Storm sighs, like he’s weary. His hand slides up my shirt, then he moves my hand with his touch, and he squeezes my breast,hard,before his fingers start to play with my nipple.
My heart is beating so loud, I feel like they can hear it too.
“Tell him, beautiful, or this is going to get messy.” Storm pinches my nipple and I gasp, my back arching up off the bench. His grip is harsher than my own, and he doesn’t go gentle on me. But I’m not a toy and I’m certainly no pawn in this pissing contest.
I find myself again, my voice, my motions. I slap Storm’s hand off me, then use my core strength to sit up, catching my phone before it falls. I yank down my bra and my shirt as I do and tug on my skirt, too, before I swing my legs off the bench, knees pressed together. Not certain I’ll be able to stand up without feeling dizzy, I lift my chin and look at Dax.
“I can handle him,” I say. I’m pleased my voice doesn’t waver. “I’ll call you if I need you.” I lift my phone to reiterate the words.
Dax’s mouth pops open. Then closed. His jaw clenches as he shoots daggers at Storm, but he glances at the glass still in his hand, and nods once. “Okay,” he says, as he takes a step back. “Please call me.”
Then another step back, his eyes locked on Storm’s. One more.
Then he turns his back on us and hurries toward the sounds of the party house.
“You are disgusting,” I snarl as I stare up at Storm.
He drops the glass to the ground and meets my gaze. “Oh? Was it me who was getting fingerbanged in a sorority house’s backyard by a boy who looks like any gust of strong wind could snap him in half, or was that you?”
I don’t dignify his judgment with a response. “Why are you here?”
“You aren’t home.”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you my daddy?”
His lips tilt up. “Do you want me to be?”
I feel the blush starting along my chest and know it won’t be long before it reaches my face. “Explain to me, without riddles, why the fuck you’re here.”
“It’s the first night since I’ve been watching you that you haven’t been home before midnight. It’s nearly two in the morning. It took me three house parties to find you but thankfully, you seem pretty popular. A girl at the last one told me you’d be here. So I came, because someone wants to hurt me, and they’ll hurt you first to make it worse.”
A chill lifts the hairs at my scalp. It’s fear and something else, too. Something from the depth of his words. “Why would that make it worse, Storm?” My voice is low, and although I don’tlook away from him, after a moment, he tears his gaze from me and runs his hand over the side of his face.
“Just get the fuck up so I can take you home.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
SLOANE
“That’s Dax, huh?” He asks this question with his eyes on the road, hand on the shifter, one gripping the wheel. I glance at the tattoos on his fingers over the shifter. Variations of knives and spiders and a distinct lightning bolt on his hand.
To think I held that hand just a week ago.
I cross my arms over my chest and refuse to look at his perfect jawline, his lips pressed together, those veins in his hands and up his arms.
I stare straight ahead at the dark, winding country road which leads to my house in twenty minutes or so, according to his phone open on the console, face up. He only glanced at it once, when we were just starting out. No way he memorized the directions but I guess we both lived in Aben, didn’t we? Both went to high school at West River. No one had ever heard of him until he became a running back; apparently, he’d been homeschooled. He was a wolf then just as he is now, but in a different way.
I don’t know why we never really talked back in school. He was quiet and he always looked like he’d eat you alive if you everspoke to him. It didn’t stop me from trying once or twice but it never got me anywhere. Cortland was the only person I ever saw him laugh with, and I don’t recall any rumors about anyone dating or hooking up with him. Then again, he’d probably rather fuck MILFs, and I’m finally seeing the hidden charm which would make that all possible.
But I think back to how he touched me at the party. The way he put the cigarette out on Dax’s eye.
He’s hidden the charm away for tonight, I guess.
“Did he finger you out there? Were you gonna let him fuck you? Or did you already swallow all his cum down because he sure as hell doesn’t seem like the selfless type.”
I grit my teeth and cross one leg over the other, refusing to look at him or rise to the bait. Sure, I’ve got questions. About the coffin nails and the camera and the paranoia. But maybe I don’t want the answers.
