I was replacing the carburetor gaskets and muttering to myself about the last guy who’d over-tightened the manifold—classic case of having moremoney than sense. I felt the owner of the scarlet car join me. We had a small seating area, but we preferred it if clients dropped in and didn’t stay. However, for some reason, he was here, and kept coming over to check, touching my arm, hovering too close, stepping into my space as if I were some novelty act he’d paid extra to watch. Every time I shifted, he shifted with me. I hated it. I craved control and knowing where my space ended and someone else’s began, and Harlan Devlin was blurring that line with every brush of his hand.
“You sure it’s the gaskets?” came a voice behind me.
I grunted. “Positive. You’ve got air leaking in.”
Harlan Devlin—trust fund prick, always in a suit, never had grease underhisnails—clasped my arm. “Oh no,” he said and fluttered his eyelashes—too playful, too familiar, as if this was some goddamn flirtation. I stiffened under his touch because I didn’t do well with people in my space, especially those who thought they could get in my space with a joke or a wink. It wasn’t cute. It wasn’t funny. It was a challenge, and I didn’t have the patience for games.
I pulled my arm away, slow but deliberate. Not aggressive, not yet, more my kind of warning. “Don’t do that.”
He blinked at me as if he didn’t understand, or as if he did and didn’t care. Either way, it made me want to crack my knuckles and find something to hit that wouldn’t land me back in jail.
Don’t hit the rich guy.
“I’ve seen you fighting,” he said in a low tone, as if it was some secret around here about what I did.
Yeah, I still fought. No hopes of the big time, more underground stuff, brutal and fast, the kind that never made it online unless someone wanted to prove they knew someone dangerous. I’d been fighting since I was a kid, and then Danny died. And fighting had stopped being salvation—it had become punishment. I didn’t care if I got hit. Didn’t care if I went too far. I was angry all the time, and violence filled the hole—thick and choking. In prison, fighting kept me alive, made sure no one messed with me. I climbed the ladder not because I wanted to, but because it was the only way to stay standing.
Now? It was the one thing that kept the edge off. A lifetime of barely contained fury wrapped tight in muscle and scars. I didn’t fight for survival anymore—I fought so I didn’t burn the world down.
Harlan touched me again. His hand brushed my arm, lingering as if he thought he had the right. “I’ve seen you leave with big guys,” he said, voicelow, almost as if he was offering something sacred. “Seen you kissing them. Dragging them with you.”
I didn’t answer. Just looked at him. Let the silence stretch too long.
He looked hopeful, as if that meant something. As if, maybe, I was for sale, or he could buy his way into whatever fantasy he’d built around me.
“I got this fantasy,” he said, licking his lips as if the words turned him on. “You. Sweaty. Bleeding. Holding me down. Making me take it.”
I stared at him blankly.
He thought it was an invitation, not a warning. Almost as if he were waiting for the right price for me to snap, to be the monster he wanted. He didn’t understand that I fought to keep that part of me caged. That, if I ever gave in to what boiled in my chest, I wouldn’t stop.
That wasn’t sex. That was violence disguised as wet dreams and poor judgment.
“I’m hard,” he added when I didn’t react, and pressed a hand to his cock.
My lip curled. Fucking hell.
“What time do you get off?” he added, as if it were a done deal.
I glanced over my shoulder, deadpan. “I get offwith my own hand, in silence, and definitely not with a client breathing down my neck.”
His mouth fell open, then he gestured vaguely towardmydick as if it had done something to offend him. “I meant finish work, not…”
I followed the motion, then met his gaze head-on, bored as fuck with his bullshit. “Yeah, well, this guy’s curled up like a dormouse in wood chips, and he sure as hell doesn’t perform for clients. So maybe keep your hand signals to yourself.”
Devlin gave a weak laugh, but his ears turned red. Good. I waited for him to say he was taking the car elsewhere and to ask me where my manager was. Well, Logan was with Gray in San Diego, along with Tudor, on pretty much a permanent basis now, so I’d have to get Jamie to pretend to be in charge, and that wasn’t going to be pretty. Last time he did that, he pushed the arms of his long T-shirt up, then flicked his lighter and tried to talk like an extra in a gangster movie. Ended up scaring the hell out of a couple of clients, which didn’t help when he told them to fuck off. Needless to say, Enzo and I hadn’t used him to act as manager again.
“I was thinking about dinner…” Devlin said, touching my arm again.
I pushed his hand away. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why are you thinking about dinner? It’s only ten a.m. Are you hungry?”
Devlin considered. Not a lot going on between his ears—but then again, he didn’t need much with Daddy’s trust fund backing him up. What must it be like, I thought, to coast through life knowing one call could get you anything you wanted.
One call about Lyric and Redcars would have millions in the bank.
