Page 59 of Poison Pen

Ricki’s eyes narrowed as she glared at me.

“I was not going to just get used to it. But if there was one thing my friend Francesca had taught me, it was that I shouldn’t get mad, I should get even.

“So, on the night of the big engagement party my parents insisted on throwing, I just made sure I was fashionably late, moderately drunk, scandalously dressed, and...” Ricki smiled a vicious smile that somehow scared the shit out of me and made my dick hard at the same time. “I brought a date.” I burst out laughing, unable to contain my surprise at her words. “A biker in his twenties that I’d met on the subway. Made out with him at the head table, too. Right in front of three hundred of my family’s most important friends and business associates.”

“I can’t decide if you’re a genius or a crazy person, but either way, I like it.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the only one. My mother completely lost her shit, screaming about how I had humiliated the family for the last time. My father called me a whore, and when Connor called off the wedding, saying that he wasn’t about to tie himself to a family of such loose morals and questionable behavior, my brother practically disowned me, telling me that I’d destroyed a decade-long friendship for him in the process of my little tantrum.”

“That’s such bullshit, babe.”

“You’re telling me. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. My parents gave me one hour to gather up as much of my shit as I could carry and then they threw me out of our apartment, struck my name off the will, and told me to keep my sorry ass out of Manhattan if I knew what was good for me.”

Flopping back onto the bed, Ricki scrubbed her hands down her face in frustration, her entire body seeming to deflate before my eyes.

“So, I hauled ass over to Queens, sold my grandmother’s earrings so I could put down first and last on an apartment, and when Violet was looking for a roommate, I was more than happy to rent her this room,” she said, gesturing at the mini greenhouse that now lived in her friend’s former bedroom. “I still loved my art, so I got the first job I could snag at a tattoo studio that would take me on and teach me, and the rest is history.”

Laying down beside her, I propped my head up on one arm, letting the fingers of my other hand trail over the exposed skin of her stomach, watching the ring in her navel dance as I got near it.

“Is that why your brother was such a raging asshole to you tonight? Because he’s still sour you didn’t want to marry his jackass friend?”

“I honestly believe it was the embarrassment of it all that finally tipped my family over the edge. They didn’t actually care about what I wanted, they only cared about how they looked from the outside.” Ricki shrugged, her eyes meeting mine. “Whatever. It is what it is, right? I finally know who I am as a person, and it’s no one they would want to associate with anyway, so I figure it’s not a real loss either way.”

She was trying so hard to sound casual about it, but I had seen the look on her face when her brother was spewing his bullshit at her. I’d watched as she physically became smaller, a mere shell of herself in an attempt to deflect the hateful words that were fired her way.

I had hated every second of it. Ricki deserved so much better.

And I was gonna make sure she bloody well knew it.

Chapter thirty-three

Ricki

“Idisagree,”Ashersaid,his warm fingers still toying with my bare stomach. “It’s a loss, Ricki, but it’s not yours. They are the ones who are missing out. Because you? You’re the kind of woman a person is lucky to know.” Leaning forward, Asher placed a light kiss on the edge of my jaw, sending tingles across my skin. “The kind of woman a person wants to hang on to.” Another kiss, this time along the column of my neck, his beard tickling the sensitive skin and causing me to sigh. “You’re the type of woman, Ricki, who a man does everything in his power to keep,” he finished, rising above me to gaze at me with hooded, hungry eyes. Gliding his palm up my body, Asher lightly grazed my breast, the barest contact over my hardening nipple nothing more than a tease. He knew it, too, the bastard, because he smirked at my needy gasp.

And Iwasneedy, too.

I didn’t want to be. I had spent the last several years attempting to prove to myself that I didn’t need anyone. That I wanted nothing in life except to be the master of my own destiny. I wasn’t going to hang my hopes on another person, waiting for them to acknowledge me. Waiting for them to care about me and my desires, only to be let down.

It had happened time and time again in my life, and I had thought I was done with the expectations that would only lead to disappointment.

But something about Asher Dunn made me want to try again. Something in his warm eyes or the way he wrapped himself around me; holding me possessively, but like something to cherish, not control. Asher didn’t seem like the kind of man to walk away when things got tough, or when I was moody and throwing my attitude around.

No, so far, Asher had proven that he was a man who showed up, and that was just about more than I could have ever hoped for.

“You want to keep me, Asher Dunn?” I asked softly, wrapping one hand around his wrist and moving his touch from my sternum to my throat, encouraging him to wrap his fingers around me like a collar. “Prove it. Show me what you think it takes to make me want to stay.”

His eyes darkened at my words, his hand squeezing firmly, causing my heart rate to spike and my pussy to pulse. I could feel the wetness pooling between my legs, and we’d barely even started.

Asher Dunn was ruining me for all other men, but I was happy to let him do it.

Releasing my throat, Asher straddled my hips, grabbing both my arms and raising them above my head, guiding my fingers until they wrapped around the wrought-iron bars of the headboard.

“Hang on, baby,” he rumbled, his voice lower than I’d ever heard it. “And don’t you dare let go.”

The words felt deeper than how he probably meant them, but that was likely just me, reaching.

Dragging his fingers down the soft skin of my inner arms, Asher toyed with the hem of my tight crop top, slowly sliding it up my breasts. I hadn’t worn a bra, so the slow drag of the stretchy spandex material probably created some pretty epic bottom cleavage if the way Asher’s eyes were glued to my tits was any indication.

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