Page 56 of Unhinged Cravings
“Seems like it.”Yeah, I let my guard down and started falling for your boss. Like a fool, I slept with him and fell for the nicknames. But otherwise, I’m good.
I wanted to scream at myself for letting Emerson in and thinking this might be something different. For him, it hadn’t been. I rubbed my cheek, hating how used I now felt.
Maybe his being at the club was nothing more than work. Maybe I was looking for an excuse to make what we’d done into something trivial. To keep a distance there when he was doing nothing wrong.
But he had left so early, with no good morning, no morning kiss. It was more likely that he’d played me. Used and discarded me like every woman he took. Like every man I slept with. Damned karma.
“So do you have a name, or should I call you water guy?” I took a bite of my sandwich and turned to him.
“Chad.”
“No fancy mob name?”
He smiled, another unusual occurrence, and shook his head. “Nothing fancy.”
“Well, Chad. No one has talked to me all day and your boss left me stranded.” And fucked over. “Since you seem to be the only outlier in this dysfunctional group, sit and talk to me.”
He didn’t hesitate, which again seemed odd. Maybe he had a death wish or maybe he enjoyed the pain Emerson would dole out on him if he discovered him slacking on the job. I might have had some regret for asking him, knowing what Emerson might do to him, but I was so peeved at Emerson and the idea that he was currently screwing some random woman at his club that I didn’t care.
Chad ended up being a chatterbox. I thought I was talkative.He could have run circles around me. We sat in the kitchen, talking about everything from sports to art to sneakers. The man had an opinion on everything. I was mid-laugh at his story about running into the net and stumbling over it headfirst while playing tennis when I heard a gruff, “Having fun?”
I swiveled to find Emerson, his arms crossed, his eyes so dark I could barely tell they were blue. His eyes swept to me, then to Chad, before they narrowed. Chad was standing now, his face blank, but I could see the fear there.
“We were just talking,” I said, picking at the label on my water bottle. “It was harmless. He was keeping me company while you were at the club.” I made sure to emphasize the word club.
“How sweet.” That voice was low and gravely. The sound I imagined came from a demon. Or a man possessed. He strolled through the kitchen and grabbed a knife from the counter. Chad now had his back to me, his hand resting on the island where we’d been sitting. With moves so fast they were hard to follow, Emerson punched him and plunged the knife into his hand. I scrambled from my chair as Emerson grabbed him by the throat.
“You’re new to my team, so let me make this clear. You now have one strike against you. It’s more than most get. One more fuck up and I will cut your hand off and choke you with it. You ever leave your post again, you ever open your mouth while on duty, you ever so much as look at her, and I will make sure your death is slow and miserable. Understood?”
“Yes, boss.”
Emerson yanked the knife from his hand, and I tried not to scream at the blood. “Get the fuck out of my sight.”
Chad scrambled away, but as he got close to the door, Emerson threw the knife. Its track came so close to Chad that it sliced the tip of his ear. “Go find Pack and tell him you're on outside rotations from now on. The next time you even look at her, I’ll rip your eyes from their sockets.”
I swallowed back my fear, telling myself this was the monsterhe had warned me about, telling me I should be afraid of him. My eyes flashed to meet his. Cold and steeled.
“We were just talking,” I said. “It’s more than I can say about you.” Why had I added that? God, he already looked feral. I didn’t want to provoke him.
He stalked over to me. “What the fuck does that mean?”
His towering presence made my knees shake, but I wasn’t about to let him see that. “Did you enjoy your time at the club?” What was I doing? Antagonizing the devil. I had to have lost my mind.
Eyes narrowing, his hand grasped my neck, and he shoved me across the room into the wall. The hold on my neck was more gentle than I would have expected, forceful, but not enough to leave marks. It was the thud of my spine against the wall that rattled my teeth and sent the air from my lungs.
“What are you suggesting, Ava?” His blue orbs were piercing, his question a snarl.
“That you’ve been gone all day. That you got what you wanted and now you’ve moved on…” I couldn’t say more because it hurt for reasons I didn’t understand.
“Do you think I was fucking someone?”
I lowered my sight, nodding and hating how it looked and sounded. His hold on my neck tightened and my eyes flew to his.
“You thought I was fucking some woman at my club, so you flirted with one of my men?”
“I wasn’t flirting.”
He stepped into my space, pressing his hard body against mine.
