She was a mess.
A gorgeous fucking mess.
A disaster waiting to happen.
She pressed the fob and the lights flashed.
Panic welled up like the build of a surprise storm.
Coming from out of nowhere.
Hitting land without warning.
She clicked open the door and started to climb inside.
My fingers twitched with the impulse to reach out and stop her from leaving. Or maybe it was just my dick aching to get messy. Knowing this girl was somehow as wild as I was. Desperate and willing to do whatever it took to get her where she needed to go.
I could see it written all over her.
Determination.
Strength.
Courage.
All of those things made for something I couldn’t get into, and the only thing I was doing was aching to get into it.
Let her go. Let her go, I silently screamed at myself, knowing I was begging for trouble. There was something about her that was too different—too good and fierce—that had me trembling.
She didn’t need my bullshit. The only thing I wanted was to fuck her. Use her up and toss her aside before she got the chance to do it first.
Consume before you’re consumed.
A motto that had served me well.
“How about that number, Grace?” If my conscience could have drop-kicked me, it would have. God, I was just asking for it, wasn’t I?
But I thought the girl looked like she might be worth a little pain.
She paused to look back at me from over her shoulder. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said it was something close to amusement that infiltrated her tone. “Doesn’t seem much your style. I thought you were more of an ‘in the moment’ kind of guy?”
A gruff sound rumbled in my chest when she tossed my words back in my face. “No. You’re right. It isn’t exactly my style.”
Her voice was a soft surrender. “I’m doubtin’ that I’m much your style at all.”
My eyes roved over that tight, sweet body. Lush curves and full hips and perfect tits. If I had a style—a style or a type or a goddamned heart—she’d be it.
I was pretty sure she saw it written on me, a black emblem that pronounced my shame.
The uptick at the corner of one of those lips was nothing but a somber goodbye. “Thank you for the dance.”
Then she slipped into the driver’s seat, started her car, and left me standing there in the middle of the road watching as she drove away, again fighting that foreign feeling that tugged at my chest.
There were few people in my life who ever evoked any emotion in my mangled, twisted heart. Those who had gotten in through the brittle cracks.
People who I would fight for.
Die for.
Kill for.
Jace and his family and my best friend Mack.
They were only there because they were the only reason I was still living in the first place. Because they’d proven time and again that they could be trusted.
That they would do the same for me.
The rest of the world?
They could go fuck themselves.
Lies fell from people’s tongues so much more often than the truth. Betrayals cast far more often than loyalties.
I wasn’t pretending to be any different.
My gaze moved back to the vacant space where she had just been.
I didn’t know why it felt like she was different. Why it mattered. I’d only met her. Sure as hell didn’t know her.
Shouldn’t, either. Chase it. That feeling. It was nothing but a fool’s game.
A tumble over the edge of oblivion.
A freefall into ruin.
But there was something about her that whispered and soothed and sang.
Or maybe what I was really hearing was her soul screaming for help.
I roughed a frustrated hand over my face to break up the clusterfuck of stupidity that was trying to climb into my mind and started to head back for the party. Then I tripped over my own damned feet when I caught sight of the two objects that were on the ground up close to the curb where they had been concealed by her car.
Left unnoticed when we’d collected the rest of her things.
It was a small wallet and a piece of jewelry.
Stooping down, I picked up the wallet, and then moved to grab the metal that glinted in the hazy glow. I rolled it around my fingers. It was a silver bracelet, cheap and banged to shit. Dangling from it were three stones that as far as I could tell were fake.
I frowned, straightening as I held the two offending objects.
At war with what to do, not sure how to handle this bullshit raging inside me.
I should toss them. Or maybe turn them in at the front desk.
Just a regular ol’ Good Samaritan, right?
Or I could dig into the wallet like I was itching to do and discover who she was. Return them myself. Maybe in return, I’d get a reward.
Thing was, I got the crazed sense that if I took a step that direction, I’d regret it. Could feel myself getting sucked into the girl’s business that wasn’t mine. Needing to know what had dimmed the intensity of those sea-tinged eyes. The magnetized vortex I could feel swirling around her.