Page 10 of Bad Men

“But I—”

“He’s right,” I intervened before she could say another word. “Just standing here is drawing attention we don’t want.”

There was no one on the streets, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone watching. The shadows had eyes and ears, and a tongue all too eager for even the tiniest tidbit of information.

I stepped forward and nudged our little party further down the damp streets, away from the cesspool of crime and depravity.

“How did you even get here?” I demanded, falling into step on her other side.

“Train,” she murmured, gesturing absently towards the building in the distance, a tiny dot glowing a puke yellow in the darkness.

I scoffed, head shaking. “Do you have no self-preservation at all?”

Mia sighed. “No,” her chin lifted and her gaze met mine, “not where my family’s concerned.”

The idea of her alone on an empty train headed in the wrong direction made my jaw clench. I told myself it was because of her stupidity, her reckless lack of any regard for her own safety, but a part of me knew it was because we’d all heard the stories. We knew what happened to pretty girls when they found themselves in the wrong place. It was the idea of hearing about it in the news after the fact, seeing the photos and the laziness of law enforcement in finding the bastards responsible that kicked my rage to a new degree of red.

“Then you’re an idiot!” I snapped before I could stop myself. “What if we hadn’t been here?” My feet had stopped before I could register what I was doing. “Or worse! What if you never fucking made it. I’ve been on the train headed this way, Mia. I’ve seen the sort of … people, who get on at a certain point, and you jump on in the middle of the fucking night in that dress.”

Her big eyes dropped down to the front of her dress then back up at me. “What’s wrong with my—”

“Everything!” I shredded the single word through gritted teeth, desire and rage boiling together into something fierce and unstoppable.

“Dav.”

I ignored Nero, lost in the billowing cloud of my own fury, lost in her velvet eyes, her parted lips, the little catch in her every breath.

Fucking Mia.

How did the scrawny, awkward girl I’d see running around town become … this, a woman with an eerie ability to make me forget I wasn’t the kind of man she deserved.

“Looking at you in that dress,” I began, tone a barely controlled vibration rumbling up my chest, “All I can think about is getting you out of it, ripping it off and...” I trailed off with the growl I couldn’t contain. “Fucking you until neither of us can walk right again.”

Her shaky gasp was nearly my undoing. It was solely the fact that we were literally standing in the center of a three way, in the dead of night that kept me from stripping her naked right there and losing myself as deep inside her as I could possibly get.

I smirked at her wide-eyed stare. “Still think it was a good idea to come here?”

To my surprise, she gave a little shake of her head and replied, “I wouldn’t regret it.”

Maybe I had too much blood rushing to both heads and wasn’t thinking straight, or maybe I had waited too long, thought about her too often that I was incapable of stopping my hands when they reached for her. I didn’t know what was happening until the line of her waist was clasped between my palms, until the soft material of her dress was crushed under my curling fingers.

I had her.

The lion had finally captured the bird.

She was mine.

“Don’t test me,” I bit out, struggling with everything in me for control. “I’m not capable of gentle.”

To her credit, she never batted an eye at my warning. She didn’t pull away. She wasn’t even rigid. She stood between us, a mouse caught between two feral cats, oblivious to the danger she was in. It went back to my earlier comment about her complete lack of self-preservation. She had none.

“Gentle’s overrated,” she whispered so low, I nearly didn’t hear it over the pounding of my own heart.

“You,” Nero broke in, interrupting my inner war with his hands joining mine at her hips, “need to stop.”

He wasn’t talking to me. The cautioning was hissed into Mia’s ear while his fingers fisted into her skirt, bunching the fabric, lifting it slowly up her thighs.

“I haven’t done anything,” she panted, making zero effort to stop us.

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