Page 31 of Thief of my Heart

“Yeah? Tell them that.” I gestured toward the party.

Hungry gazes were still flickering her way from the other side of the wide-open door. The singsong melody of the latest underground Aventura song danced its way toward us, much to the delight of the party. I rolled my eyes. Another song about a dude obsessed with a woman he can’t have. Fitting.

Lea glared at me but didn’t lash out again. Instead, she wrapped her arms around her slim body. Her nipples had perked up even more in the winter chill, and the rest of her bare skin rippled with goose bumps.

“Y-you’re imp-possible,” she chattered.

“Here,” I said, holding out the black wool jacket I’d stripped off as soon as I’d entered the party. “Put this on because you’re not going back in there.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” she said, though she allowed me jacket around her shoulders. “Get off me!”

“I’m off, I’m off, contessa.” I held up my hands as I took a step backward. “God, you’re even bossier when you’re wasted.”

I expected her to bolt, but to my surprise, she didn’t. Instead, she stood there glaring at me, the most beautiful little minx I’d ever seen. Regal, even when she was toasted.

“You dressed up again,” she said a few moments later.

I looked down at my clothes. It was the same thing I wore to her grandparents’ house, except I’d exchanged a white T-shirt for the button-down. The jacket wasn’t much—Father Deflor had let me raid it from the church’s Lost and Found. The clothes weren’t exactly stylish, but they were clean. Apparently I had set the bar for “nice” pretty damn low.

“I guess,” I said. “It’s my only coat. And I needed to be warm for the walk.”

She balked. “You walked here from Belmont? That would take like an hour and a half.”

I ground my teeth, unwilling to admit that I wasn’t about to waste the last forty dollars I had on subway fare or a cab when I had two perfectly good legs. “Yeah.”

What else was I supposed to say? That I wasn’t going to come at all? That I was fully planning to eat more of the dinner she’d cooked, then fall asleep flipping through one of the decade-old magazines Mattias kept in his office for waiting customers? But that once I’d flopped onto the bed she had made up for me, I’d stared at the ceiling until I couldn’t fuckin’ take it no more and then walked the hour and thirty-three minutes through Crotona Park, down Union Avenue, and under the freeway, all the while imagining how Lea might have been picked up at any corner, until I’d walked into this party and seen every dude in here imagining how he might do just that.

It was my worst nightmare come to life.

“What are you doing at a place like this, Lea?” I asked abruptly.

Her scowl returned. “What, a nice girl like me?” she asked bitterly, as she clutched my jacket tighter. “I told you I was coming.”

“Girl like you deserves to be wined and dined. Not humped in the projects on some joker’s mattress.”

She looked back at the building, then at me. “This isn’t the projects.”

“Next thing to it. Carrera lives in Mill Brook now, you know. Half the party probably lives in his building.”

“So, if they live in a housing project, they’re not good enough for me?”

“Don’t be fuckin’ naive, Lea.”

She recoiled at my tone. “There’s the wolf again.”

I took a deep breath. I was snapping like a feral animal. Wrong idea, especially when I wanted to protect her, even if I had no business trying.

“You know what goes on here,” I tried again, this time more carefully. “You know what’s going on here right now. Half the people in this party are either high or looking to score. There’s gonna be more than one fight breaking out before the night is over. Not to mention plenty of dudes looking to get you so wasted, you pass out in their arms, and they can take you home and do whatever they want. You’re better than them, Lea. You deserve better than this.”

She was quiet for a long time, but those green eyes sparked like firecrackers. It was everything I could do not to look away—but I wouldn’t stand down. Not about this.

She, however, was not about to let me off the hook, either.

“I’m sorry about, ah, dragging you out here,” I said finally. I had to give her something. “I could have talked to you in there, I guess.”

“And?”

I swallowed, frowned, and sighed. In that order. “And…I’m sorry for yelling at you. And for insulting your dress. You, um, you actually look nice tonight. Really fuckin’ nice. Too nice—shit.”

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