Jack made it into the crosswalk just as the traffic surged forward. With a soft curse, he dodged back onto the curb, narrowly missing a collision with a taxi.
Shit, shit, shit. He shouted Eva’s name again, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even turn around. She hurried down the stairs to the Christopher Street station, head lowered.
When the light changed at the intersection, Jack flew across the street and down the stairs to the station just as a train was departing. The platform was teeming with people. He scanned it, racing back and forth between the columns.
She was gone.
Fuck. He pulled out his phone and punched her name, but the call rang through to voicemail. He thumbed in a text. Where are you? Come back.
Not smart, Eva. She wasn’t safe in this city all alone. As he stared at the phone, raking his hand through his hair and waiting for a response, blood surged through his veins.
To hell with waiting. He was a man of action.
If only he knew where to go.
But the more he thought about it, the more he knew exactly where she’d go. As much as he liked to think he had never gotten too close to a woman, he knew Eva Fiorini. He knew that the simplest things made her happy, that she was intensely loyal, and that she was a good girl who sometimes, perhaps only with him, loved to be bad.
Above all, though, Eva was a woman who’d been sheltered most of her life. She had few options for escape.
He took the next train downtown, bound for Eva’s apartment.
Chapter Fourteen
Eva
Eva breathed a sigh of relief as she sat on the train headed downtown, then buried her nose in Jack’s sweatshirt and inhaled the manly, woodsy scent that lingered there. She thought of the way she’d felt, riding him while they were stuck in traffic, and cringed. She was a complete fraud.
The Snoozer. Yes, that was her name.
Rick, the asshole ex, her only ex, had christened her that after their horrible last date. She’d been a little tipsy and, filled with liquid courage, she’d decided to give a blowjob a go. But he’d been drunk and had passed out before she’d even gotten his dick in her mouth.
Some mutual friends from their social circle had called her one morning not long after and brought her attention to the Voice article. It wasn’t the way he made it out to be, she’d explained, but who cared about the truth when Rick’s story was so darn entertaining?
Afterward, she Googled the nearest cloister and how to become a nun. Thankfully, though, with time, the name had been buried.
But now…
Oh, God.
Jack knew. That horrible woman, Lucy, knew. How had Jack ever gotten himself entangled with her?
Eva hugged herself as the subway rattled on through the darkness, and a terrible thought occurred to her. Lucy’s harmless, he’d said. Well, maybe she had been. Maybe she’d once been normal, as perfectly lovely to be with as she was to look at. Until Jack.
Maybe Jack had destroyed her.
Eva had heard the rumors about him, about the trail of wreckage and broken hearts he’d left behind. Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe, instead of emerging from her sex education with an arsenal of ways to knock a man dead, she would become…Lucy.
She shuddered. No. She crossed her legs, feeling the wetness between them. Jack’s wetness. She loved fucking him. Loved it.
But she also loved the way he’d taken care of her. The way he’d talked to her, asking about her, wanting to make sure she was okay.
She swallowed. The problem was, she didn’t just love fucking him. There was so much more.
But the things she was starting to want were things Jack simply didn’t do.
The train came to a stop at Franklin Street, and she climbed the stairs, pulling her phone out of her bag. She saw the message from Jack and sighed. Where are you? Come back.
Later, she thought. I need to clear my head.