“Cali—” Drake steps to the side and grabs my wrist, tugging me.
I twist my arm away.Does the man have a death wish?Or is he just so arrogant he thinks a guy twice his size can’t touch him?“Please leave,” I tell Drake.
His jaw clenches as if he’s refusing to give up a toy.
Jaeger lets out an angry sigh, pushes me behind him—what the hell?—and punches Drake in the face.Holy shit!
Drake lands on the ground, rolling, grasping the front of his face.There’s no blood, but that had to have hurt.
Jaeger leans over him.“Do.Not.Touch.Her.That was a warning tap.The next one won’t be.”
Drake hastily rises and brushes the powdery Tahoe soil off his trousers.He glares at me.“Not what I had in mind for tonight,” he says, and stalks away.He fires up his expensive sports car and tears out of the driveway in a spray of pebbles and pine needles.
Jaeger tilts up my chin with his finger, searching my face.“Are you okay?”
I nod, wondering what in the hell just happened.“What are you doing here?”Drake’s car rounds the corner at the end of my street, his taillights disappearing.“How did you know…?”
Jaeger rubs a hand down his face and lets out a tense breath.“Kerstin.She told me you left the club drunk with some guy.”His face contorts.“What were you thinking, Cali?”
This side of Jaeger, the angry, protective side, is something I’ve never seen before, and it’s totally hot—not that I wish to ignite it unduly.
I wasn’t thinking when I left with Drake.In fact, I purposely tried not to think.About Jaeger.But that’s not something I’m going to tell him.“I made a mistake.”
“You made a mistake?You—” Jaeger steps to the side and runs his fingers through his short hair.“Do you understand what that—thatpsychoticassholecould have done?”
Yeah, I kinda do, and I’m trying not to imagine it.The last half-hour has sobered me up.
I rub my eyes and move to the front door, unlock it, and walk inside, my fingers and arms trembling.Jaeger lingers on the threshold.“You can come in,” I tell him.
He walks inside and shuts the door.
I fill a glass of water in the kitchen and offer it to him, but he shakes his head.I take several gulps from the glass, cleaning the taste of Drake from my mouth.
“I’m sorry for yelling.”He lets out another strained breath.“But you can’t go home with people you don’t know.Matter of fact, don’t go home with anyone unless it’s a friend.”
I spin around.It was stupid to go home with Drake and I learned a painful lesson tonight, but where does Jaeger get off telling me what to do?“What about you?Did you take your lady friend home before you came here?It’s okay for you to leave with some random person, but not me?”
“I’m not a hundred-pound female,” he growls.“He could have hurt you, Cali.”
Before I dated Eric, I’d left parties a time or two with guys I had just met.But in those cases, I knew the guy’s fraternity brothers, or we had friends in common.There were dangers in college, sure, but we lived in a bubble where people knew each other.The risks were lower.
Jaeger’s right.I ignored my instincts tonight and treated Drake like I would a guy from school.It was foolish and dangerous, but that doesn’t give Jaeger the right to treat me like a child.“I said I made a mistake.I don’t recall having a second big brother.Why did you follow me, anyway?”
He sits in the center of the couch, taking up two-thirds of it, his legs spread wide the way guys do because they don’t wear skirts or feel the need to hide their private parts.He leans his head against the wall behind the cushions and stares at the ceiling.“I thought the guy could be bad news.”
I look around searchingly.“And you knew this how?”
He glares at me.“He’s a guy, and you’d been drinking.I wasn’t taking chances.”
My eyebrows pinch together.Jaeger’s reaction to Drake was rather heated for someone I’m casually friends with, like he was taking things personally.Why the hell would he leave his date to follow me home on the off chance Drake was a serial killer?
“What about your lady friend?”
“Client.She’s a client, Cali.”
“She’s pretty handsy for a client.Do all clients feel you up?”
Jaeger’s gaze narrows on my face.He sits forward and grabs my waist, pulling me between his knees until I have no choice but to shift and sit on his leg or fall into his chest.I choose the leg, slowly sliding off onto the couch beside him, my legs dangling over his lap.
