“You,” I answered. “I want what’s mine.”
“I’m not yours.”
I smirked, and Golden stepped out of the shadows and shoved me hard in the chest. My back crashed into the brick wall of the church—I mean, come on… a BDSM club in a church? Sacrilegious on a good day—but I figured I’d let him have the one up on me for a second.
“Did you not read my note from the cabin?”
Golden’s eyes narrowed and he leaned down, like he was trying to intimidate me. I held his stare, a smirk playing across my lips.
“You’re not shit to me,” he spat.
“My cum in your mouth says otherwise.”
His hands tightened on my chest, pulling at the thin fabric of my t-shirt. He was shaking, and that made me hard for him again.
“Why did you follow me outside?” I asked, affecting what I hoped was a bored look. I didn’t want him to know how much I wanted him. I didn’t want to show my hand. And honestly, I liked the way he hated me. I didn’t want him going soft on me. Quite to the contrary…I wanted him so hard it hurt.
I let go of him and he stepped back, bracing his hands on his waist and looking down to the darkest corners of the alley. I smoothed my hands down the front of my shirt and straightened to my full height, which was still a handful of inches shorter than him.
“It’s okay if you haven’t been able to stop thinking about it,” I told him, and he frowned, pivoting on his heel and walking off into the darkness.
I followed him, staying in the amber light of the security bulbs that lit the front part of the alleyway. I wanted to make sure Golden saw me at all times, that he knew where I was and what I was doing. I wanted him to think that he could trust me because, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” I said.
“You gave a bad phone number,” he said after the longest pause.
“I didn’t give you a phone number at all.”
“From the auction contract,” he corrected.
Something bloomed in my chest and I tangled my fingers together behind my back to stop myself from lunging for him and fucking him so hard against the wall that the bricks cut his face open. He watched my hands move and tensed. I realized he worried I was reaching for a gun, which… I patted it at my waistband just to make sure it was still there.
“You tried to find me.” I delivered the accusation as a statement. He’d already showed his hand. I didn’t need him to confirm or deny either way.
He remained silent.
I didn’t tell him the number I’d put on the contracthadbeen a good one, but in a fit of rage after coming back from the cabin, my father had beaten it into pieces with a paperweight from his desk. I took the loss as a sign and switched to using a burner, which is what I should have been doing all along. Harder for my father to track, harder for people who hated him to track, easier to ditch. The whole deal.
“I’m flattered, Foster Golden, but I’m not good for you.”
“You never told me how you know my name.”
“You never told me itwasyour name, but thanks for confirming.” I smirked and tilted my chin toward my chest to make sure he could read my expression in the light. “Foster Thomas Golden.”
“Shut up,” he hissed.
“I know how old you are,” I told him. “I know where you were born.”
The gravel crunched beneath his boots as he shifted his weight, but he didn’t say anything.
“Twenty-nine. San Diego,” I told him for good measure. “It kills you, doesn’t it? That you don’t know shit about me and I know every detail there is to know about you.”
That was an overstatement, but I didn’t think he knew that. There was a lot of things to know about Foster Golden that were on public record, but the fact there were things omitted from the report I’d run behind my father’s back led me to believe there were definitely things about Golden I didn’t know. Probably things I shouldn’t know.
“Why did you think someone had sent me after you?” he asked. “The first night we met here.”
“I’m a popular guy.” I held my hands out in invitation.
