Page 7 of Violent Cravings

“What’s your name?” he asks brusquely.

“Laura Brown,” I answer in a hurried breath, unnecessarily adding my last name. “Why...why do you ask?”

An unnerving thought occurs to me.

“Are you going to complain about me to my boss?” I ask, panicked.

He chuckles and shakes his head. Fuck, I can’t get over how handsome he is.

“No, Laura, I just needed to know,” he says.

“Why?” I repeat. My heart is pounding now.

His expression signals that he’s not going to respond to my question.

“Is this all you do?” he asks, his eyes casting around the room. “Serving at functions.”

I frown at him and my cheeks flush.

Is this all you do? His condescending tone says it all. He thinks very highly of himself, more highly than he considers the likes of me. I’m just a server, after all.

Of course, I’m more than that. Much more than that. We all are. And I feel the sudden urge to prove it to him. I may be a college dropout who has to work two jobs to get by, but I am so much more than just a low life.

I know people like him. Business people. Rich people. Their lives are empty without their jobs and the wealth and status that comes with it, so that’s the only way they know to define themselves and everyone around them. In reality, they are the pitiful and deprived ones.

I hate the way he assumes he‘s superior to me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. This is neither the time nor the place to lecture a man like him.

Not that I’d even be capable of doing that. He’s rattling me way too much. My heart hasn’t stopped racing since I bumped into him, and I‘ve never had this hard of a time maintaining composure. He’s frazzling me in a way that no one ever has before, and I don’t know how to deal with it.

“That’s none of your business,” I retort, sounding harsher than intended. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. And I’m sure you do, too.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, mimicking his earlier gesture of scanning the room around us. I’m met with Layla’s gaze from afar. She’s throwing me an “Is everything all right?”-look, which I acknowledge with a nod.

He notices the exchange, his eyes traveling back and forth between the two of us as he assesses the situation.

“Are we done here?” I ask, trying to sound confident, even though my voice is shaking in sync with the empty tray in my hand.

He smiles.

“You can go,” he says. “But to answer your question, no. We’re nowhere near done.”

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