Page 53 of Break for Me

“Tell me.”

She breathed in deeply, like she was trying to decide if I was fucking with her or having an actual conversation.

“A soulmate doesn’t just happen by chance,” she said. “It’s not somebody you just stumble across. Soulmates are made. I think you decide that you want somebody. You have to keep choosing that somebody every second of every day. You have to decide that they’re worth all the shitty days, that you’d miss the sound of their snoring more than you’d ever want the quiet nights back, that their broken pieces can fit together with your own so you both have a little better chance at being whole.”

Was she even drunk at all? What was happening here? Did she get smarter when she was intoxicated?

“No wonder you thought I was ridiculous for talking about Seph. I didn’t realize this was a time for world-shifting epiphanies about love.”

She didn’t laugh, or even so much as smile.

“I’m just tired of being the runner, Jersey. I’ve been the fuse and the lighter in all this chaos. I’ve landed a shitty reputation but really, it’s one that I damn well earned. I’m broken and beaten down, but I own it. I know I don’t deserve that stability, that kind of love that I want. But it’s easier to believe that I might still get lucky than to have to just accept that this is it for me. That what I’m doing right now is what I’ll be doing until someone does decide they’ve had enough of my attitude or my mouth or my attempts to flee; until someone just kills me.”

We walked the rest of the way to the elevator inside the parking garage in silence. That conversation had been a pleasant enough distraction from the punishment that I’d been dying to hand out since that fucking hotel parking lot and having to see my poor girl sitting on her rims.

This witch still owed my girl an apology.

thirty-nine

TRISTA

I couldn’t help but laugh a little when we made it back to his car…and its shiny new tires. He followed me right up to it in silence.

“You know, I thought you’d be a little more upset,” I said and turned to face him, but my whole body smacked right into the front of his. “About the car,” I finished and swallowed hard. He was suddenly an entirely different person than the man I’d spent the last few hours with. There was no hint of the amusement that had been on his face through dinner, no trace of the softness he’d used to help change my shoes.

“Upset doesn’t even scratch the surface of this kind of rage, Fancy Face.”

I tried to back away from him, but only bumped into the car while he continued forward to leave no extra space between us.

“I’m sorry, Jersey,” I squeaked.

“That apology is owed to Persephone.”

“You —? You want me to apologize to — the car?”

“You’re going to apologize to her,” he said, and pressed his entire body against mine. “And then you can try to earn my forgiveness. You can use every part of this body to make me come.”

His fingers brushed across my cheek and down my neck, then trailed down between my breasts.

“You’re going to start by using that venomous, fucking tongue to trace every vein in my cock. And you’re going to do it now.”

Fuck. I couldn’t tell if I’d pissed myself from straight fear, or if I was so excited that I’d soaked both legs nearly down to my knees.

I forced myself to square my shoulders, either way.

“In a parking garage? I don’t think so, Jersey.”

He smiled.

And it was fucking terrifying.

His hand roamed its way back up the front of my body to wrap around the back of my head so he could pull me into him like he was hugging me. His face dropped down to my shoulder so he could talk into my ear.

Why the fuck was I already moaning? Already gripping the lapels of his jacket like I somehow still needed him closer than having every inch of him pressed into every inch of me?

“That wasn’t a request,” he whispered. “You can get on your knees on your own, or I can put you on them. Makes no difference to me.”

I heard him unlock the doors of the car and a second later he’d dropped my backpack to the ground and pushed me out of the way to open the driver’s door of the car. He backed me into the opening and stood there to wait, staring right through me with pure rage burning in those blue eyes.

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