Thea was forbidden from seeing me but we saw each other in secret anyway. Like now, when the redhead who showed at my door started to push herself inside without so much as a hello.

Standing almost as tall as I am in platform heels, she nudged a pair of glasses up her nose and demanded, “Let me in so I can get out of these shoes.”

And she said those words in Thea’s voice.

I blinked and reached up to rub at my temple, trying to readjust my brain to catch up with the weirdness.

“LeVan, let me in!” Then she looked up at me, and the pale blue of her eyes hit me. Thea’s eyes.

“Thea—”

She shook her head and this time, instead of waiting for me to move, she shouldered past me, wobbling a little in the heels.

My gaze zoomed down and locked on her ass, revealed in a skirt far shorter and tighter than anything I’d ever seen her wear. And I thought that skirt might be even more revealing than some of her panties.

“Is it Halloween?” I asked before I could stop myself. “What’s with the get-up?”

She’d already dropped down on the nearest piece of furniture—that happened to be my massive, unmade bed—and I watched her shoulders rise and fall on a sniffle as she reached down to undo one of the ankle straps on her shoes.

She sniffed again.

My heart crushed inside my chest.

Moving to her, I knelt down in front of her and reached for the other shoe, helping ease it off. “These shoes are too small for you,” I said, rubbing the red marks it had made on her heel and toes.

“Why do you think I wanted them off?” She sniffed a third time.

Reaching up, I cupped her chin and eased her face upward until I could see her eyes. She’d slathered on makeup with a heavy hand, making it clear that her clothes weren’t the only thing getting the Goth treatment. Reaching up, I tugged off the glasses she had perched on her nose. Tears were welling in her big, beautiful eyes. “What’s going on, pretty lady?” I asked. “Is it Nicky? Is he hurt?”

“Not yet,” she said, a choked laugh escaping her. “But Mother will do her best to see that doesn’t stay the case.”

“What?”

She reached up and closed a hand around my wrist, squeezing tightly. Her lashes drifted down as another noise escaped her, but this one was far closer to a sob than a laugh.

“Hey, hey…” I pulled her up against me and rubbed my cheek against hers. “Whatever this is, we’ll make it right, okay?”

She clung to me, her arms roping around my neck like she’d never let go. I pulled her in closer and rose, shifting around until I could sit on the bed and pull her onto my lap.

That, of course, brought on a different set of problems.

Her skirt rose up.

Suddenly, Thea was practically half naked in my arms and I hadn’t seen her in a fucking month. We had plans to hook up the next week after mid-terms, but that was next week and she was here now and soft and warm…and her hip was pressed up against my cock.

My dick didn’t give a damn that she was upset.

I did.

But my dick was…well…a dick.

I could ignore that, though, wrapping my arms around her and nuzzling her neck as I murmured to her.

Unfortunately, Thea didn’t want me ignoring it.

She twisted around in my lap and pulled back, staring at me. The tears had left her makeup smudged but it would take far more than that to make her anything less than beautiful to me. “Tell me what’s—”

Wrong never made it out of my mouth.

She caught my face between her hands and kissed me, starving, almost feverish. My dick approved.

Fisting a hand in her hair, I tugged her head back. “Hey, wait…” I said gruffly.

“No.” Thea pulled free of my grip and reached for the skin-tight shirt—it was also half-sheer, making it apparent the bra she wore was black and lacy—and dragged it off. Now, wearing just the bra and panties, her skirt around her waist like some twisted belt, she rocked against me. “I don’t want to wait or think. Kiss me, LeVan.”

That was a demand I had no desire to ignore.

Weaving my fingers into her hair, I pulled her face to mine.

I had a feeling I might regret this, but I’d worry about that later.

Much, much later.

My wandering hands quickly determined that the panties she had on under that lousy excuse of a skirt were almost as skimpy as the skirt was—more like a few straps of cloth that stretched over her hips and ran down in a thin strip between the cheeks of her ass, it took nothing to rip it off. Thrusting my fingers into the depths of her folds, I found her wet and waiting for me. She cried out against my lips and rocked against my hand.

When I pulled back, she moaned in disappointment, but that moan quickly turned to a sob as I flipped her around and spilled her onto her back.

There was no shyness in her tonight, nothing but a desperation that added fuel to the hunger I always had for her.

Pushing her thighs apart, I pressed my mouth to her pussy and groaned against her.

She shoved both hands into my hair, her fingers tangling in the dreads and gripping tightly. “Please,” she gasped.

Oh, I’d please her.

Catching the hardened nub of her clit between my teeth, I tugged on it, then listened as she wailed.

I slid my hand up her thigh and pushed two fingers inside her, working her with my hand and mouth.

She rocked against me, moaning, and each time I so much as slowed, she thrust herself back against me and tugged at my hair. “Please, LeVan!” she demanded.

I loved it.

“Keep it up, pretty girl,” I muttered against her wet flesh. “You’re practically fucking my face. I love it.”

She whimpered as I lifted up and blew a puff of air against her clit, then drew my tongue around her in a slow, taunting circle. One hand fell from my hair and I caught it, guiding it back.

She understood and fell back into her rhythm, rising up to my mouth, moaning and shaking as I licked, sucked, and finger-fucked her into climax.

She was still shaking from her orgasm when I rose and shoved down the workout pants I’d pulled on earlier. Pulling her hips to the edge of the bed, I pulled her up, turned her over, and thrust inside.

A long, throaty whimper escaped her.

Sliding my eyes up the long, elegant line of her spine, I stared at the mess of red hair and whispered her name.

The hair wasn’t familiar, the clothes…even her desperation was off.

But she moaned my name and a moment later, she gasped, “I love you.”

That…I needed to hear that and with a strained curse, I began to thrust deeply, drawing a cry from her lips as I filled her completely. She bounced up on her toes as she took me in, her spine undulating.

It was raw and rough and I held off coming until I heard the ragged sound of her breathing, until I felt the shudders rippling through her.

Then I let go and climaxed—it was almost painful.

Or so I thought.

Her crying was going to be the end of me.

It didn't help that I couldn’t get her to talk and after about ten minutes, I stopped trying. Whatever this was, the pain went deep enough that I figured she had to get it out.

I didn’t keep watching the clock either, but I’d always had a pretty good sense of time, and I think it took almost an hour for that storm of tears to pass, longer for her breathing to calm. Smoothing a hand up the tangled cloud of her hair, I combed my fingers through it, then rubbed the back of her neck. “You ready to tell me what it is that’s hurt you so much?”

Although I had a bad, bad feeling that I already knew. And it wasn’t a what, but a who.

I’d held my peace over the miserable old bitch that had somehow birthed not one, but two of my favorite people in the world, and I’d done it because saying much of anything wouldn’t have helped one damn thing, wouldn’t have changed one damn thing. Or at least, that had always been my viewpoint. How did I change the prejudiced mindset of a woman whose world was colored by not just prejudice, but anger, resentment, and jealousy?

I had no idea if Thea knew just how deep her mother’s dislike of me—and my family—went, but it was a legacy that went back decades.

Nothing would change Melody Kent’s opinions of me, my brother, or my mother.

As far as that old cow was concerned, my mother had taken something that belonged to her and her alone.

Braxton Vanderbilt—my father.

But her dislike and envy of my mother went back even further than that. As far as she was concerned, everything my mother had ever wanted, it seemed that Melody had been determined to take it…or ruin it—whether it was winning a spelling bee in third grade—Melody had insisted my mother cheated—to winning a science fair project in sixth—Melody had destroyed the project by crashing into Mom as she carried it down the steps.

That vitriol had been behind the accusations of me stealing from a candy store when I’d been just a kid and her ire at me had emerged at other times until I’d learned to steer clear of her and anything connected to her.

I’d done just fine too, until her beautiful daughter transferred from a private school to the small public one I’d graduated from.

Someone had pointed her out to me when I’d been caught staring.

Maybe I should’ve stayed away. But it would’ve been the stupidest thing I’d ever done, because this girl was the most important thing in my life. A part of me. And now she was hurting inside worse than anything I’d ever seen.

She still hadn’t answered me, so I cupped her chin in my hand and made her look at me. The tears had come so hard and vicious, they’d all but washed away the heavy makeup. With my free hand, I caught the bottom edge of my t-shirt and wiped her eyes.

“You’ll ruin it,” Thea said, her voice raspy from all her crying.

“It’s just a shirt.” I continued about my task until I’d dried her tears and cleaned away the makeup as best I could. “What has she done this time, Thea?”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’ve already figured that much out,” she whispered.

“Very few could make you hurt like she can.” I pressed my lips to her forehead. “If it was something about Nicky, you would’ve already said. So…it’s something she’s done. Again. What is it this time?”

The words came in a low, halting whisper and at first, I didn’t understand them.

They didn’t make sense.

I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I knew her mother to be a good woman or anything. But they just didn’t make sense.

Mother had someone watching us.

I drew back, the surprise so stark, I didn’t know what to think. I needed a minute to process her words.

I’d been told before I had an old soul. “That boy, ain’t nothing gets by him. Can’t ever surprise that boy,” my granny used to say. Mama’s mother had showed me my first magic trick and within ten minutes, I’d figured it out.

But I was stumped here.

I couldn’t understand this. I couldn’t get it. What I'd just been told made no sense.

“LeVan?”

Thea’s soft voice shattered the bubble that had been holding back that understanding, though, and with understanding came…rage. Carefully, because if I wasn’t careful, I thought I might break her, I eased Thea off my lap and got up. Hands clenched into fists so tight, I paced over to the window of my apartment. It was a couple of blocks away from the campus and looked down on one of the beautiful old streets of New Orleans. There was rarely a minute when something didn’t catch the eye.

But right now, I wasn’t seeing anything in front of me.

I saw red.

And oddly enough, I heard my father’s voice.

“Son, sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself mad about something and you better understand how to handle it. You are the most unusual boy. You don’t get mad at me, at your mama, at your brother…but sooner or later, something will make you mad and you can’t let that mad get the better of you.”

I hadn’t understood what he meant.

I did now.

I wanted to break something.

Only the soft, erratic breathing coming from behind me kept me from grabbing the thing nearest to my hand—the bookshelf next to the window so I could send it flying to the floor.

“Is there any reason to guess why she’s been watching us?” I asked, my voice so tightly controlled, I barely recognized it.

“Oh, you won’t guess. Not in a million years,” she said, a noise leaving her that was unrecognizable. It might’ve been called a laugh, but the sobs trapped inside that sound were as sharp as razors and they infuriated as much as they hurt.

Slowly, keeping those knotted fists at my side, I met her eyes. “Tell me.”

Each word made me want to vomit, and there were a couple of times I saw her throat working like she had the same reaction.

If it had been hard to control the anger before, it was even harder now.

“She can’t do that,” I said. “She can’t…Nicky is able to take care of himself. It’s not like he needs around-the-clock care! And she’s threatening to keep you from seeing him? You’re his fucking sister!”

She flinched and I sucked in a breath, forcing my voice under control. It had echoed and boomed around the room like I’d been speaking to a room full of hundreds, not the one and only woman in my life.

“Sorry,” I bit off.

She just waved her hand, shrugging it off. “You know my mother—if she thinks it will make me suffer, then she’ll do her damnedest.” She sniffed and reached up, swiping at the tears running from eyes. “I just…LeVan, what did I ever do to make her hate me so much?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

The truth…what good would it do if she knew?

But then again, what good would it do to not know? After this?

“You fell in love with me,” I said.

Thea snorted. “Shit. I know she hates the idea of me dating a guy who is half black, but plenty of parents adjust to it. She just…she hates me. She’s hated me and Nicky since our father died.”

“It’s not just that I’m half-black, Thea. It’s me.” I drew in a breath and looked up. Absently, I gathered my dreads into a loose tail at my nape and fished out a band from my pocket to hold them as I mentally debated on what to say, if I should say anything. But that cat was already out of the bag. Finally, I lowered my gaze to hers. “It’s me…and the fact that when your mother was younger, she had a thing for my dad—and she despised my mother. Apparently, she’s never gotten over it.”