Page 28 of Intrepid

Fox slid an eye-flickering look toward the stuttering kid. “Well, now. Seems you ransacked my personal space.”

“I-I-I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

The back of the man’s hand struck hard against the kid’s face, slamming him backward into the wall. The tight ball that the kid tucked himself into, as he cowered, revealed that it hadn’t been the first time he’d been hit.

With the gun still trained on us, I studied the small gap to the side of the man, wondering how many steps I’d get before he shot me.

Fox tipped his head, tongue scraping across his front teeth. “I think we could all use a drink.”

8

Sera

Present day …

I lay back against the pillow, with my book propped between my legs. Bea had gone home with Simone for the weekend, leaving the spacious apartment eerily quiet. I’d somehow gotten used to hearing her alternative music droning on in the background, or the sound of her sister’s voice on the many occasions she Facetimed her. Not that I’d complain, having lived so long in silence. I appreciated the evidence of life around me, no longer living as a ghost in my father’s graveyard mansion that housed far too many skeletons.

I envied the laughter.

It’d been years since I’d heard that jubilant sound, the way my mother’s laughter would fill up a room, until it burst with the infectious happiness that made her a woman you wanted to be around. One who commanded the attention of everyone around her, yet made you feel like you were the only one in the room.

I missed her.

Hard to believe ten years had passed since I last saw her face. She’d gone in to the emergency room for some weakness, breathing problems, and some confusion she’d been suffering. At the time, she thought she’d just picked up the flu. Didn’t think anything of it. She’d died not even a day later, unexpectedly. I’d learned she’d been carrying a rare, late-stage lung cancer that had aggressively metastasized to her brain and liver, and had begun to spread to her bones. I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.

She had no other family, besides me, and she’d wanted nothing to do with my father, so I didn’t even know who he was until I’d been sent to live with him. All my mother and I’d had was each other, and when she died, I felt as if a piece of my soul had left my body.

A few months back, I’d had ‘No Regrets’ inked within a black lotus tattooed on my left shoulder. For me, it symbolized rising above the bullshit and starting anew, as my mother had always told me, without regret.

Yawning for what had to be the dozenth time in the last fifteen minutes, I shook my head of those thoughts, dragging my attention back to the page I must’ve read about three times already. Surely, my subconscious vault had stored away something important by then.

“C’mon, Sera. It’s the last chapter,” I muttered, and yawned again.

I’d have given anything to throw on some Prince and sketch for the next hour, because I sure as hell had no interest in Criminal Justice, or anything even remotely connected to my father. That he had any level of control over my life, even after having freed myself of his constant scrutiny, infuriated me.

But I’d made a deal, and I had no intentions of breaking it—even if it bored me to death.

Minutes passed as my head continued to rebel against me, overpowering my ability to stay focused on terminology that my textbook had gone through painstaking efforts to hammer into my brain. Like cramming it with a bunch of worthless foam. I must’ve read the same line at least ten times, not absorbing a word of it. I scratched at my neck to break the distraction, and softened my strokes to a light tickle across my skin.

My mind wandered into thoughts of Ty’s soft caresses, the way he’d touched me at the club, the long and nimble fingers of his strong hands. I imagined them dirty after working all day, his body covered in grime and sweat—a stark contrast to the clean-cut style he’d sported that night.

The visuals teased my eyes closed, and I allowed my fingertips to drift over my throat, just as his had. With my fingers tangling a wicked web of excitement across my sensitive skin, the visuals of his beautiful face caught up in climax spread goosebumps across my skin.

It’d been a long time since I’d fantasized about a man. After Dane, I’d made the decision to commit myself fully to school, to give myself a sense of purpose. Constructing an impenetrable shield, that effectively denied me of any need for affection, or touch. Somehow, Ty had broken through it, he’d burned it up and left me a hot mess when I’d left the club.

I’d spent most of the day trying not to think of his eyes, blue as the hottest flame, his hard-cut body, and that mouthwatering scent he wore like his own personal brand of sex. So virile and undeniably masculine, it complemented the deep rich texture of his voice. I slid my hand beneath the hem of my T-shirt and across my stomach, imagining his lips leaving a trail of kisses there. Tipping my head to the side, I dragged my fingertips up the line from my navel to between my breasts, up along my collarbone, and back down, until my palm brushed over my hardened nipple.

My body shuddered at the sensation, the clenching of my thighs shutting the cover of the book, so its spine slid down my legs, until the hard edge rested against the thin cotton shorts I wore. Back and forth, beneath the T-shirt, I traced my flattened palm across my breast and circled the tip of my finger over the areola, closer and closer to the nipple. Arching off the bed projected them further, while the visuals of Ty’s soft lips clamped around them only heightened my arousal.

The buzz of my phone vibrated against the nightstand beside me and shattered my musings, as I shot up in bed, straightening my shirt.

As I reached for it, a text popped up on the screen, from an unknown number.

Are you going to ignore me, then?

“Un-fucking-believable!” Once again, I wanted to throw my phone against the wall. I had been trying to ignore Dane, so I hadn’t bothered to respond to him after the text at the club. No way I was about to dive headfirst into another round of his bullshit, after it’d taken all summer to distance myself from him.

ME: It’s over, Dane. We are over. Don’t text me at this number again.