GRAYSON
“So, has the pretty cinnamon-haired girl turned you into a gooey, cinnamon guy?” Danny needles me over the phone as I’m gearing up to jump into bed. “I saw the surveillance feed at the gym. You completely fucked your reps checking her out.”
I smirk, but my pulse betrays me—too fast, too eager.
“Poetic, don’t you think?” Danny adds. “You just happened to show up at the same time she did?”
“She’s breakable.” The words leave my mouth too quickly, an excuse rather than a truth. “I can’t touch that one. But I can look.”
Danny snorts. “All the best ones are, man. Besides, she works at the hospital; she probably sees fucked up shit all the time and wouldn’t flinch.”
Wouldn’t flinch.
The idea of testing that theory coils in my gut.
“You got an itch to scratch after Friday, hmm?” Danny probes.
Damn right.
Violence is a switch. I don’t flick it lightly, but when I do, I commit. Like last Friday. When Danny and I exited the bar later that night, we found my truck tires slashed and the guys from earlier waiting to corner usinto a fight. They deserved my brand of violence, and I fucking delivered.
The flip side of unleashing that side of me? It turns me on. Immensely. That is precisely why I need a special kind of someone who can handle my more… animalistic side.
“So, DystopiaNet?”
I nod to myself. A cat-and-mouse kink-themed chat site seemed like a good place to start.
I log into DystopiaNet, searching for something—or someone—to take the edge off.
Then I see it.
A new applicant. Ten minutes ago.
I freeze, pulse hammering against my ribs. I know that profile picture. I know that handle.
Pipsqueak98.
My jaw clenches as I click. Her preferences, her intro, her boundaries?—
“Fuck… is this her?”
The girl from the bar.
The one I labeled fragile. The one I nearly walked away from. The one I thought I couldn’t have.
I was wrong.
I click on the profile pic and bam. There goes all my blood straight to my dick.
Danny’s voice cuts through the static in my head. “Wait—who is it? Local? Do you know ‘em?”
Know her?
My grip tightens around the phone. I fucking taste her name in my mouth.
“It’s her,” I growl.
I react before I can second-guess it. One click. Swipe.Claim.
