Page 32 of Primal

When I finally get close enough to touch her, I’m jostled to the side by the crowd. Gritting my teeth, I push my way back to her. She’s like a lighthouse, my beacon in the night—I’ll always find my way back to her.

There she is, standing right in front of me, and she doesn’t even know it. If there weren’t so many damn people around, I’d force her to come with me.

Her phone pokes out of her back pocket. I silently chastise her for being so careless.

But I thank whatever entity is out there for the perfect opportunity for me to take it.

Thankfully, no one is paying any attention to me, so it’s easy for me to slip in and slide her phone out of her pocket. I’m breathing so hard that when she whips her head around, I duck behind someone else so she doesn’t see me.

She’s so close, yet so far away. I drink in her beautiful, freckled face, her long brown hair piled high on top of her head into a messy bun.

Fuck, I need her now.

But instead of taking what I want, I wait. For now, I’ll keep my distance and watch her have fun. Pretty soon, I’ll be having some fun of my own.

CHAPTER 26

KIARA

About thirty minutes later, Anthony Banks is finally done with his set. After thanking the crowd for coming out, Yolanda and I head to one of the many drink vendors and get some strawberry lemonade.

Yo pulls out her phone and shows me some of the videos she took to upload onto Instagram.

“Oh, crap. I forgot to take pictures and videos.”

When I go to grab my phone out of my back pocket, my fingers only graze the rough fabric of my jean shorts. I switch my lemonade to the other hand and check the other pocket, but it’s not there, either.

“Did I give you my phone?” I ask Yolanda worriedly.

She looks up and frowns. “I would have already given it back to you. Did someone take it?”

I shake my head and start looking around on the ground. “That’s impossible. It was right in my back pocket. These shorts are so tight, I would have been able to feel someone take it.”

I even had Yolanda take my phone out of the pocket to see if I could feel it, and I did, which is why I chose these shorts.

“Okay, don’t panic,” she says calmly. “Let’s retrace our steps. It probably fell somewhere.”

Even she doesn’t sound so convinced about that.

We spend the next twenty minutes looking around the venue, but my phone never turns up. We end up going to the lost and found to see if anyone had turned it in, but it’s not there.

And somehow, in some way, I know Zyran is responsible for this.

“He’s here,” I say through gritted teeth, frustrated as all hell.

“Who?”

“Zyran,” I snap, storming away from the lost and found. I don’t even know where I’m going, but I look around to see if I can find him.

It’s not so much the phone I care about as much as it is what’s on the phone: the pendant of my locket.

He’s already on thin ice with me, so if anything happens to it, I swear I’ll never forgive him.

Yolanda runs to catch up with me. “Wait a minute. How do you know he’s here? Did you see him?”

I shake my head and stop dead in my tracks when I see a tall man with black hair and blue eyes. I start to walk over to him to demand my phone back, but then I realize it’s not Zyran at all.

Sighing in defeat, I flinch when Yolanda grabs my arm and turns me to face her. “You’re going to go crazy if you keep letting him get to you like this, Kee. Just calm down before you go off on some innocent person.”

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