TRAP (The Billionaire's Rules, Book 15) Read Free Page B

suit coat, turned on his heel and started back inside. “Lanie, you coming with us?”
    She hesitated, looking at Brayden. “Are you all right?” she asked him softly.
    He nodded grimly, touching his lip and wincing a little. “I guess the uptight jerk can punch a little bit after all. Busted me up pretty good.”
    “You need to go to the emergency room,” she said.
    “I’ll be fine.” He sighed and turned around. “I’m going, don’t worry.”
    Lanie looked back and saw Ivy and Cullen standing in the doorway to the house. Ivy’s face was a mask of worry. “Lanie, why don’t you come back inside now?” she called.
    Brayden kept shuffling out of the yard, and suddenly Lanie realized that it wasn’t simply her concern for Brayden’s health and the fact that he’d been hurt by his fight with Cullen—it was that she didn’t want to leave things this way between them.
    If this was the last time she was ever going to see him—watching him shuffling off bruised and beaten and broken...she couldn’t let this be the last memory she had of him.
    Lanie smiled at her cousin. “I need to go and talk to him. You understand?”
    Ivy nodded, sighing. “Yeah. I think I do.” She glanced at Cullen and he nodded, shrugging.
    “Let us know if you need us,” Cullen told her. “And be careful,” he told her. And then he shut the door.
    Lanie let out a deep sigh. She turned back and saw that Brayden had disappeared from view again, and she went after him.
    Catching up to him a little way down the street, Lanie called his name. He didn’t turn around at first.
    “Brayden, wait.”
    He finally stopped but still didn’t turn to face her. “Just leave me alone,” he said.
    “I need to talk to you,” she said.
    “There’s nothing left to say. I got my ass kicked and my company’s ruined. The job of putting me in my place is done.”
    “Just look at me,” she said. “We should at least be able to talk to one another, even if this is the last time we ever speak.”
    When he turned around, she was startled by the feeling that went directly to her belly and chest. A feeling of wanting to just throw her arms around him, and feel his arms wrapping around her in return.
    A feeling that this was the man she should be with.
    “You already made your point,” Brayden said. “Or Cullen made it for you, I suppose.” Even in his bruised and battered state, he was still gorgeous, Lanie realized.
    His strength was still evident, even after everything he’d been through that day. He looked rough and ready, and she found herself responding physically to him despite herself.
    “Cullen didn’t make any point for me,” she said. “He was defending his family from someone he thought was threatening them.”
    “I didn’t realize you were family,” Brayden said, his eyes uncertain.
    She nodded. “His wife, Ivy, is my cousin.”
    Brayden gave a slight shrug of his powerful shoulders. “Okay, well…I suppose I deserved it, then.” He put his hand on the back of his neck and rubbed, making a face. “So what do you want to tell me, Lanie?”
    “I didn’t have anything to do with that recording that you were sent.”
    At the mention of the recording, Brayden’s eyes went flat and cold. “You mean that wasn’t your voice on there, telling the whole world that I fucked you without consent?”
    “That audio was edited. It was taken completely out of context.”
    He stepped closer to her now, his eyes hardened. “You went and spilled personal information about our relationship during my weakest moment, when someone had already taken advantage of me over that exact subject matter. And you expect me to believe you had no idea they were recording you?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m telling you happened,” Lanie said. “I was upset after you said that we weren’t friends, and that I’d just done sexual things to you and that was all it was. I was crying, beside myself, and that’s when she came and talked to me. I