Page 22 of Wilder Love
“You will never have me.” My voice rang with conviction, my gaze on him unwavering. My body, my choice.
“Never say never, little lamb. I’m going to use you up and then I’m going to toss you away like yesterday’s trash.”
Using all my strength I shoved him away. He staggered back a couple steps, enough to give me some leverage. I kicked him in the shin and stomped down on his foot. Hard. His hand wrapped around my throat and he tipped up my face, so my eyes met his. “You don’t want to pick a fight with me.”
“Leave me alone and we won’t have a problem.”
He released me and took a step back, his gaze raking over my body before returning to my face. “Why would I do that when this is so much fun?”
Tristan was laughing as he walked away backward. He shot me a finger gun and then he spun around and swaggered across the near-empty school parking lot to where his friends were waiting for him. Guys like Tristan always traveled in a pack.
I pressed my sweaty palms flat against the wall, using it to hold up my shaky legs. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had affected me. My heart pounded in my ears. A tendril of fear snaked its way through my body and squeezed the air from my lungs.
What did guys like him see when they looked at me? Did I have slut tattooed on my forehead?
“Nice piece of ass,” one of the other guys said, snickering. Well, that answered my question, didn’t it? I was a piece of ass, nothing more.
“She’s mine,” Tristan growled. “Nobody else gets to touch her.”
Mine. I hated that possessiveness. That ownership. His supreme confidence that anything and anyone was his for the taking. I was a person, not an object. My nails dug into the palms of my hands. Tristan Hart wouldneverhave me. I wasn’t his for the taking.
Dylan showed up two seconds after Tristan’s BMW peeled out of the parking lot and disappeared from view.
“Where have you been?” I asked, my movements jerky as I yanked my bike out of the rack.
“Had something I needed to take care of.”
My gaze swung to him. He swept his tongue over his lip and caught the blood, spitting it onto the grass. If we survived high school, it would be a major achievement. I didn’t even bother asking him what had happened.
We both had our own battles to fight. I could handle Tristan Hart on my own.
* * *
“I don’t really seewhat the big deal is,” Sienna said, adding a dash of cranberry juice to her latest concoction. “There’s no minimum age for falling in love.”
“Nobody is in love,” I lied, spinning around and around on the leather stool until I got dizzy. As if that could shake off all these feelings I had for Shane. It was like being given a taste of your favorite food and then having it snatched away before you ate your fill and being told you could never have it again. That was the price I’d paid for the little white lie about my age. “We’re just friends.”
“Sure you are.” She rolled her eyes and slid a drink across the polished mahogany bar in front of me. “Try it. It’s my Christmas special.”
Sienna watched my face as I took a sip. Whoa. The liquid burned my throat and heat pooled in my stomach. “What’s in this?”
She waved her hand at the bottles of alcohol. “A little bit of everything.”
We were in the library of her mock Tudor. The rooms were cavernous, all dark polished wood, leather furniture, and Oriental rugs, fresh garlands and soaring Christmas trees in every room. A tapestry hung on the wall behind Sienna—fair-haired maidens frolicking with forest creatures. I studied it for a moment as I sipped my lethal cocktail. It looked like it belonged in a medieval castle, not in a SoCal McMansion, a new-build pretending to be something it wasn’t.
“Why were you with Tristan?” I asked, the alcohol giving me liquid courage. “Why would you ever fall for an asshole like him?”
She shrugged, her red cashmere sweater slipping off one shoulder. “I thought I was in love. He’s one of those guys who will say or do anything it takes to get what he wants.”
I’d already figured that out.
“At first, he was really sweet. He used to leave cute notes in my locker and he was really attentive. Like, walking me to class and bringing me little presents or those brownies I love with the fudge icing and walnuts…” She chugged the rest of her drink and coughed, pounding her chest with her fist. Tears leaked from her blue eyes. “Maybe next time I’ll go easy on the Cointreau.” She tapped her finger against her chin, contemplating this.
“Our parents wanted us to be together. It felt more like a mergers and acquisitions deal.”
“What happened?” I asked, feeling like I had a personal stake in this story.
“It was like a switch turned. Right after we started having sex, he started making all these comments. Like, how I had to lay off the brownies because I was getting fat.”
