‘I never knew you had daddy issues, babe.’
My laugh is all bark. I’ll save the biting for Miranda.
‘The only issues she has is making sure she gets enough of me.’
Bless his cotton socks and his skinny jeans; he didn’t like that.
‘You’re just, like, the dude banging my old pussy.’ Chest puffed, his words carry across the street. ‘How does that feel, knowing I was fucking that first?’
‘It’s funny you should ask.’ My response is delivered in an even tone as I lean in, my response a growl in his ear. ‘After the first two inches? Her pussy feels brand fucking new.’
At this stage in my life and regarding this woman, I shouldn’t behave so childishly. Be so coarse. Behave with such laddish mentality. Because this is a woman who deserves better than us both. But hot heads and tempers held tenuously in check lead to such aggrandised behaviours.
I shouldn’t behave like this, but there’s no escaping the fact that I am—I am a slave to my feelings. And right now, I feel like I should deliver a punch to his gut. So I do, swift and hard.
The prick makes a noise like a set of bagpipes that’s been stood on as he stumbles. But he doesn’t fall.Shame.
‘Don’t look at her.’ As I step forward, he staggers back, the wind knocked out of his sails now, as well as his guts. ‘Don’t speak to her.’ I wrap my hand in his shirt and tighten it. ‘If you see her walking down the street, you cross to the other side. Got it?’ The bluster drops from his stance, and there’s genuine fear in his eyes as I raise my balled fist. I fucking hate bullies.
‘James, leave him. He’s not worth it.’
‘You hear that?’ I get a little closer. ‘She thinks you’re a waste of oxygen. I’m inclined to agree.’ And with that, I push him away. In five long strides, she’s in my arms, and then we’re on our way.
* * *
‘So you didn’t give him the ring back?’
She sighs, and I glance across the darkened interior of the car, watching as one shoulder lifts in a shrug before she draws her bottom lip between her teeth.
‘That expression? That says you had plans for it.’
The rush of adrenaline from earlier has long since washed from my system. I’m back to cool, if not a little calculated. Funny how, when I’d opened the passenger door tomycar, she’d slid right in without a protest.
‘You’ll just think I’m a psycho if I tell you,’ she murmurs, turning her head to the passenger window. The light from a streetlamp catches the flare of her hair, highlighting the curl of her smile she’s trying to hide from me.
‘Go on. You can tell me.’
‘What is it about the cars in the night that makes the space feel like a confessional?’
‘Does it? I can’t say I’ve ever noticed.’
‘Or maybe it’s just because I want to confide in you. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ Fuck me, her delivery is all vice and no virtue.
‘Where are the dark country lanes when you need then?’ I mutter, twisting in my seat with the aim of accommodating the sudden swelling of my cock. Miranda’s gaze sees all, knows all, as her tongue unconsciously rolls across her bottom lip.
‘Tell me about the ring.’ Distract me from a charge of indecent exposure.
‘I’d asked the jeweller I’d taken it to if he’d be able to remove the stone from the mount.’
‘And?’
‘He can. And I’m going to send them both back to him by courier.’
‘That seems like a very damp kind of vengeance. A diamond plus a mount still equals a ring, I think.’ And another girl to fool at a later date, perhaps.
‘Ah, there’s where you’re wrong,’ she says, turning back from the window. ‘Well, not completely. I told you the jeweller confirmed the moissanite, the fake stone, was recently set in the mount. It probably did have a diamond originally. Quite a sizable one. I thought he must’ve had it taken out because he didn’t want me to have it. That maybe I wasn’t worth it to him.’
‘What a complete fucking prick.’ My blood begins to boil again. How could someone profess to love another and not want to give them the world?
