Page 29 of Getting It Twisted

Not that I should care if they rile each other up, but I’d rather avoid a fistfight at least. I also have to reassure George that I don’t care about Nathan, which to my ire has become harder and harder to prove even to myself.

The street illuminates with a new set of headlights. Finally.

I stumble past the crowd and onto the patio in time to see Nathan sauntering up the yard. He’s dressed in a black crop top under a fishnet long sleeve that barely covers his taut pale stomach. As the wind turns, I get a whiff of his scent. He still uses the same perfume as back when he was eighteen, and it’s crazy how vividly that smell takes me back and how it never fails to catch me off guard.

His scent melds with the same inexplicable pull that steals the breath from my lungs and renders me unable to look away from him.

It’s a compulsion. It’s a need—deep and dark and vacant of logic.

It’s telling me I want him, that I need him like air.

And I fear it’s right.

I hate him, yet I want him so bad I could choke.

“Couldn’t wait five seconds to see me?” he drawls as he walks past me up the patio stairs.

My eyes come level with the curve of his ass, perfectly accentuated in his skintight leather pants. He really has a spectacular ass. Round, plump, and with just the right amount of muscle for his otherwise lithe frame, it tapers to narrow hips and a slim waist.

Being annoying is his trademark, but why does he have to be so damn hot too?

I rub a hand over my heated face, ignoring the twitch of my cock in my pants. “Let’s just get inside.”

As we enter the hallway, April gasps at the sight of us.

“Is this him? My god, he isgorgeous!”

Nathan bends over in a bow, real old-timey, with one arm folded at his side and the other grasping April’s wrist. “At your service,” he says, planting a kiss to the back of her hand.

She giggles. “No wonder Daniel’s so hung up on you.”

“Don’t flatter his ego,” George says. “He doesn’t need it.”

At first, Nathan is blank-faced and quiet, as if he’s going to let the comment slide. Then his face twists into an expression I’ve seen many times before.

“Oh. It’syou.” His tone is bored, but the underline of spiteful rage is impossible to miss.

“Told you this was a bad idea,” I hiss into George’s ear. “Give me the key, and we’ll get out of here.”

“We?” George huffs. “Does he need help to unlock his door too?”

“You know what, George?” Nathan points to the bump on his nose bridge. “I think you look better like this. Makes you look a little more world-weary and less like you’ve got a stick up your ass.”

“What did you just say?” George growls, the vein in his temple bulging ominously.

I grab hold of his shoulder and lead him into the living room. “Hey, how about another drink?”

“. . . and after that, it’s on to case studies; custody battles, divorce settlements . . .”

George’s words enter one ear and exit the other. All I can think about is how Nathan sits next to me on the couch with his arm slung casually over the backrest. He’s barely touching me, yet his skin is like a furnace, sending heat all over my body.

How did I end up cozying up to him on the couch? Fuck it, I’m too drunk to care.

“Property law almost killed me, but this?” George shakes his head.

Nathan grabs a handful of potato chips and stuffs them into his mouth. “Sounds mad boring, bro.”

George shoots him a glare. “It’s called getting an education,bro. Not that you’d know anything about it. What’s your GPA again?”

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