Page 149 of Wicked Dreams

“We’ll talk soon,” Tobias calls.

Once we’re half a block away, I force us to slow down. “Who was that?”

Caleb shakes his head. “I thought we were still not asking questions.”

“You can’t just?—”

His eyes flash. His hand slides around my neck, threading through my hair. He yanks my head back, exposing my throat.

“I can,” he murmurs.

There are still bite marks under my shirt, speckled along my breasts. There were a few that ventured too high up my neck that required concealer.

He tugs the collar down, eyes heating. “You covered them up.”

He wets his thumb in his mouth and rubs at my skin. His touch is delicious and dangerous, and I find myself enraptured by his expression.

“There.” He releases me. “Now the world will know you’re mine. Don’t hide it.”

We’d managed the day without him going all dark on me. And here we are…

I press my thighs together, but the impact of his words on my body is a strong one. Especially because we’re in the middle of the freaking sidewalk in Times Square.

People move past us like we’re rocks in the middle of a river.

He’s hungry, and I can’t help but feel the same. Like we’ve unwittingly been starving ourselves.

He touches my neck again, and then he straightens. He smirks at me.

Heknowswhat he does to me.

My phone buzzes.

Unknown

How’s it feel to be so small in such a large city?

I choke on my gasp, shoving my phone back in my pocket.

Caleb raises an eyebrow. “What on earth was that?”

“Riley trying to be funny.” I clear my throat.Please don’t call me out on that lie.

He narrows his eyes but doesn’t question it.

We eat pizza at a diner on the second floor of a building. It overlooks the busy street in the theater district, which hosts some colorful characters. When the sky opens up, every single person on the sidewalk seems to have a black umbrella at the ready.

Caleb frowns. “I’ll call the car.”

We had left his at the edge of the city, then took a black car into Manhattan. The driver didn’t say a word to either of us, although I caught Caleb slipping him cash.

We wait at our table until a car pulls up to the curb and Caleb’s phone chirps.

“Ready?” he asks.

The pizza was delicious. The diner was cute. The city is impossibly big and daunting and everything I could’ve imagined as an almost-adult. It’s a lot different to how I experienced our neighborhood as a small child in Brooklyn.

I can see how people would come here to chase their dreams. And I can see how the city would chew up anyone not one hundred percent committed.

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