Page 18 of Damaged

“There’s not going to be any fucking, Dalton. I’m not getting on my knees for you and my mouth and tight little ass aren’t yours for anything you want to do to me,” Silver shouted as he closed the distance between us and pointed his finger in my face. He was still completely naked.

“‘When you want it, how you want it.’ That’s what you said, right?” Silver asked. His finger jabbed me in the chest. “I didn’t sign up for this,” he snapped as he motioned between us.

His anger only served to fuel my own. “This? What the hell does that mean?”

“You treating me like shit one minute and then being nice to me the next. Ivan played those mind games with me. Fucking me is one thing, but no one gets to do those other things to me ever again!”

Silver was more enraged than I’d ever seen him, giving me the opportunity to witness his range of emotional responses. Even if his nudity wouldn’t have caught everyone’s eyes, his shouting most definitely would have.

“Hey kid, you lookin’ for a ride?” I heard some guy yell. I automatically shifted my body so it was in front of Silver’s. The guy offering the ride was in a semitruck. His pockmarked, portly face and nearly bald head had me fuming.

No fucking way.

“Yes!” Silver called.

I spun around and saw that Silver was already dragging on his pants.

His own pants, not my sweats.

They had to be cold and damp, but he didn’t seem to care. His eyes were on the semi driver. I glanced at the asshole in the huge rumbling cab of the rig and saw him smiling like he’d just won the fucking lottery.

Considering Silver had initially asked me to take him to a bus station so he could get on his knees for some stranger to earn a bit of cash, I had no doubt Silver knew exactly what he was getting himself into with the truck driver. I turned back to Silver just as he was bending to grab his shirt which had fallen to the ground at some point. The sight of long thin scars on his back had me seeing red.

By then, we’d attracted the attention of at least a dozen gawkers in the parking lot, not to mention all the people inside the restaurant who had their noses pressed up to the glass. Some of the assholes even had their phones pointed right at us so they could catch the whole thing on video. Videos that would already be on several social media sites before we even got into my SUV.

“Get in the car, Silver,” I demanded as he began working his hands into the sleeves of his shirt.

“Go to hell, Dalton,” he returned, his fury clear.

God forgive me but all his words did was turn me on even more. He wasn’t the same young, vulnerable kid who just minutes earlier had been struggling to do something as simple as ordering a drink.

Silver managed two steps toward the truck driver still sitting in his semi with a shit-eating grin on his face before I shot my arm out and slammed it against the side of my car, preventing Silver from moving forward.

“You’re not going with him,” I practically growled. “Do you have any idea what that fucker will do to you?”

Silver didn’t cower at my words or tone even a little bit. “Whatever he wants, I expect. Maybe not for two hundred bucks, but I can live with that if it means I don’t have to spend even one more second with you,” Silver said, his words cold and even.

“Yeah, and when he’s done with you, he’ll throw you into a ditch somewhere like you’re nothing more than a piece of garbage. You’ll be lucky if you’re still breathing at the time!”

Silver tipped up his chin in defiance. Despite the bruises on his face, all I could focus on were those gorgeous lips of his.

Plump, soft, glistening.

And those eyes. They shone with anger and determination, and I loved it. It meant the fuckers who’d hurt him in the past hadn’t taken all of him. His strength, his spirit… God, how I fucking envied him for it.

Something primal consumed me in that moment. I wanted to mark him as mine somehow. I wanted that defiance to melt away and be replaced with pleasure.

I left my arm where it was and lifted the other and pressed it against the car, caging him in. The rest of the world fell away as I stepped forward so that our bodies were separated by mere inches. Silver was still shirtless since he’d only managed to get his hands into the cuffs of the sleeves. He was strikingly pale with smooth skin except for the line of thin dark hair that ran from his navel down to the waistband of his pants and beyond.

If I hadn’t been so hyperfocused on him, I would have missed it.

That little indrawn breath as his body tensed up.

And the trembling.

But it wasn’t from fear or dread or anger.

The world fell away as I let my eyes caress his upper body. Silver let out a rough breath as if he could feel my touch even though I hadn’t laid a finger on him.

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