Thief: A Bad Boy Romance (63 page)

W
ell
, shit; fucked that up about as royal as possible.

She’s out the door before I can even change that night. When I finally slump my way through the front door to our house like some sort of marathon runner tumbling over the finish line after the thirty-odd hours I’ve just had, the house is quiet and dark.

I shower alone that night; her door shut and my mind on the activities of the previous night.
“What I was looking for there?”
I mean what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I angrily grab the soap, growling at my reflection in the mirror - a reflection sans a jaw-droppingly-naked Chloe this time - and think about it long and hard. Really, what
am
I looking for with Chloe? Feelings? A damn
relationship
? I mean, Christ, She’s my- she’s-

Fuck, no; it’s not even possible, even if I wanted it. And I
don’t
, of course. I mean, this is
me
we’re talking about; I don’t do clingy, messy, dramatic relationships. Hell no. But - shit, I don’t know, something's different with Chloe. The sort of different that I can’t get out of my head; the kind of different that’s imbedded itself in my skin like a tattoo.

I was denied by this girl five years ago.
Denied
. I mean, that
never
happens to me. I’ve basically never been shot down, never been told “no” to. When I see a girl, and I want her, I can basically
bet
that I’m going to be hearing her screaming my name later. So, there, that’s it; that
has
to be why I’m obsessing over this. Chloe’s the
one
girl that said no, and I can’t deal with that. She’s the prize I was denied five years ago that I’m still fucking chasing.

Fuck. That.

There are literally a million other girls in the city of London I could be out fucking the hell out of right now. A million other lays to get Chloe out of my head; a million other faceless women to replace her.

I look up and meet my own eyes in the mirror through the steam of the shower, tightening my jaw in resolve. Fuck it, that’s the move; leave this shower, get changed, drink an espresso or something and just go
fuck
something.

Except all I can think about is how different
this
shower is to the one last night; the one where I had her pressed against this glass, my cock slick and hot, nestled against her pussy and her lips wrapped tight around my finger. Fuckin’
hell
, I mean I didn’t even
fuck
her and I’m this twisted up about it.

And then I’m just imagining the feel of that heat between her legs against my cock. I’m imagining her soft, plump lips wrapped sensually around my finger, her finger teasing the digit, and all I can picture is her on her knees with those lips wrapped sweetly around my cock.

I shake my head from the daydream as the water starts to get cold, grunting as I turn to shut it off.

And I’m rock hard; as hard as I was when I made her come against me last night.

I don’t even realize what I’m doing until I’m standing, naked and dripping wet, in front of her bedroom door. I’m rock hard and just fucking
hungry
for her. I want to wrap her legs around my waist, or drape them over my shoulders and bury every single fucking inch inside this girl until I explode I want to bend her over on her hands and knees and shove my tongue as deep into that honeyed pussy of hers as I can.

The door is locked - I check - and I almost,
almost
knock before I’m suddenly shaking myself out of my delirium and realize fully what I’m doing.

I’m naked, and hard, and standing outside my stepsister’s room thinking about fucking her bare and taking and claiming her in every possible way.

Yep, it is
time to fucking sleep.

I shake my head again as I turn away from her door and stumble back to my own room. “Go out?” “Find someone new to pick up?” I could almost laugh, except I’m pretty sure I’m too tired to. Fuck, I’m too tired to do anything but crash into my bed and slowly let the darkness drag me down, as I fall asleep with the world’s most confused erection of all time.

* * *

S
leep is a wondrous thing
. Or at least, it
can
be.

I’m hoping as I wake up late the next morning that somehow actually turning my body and my mind off for a solid nine hours will fix things. I’m
hoping
to wake to clarity and the sudden epiphany that I’m being a solid wanker and that I need to go drop Chloe Caulfield right out of my head.

Hope is another wondrous thing.

And a waste of time, apparently.

She’s off someplace before I even struggle downstairs to make myself some breakfast, and even though I want to scowl at her ducking out like that, I’m still in no place to even start to talk to her on a normal level.

“Oy, look who’s roused himself, eh?”

I blink as I step into the kitchen to find my dad slumped over the racetrack score paper by the window, smoking chesterfields.

Jesus, you can take the bum out of the East End and put him in a nice house, but you can’t take the East End out of the bum.

Laura smiles at me from the counter, where it looks like she’s mangling a pan of scrambled eggs something wicked. Hey, at least she’s trying. I can’t honestly remember a single thing my father’s ever
cooked
.

“There’s coffee, Oliver.”

I smile at her before I see my dad roll his eyes and glance down at his watch, “Tick-tock, Ollie. Restaurant going to run itself today is it?”

“It’s nine-thirty, dad.”

“So?” He scowls at me, “
I’m
up, and I went five rounds of five-card with the lads last night.” He snorts, shaking his head as he glances back to his betting paper. It’s as if somehow his being out playing fucking
poker
is
anything remotely like
the night I had last night; even
without
the whole Chloe debacle.

“Had a
bit
of a rough night last night, pop. I don’t know if you know.”

Dad just shrugs and turns to a new page of his sports paper.

“Your father called Ian this morning and heard,” Laura says.

The idea of poor Ian being roused by my father’s poking and prodding phone call at whatever ungodly hour he called is half amusing, half cringe-worthy, but I grin to myself nonetheless.

She scrapes the eggs around the pan in a way that has me wincing before she looks up again, smiling, “So
exciting
about the
Times
, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, a bit of a shitshow it was.”

Dad shrugs as he scans down a list of greyhound track results, “Eh, the lot of those greedy fucks can sod right off. Who needs ‘em, yeah?”

I roll my eyes as I pour coffee. “
Everyone
needs them, Dad. It’s a
bit
of a big deal to get a write up.”

“Bunch of lazy twats looking for a free meal is what that is.”

I swear to Christ, you couldn’t make this up if you tried. This is literally how my father speaks and thinks about the world. And I’d like to think I’m wise enough to know when to just shut up and let him think whatever he wants.

“So, a little nancy with a notebook gets his knickers twisted and you get the day off, eh?”

I clench my jaw, and want to say something a bit more choice, but I decide not to in front of Laura. I realize that I barely know her, but she seems nice enough; probably
too nice
for a pisser like my dad, really.

“Guess I’ll be going then,” I say thinly. My dad doesn’t say a thing.

* * *

C
hloe ignores
me from the second I walk in the door.

Of course
.

But where I should just roll my eyes and let it be, for some reason, I can’t. Instead I glare at her from across the kitchen, sipping my espresso and growling to myself. Because for some reason, being ignored by this girl somehow
gets
to me in ways that stupid games like this never do.

It takes me a second, but when it hits me, it
sticks
with me. Because that’s when it clicks. What annoys me the most about her standing over there with headphones in her ears and pretending she didn’t see me walk in - pretending she didn’t see me make myself an espresso three meters away from her, glaring at her the whole time - is that games like this are
totally beneath
a girl like her. Because she’s not just
ignoring me
, she’s making a game of it. She’s making it
obvious
she is, which sort of dilutes the whole purpose ignoring someone.

A girl like Chloe Caulfield is
way
above playing games with a knucklehead like me, and that’s what gets under my skin like a splinter.

I nod at Ian when he pokes his head into the kitchen, and grin when he glares at me. Yeah, there’s the face of a six a.m. Barney Beckett wake-up call if I ever saw one. He coughs and makes a nodding gesture for me to follow him back out to the empty dining room.

“Oy, heard you got a call from room service bright and early this morning,” I grin, sipping at my espresso as I step around the tables stacked with chairs, “Sorry about that.”

He glares at me before he snorts and shakes his head. “Eh, no worries. I make Jerry take just about every call I get from your old man, I don’t think he can actually tell us apart.”

I laugh.

“Listen though, there’s another call I got just now you should know about.”

“Oh? What’s it now?” I roll my eyes, “Barney changing the whole theme of the place to a topless chips shop?”

“Your pastry cook is putting out feelers.”

I freeze, espresso cup midway to my lips, “Huh?”

Ian nods. “Got a call from Sean over at
Maxwell
, checking out her references.” He glares at me, “Ollie, I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to find a decent pastry cook right now.”

She wants to quit? Over one fucking argument?
I can feel my teeth grinding together as I glare into my coffee cup.

“Look,
make nice
, okay?” We can’t be changing over staff in between
Times
reviews; you
know
that.” Ian shrugs, “Besides, I
like
her.”