And now someone’s gone and moved this unknown piece into play.
My pulse thrums in my ears.
Before I can second guess myself, I’m pushing away from the shadowed recess I’ve been occupying since I first spotted my gray-eyed ghost.
I’d watched Sabine saunter in—with LeofuckingBaker on her heels—and waste exactly zero time in finding a darkened corner to pull him into.
When the fuck did they meet?
When Callum and Lake told me they’d followed the two of them to the diner, I thought that would be the extent of it.
I didn’t think she’dactuallymake plans outside of that. Actually bring him here.
Actually…fuckhim.
The harsh realization that follows leaves an acidic taste on my tongue. Despite knowing from the moment she climbed in his lap,exactlyhow it would end, I couldn’t have stopped myself from watching them if I tried.
Couldn’t have stopped what followed either—the painful fucking hard on or the suffocating betrayal of knowing she was fucking someone else.
Someone that wasn’t me.
Someone that wasn’tus.
The denials I’ve been loudly maintaining all week are starting to sound like a high pitched whine, and those grasping, clawing fingers dig in harder, threatening to expose my soft belly.
Seething, I dog her steps, vibrating with the need to confront her and teach her a fucking lesson.
Demand she tell me just what the fuck game she’s playing at. Just who sent her here and gave her permission to upend everything and twist my whole fucking body into knots?
Answers.They’re the only way I’m going to be able to wrestle back some kind of control.
Just as she’s nearing the restrooms, she also notices the two casually-dressed guys standing nearby, lazily surveying the crowd. Just above the place where their necks meet their right shoulder is a tattoo of an Ace of Clubs.
When she thinks no one is looking at her, Sabine’s face is oddly devoid of expression. Like she’s not really here and present with the crowd, too busy in her own head. Even now—considering she just fucked some guy’s brains out in averypublic place—she looks…apathetic.
But as soon as she spots the two thugs, it’s like a switch flicks and she’s ready for human interaction. She immediately pastes on awhite-girl wastedaffect and makes her way over.
I stop within hearing range and press myself behind a nearby pylon. The tattoos mark them as low level members of the Strange Aces, barely higher than Prospects, and there’s only one reason to approach them. My jaw clenches.
“Hi boys,” she chirps loudly, swaying on her fuck me heels. She’s almost at eye level with them. I find myself tracing the lines of a dress that’s doing a poor impersonation of something that might actually cover her ass, and then I’m drawndown, downthe considerable length of her legs.
Fuck.
Those legs.
I tear my eyes away angrily, and back to the two bikers. From where I am, I can only see one weapon holstered on each of their hips. They look incredibly bored.
“Can we help you, sweetheart?” one of them asks her with a smirk. His hair is thinning in the front, and his dark eyes are mean and glitter under the lights as he tracks them over my body. He’s probably in his late twenties but already has a thoroughly strung out, middle-aged look.
“I’m hoping that you can,” she says with a flirty look and conspiring smile.
Jesus Christ.How do they not notice howforcedthat smile looks on her face? It looks so…empty.
She thinks she’s been slick with the way she’s kept her eye on everyone, watching us all like a fucking hawk. Like she’s taking notes for a school project and doesn’t want to miss a thing the teacher says. But she’s not the only one who’s been observing, taking measure of the threat right in front of us.
She’s fool’s gold. Shiny and beautiful to look at, but I see the truth whenever the light shifts and her mask falls away. There’s something broken and rotting right beneath the surface.
“I’m new to town, and I really need to fill my prescriptions. Do you think you can maybe give me directions to the nearest pharmacy?”