“Shut. Up,” he growls against my mouth, pulling back just a fraction, his chest heaving against mine.
“No,” I snarl, fisting my hands into his shirt to violently drag him back down to me.
Then, a completely different battle ensues. A frantic race of who can get the other naked the fastest. The living room instantly fills with the friction of denim, lustful groans, and heated, breathless sighs as our bodies become the exact, consuming distraction from reality that my frantic brain craves right now.
When we finally collapse, skin-to-skin on the hardwood, gasping for breath, his phone erupts withBarbie Girl’s high-pitched melody right beside my head, shattering the moment all over again.
I let out a breathless, post-coital giggle as Tomcat mutters a dark, worn-out, “Brat.” He sprawls motionless, tattooed arm over his eyes, utterly unconcerned with whoever is blowing up his phone.
I blindly pat the floor around me until my fingers brush the cool glass of the screen. By the time I pull it into view, the line has gone dead.
“You know, I’m thoroughly tired of looking at all those creepy, unwanted surveillance pictures of us together,” I murmur, turning on my side and blinking up at him as I open his camera app. “The ones we have absolutely no control over. Will you take a good one with me? A real one that we actually choose to take?”
Tomcat lifts his arm just enough for me to see those intense, beautiful eyes of his tracking me. “Right now? Like this, Goldie?”
“Uh-huh. You’re pretty freaking hot when you're all naked, dangerous, and sweaty.”
He lets out a low rumble, wrapping his massive arm around my waist and pulling my back flush against his chest. Taking the phone from my hand, he drops a heavy, lingering kiss to thecrown of my head and holds the lens over us while I beam a bright, genuine smile up at the camera.
Tomcat snaps a few different shots, the flash illuminating the dim room, before passing the phone back down to me so I can scroll through and pick my absolute favorite.
“Need to get dressed and move, baby,” he murmurs against my neck, his thumb caressing my hip. “Pope’s already going to be pissed that I’m running late.”
“Just let me find the most perfect one first,” I tell him, my thumb swiping across the glass.
I scroll lazily through the camera roll, admiring the way his dark tattoos look against my skin, not even noticing I’ve already swiped past our new photos. I stumble onto a folder of what looks like club surveillance files. My thumb freezes. The screen wobbles as a violent tremor overtakes my hand, and the room’s warmth vanishes into a cold, paralyzing void.
There’s something…
My breath catches, heart slamming to a halt as I pinch the screen, zooming in on the pixelated faces clustered by the dock. My vision tunnels, locking onto one unmistakable profile.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
The room whirls around me. It’s him.
The ghost is back, and he’s finally found me.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Tomcat,”Marigoldcallsout,a sudden, fragile wobble cutting through her voice.
I stay silent, my back to her, sliding into my boots. I figure she just wants my opinion on whatever photo she’s picked for our background.
“Tomcat, who the hell is this? Where was this photo taken?” she asks, her voice hitting a harder, much more forceful register this time.
That sudden, razor-edged shift in her voice snaps my head up. She’s gone ghost-pale, eyes darting frantically over the screen. The phone trembles so hard in her grip I half-expect it to crash to the floor.
I’m at her side in a heartbeat, my hand finding the warm nape of her neck, grounding her. “What is it, baby?”
“This,” she says, her finger stabbing frantically at the glass. “Where was this?”
One glance at the screen and I recognize the photo instantly. A heavy sigh escapes me as I step back just a bit. “Babe. That’s official club business.”
“Dammit, Tomcat,” she snaps, whirling on me with eyes that shine with a frantic, maddening light that freezes the blood in my veins. “I don’t give a single flying shit what your club is up to. I want to know where you saw Damon, and I want to know why the fuck you have a picture of him.”
I look down at the screen, staring at the cold, hollow profile. “You’re entirely sure this is him, Goldie? We looked up his file. I didn’t recognize him from the old descriptions.”
The bitterness in her voice is so raw, so jagged, it scrapes down my nerves and sends the hair on my arms standing straight up.
