“Yeah.” I forced my attention back to him, to the contract spread between us. “Payment in installments. Monthly. Standard terms.”
“Perfect. If you’ll just sign here—”
I barely looked at where he was pointing. Grabbed the pen, scrawled my name across the signature line. Every smile she gave the stranger felt like a punch to the gut, every lean-in like a knife between my ribs.
I didn’t understand it. This rage. This territorial, possessive fury that made me want to cross the room and tear that man’s hand off her arm. We weren’t together. We’d fucked twice, and both times she’d made it clear it meant nothing. Just scratching an itch. Just two people working something out of their systems.
So why did watching her with him feel like betrayal?
Marcus poured champagne, held up his glass for a toast. I ignored it, downed a shot of vodka instead. Then another. The burn helped, but not enough.
She stood. So did the man. They moved toward the exit together, and something inside me snapped.
I signed the rest of the contract without reading it, shook Marcus’s hand without feeling it, and bolted.
***
She was already inside the safe house when I stormed through the door. I slammed it behind me hard enough to rattle the frame, and she spun around from where she’d been standing in the kitchen, eyes wide.
“Did that man fuck you?” The words came out raw, violent.
“What?” She stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
“You heard me.” I stalked toward her. “Did you let him fuck you?”
“Drew, what the hell are you—”
“Answer the question, Cassandra. Did he touch you?”
Confusion flashed across her face, then fury. “What are you talking about?”
I grabbed her wrist, backed her up until she hit the wall. Not hard. Never hard. But with enough force to make my point. “The man in the club. The one you were sitting with, smiling at, leaving with. Did. He. Touch. You?”
Her breath came faster, chest rising and falling. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Answer me.”
“No!” She shoved at my chest. “I didn’t let anyone touch me. Not him. Not anyone. Happy?”
The relief that crashed through me was dizzying, followed immediately by something darker. Hunger. Need. The kind that had been building since the moment I saw her in those shorts.
“Why?” I asked, voice dropping to something dangerous.
“Why what?”
“Why hasn’t anyone touched you?”
Her jaw clenched. She tried to push me again, but I caught her wrists, pinned them gently against the wall on either side of her head. Our bodies were almost flush now, close enough that I could feel her heat, smell her shampoo mixed with something uniquely her.
“Because,” she said through gritted teeth, “I didn’t want them to.”
“And me?” I leaned in, lips brushing her ear. “Do you want me to?”
She didn’t answer. But her pulse thundered against my fingertips where I held her wrists, and her breathing changed, quickened.
I pulled back enough to look at her face. “Cassandra.”
