As it is, I dig my nails into my sweaty palms and shift on my feet, feeling the scrape of the wall on the backs of my thighs. “How’d you know I was at the bar?”
“You wanted to learn things, yeah?” When I hesitantly nod, he murmurs, “It wasn’t hard to figure out where you’d go for that.”
I clench my thighs again, getting sort of restless. “I thought you didn’t wanna waste your time on teaching me.”
“I don’t,” he clips. “But I don’t want other guys teaching you either.”
My breaths escalate.
It’s such a guy thing to say – I don’t want you but I don’t want anyone else to have you either.
And maybe because I’m such a girl, it starts up a quickening in my lower stomach. “Why not?”
Something about what I said makes him move away from the door and I shiver in his jacket.
His footsteps should be muffled like mine were but they aren’t. They’re loud and thudding. They pulse and vibrate.
I feel all of that, the sound of his approach and the blazing look in his eyes, in between my legs. He pauses right before me and my lips part at how big he looks right now, big and tall and warm and I curl my toes in my soccer cleats, the old ones. Not the ones he bought me. I’m keeping those safe under my bed.
“Because you’re my friend,” he replies in a rough tone, his eyes flickering down to my heaving chest before moving back up to my face.
I don’t know which word he has emphasized more, my or friend. Which word sends a shock of current running down my spine, and I don’t even have the time for such nonsense because he leans over and puts a hand on the wall, just above my head, and whispers, “And only I get to teach things to you.”
I swallow. “I’m –”
“What’s this one called?”
He doesn’t have to explain his question to me. I already know what he’s referring to. He’s looking at my painted lips.
“C-cherry Picker,” I whisper.
I actually went rogue on my usual color choice – dark and different shades of coral – and went with something super red, Wyn’s favorite.
Arrow brings his free hand up and traces the bottom of my lip with his thumb. “Cherry Picker.”
“I thought it suited the miserable occasion.”
His thumb digs into the center of my lip and he forces my mouth to part, narrowing his eyes. “Were you going to let him pick your cherry?”
I rake my nails up and down the wall as my pussy flutters at his possessive gesture. “I… I thought about it.”
He almost mashes my lower lip with my teeth. “You did, huh.”
“I mean, I –”
“You thought about letting him tear through that little piece of flesh between your legs.” His hand moves down from my lips and he wraps his fingers around my throat. “You thought about bleeding on his cock. Is that what you’re telling me?”
An intense spasm rolls through my channel at the graphic image he paints – my blood on his cock – and his possessive hold on me. “Arrow, please.”
“Please what?” he whispers, his hand a hot brand on my throat. “Please don’t say things like that, Arrow? Or please don’t lose your shit thinking about that virgin pussy being violated by that drunk motherfucker? Or maybe…” He squeezes my throat and I’m almost off the ground, teetering on my tiptoes. “Or maybe don’t lock me up in this motel room, Arrow, and go hunting for him. Don’t think about beating the living shit out of that dumb fuck. Is that what you’re pleading for, Salem? Don’t kill him. The cherry picker you chose for yourself.”
He can’t beat him up, can he?
I mean, that’s what he got suspended for, beating someone up.
Oh God, he can’t do that and I can’t let him.
But still, my whole body is buzzing with his violent reaction. My whole body is ablaze with his possessiveness, his raw domination over me.
This is bad, Salem. You can’t revel in these things.
“You can’t do that. You can’t beat him up, Arrow,” I blurt out, my heart jumping up to my throat and pounding against his palm. “Your team won’t like that, you beating someone else up in a bar, in front of everyone.”
It’s like he doesn’t even hear me as he whispers, “And this time, they won’t be able to pull me off him until I finish the job.”
I have to clench my teeth in order to tamp down the electric thrill his words fill my belly with and something really stupid and dangerous slips out of my mouth, but I stop myself at the last second. “Have you…”
“Have I what?”
I don’t know what I hope to accomplish by asking this question but I can’t help it. I have to know. Because God, he looks so angry and wild and so crazy possessive.