Turning my face slightly and patting my cheek, I tell her, “Go ahead. If the slap made you feel better, a good right hook may get you the rest of the way.”
Sighing and slouching back against the wall, she scowls at me. “Don’t tempt me.”
Since she clearly needs a firm hand to push her in the right direction, I offer mine. “Now, you say you’re giving Rafe a chance, but this Chicago plan is clearly not something you just pulled out of thin air. Stop wasting your time on me. You and me can’t happen. It’s not in the cards.”
“Fuck the cards,” she returns, folding her arms across her chest defensively. “Fuck the dealer. Fuck the deck. Fuck the whole game.”
She can be as mad about it as she wants, but it is what it is. She can’t force me into a relationship and she can’t see inside my head, so let her think it’s easy for me. Maybe she does need to hate me. I’m not quite ready to push her there yet, but as stubborn as she’s being, I might have to. I’ll give her a little more time, see if she can get over it on her own.
I’m a permanent fixture in her life if she and Rafe are together, so I really don’t want her to loathe me to the point of discomfort when I’m around. That’s going to make my life harder. It’s going to make Rafe push me away, maybe give his favor to someone else. I should be next in line for a promotion—I was before Laurel—but not if things don’t settle down between us.
This girl is fucking up my whole life.
“Give Rafe a chance,” I tell her. “You liked him before you met me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” She looks me dead in the eye. “But then I met you.”
I’m not going to go around in circles with her—I can’t. Whether Rafe comes after us or he doesn’t, I know without a doubt he’s watching and noting every second we’re both gone. “I can’t do this with you right now, okay? I can’t do this with you at all. We aren’t exes. We weren’t together. Get over it.”
Her whole being stiffens, her eyes dimming with hurt. It stings me, too, but fuck, what am I supposed to do? I need her to move on and get past this shit. If she does, I will. Rafe will get over it, our relationship will recover, and someday this will be something none of us even thinks about anymore. Almost like it never even happened.
“I should want him to kill you,” she mutters, shaking her head and moving down the wall until she has enough distance to storm away from me.
I almost let her, then her words—and her inflection—hit me. My hand shoots out and I grab her arm, dragging her little ass back against me. “What was that?”
She catches her breath, but doesn’t speak.
“What did that mean, Laurel?” I press. “Did Rafe say something to you?”
“Oh, now you want to talk to me,” she says knowingly. “Fuck you, Sin.”
This is not the fucking time for games. I’m not Rafe, I don’t get a kick out of her shit, so instead of playing that game, I play my own. I push her against the wall—not hard enough to hurt, just to remind her who’s boss—and soak up the sound of her startled gasp. My body follows, my chest pressing against her back.
“Is that how you talk to me?” I murmur, close to her ear.
I hear her swallow, hear her suck in a shallow breath. I don’t know if she’s afraid or turned on. There’s not a huge difference. It makes me hard either way. Laurel gasps again as I push my cock against her pretty little ass so she knows it.
Keeping one hand on her shoulder, I let the other drift down just above her knee, then I trail a hand up the back of her thigh, catching her dress and dragging it up, too. Laurel’s head dips back like she’s going to let it fall against my shoulder, but she catches herself.
“Now, I asked you a question,” I tell her, releasing the hem of her dress and skimming her ass with my hand.
A little breathlessly, she tells me, “You are the absolute worst, aren’t you?”
Smiling faintly, I run my lips along the shell of her ear. “Don’t act like you’re surprised.”
“I know you’re using me this time. This won’t work now,” she tells me.
“No?” I run my hand over her ass again, this time giving it a firm squeeze. “So if I put my fingers between these pretty little legs, you won’t be wet for me?”
With relish, she tells me, “If you put your fingers between these pretty little legs, I’ll tell Rafe.”
“Liar.”
“I could tell him to kill you, you know.” She can’t see my face, but my eyebrows rise in surprise at her casual threat. “You think you have all the power, but guess what? I have some, too. I don’t have to protect you. You certainly don’t care about hurting me, so I shouldn’t care if you get hurt. You’re probably just an unhealthy addiction and I should take my meds.”
Not sure I like how casually she’s referring to my death as the solution to all her problems. This isn’t going quite the way I thought it would. It was easy as hell to turn her into something soft and pliable with sex in my bedroom, but I guess now that I’ve hurt her, she has a line of defense against me.
I fucking hate that, and not just because it makes her harder to bend. I don’t like it because even if I deserve it, I don’t want her to have a line of defense against me. I want her open. When it comes to Laurel, I’m greedy as hell and I want full access.