Page 17 of Hunter

“Tony?” I ask quietly so only he’ll be able to hear me. The last thing I want to do is interrupt Emilio; he scares me more than Javier.

“Yeah?” he replies, sounding content and carefree.

“You won’t become like one of those boys, will you?” I ask him with genuine fear in my heart. “You know, like your mom said…like Javier and Phoenix? Getting into fights and becoming scary?”

“No way, Lou, you know I’m not like that.”

I grin and he smiles back at me.

“Promise?” I ask a little bit quieter.

“Promise!” he vows as he reaches to hold my hand over the middle seat. We stay like that the whole way back and I don’t stop smiling about it until I fall asleep in my bed that night.

Chapter 8

Louisa

I’m pulled out of my little stint down memory lane as a heavy, overwhelming presence causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I can recognize his scent anywhere; it’s masculine, dirty, but intoxicating all at the same time. Gasoline lingers on the tips of his fingers, where it’s been ever since he discovered motorbikes at eleven years old. And when I say ‘discovered’, I mean his big brother thrust it upon him for his birthday. I think that was the start of everything; everything that tore us apart. And yet, even though I know that smell is bad for me, it will always consume me, pulling me back to a time when I thought he’d be my everything for life. The one constant thing I would never lose. Too bad; I lost him just as I had lost my mother, my father, and the belief that I would always have someone around to protect me from evil. Evil found me in the end, and no one was there to stop it.

When his scent refuses to leave, I finally emit a sad and frustrated sigh before turning around to face this ordeal. Our eyes meet, his full of arrogance, and a determination to pull me back, regardless of everything; mine are full of regret for ever having believed in him. On the inside, I’m screaming, but on the outside, I remain indifferent.

“What are you doing here, Tony?” I eventually ask as I return my focus to the couple I’d been watching for the last few minutes. “Get lost on your way to Rosa’s place?”

“You’re crazy if you think I would try to resist an opportunity to see you without Phoenix getting all up in my face, mi amanté.”

His breath tickles my ear, but I ignore it, trying to keep hold of my stoic body language.

“Don’t you know? I’m here with my new beau,” I reply, jutting my chin out toward Trent who is beginning to dance with a bunch of barely dressed girls in the crowd. I grimace as I watch him rub up against several of them at a time, looking like the giant tool that he is. The ass couldn’t even try to make me look cool in front of Tony.

Tony looks over at Trent and laughs softly before turning my stool to face him. When I try to look away from his face, he uses his forefinger to pull my chin back, forcing me to recall the moments when we stared into one another’s eyes, when we had our first kiss, our first time, and it makes me feel sick. I suspect he knows it too, for he leans in closer with a smile that is both sexy and terrifying at the same time. I cannot hide from him, cannot hide the way my body tenses up, the intake of air through my parted lips, nor the urge to cry. I see it, the moment he softens a little, momentarily reverting back to the Tony I had given my heart to. But then he crushed it, perhaps beyond repair.

“I don’t belong to you anymore, Tony,” I whisper with false bravery, “you shouldn’t be touching me in front of my fiancé.”

“Mi amanté,” he sighs, “if I thought for one minute this ese was anything other than a complete waste of space to you, I would have him buried deep inside the desert.” He then moves my chin, so my ear is to his lips. “You know I could.”

It says it all; he belongs in a world where a woman should bow to her man and move to accommodate him and his needs. He used to be a boy who would have moved his lips to my ear, not the other way around.

“What do you want, Tony?”

“You,” he says with a smirk that tells me the old Tony, the one I fell in love with, has gone again. This is the Tony who broke me. “I want you, mi amanté. I want you somewhere far away from your pig-head brother, somewhere I could do anything I wanted to you,” he whispers as he rubs his forehead up against my cheek. “You know no one fucks you as good as me, mi amanté.”

“You had me, Tony!” I snap with my last ounce of courage. “But you threw it away. You threw me away. You threw us away and I will never forgive you for doing that. Leave me alone, Antonio.”

Suddenly, the sound of a fist banging on top of the bar from behind me has Tony finally breaking away and eyeing the owner of said fist with narrowed, angry slits for eyes.

“Antonio!” a gruff voice says, sounding almost bored because he knows this will annoy my ex even more than if he attempted to put any effort into the word. “What say you fuck off and leave the lovely Miss Louisa alone.”

I know that voice, it belongs to one of Phoenix’s friends-slash-associates. And when I say ‘associate’, I mean they were in the same line of seriously dodgy work. Seth still works in said dodgy field; thankfully, however, Phoenix has given up on all that. At least, that’s what I choose to believe when he tells me he has. Seth and my brother hang out often, so he’s been an ever-present fixture in my life.

Tony, who was always a little jealous of Seth, even before he turned into a completely different person, is currently standing his ground. Though, I’m guessing Seth isn’t alone right now, or else he’d be engaged in a full-on fistfight with my ex.

“Run along,” Seth says to him like a little naughty puppy. I have to bite my lip to stop myself from smiling. Tony bares his teeth before eventually turning around and walking away.

“Louisa?” Seth spins me around and picks me up in a huge twirl of a hug. It’s the first time I laugh today, especially when I see three more familiar faces whirling around in front of me; some of these guys have been like family to me growing up. “What the fuck are you doing here, darlin’?”

“Playing fake couples,” I reply with embarrassment before pointing out the enormous imbecile that is Trent on the dance floor. Seth follows the direction of my finger and rubs his brow with a wince before grinning at me in silent amusement. Trent is now leading a harem of girls into one of the tents, an arm thrown over a naked shoulder on either side of him.

“Er, yeah, about that…” he begins but stops himself when he sees Daniel sauntering up beside me. He eyes him with threat, which is the usual way of guys like Seth. Suspicion is their middle name. Intimidate, then ask questions later. “Can we help you, friend?”

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