Yup. Sorry, dipshit.
This dark-eyed fucker was clearly the poster boy for one-sided feelings. The extent of exactly how one-sided they were was still muddled and pissing me off, but it was pretty damn clear at the cafe that Scarlett wasn’t head over heels like he was.
But she liked him enough to fuck him.
To let him put his mouth on her while I watched.
Sweaty heat gnawed at the back of my neck as I couldn’t help but picture them together, because maybe I did have a touch of masochism in me after all.
Just how many times had he slid himself inside of her and made her come? Did he know what positions she liked to be fucked in? Did they use a condom or did she let him feel everything, every part of her that was feminine and tight and perfect?
I hoped like hell she didn’t.
Fucking fuck, the more I thought about it, the hornier and pissier I got. Gritting my teeth against the rise of my own shitty demons, I incinerated the images my mind created with another unhealthy drowning of dark liquor.
My liver was pissed, but my head was happy. If the whiskey was filling it, nonsense couldn’t.
“If you know about that story, then I don’t need to tell you how closely you need to watch her.” I drug a lazy look down at him, still nursing my bottle. “She’s been off lately. Worse than I’ve seen her. She usually gets extra reckless around her brother’s birthday, but that’s not for another few months so I’m not sure what’s triggering it. But she’s on a mission.”
To be punished.
Maybe worse.
I knew it.
Somewhere down the line of punishing herself for her brother’s death, she started looking for other people to do it. Then she started liking it.
Then she started needing it.
Her pain and pleasure receptors were twinned together in that pretty head of hers, and it made her an incorrigible danger to herself and depraved men like me.
That addictive danger came out of the bathroom only a few seconds later wrapped in a tiny white towel. If my brain didn’t decide to take the exact moment to remind me that I used those motel towels to wipe up blood twenty-four hours earlier, I’d have been hard as steel for her.
She easily had the attention of both men in the room, casting a spell over us both as we silently watched her pad across the carpet to her bag of things. Wait—
Scratch that.
My bag of things.
She knelt in front of and put her hands into my duffel bag and pulled out one of my shirts. The same button up she wore last night.
My chest grew tight watching her steal my shirt like it was a normal thing for her to do, even though she still wouldn’t look at me as she did it.
She rose slowly, clutching my clothing to her chest where she knotted the front of her towel together. That tightness coiled around my sternum constricted in anticipation when she turned her fresh face in my direction…
Then it fucking exploded into shards of disappointment when she set her gaze on him.
“What were you talking about before I came out?”
His smile for her was gentle, a soft appreciation for her attention. Bastard. “The meaning behind our names.”
“What’s your name mean?” The question came fumbling out before I even realized it was me who asked it.
Shit. If my mouth not consulting my brain before it spoke around Scarlett was going to become a common experience, I was in trouble. Big.
At least it worked. A little.
Her stare slid over to mine, the color in them still drained a lackluster seafoam drowning in misery. Now, my question added a riptide of irritation.