I said. "Your mouth is soft, though."

And that face, the one that makes strangers hate their own reflections, finally did something I'd never seen it do.

Angry. And not one word left in his mouth.

Chapter 2

And out of its depth.

That flustered second of his went straight to my head like the wine hadn't.

I closed the space between us.

"Your father says you're supposed to stay with me now. So come home."

"Not happening. The old man put you in charge of me? He can dream."

I looked him over, unhurried, top to bottom.

Our eyes met and he was the one who turned away, stubborn about it, chin first.

The tips of his ears were red.

I sighed.

Then I hooked two fingers in the waistband of his pants and yanked.

He came forward half a step. I tipped my face up and set my teeth on his throat, right over the knot of it, and left a mark that was not small.

His stomach went tight. His throat moved under my mouth.

I wasn't wearing lipstick. Which meant that mark wasn't coming off with a napkin, or with anything else.

"Nico," I said against his skin. "If you're so tough, walk back in there like that."

Nico Voss is a trust-fund brat, famous all over the private-school crowd for being impossible to handle.

The one thing he's never done is date anyone.

That night I kissed him and left him standing there. In every sense of the word.

Three days later he finally came home.

He came in quiet, which was new. One lamp on in the living room. Then he saw me on the couch.

He stopped short.

"It's the middle of the night. You sitting there to scare people?"

"I was thirsty. Came down for water."

"Mr. Nico. You're home." The house manager appeared out of nowhere. "Miss Shaw has waited up for you every night this week."

"Every night?"

"Every night, sir."

The house manager turned to me and handed over a card, the way you hand someone an invoice. "Mr. Voss is traveling. He said keeping his son in line will take some effort on your part. This is extra, for you."

I thought about it for a second and took it.

Nico watched me the whole time the man walked out.

I glanced at him. He looked away fast.

Two seconds later his eyes were back on me.

"Vivian, don't tell me you like me." He said it slow, like he was enjoying it. "My dad hands you a leash and you kiss me instead. Everyone thinks you're such a good girl. Turns out you've got some nerve."

"Get one thing straight, though. You're not managing me. If every woman on the planet dropped dead, I still wouldn't want you."

Wouldn't want me. Fine.

I ran my thumb over the edge of the card and started a list in my head.

Riding crop. Handcuffs. Rope.

The mark on his throat had already faded. That needed fixing.

He was still going. "So do us both a favor and give it up."

I wanted to put something over his mouth.

I blinked at him instead.

"That night, after I kissed you. Where did you go?"

He stopped talking.

The red climbed his ears again, and he stumbled over the first two words like they'd been shuffled.

"Out. Kept the party going. Obviously."

"Best night you've ever had?" I said.

He went rigid, then pushed past me. "I'm going to bed."

Sunday.

I stayed at the library until two in the morning and finally finished the olympiad problems my faculty advisor had dumped on me.

I got home to find Nico throwing a party on the roof.

I washed up, got into bed, and lay there while the ceiling shook.

He threw parties whenever his father traveled. He had never thrown one this loud.

So I went upstairs.

Wind up there, no moon. Nico had a guitar in his hands and his fingers were flying over it.

He saw me and the music cut out like someone had pulled a plug.

"Who exactly are you dressed for?" he said, low.

Someone in the back laughed way too hard.

"Voss, they're long-sleeve pajamas. Who's getting seduced by that? You blind?"

"Shut up."

He wasn't looking at the guy who'd laughed. He was looking at me.

"What do you want up here?"

Chapter 3

"It's too loud. Keep it down. I need to sleep."

"Sleep?" Nico tossed the guitar onto a couch. "You walked in at two in the morning. So much for the good girl and her bedtime."

So that was it. He'd waited until my car pulled up and then turned the speakers to the ceiling.

"Nico, don't be so mean to her. Viv, come play with us."

That was Bianca Lowell. The Lowell heiress. She's been hung up on him for years.

I was curious enough about why she wanted me to stay that I sat down.

Off their bar turf, that crowd just drank beer and spun a bottle. The neck of it stopped on Nico.

Somebody yelled the question. "Have you still got your first kiss?"

"Come on, Voss doesn't date anybody. Of course he's still got it."

"Someone was asking, though."

Bianca looked at him and then looked at the floor, shy about it.

Nico's eyes went over me, slow, all the way down and back.

He cleared his throat. "Nope. It's gone."

His best friend's eyes went round. Bianca's face fell.

"No way. Is it..." Somebody waggled his eyebrows at her.

"Don't," she said, and put a hand over her mouth like a woman being teased about her wedding.

"She's blushing, she's blushing. Voss, give us the details."

Nico looked right at me. He didn't correct anyone.

He lifted a brow. "I kissed her. She turned so red I thought she'd pass out. Knees went out from under her."

Every sentence he added took a shade out of Bianca's face.

It didn't stop her from sliding closer to him. He didn't move away. He let all of them believe it, and while they were laughing he tipped one corner of his mouth at me where nobody else could see.

I checked my phone. The package I'd ordered had been delivered.

Time to put it to use.

"You guys keep going. I'm tired."

"Hang on, sweetheart, the bottle already landed on you. Same question. Answer it, then you can go."

I didn't turn around. "Seventeen."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning it was gone at seventeen."

"No way. The good girl had a boyfriend in high school?"

I was on the stairs by then.

I looked back once from the stairs. The smile had come off his face like someone had wiped it away with a rag.

I wrapped the handcuffs in strips of cloth so the metal wouldn't cut, and put the rough rope in a pot of water to boil.

The message I'd sent him, come to my room, sat there unread.

They'd moved down to the gaming room. I sent two more.

Then he blocked me.

I sighed, opened my laptop, and started writing code.

By the time the rope came out soft and strong, the script was done.

Two minutes later somebody was pounding on my door.

I took my time getting up. Nico shoved past me into the room.

"Where the hell did you get a photo of us kissing?"

"Isn't it obvious? I pulled it off the bar's security feed."

He dragged a hand back through his hair. Every muscle in his jaw was working, and he kept it there. Maybe losing it in front of me would have cost him too much. I couldn't tell.

"I came up. Now kill the program."

Earlier that night I'd dropped a script on the machine he always uses.

His friends would be tearing through a match, and then his screen would freeze on them. Our photo, dead center. Small print underneath.

Upstairs in two minutes, or the same picture goes up on every screen in this house.

I smiled and traced his eyebrow with my thumb.

"You're really that scared of them finding out. Is kissing me embarrassing? Are you afraid they'll laugh at you? Or is it that you hate me?"

Chapter 4

Whatever he had, he didn't swing it.

"None of those."

I touched the knot of his throat.

"So you're scared Bianca will find out."

He swallowed. Both his hands came down on the desk behind me, one on either side, and he leaned in.

"Look at that. You're jealous."

His breath was on my mouth.

The two-minute timer ticked somewhere behind me.

I pressed my lips together and reached back and killed the program.

"Sure," I said. "Even a tool I use to blow off steam, I don't like other people touching."

The cuff went around his wrist with a click.

"I'm a tool you use to blow off steam?"

I didn't answer. I bent down and locked the other end to the back of the chair.

"Let me go." His voice climbed. "What are you doing? I'm telling you right now, there is no way I'd ever"

He has a beautiful mouth. Nothing good has ever come out of it.

So I covered it with mine.

Everything I know about kissing came out of books. Lucky for me the lab equipment was excellent.

He fought it for a few seconds and then he stopped fighting it. Then he was kissing me back like his body had made the decision without him.

His lashes shook against my cheek. Under all that perfect bone structure, the color came up in his skin.

Our breathing tangled. The hem of his shirt got shoved up and the strip of stomach it left showing was pulled tight.

I let my eyes drop to his black pants.

"Vivian. Don't look."

"Want me to help?"

"Don't you dare."

His whole face went red. "Touch me and you're dead. Don't look. Don't touch. I mean it."

I looked. Then I touched.

The sound he made against my ear was low and wrecked and shameless.

"Get it straight," I said. "Your first kiss was me. The first time anybody made you feel that was me too."

"It really is the first time, isn't it. You're so easy."

His breathing alone could take a person apart.

"There's an effect in psychology called anchoring. A feeling gets wired to one specific outside trigger. Nico. Next time you do this yourself, you're going to think of me."

His skin is pale enough that the cuff had already marked him red. The chair rattled against the floor and kept rattling.

"Am I a good student, young Mr. Voss?"

I'd never called him that before. But there's something to be said for a word that makes the whole thing worse. Talking to the golden boy like he answered to me, out loud.

"What the hell book is this from? My dad told you to teach me like this?"

"It's called Taming the Brat. Dark romance. The filthy kind." I leaned down and kissed his throat. "Forgot to mention. Straight-A brains don't just ace the theory."

"Don't. Not there."

Then somebody was at the door across the hall.

"Voss, what's taking so long? We've played three matches without you."

He went rigid all over.

My hand jumped.

The sound he made was not quiet.

Outside, the footsteps stopped.

"What was that? Next room, I think. That sounded like Voss."

"That's Vivian's room. No way he's in there. Whatever, let's look."

The panic hit his face all at once.

"Vivian. Where'd Voss go? Is he in there with you?"

Knuckles hit my door, twice, then twice more.

Every line of him was drawn tight.

I put my mouth to his ear. "Scared they'll walk in on you?"

He turned his head and gave me a look, red to his hairline.

"What do you think?"

I found a shirt and laid it over him.

Chapter 5

"Where are you going?"

"To open the door."

"Are you insane? You can't open the door with me like this."

"Relax. I'll keep them out there."

I washed my hands and opened the door a few inches.

"What's up?"

"Nobody knows where Voss went. We're checking if he's with you."

"Obviously not. You all know he can't stand me."

They hadn't expected me to say it flat like that. Two of them looked at each other.

"Okay, we'll try somewhere else."

"Come on. Voss pulls this disappearing act and doesn't say a word."

The whole group moved off down the hall.

I was closing the door when a hand caught it.

I knew him. Preston Vale, Nico's best friend. Cool eyes, the kind that stay level while they take everything in.

"Vivian. Have you ever thought about a different life?"

I gave him a look. "Such as?"

"Such as away from this family. Away from Nico. Not living on somebody else's charity. Maybe a boyfriend with a personality that isn't a felony."

"One like you?"

His brow went up. "If you wanted."

I folded my arms and leaned on the door frame. "You don't give up, do you. Three years ago you were doing this too."

He tilted his head. "Three years ago I was out of line, I'll give you that. Doesn't change that I still like you."

Something knocked hard inside the room.

"What was that?"

"Probably one of my toys. I'll go take the batteries out."

I started to shut the door. "Oh. Isn't Nico supposed to be your best friend?"

Preston laughed, quiet about it. "He doesn't like you."

I closed the door.

Nico was still tipped back in the chair where I'd left him.

"Out of line? Three years ago you were seventeen. Your first kiss was him?"

His eyes stayed on me and didn't move. Direct. Sharp. Something under it that wanted to take a bite.

I bent down until we were level.

"How is that any of your business? You don't like me."

"I..."

He stopped there.

"Hm?"

Then he made that little sound in his throat. "I'd never be with a woman who plays with me."

"You'd better mean that."

I unlocked the cuff. "Go back to your room."

"Take the shirt with you. It's dirty."

He held it in. He was in no shape to start anything. He left with his neck still red, furious, and without a sound.

The first time I kissed him he stayed away three days.

This time it was a week.

When we finally ended up in the same place again, the air had cooled.

He drove without saying anything. Too fast, but smooth, eyes forward, jaw set.

Hair everywhere. White shirt under a navy sweatshirt, cuffs pushed up.

It was the day of the family dinner.

"Dressed like that, you almost look like a student," I said.

"If my dad hadn't ordered me to bring you, I wouldn't have driven out of my way to get you."

"Thank you."

"That's it?"

I let it sit for a second.

"Fine. If you don't want to talk about that night, don't. It was a hand. That's all it was. I'm a grown man, I'm not embarrassed, there's nothing to be sore about, and I definitely don't lie there at night with my head full of you."

I caught the part that mattered. "You thought about me at night?"

"I did not."

I smiled at the windshield. "Then the anchoring worked."

The car stopped so hard my seatbelt locked.

"I was not thinking about you doing that," he said.

Chapter 6

I blinked at him. "Then what were you thinking about me doing?"

"Thinking about you..."

Pink came up under his skin. He cracked one knuckle, then another.

"Vivian, you're a freak."

"Can't help it. Stress. Bear with me."

He pulled over on a county road outside the city and yanked the parking brake.

Then he raised those heavy lids and gave me a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

"I'm tired of driving. Heard you just got your license. You take it."

Plenty of people get a license and still won't touch a highway. He was telling me exactly what this was.

"You'd put your life in my hands?"

"Up to you."

I got out, walked around, and pulled the driver's door open.

"Why aren't you moving?"

He looked at me, and his hand went to the seatbelt release and pressed it.

Then he had my wrist and I was in his lap, and he was kissing me, soft and taking his time and giving me no say in it.

One arm around my waist. One hand on my knee. Deeper by degrees, until the air ran out.

He pulled back an inch.

I'd worn light makeup that day. His mouth had come away pink and wet with it, and his eyes had gone dark.

His voice came out low and rough. "Driving wears me out. I'm using you for stress too."

I got my breathing under control and gave him an honest review.

"Good student. Solid technique. Nice to see you applying the material."

"You're not so composed yourself, Vivian. Listen to you breathe."

I put my hand down on his thigh.

"I thought it was up to me. You just handed me your life. Why so tense. Which one of us is average again?"

He turned his face away and covered his eyes with the back of his hand. His other hand closed into a fist and stayed that way