Page 22 of Unexpected Temptation

“The messed-up part is, I wouldn’t exactly hate it if he felt that way about me.” I quickly put my hand over her mouth. “Don’tsay anything. Maybe I’ve got a workplace crush. Okay, that happens. It’s not a big deal.”

“For you, it is,” she says through my fingertips.

I lower my hand, smiling, trying to make light of it. Her words slam heavily into me. She’s right. For me, even having a crush is just craziness.

“Well, it’s not like you’re going to go and tell him, is it?”

“You don’t even have to ask that,” she says. “You know I’d never tell anybody anything about you.Ever.”

“I know.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRISTAN

Raffie leans against the wall, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He’s got an unlit cigarette hanging from between his lips. As a kid, he was lean and had a full head of black hair. Now, he has a pot belly and a receding hairline he covers with a bad combover, which he distracts from with a lot of jewelry.

A perk of being a Mobbed-up Trentini insider is nobody gives him crap about any of that, I guess.

“You look good, brother,” he says. “Strong.”

I throw out a couple of jabs, the announcer’s voice booming through the walls.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Raffie scowls. “Can’t you at least try to have fun?”

“You ever been in a real fight—the sort of fight without backup? In a cage? It’s just me and him. I don’t know how old he is. I don’t know his background.”

“Are you scared?”

“Only an idiot isn’t scared before a fight,” I growl, “but I know one thing. I’m going to put my fist through his head.”

Raffie grins, and I turn away. I don’t like that smile. It’s like he thinks I’ve said this for his benefit. It’s simply the mindset a man needs before a fight.

“I mean it,” I growl, feeling the beast come out in me, the demon it takes to win a war. That’s what people have forgotten. Regular people, even Raffie, with his Mob shit … It takes a competent, aggressive, and beautifully violent man tomakesomething happen. A man must love violence—fairviolence, which means he might get hit, too.

It’s all well and good, “ooh-rahing” when the close air support is coming in, but when the enemy fires an RPG, and the cobra has to swerve suddenly, that buzz-cutting machine gun emerges. I had a friend who used to joke about the enemy, giving him another buzzcut.

Raffie looks lost. I snap back to the present. Something lately has got me feeling more, just feeling more, that’s it. I don’t get it. I need to focus on the fight—the beautiful violence.

“I mean arealfight,” I tell him. “One on one, or maybe there’s five of them and two of you, but you’ve got the better gear. Fine, but they don’t want to die, either. Afight, Raffie.” I walk right up to him, my chest pounding.

He looks offended for a second. Then he does a witness check as if he needs to make sure none of his Mafia buddies see this moment. I almost laugh. Raffie smiles, and the boy pushes through the lines and alcohol acne on his face. He’s the same kid who was cheering when I cleared my bike over Death Valley.

“Yougotthis, man!”

He offers me his knuckles. I know he’s probably coked- and boozed-up, but for a second, it doesn’t matter. We bump knuckles so hard. It’s a miracle I don’t break something, but he grins and gestures with his cigarette.

“Light it,” I say, shrugging, as I go back to pacing the room and rolling my shoulders. “If a smoke’s worth of secondhand smoke is the difference maker here, I’m a dead man anyway.”

Raffie laughs, and, with my back turned, I hear thetskof his lighter. I make the same noise.Tsk, tsk, tsk,throwing quick jabs.

Part of me wishes I had something to fight for or somebody, but I tried that. I can’t be thinking thatnow. I punch myself across the mouth, tensing my jaw. I need to forget. I need to be a monster. Whoever they put me against, they’re dead.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MAYA

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