“Why? They don’t have any familial link; she’s my mother’s first daughter. If anything, Lisa’s of a more logical age for dad than Laura. Our mother is fourteen years dad’s senior.”

I decide not to calculate Arlo’s age when he encountered Darius’s mother. Hopefully, he was at least eighteen. “A cougar.”

“You can say that again. Her current boyfriend’s twenty-three.”

I chuckle. “You have to admit this is weird. How do you even know what sort of kinks your family members have? I don’t know what my grandma likes, intimately. Or my mother, for that matter.”

“Not really. I haven’t watched my dad or my sister fuck, if that’s what you mean. I can just tell that their characters are like mine. Demanding, exacting, possessive.”

I mark those three words, because they seem to explain so much about this guy.

“As for your grandma—and other people as a general rule. I guess most people don’t notice anything because they’re all various shades of vanilla. Boring as fuck. I knew you were the kind of girl who’d get wet at being told what to do when you’d avoid my gaze, sneaking little looks. Like prey hiding. I knew you’d be perfect for me that very first day.”

Perfect.

I’m bright red down to my tiptoes. And yes, avoiding his gaze, which apparently makes his point.

29. Claire

29

CLAIRE

I have half an hour before dinner, so I finally make myself face the inevitable.

My initial instinct to remain alone in my room for it causes my stomach to churn, so instead, I walk into the lounge. Like this morning, Keller’s reading on one of the sofas. There’s plenty of room elsewhere, but when I walk in, he straightens to free up some space, so I join him. The low, soft, dark four-seater is incredibly comfortable. I imagine getting up from here could become a struggle after a while.

“Studying still?” I ask.

“They don’t let people become surgeons unless they get the grades,” Keller retorts dryly. “No matter your last name.”

Surgeon. That makes me look at his long, strong, skilled fingers.

“What made you want to do that?”

“My cousin,” he says with a shrug. “He explained all the reasons why that was a sound career path, and they made sense to me. I don’t have a vocation as such. My only goal is to not deplete the amount of money my father made.”

I won’t deny I’m surprised; I thought he’d be a typical trust fund baby. “You want to make your own way?”