“That’smypin!” I screamed at him. “You can’tdothat!”
“Like fuck Ican’t!”
My hand clutched at my bra where the pin had been. And yes, I knew what it was. Which was why I wore itundermy shirt. I wasn’t an idiot. “Why did you give it to me if you didn’t want me towearit?”
“Christ,” he muttered, raking a hand through his rain-dampened hair. “Jesse is way too fucking softonyou.”
“What doesthatmean!?”
“ItmeansI thought you’d wear it for a couple of weeks, lose it, and forget about it. Or your brother would make you get rid of it. Or some teacher would get wise and tell you you couldn’t wear it anymore. You weren’t supposed to keep it forever. Now stop acting like a brat. You’re not five years oldanymore.”
“I. Was. Eight!” I shouted. “And you shouldn’t have given it to me if you didn’t want me to wear it!” With that, I dropped to my knees in the grass, searching formypin.
Brody grabbed my elbow and tried to pull me up, but I jerked from his grasp and scrambled through the grass on my hands and knees in the direction I thought the pin might’ve bounced. He stepped in front of me, stomping his boot down on a flash ofsilver—
Mypin!
“Get OFF!” I cried, pushing and then pulling at his boot, but it was no use. The leather was damp and slick, and he weighed like five hundred pounds; the rocks in his head weren’t helping. “You’re so fucking BOSSY! You think you know EVERYTHING! LET.ME.GO!”
But he was already hauling me to my feet. “Jesus, Jessa.” He shoved me back, all the way back, across the yard and up against the rough, scaly bark of a tree. I was so mad I could’ve spit. Maybe I should have. Probably would’ve been moreeffective.
When I struggled and tried to knee him in the groin, the way my brother had taught me to do, he shoved his knee between my legs, grabbed my wrists and pinned them on either side of my head. Then he pressed his hips against me, trapping me against the tree with hisweight.
So much for my brother’s self-defenselessons.
“Get your shit together, princess,” he said in a low growl, “and calm the fuck down.” It was oddly quiet; the throb of the music from the barn was muffled as the rain misted down around the tree, and Brody’s breathing was all raspy and weirdly uneven. “You wanna bring the wrath of the Kings down on me over ajunkpin?”
I looked up into his dark blue eyes. His body was hot and heavy against me. I’d never had a boy—a man—pressed against me, so I only had the stories of some of my girlfriends to go on, but he definitelyfelt…hard.
A flood of heat rushed through me as Iswallowed.
“Piper’s not even here,” he said, still holding me pinned against the tree. “You want me to go head-to-head with a dozen pissed-off bikers,armedpissed-off bikers, ’cause you keep screaming like a banshee for me to get off you? You want someone in that party deciding you need to be relieved of me, just so he can take myplace?”
Okay. That gotthrough.
The guys in that party were kinda scary. Like scary in the way Piper was scary to other people—because I didn’t know them, and yeah, they were probably armed. But mostly, scary because Brody seemed to think I should be scaredofthem.
No way I’d admit that to him, though. I didn’tneedhim.
At that point in time, I was well on my way to convincing myself I didn’t needanyone.
I bit my lip and sniffled, shakingmyhead.
“Hope you’ve got something nice to wear to my fucking funeral,” he said, releasing me. He eased back an inch, but didn’tstepaway.
“I wasn’t going to get you in trouble,” I whispered into the small spacebetweenus.
Brody was still breathing hard, and something in his eyes had changed as he stared at me. They looked kind of… dreamy, and darker thanusual.
“You, at this party,” he said, “is nothing buttrouble.”
“Why? Why can Roni be here but Ican’t?”
“Because I don’t give a fuckaboutRoni.”
“But what if somethinghappens?”
“Like what? She falls onsomeone’sdick?”
