Page 62 of Mastered By Lust

Only a few feet away now, I shout, “What the fuck? Let her go!”

Patrick turns around, smiles. He doesn’t look surprised—he looks smug. “Dmitri, hey. Glad you could make it to the party.”

“I’m not gonna ask you again. Let her go.”

I reach for Patrick, but he keeps a tight hold on Leah. I don’t want to hurt her by yanking them apart. She doesn’t look like she could hold herself up.

“Leah and I are together now.” Patrick puts his filthy lips against her cheek. “Aren’t we, babe?”

“No the fuck you aren’t.” I bite the words out through clenched teeth. How dare he touch her. I’m going to tear his limbs from his body. Then I’m going to throw him in the lake by our family cabin and make him try to swim.

“Leah, come on. I’ll take you back to my place.” Patrick starts walking forward. Leah stumbles alongside him.

Danica catches up to me, panting for breath. She, Layton, and the friend all stand in Patrick’s way. “Let her go.”

“No, she’s with me.” He cups Leah’s cheek and moves to kiss her.

Danica doesn’t give him the chance. She pulls back her arm and punches our cousin in the nose. He shouts in pain and surprise before she pulls her arm back to hit him again.

“The fuck, Dani!” Patrick lets go of Leah to defend his face.

Leah starts to fall. I lunge forward and grab her. She has no strength or mobility of her own. Scooping her into my arms, I say, “I got you, you’re okay now.”

“Dmitri. Mad—at me?” Her voice is faint, her words slurred.

“Not at all. Hang on, okay?” To Patrick I say, “What the fuck did you give her?”

“She’ll be fine, relax. She alreadyisfine.”

She’s not fine. Not at all. Leah doesn’t do drugs. She barely drinks.

My eyes burn because I’m so angry. So gutted. This is so fucking wrong. Patrick has gone too far. Hurting Leah? There’s no coming back from this. He’s dead to me.

I just wish I knew why he did it. “Why are you here with her, like this?”

He shrugs. “I wanted you to forget about her. Get your head back in the game. It started with the Tagger.”

“The Tagger?” No fucking way. The asshole tracking Leah wasn’t some rando—it was my own fucking cousin. “You’re behind that? She was furious—she thought I did it.”

“Yeah, well, that was the point.”

“Youframedme?” My pulse pounds in my ears. My vision gets faint at the periphery as I narrow in on Patrick. I force myself to take a breath. I’m so fucking furious, I might snap.

He shrugs again, every inch the kid who attracted trouble but never accepted the blame. “I didn’t think you’d talk about it. I signed up for it with your number, had a friend follow her a bit. I thought she’d find the Tagger, think it was you, and ghost you. It would be over. You could stop being such a pussy and we could open our club. Together, like we planned.”

“I told you to open it with Granddad, since the two of you want it so much.”

“That was never the plan, though. It was always you and me. We’d be the owners in the front, and he could run his business through the back. If he’s in the front, it defeats the whole point.” He shakes his head. “Then you kept getting hung up on Leah. I thought if you saw her with me, you’d drop her for good. You might be a cuck for that Gage Hawthorne, but not for me.”

Danica is watching our exchange, back and forth. She’s going to have questions later. I don’t have the bandwidth to worry about what she’s thinking. This is a shit-show, and I need to get Leah some help.

But Danica speaks up. “So you sexually assaulted Leah because you’re mad at Dmitri?”

“No.” He chuckles. “She let me kiss her.”

God. Leah’s a deadweight and practically unconscious in my arms. Patrick knows she couldn’t consent to shit.

“She didn’t let you—youdrugged her.” Danica starts forward, but Edmund Layton grabs her shoulders.

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