Rogue (10 page)

“Stupid!” I gasp.

He laughs and stands, and says, “When I go out, lock up. I’ll be back with food.”

“If I fall asleep, I’ll be too tired to come open it again,” I warn, but the truth is, I just don’t want him to leave!

“I can open your lock without you so much as waking,” he says easily, then he comes back and slides his gloved hand under my camisole. “But lock up anyway.”

“You’re bossy.”

“And you’re fucking sexy in what you’re wearing right now.” His thumb traces the underside of my breast and my breath snags when our eyes meet, and there’s no shutter in his eyes, no filter. What I see galvanizes me, the roiling tumult in the very depths of his gaze taking me for a spin.

“I’ve been told I have a photographic memory. That some im
ages just stick with me with extreme clarity . . . but that night, Melanie, I remember everything about that night more clearly than any other moment in my life.” He grasps the back of my neck in a big, square hand and gives a little squeeze. “Your red thong. Your perky little nipples. The way you looked at me like a princess and told me your name was Melanie. I remember it too well.”

I’m transported there for a moment. It’s all a haze of passion and desire and teeth, tongues, hands. I ache, but I don’t want to be his toy. I don’t want to be his booty call. My throat hurts when I take his hand, pry it off my neck, and start guiding him to the front door.

“I think . . . Greyson, I think you should leave. I can’t think when you’re around. I don’t know what you want from me but I can’t play these games with you . . . not with you . . .”

He looks at me when we reach the door, almost as if he wants me to kick him out. Almost as if he wants ME to be the one to tell him I never want to see him again. Will he feel relieved? Well, he won’t be! I can’t even begin to explain what that touch of gold tan does for his looks. How I can’t stop admiring the intriguing angles and planes of his face. How long I’ve waited in my life to feel something, a sparkle, a tingle, like
this.

“My best friend gets married in two weeks,” I whisper, then I tell him the church as I start pushing him out, all the while holding his gaze. It’s hot, hungry. THE LOOK. “If you want one more chance, if you’re serious about this, you can come to church,” I tell him, then I lean over and kiss his lips, very softly, hearing his low, rumbling groan, then I step back and close the door.

I lean on it, squeezing my eyes shut as I struggle to breathe. God that kiss was nothing and yet it made every inch of my body shudder.

After a minute, I hear him growl
“Fuck”
on the other side of the door. Did it take him that long to recover from that kiss too? Then I swear I can
feel
him lean on the door. I close my eyes and
breathe slowly. When he whispers, “Melanie,” it’s right where I have my cheek pressed against the door. I tremble down to my toes, struggling to get my voice level.

“Yes?” I say.

“I’ll be there.”

I hear the elevator a good while later. I lift my fingers and touch the door, and for the first time in my life, I’m terribly afraid about meeting him, the one man I’ve been waiting for.

Suddenly every fiber in my body, my sober body, tells me he is the one.

He is the one.

The one who’s going to wreck me. Hurt me. Demolish me. The one who is going to remove every inch of the girl in me. He will be the memory I will never forget, and good or bad, he will be THE one I dream of.

Except he’s all wrong.

There’s something exciting and alarming about him.

The dark in his hazel eyes, the brilliant gleam that makes him so attractive to me, the way he smells of leather and metal and forest and
danger to me.

I think of my mother and I always thought I’d do her proud. I remember my best friend, concerned that a Riptide would sweep her away. Greyson won’t be a riptide. I don’t know what he’ll be, but I’m thinking tsunami, hurricane, something natural and unstoppable.

I wonder if he will show up at the wedding. If he is as helpless to this pull as I am.

I plop back down with my movie and curl into a couch pillow, my thoughts no longer with the most beautiful fairy tale ever written. I whisper into the emptiness of the room, “Please, if you’re just going to hurt me, please, please, don’t come to Brooke’s wedding.”

NINE

RESTLESS

Greyson

W
hat in the fuck am I doing?

The surveillance camera screens flare bright when I get home after days of nonstop working, of chasing my marks, city to city, home to home. The house is asleep. Father, the guys, everyone in the rental. I bite off one glove, then do the same with the other while I bring a loaf of bread, a jar of PB, and a steak knife over.

We’ve set up the surveillance cameras that watch the entries, exits, windows of the home. Pounds of computers weigh down several tables, lights flickering among tangles of wire. I spread the PB onto a slice of bread, slap another one on it, and gobble it down as I search the boxes of recordings and pull out a card from last year, labeled with the date of the fight. I’ve been thinking about her. Every second of the day, I remember her.

Wet and vulnerable, in the rain.

Wet and warm, in my arms.

Telling me her name is
Melanie.

Inviting me to her best friend’s wedding.

She triggers every synapse in my brain until she’s alive in my mind, laughing a laugh I’ve only ever heard her laugh . . .
cuddling with me as she watches her movie . . . pushing me out the door like she can’t stand the sight of me, then pulling me back and kissing the bejezus out of me.

I stood there like a moron leaning on her door, my heart slamming in my chest as I waited for her to open it. Hell, I was ready to kick it open.

Instead, I left and went to rent a tuxedo and then I started looking at apartments nearby.

I’m dangerous to her; hell,
she’s
dangerous to
me
. I can’t let myself get distracted for this shit.

So what the fuck am I doing?

I slide the recording into a card reader and play it, my eyes straining for the glimpse of her, my daily dose of Melanie I need to see.

“And nooow, ladies and gentlemen . . .” the announcer begins with his usual flair, “Remington Tate, your one and only, RIPTIDE!! RIPTIDE!! Say hello to RIPTIDEEEEE!” he yells.

One of our fighters trots toward the ring, into the screen. It’s Riptide.

He’s not good; he’s the best I’ve ever seen. The most lucrative fighter my father has ever sponsored in the Underground—and one we all hope to continue to sponsor, thanks to his reckless streak.

“Riptide, Riptide . . .”
I hear the crowd through the speakers.

I drink my soda as I keep watching the screen, waiting to spot the blonde on the sidelines.
Melanie.
She’s about to appear, jumping up and down as usual, and I’m tensing with anticipation when the image freezes, blacks out, then cuts to the next fight.

I smash a fist down to get the computer going. Nothing. I scowl, rewind, play. Same shit happens. Draining the last of my soda, I toss the can in the trash can and roughly scrub a frustrated palm over my face, then I stalk to Wyatt’s room and flick the light on. “Who the fuck messed with the tapes?”

“What?”

“You tampered with them, Wyatt?”

“They’re from fucking last year. What’s so important about it? What do you see nobody else does, huh? What does my father think you can do nobody else can’t?”

“He wants to break me. That’s all there is. You’re fucking lucky he didn’t try the same with you. Tomorrow I want the full footage, I don’t care what you need to do.”

I flip the switch back off and go to my room and stare at my phone.

What the
fuck
am I doing? I grab a knife and feel its weight, somehow satisfying me. I set my SIG aside, pull out several knives, slide them into my slacks’ back pockets, six inside each, then I start sending them flying, over and over, rapidly twirling them a dozen times in the air, so fast you don’t realize the blade is turning until it slams into the wall. I pull them out of each pocket, one every second.
One. Two. Three. Four . . . five, six, seven, eight, nine, teneleventwelve.

I’ve got a rental tux. I’ve got a place in Seattle, a ticket to Seattle. I’ve got an itch in me and her name’s Melanie.

My phone rings. “Yeah?”

“She’s home now. Safe and sound.”

My eyes flick to the clock. 11:34 p.m. So late? “C.C.’s coming to relieve you tomorrow. I’m working a mark and then flying in. Why’s she out so late?”

“ ’Kay, boss.”

“She alone?”

I wait for Derek’s answer. “Alone. She had dinner with the friend and the blond guy who hangs out with them. And no, he didn’t sit close to her.”

“What’s—”

“She’s fucking wearing some sort of dress. Floral.”

“And what—”

“It’s pink, boss. With yellow tennis shoes and her hair loose and lots of bracelets.”

I see her in my mind and breathe out through my nostrils while a strange sensation of peace and longing flow through my muscles, tensing then relaxing me.

“Keep an eye out.” I click the line off and stare at her name in my phone. I’m not a fucking teenager to be texting a girl. I don’t like leaving traces. I need to change this fucking phone.

I rub a hand roughly across my face. If my father knows I’m chasing after her, I don’t know what he’ll do. What Eric will do. Anybody I’ve ever come after could come after me through her.

So leave her alone. . . .

I pull out the knives, stick them back in my pockets, and swing again. “Can’t,” I say.
Can’t leave her alone. Don’t fucking want to.

She makes me feel like I’m not a robot, like I’m flesh and blood, a man, not a number, not a job . . . not a monster, not a bastard, not a zero.

TEN

ANTICIPATING

Melanie

T
he worst part isn’t wondering for the next two weeks if I’ll have a date for the wedding. It’s not even my compulsive checking of my texts. Or hearing mean ole Becka snicker at the office about how quiet I’ve been and speculate on whether or not I’m brokenhearted. None of that is the worst part.

It always amazes me how one day you can think you’re at the highest point of your misery, but it’s not even the beginning. Okay, so I want to look good, right? I want to look spectacular. If—not
if,
Melanie,
when
—Greyson King shows up, I want him to lose control because of me. I want that man to want me like I’m his next breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Hell, I want him to crave me like a feast. And take me like a beast.

So I get a Brazilian. I get a massage. I get pedicures and manicures and my nails are now a pretty, shiny red. I smell the best I’ve ever smelled and am so ready to be taken to bed by a man with hazel eyes, I can’t even think what I’ll do if he doesn’t show up.

He said he’d be there and the eerily soft and low determination in his words didn’t frighten me; it’s the fact that I hope he will be there because he wants the same thing I do.

But that’s not the bad part . . . the bad part is that I’m so very ready, and yet the evening before the wedding, my bridesmaid dress isn’t ready from the dry cleaners.

I’m waiting inside the small shop as they scramble to find it in their carousel, and I’m getting so nervous, I’m drumming my nails on the counter as they keep pulling out dress after dress. I shake my head. “That’s not it. That’s not the bridesmaid dress, sir, and I’m really starting to panic here. The last thing I want is to call my friend and tell her I lost my bridesmaid dress, please! It’s red. Strapless. Look for it again, please?”

“Ma’am, ma’am!” Another guy appears from the back of the carousel with my ticket in his hand. “I’m sorry but we checked and we delivered it to the wrong address.”

“Urgh. To which fucking address?!” I pull out my phone and write down the address, then track it on my phone and see it’s only a few blocks away. “Do you have the correct delivery for them so I can make an exchange?”

The man nods. “But I can get in trouble.”

“My dear sir, you’re already in trouble and I’ll make a shitload of trouble for you if you don’t just give me what’s theirs so I can go get my dress. Call them and tell them I’m on my way. Please!”

Reluctantly, he hands over a suit and a floral dress, and I grab the clothes on their plastic hangers and hurry down the street, and up several flights of stairs, where I knock on the door and say to the man who opens it, “Excuse me, there was a mistake over at Green Dry Cleaners, and I believe this belongs to you, and you have something that belongs to me, which I need desperately for tomorrow.”

He stands there holding a beer and looks me up and down like I’m some escort sent to pleasure him.

I repeat exactly what I just told him and use his damn clothes to shove between us so he stops looking at my legs.

“I don’t check this shit, my wife does, and she’s not in.”

“Please just take this in and verify if it’s yours, and check your closet or somewhere for a recently cleaned red dress. This here must look familiar to you, does it not?”

After a huge hassle with the suspicious man, I finally get my dress and breathe when I realize it’s still hung up and in plastic. Thank god.

I head back to where I had to park my car two blocks away. These little alleyways have zero parking spots and I’m skipping around puddles, taking care of my shoes, when I hear a whistle from across the alley. I stop and look up, and a man stands there, right in the middle, his stance menacing, wide. One of my eyebrows flies up, and then the other.

What the?

My heart picks up speed as a flicker of alarm flutters through me. I turn around when I hear footsteps behind me, and I see two men. A ball of anxiety knots within me as I scan the area. A dark car is parked near the end of the alley where I’m headed. I think I see one man behind the wheel, and the passenger door is slightly ajar, as though the single man before me just got out of the vehicle.