Page 22 of Flagrant Foul
My nails dug into my palms as muscles began to engage.
Teddy slapped the man’s hand away, top lip twisting to one side as if to sayEw.
It gave me pause. A fraction of a second to try to come back to myself. My fists unclenched a bit, but the rage had taken root too deeply to ignore.
“Out,” I said to Teddy as I tried my best to suppress the snarl that was building in my rib cage. “You’re getting out of here. Now.”
I took him firmly by the upper arm and began steering him to the stairs.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, glaring at me in disbelief as his eyes flashed with his own brand of fury. Ididn’t answer, but I did keep manhandling him toward the exit. “Help! I don’t know him,” the little shit cried.
People around us stopped and looked.
“He’s underage and he’s been drinking, and I’m taking him home,” I explained without attempting to tamp down the snarl. “Would anyone like to try to stop me?”
One or two heads shook, and the attention shifted away from me. My change in momentum had swung Teddy around, so he was no longer at my side. He was in front of me. His hands were on my chest, lightly, but they burned like a brand.
I looked down at him, and my life changed.
It was one of those moments that had a before and an after. A watershed. A divide. A now and a then.
Teddy’s lips were curled into the prettiest smile I’d ever seen. Plush pink flesh pulled back to reveal an icy stripe of white. There was a certainty to him I’d never seen before, and something in his eyes that scared the unholy shit out of me. Something unhinged and raw.
Something scratchy.
Something very, very wrong but strangely comforting.
Recognition.
He recognized the face of my rage as surely as if he were looking into the face of an old friend. Someone he hadn’tseen for a while but had shared history with. Someone he liked despite the fact that he shouldn’t.
He began to laugh, the sound climbing higher and higher, hitting different parts of my body until I couldn’t tell if it was portentous or if it was the sound an angel made when it was happy.
The confusion that usually reigned when the bad rage died down began to find me. It felt different. Woolly. Other. The mist was clearing, but there’d been no physical outburst from me. No adrenal relief. No bruised, bleeding knuckles. No satisfaction.
“Walk,” I instructed.
Pretty lips bowed into an even prettier smile. “No.”
I was still far from reasonable, and the only clear thought I had that still made sense was,I have to get him out of here, so I picked him up and threw him over my shoulder.
There was a density to his bones that I didn’t remember, but he wasn’t heavy. At least, if he was, I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was a bone-deep heat that leached into my shoulder where we were touching.
He kicked his legs and began pummeling my back when we got outside. I ignored it, adjusting my grip to make it a little tighter, and kept walking until I got to a spot far enough from the club entrance for my liking.I released Teddy, and as he slid to the ground, his body pressed firmly against mine. The knotted net of his top scraped against my pecs, chafing as it was dragged over my skin.
The top, if we’re still calling it that, rode up. All the way up.
It was a hot, humid night. Late July in New York. It had rained earlier. Not enough to cool things down significantly, but enough to make the air heavy. Across the road, a neon sign blinked at an angle. The streetlight was dim. The pool of gold it emitted made puddles of water look like mercury that had been spilled on the sidewalk.
Pale-pink nipples pointed at me.
They were pebbled and proud.
The part of me that spun when I saw Teddy in the club spun again. Or perhaps it hadn’t stopped spinning. Perhaps I’d been spinning since the second I saw him, and I was only just beginning to notice it because everything around me had started to go quiet.
My mind raced, desperately trying to play catch-up. What the fuck was going on? Teddy was a skinny boy who wore hoodies and too much hair product. What the hell was he doing on a grubby street, in the middle of thenight, in Manhattan, and what the fuck was up with all the mesh and skin?
Jesus Christ, why were there tiny crystals dotted all over that fucking mesh top?
