I never chased anyone, let alone a woman. As far as I was concerned, she could shove off, and I didn’t give a damn either way.
“What happened?” Xavier scowled. Clearly she’d piqued his interest, just like she wanted. He was the nosy one, though. Luke, on the other hand, kept his own counsel. He would sit back and listen without putting his two cents in. That’s just how he was.
“Ask him.” She gestured at me. “That snot-nosed little brat must have fucked his brains out,” Jennifer continued, but I remained expressionless.My patience for this was limited, but Jennifer was still a woman and I needed to rein myself in.
If she had been a man, I’d have already put her in her place. My way.
“Snot-nosed brat? Who’s that?” Xavier pressed while Luke kept quiet. He remembered my Babygirl very well indeed. Considering he’d even kissed her once.
“Oh, you mean Matt’s daughter?” Xavier guessed with a snicker, and I went rigid. The muscles in my chest pulled tight, and, half-naked as I was, I was worried they might notice it happening.
“What happened to the little doll? I haven’t seen her in a while.” He made a face, and his dark eyes darted toward me. The fact that they were all talking about her bothered me much more than Jennifer’s “brat” nickname.
“She left, and that was for the best,” Luke commented finally, breaking the silence. I immediately turned to look at him, wondering what had happened to all his famous discretion. Also…how the fuck did he know that?
“Who told you that?” I burst out, unable to modulate the tone of my voice, which had gone from peaceful to malicious. Jennifer shook her head meaningfully at my suddenly aggressive attitude.
I’d always been indifferent toward women, even sharing them with the rest of the Krew, so the fact that I avoided even talking about Selene and shielded her from them and went out of my way to convince people that she didn’t matter to me bothered Jennifer. It bothered her a lot.
Lately, Blondie had been throwing tons of jealous fits, though I’d told her many times to knock it off. She had no right to be busting my balls. We weren’t together. She wasn’t my woman, and I most certainly wasn’t her man. I wasn’t anyone else’s either.
“Through the grapevine,” Luke said, drawing my attention back to him.
“And are you sad about her leaving?” I pressed. I could perfectly recall the way he’d licked his lips after he kissed her. Selene had only jumped him to make me mad after she’d watched some random blond get on her knees for me. Luke and I had talked about it and clarified the situation, but I certainly hadn’t forgotten how he’d talked about her in the car that day.“She is fucking stunning and she smells nice and she has a picture-perfect ass and who knows what else she’s hiding under those baggy clothes…”
“What?” he asked with a frown, pretending he didn’t understand me. But I was well aware that he knew exactly what I meant, and he knew that too.
“Are you sad about her leaving?” I repeated. “You wanted to do her, didn’t you?” I needled him deliberately. Xavier and Luke both leaped to their feet, though they did it for different reasons. The former wanted to get between us in case of a fight; the latter wanted to start that fight.
“What the fuck do you want from me?” Luke raised his voice, and I grinned at him. I didn’t want anything from him, but I was antsy, and I didn’t know why.
In reality, there were several reasons: I had built up too much frustration and too much anger, and I was at the point where I needed to explode and take it all out on the first person I came across.
“She’s gone! I didn’t touch her; Xavier didn’t touch her. We followed your orders! You are out of line with this!” Luke continued, stabbing a finger at me, though I wasn’t sure why he’d gotten so worked up. “And you only have yourself to blame. She probably left because she needed to get away from a person like you!” he concluded, and I took an immediate step forward, which made Xavier grab me by the shoulders.
“What did you say?” I hissed, trying to understand what he was getting at. Luke knew something, something I didn’t know, and he needed to spill, or else I was going to act now and deal with the fallout later.
“I talked with her on Halloween,” he confessed, a self-satisfied expression on his face. I tried to advance on him, but Xavier held me back.
He talked to her? When exactly did that happen? And why hadn’t Selene said anything to me?
“I ran into her as she was fleeing in tears from the bedroom where you took her to fool around with Jennifer. She told me everything, and she was completely freaked out. All I did was console her,” he said with a note of satisfaction. Meanwhile, my brain was stuck on one word.
Console?
I stopped and stared fixedly at him. Halloween had been another goddamned mistake, and I regretted it bitterly even as I realized I’d had to do it. I had to be sure that Selene fully understood who I was. She had to leave me.
So I did something terrible because I knew she would hate me for it, and that would make everything easier for her. I wanted her to go back to Detroit; I wanted her to get far away from me and the many dangers that cast a pall over my life.
And that’s what happened. It had definitely happened, just not in the way I’d hoped.
“Console her? How the fuck were you trying to console her?” I asked in a menacing tone.
Luke treated women just like I did. If he told me that he touched her or kissed her again, I would have hit him for real, and, this time, no one would have been able to save him from my fury.
I wouldn’t have stopped Selene from sleeping with other men, as long as they were worthy of her body and respected her values. They needed to be a lot more worthy than me, certainly not less. She had to save the best of herself for someone much better than me.
Not someone like Luke.
