by Misti Murphy
He blows out a breath. “But you’re not into me.”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” I wring my hands, stare down at them. Even as I feel Rogue’s gaze on me again. Even as my heart flutters in excitement. “You’re a sweetheart. You’re exactly the kind of guy I should be into.”
“But you’re into Rogue Maddox, aren’t you?” He sighs. “There’s something between you. I can practically see it. I can’t exactly compete with a guy like him.”
“You shouldn’t have to compete with a guy like him.” I touch his arm. I wish I could tell him that I was immune to the A-list bad boy. I’m not though. I’m just not.
“What do girls like about guys like him?”
“He’s different than you think.” I shrug. “He made me smile for the first time in a long time. He made me laugh.”
“I make you laugh,” Ben says.
“A month ago I wouldn’t have been able to talk to you,” I remind him. How many classes did we have together before we started conversing? “Rogue was the catalyst for me being able to talk to you that day you asked me to sit with you in class.”
“I thought you said you met him that day?”
I shake my head. Keeping our timeline straight can get confusing, but I don’t want to share how stalkery I really am. “I met him earlier. He came to Adira’s shop.”
“So this whole time you’ve been into him?” Ben’s shoulders droop.
“I want to be your friend,” I say. “And nothing is going on between me and Rogue. He doesn’t even know I’m alive.”
“Doesn’t seem that way.” He scoffs. “The guy hasn’t stopped staring at you since we got here.”
“That’s because he thinks I’m someone else,” I confess.
“Huh?” His green eyes fill with confusion.
“Uma Cookie,” Rogue booms as he storms toward us.
“Oh shit.”
Ben drops his face closer to mine. “Uma Cookie?”
“Long story. Can I tell you later?”
It takes him less than two seconds to ask, “What do you want to do?”
Even though every cell in my body wants me to stay, I turn around to run.
Chapter Seventeen
Rogue
“Don’t you dare run,” I growl at the she-witch before she can escape more than a few steps. She’s so damn cute tonight in a teensy black leotard and black sock-like-tights that turn into fishnet over her thighs. She has kitty ears on her head. How did she know exactly what to wear to ensure we match? It’s like we’re straight out perfect for each other. #couplesgoals or something. Or we will be when she stops running from me at every turn and I finally prove my mental health is not questionable. She’s led me a merry chase but it’s time for that to end. Here. “Don’t you dare move a muscle.”
“Don’t speak to her like that.” The tall awkward dude she’s with is brave. He steps between us like he has a chance of protecting her from me, when really he should be worried about his own safety after putting the moves on her.
Yeah, I saw him leaning in. Saw the way he looked at her lips. He’s into her. And while he’s probably not a bad guy, I don’t care. That pussy. I’ve licked it. It’s damn well mine. That mouth…I have dreams about it…and it’s also fucking mine. Every part of Uma Cookie is off-limits to this lank bastard. “Who are you?”
“Ben.” He plants his feet wide as he glances over his shoulder at her. Folds his arms over his chest as he turns back to me. “A friend.”
“You better hope that’s all you are.” Some of the tension in my shoulders and jaw dissipates. He might want more, but Uma Cookie hasn’t chosen him, and in my eyes that tells me she’s still thinking about me. It’s almost enough to make me smile. Until I remember that she’s had ample opportunity to come to me herself. “Whose idea is that?”
“That’s none of your business,” he says.
“And what is about to happen between me and this cat burglar is none of yours.” I’m a competitive kind of guy so this little cock show he’s trying to put on doesn’t faze me. I slide the handcuffs from my belt and knock him aside. Uma Cookie is going to choose me. “Hello, kitty. I guess I can’t call you little bunny anymore, huh?”
“I guess not.” She looks up at me through the small leather mask she’s wearing over her eyes. They’re violet today. Framed by a thicket of dark lashes. Still not her real eye color. They sparkle, though, and they match her hair. And the tip of her tongue is shimmery purple when it darts out to lick her lips. Probably from the cocktail she was drinking downstairs. “Ben, can you give us a minute?”
“Sure.” He does not sound sure. He sounds fucking confused and like he wants to shove himself between me and her. “I’m going to—”
At this point her friend ceases to exist as far as I’m concerned. He can walk away, or he can stay and watch me win myself a cookie. Either way, he’s of little concern to me.
“Thanks,” Uma says, but her attention is mine. It’s solely on me as she crosses her arms and hides her gloved hands in the crooks of her elbows. “I guess you’ll just have to let me go, officer.”
Her lip twitches in one corner and if she’s anything like me she’s got her mind on a game of cops and robbers that is anything but childish.
I swish my mouth from side to side while I get low enough to lock eyes. If this were any other time, say one where she’d stuck with me these last few weeks, then I’d be up for having her steal her delights on my scratching post. “Here’s the thing, I already did that. I thought we’d come to an agreement. I was going to buy you waffles. You were going to stick around for breakfast. That was the agreement, was it not?”
“I…” She pushes a raspberry tress behind her ear. Grimaces.
“Let me clear up any confusion. That was the agreement we made.” I push in nice and close so my lips touch the shell of her ear. “Right before you came all over my fingers.”
Her breath catches on a little whimper.
My cock jerks to attention. Her jasmine and blackberry perfume and that hint of musk rising off her is like adrenaline in my veins. I’ve missed her. More than I probably should have, considering I don’t even know what she really looks like or what her real name is. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m hooked on her. “I’ve been waiting for you to show up ever since. Waiting to hear why you would rather disappear than have waffles with me.”
“It’s complicated,” she says.
The flicker of something sad and painful in her gaze tells me she believes that. It makes my chest ache with the need to fix whatever is complicating it for her. Because in my head, nothing has ever been simpler than the way I feel when I’m with her.
Only, I want her to open up to me. I want her willing. It’s enough for me to choose not to unmask her in public, though the idea is both tempting and warranted. “Let me in, Uma Cookie.”
“I should go.” She squeezes her way out from between me and the wall.
“I can’t let you do that.” I snag her hand. I still have the cuffs in my grasp. I slap one open cuff around her wrist and lock it into place.
Her eyes widen. “You can’t be serious.”
“So serious.” I wrap the other cuff around my own wrist until it clicks. I want her to want me as much as I want her, but more than that I want my twin to fucking believe me about her. “You don’t get to run away again.”
“Let me go,” she demands this time. Stomps her foot.
“No.” I smirk down at my kitty with her claws out. “No chance in hell.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Her chest starts to rise and fall rapidly. Her eyes grow round. She shakes her head. “You can’t do this. You won’t.”
“Baby, I think you’ll find I just have.”
“Let me out of these cuffs right now.” Her voice grows increasingly agitated. “Or so help me I’ll scream and make a scene.”
“Go ahead.” I scoop her up and toss her onto my shoulder. Her hand grips my bicep and mine grips
her thigh. “We’re in a haunted house after all. I’m not letting you out of these handcuffs yet.”
She doesn’t scream or make a scene as I cart her along the gallery toward the bedroom my brothers and I had congregated in earlier while Ro had told us her decision to interview with Marty. People pass us and she doesn’t so much as make a peep. Secretly, she doesn’t want to get away. I’m sure of it.
And this carrying my girl around like a sack of potatoes thing that Rebel was doing to Summer earlier…it’s kind of fun. I could get used to it.
I close the door behind me and let my treasure slide down my front. I steady her with one hand to her ass and the other on her hip before I thread my fingers with hers. Our metal bracelets jangle with each movement. The sound of the party dims until it seems like we could be locked inside a cocoon, just the two of us.
“Now that we’re alone what are you planning on doing to me?” She tugs her lip between her teeth.
“I’m not going to do anything to you,” I say. Correct myself. “That you don’t want me to do to you. I just want to talk.”
“So talk.” She darts a glance at the door like she’d rather be anywhere else, yet grips my hand like she never wants to let go.
“Come here.” I guide her to the sofa.
We sit down with enough space to stretch our arms out between us. She finally tugs her fingers free of my grip and while she can’t really get away, that inch of distance between our hands is an ocean. I hate it. I want her on my lap, straddling me. Our breaths mingling while we discuss what it’s going to take for her to let me in. Let me kiss her. Let me keep her.
Oh yeah, this girl brings out the possessive streak I never knew I had.
“That night we spent in the park. Was it real?” It was for me and I think it was for her, but I need to start somewhere.
She’s quiet for a long time. She rubs her free hand up her opposite arm and then drops it in her lap. “It was the realest I’ve been with anyone since my dad died.”
That’s what I thought. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never seen her without a disguise; what we had was genuine. Our connection is tangible. It hasn’t wavered. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I want to stop thinking about you,” she says, like it hurts to do so.
“Why?”
“Because we don’t make sense,” she says. “You’re Rogue Maddox and I’m…”
Silence fills the space between us. Builds itself into a painfully pregnant pause.
“You’re what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Because we can’t change it. You and Uma Cookie is one thing, but you and me, we don’t go together. We’re like pickles and chocolate.”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. I’ve actually munched on that combo a couple times when I’ve been in the mood for something salty-sweet and I happen to like it.”
She turns to face me. “I like that combo too.”
“Just another thing that suggests we do, in fact, go together,” I say.
“The point is most people would say those two things definitely do not go together. In fact, they belong nowhere near each other and probably shouldn’t touch.”
Is it just me or does her little finger stretch a millimeter in my direction? I cover her hand with mine. Turn it palm up and lock our fingers together. “I don’t think that’s the point at all.”
“I can’t be myself around you,” she finally admits. “And I can’t keep being Uma. I have a real life and so do you. And if you met me in the real world, I am not the girl you take a second glance at.”
“Have we…” I clear my throat, “…met in the real world?”
“No,” she says vehemently. “No, of course not.”
I peer at her. Somehow I don’t believe her. “Are you lying to me because we actually have met and you don’t want me to figure that out and then work out who you are?”
She sighs. “Trust me, it’s for the best.”
“I disagree.”
“That’s because you have no idea what my life is like.” She touches the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “You have no clue how shy I am. Or how hard it is for me to make friends. You don’t know what my family would think if I got close to you. You don’t even know that I’m a virgin.”
“Okay. Hold on. What?” I’m having an out of body experience. Her words hit me square in the chest and push me into the sofa. “You’re a virgin?”
Her face turns a shade of scarlet that would be called Humiliated Strawberry if it were a paint chip. “I can’t believe I just told you that.”
“Well, now you need to explain.”
“I haven’t actually done the… you know. I can’t really talk to people all that well. Especially guys. So I kind of haven’t…done…anything.”
“But what about… in the park? And in the dressing room?” She’s the best freaking head of my life. Everything we’ve done together has been fire. I’m addicted to the foreplay.
“Uh. Yeah. So that was actually a first.” She bounces our clasped hands together in her lap. “Besides, that’s Uma Cookie. And, well, being friends with Adira comes with a heaping side of sex-education.”
“You are Uma Cookie,” I say. “She’s you.”
“See, this is what I mean.” She groans into her hands. “You’re obsessed with this imaginary person, but I am far from being her. Uma Cookie isn’t the me you’re talking about getting to know. I’m not who you think I am. And you’re you. I’ve seen the photos on your Insta. And in the media. You always have some girl to take pictures with. And I’m…I’m not ever that girl in the Insta photos.”
“I can have them all taken down with the snap of my fingers. The Instagram ones anyway. I can’t do anything about the media.” I grimace as I scoop her up and plant her on my lap. The space was okay until it became clear that I’m never going to get her to give me a chance by allowing her the distance to doubt us. “We can fill my Insta with photos of you and me. Summer, she’s my publicist, can put out a statement that I’m in a relationship with…all you need to do is tell me your name.”
“I can’t.” She licks her lips. Her gaze gets stuck on my mouth. She wants to kiss me, but she also seems to be desperately avoiding eye contact. “That wasn’t even the point.”
“What was the point?” I blow out a breath and use my knuckle to tip her chin up and bring her focus back to where I need it. On the argument that I am far from giving up on. “Because I don’t see the obstacle here.”
“I wish I didn’t see it.” She plucks at my vest. “But you’re a Maddox and I’m—”
“You think I’m shallow.” I’m Rogue Maddox; hot-blooded lover of women and fun. A scoundrel. A scallywag. I only invest in relationships with the women I count as family. And Uma knows that. “God, look at how we met. And that night at the bar. And my Insta. Of course you do. Because I am.”
“I don’t think you’re shallow.” The heat of her palms seeps into my chest and soothes my damage. She smiles tentatively, one-sided and a little troubled. “I think you carry a lot on your shoulders that you don’t want anyone else to see. You feel so hard that you have to buffer it with humor so you don’t bow under the pressure. You’re actually amazingly deep under that surface of yours.”
Holy shit, she sees through me. No, inside me. Deep into my core. I don’t know the color of her eyes, but she seems to know the very shade of my soul. “Then you know that I’ll adore you no matter who you are behind your mask.”
She opens her mouth then shuts it again. Worries her lip.
I clasp her neck. “Seriously. Even if you’re Karen from Finance I will find a way to wrap my hetero body around that.”
“You know I’m not.” Her palms melt onto my chest. “Y-you touched me.”
She wants this thing between us too. She feels like I do. I’m sure of it.
“I’ve had my hands and mouth where no man ever has before, haven’t I?” With some girls that idea is fucking dicey, but she
said it herself, she’s so shy she doesn’t believe she’d be able to talk to me without the costume between us. That girl doesn’t get frisky with just anyone. It reminds me of the first time she kissed me. There was no finesse, just want. It makes more sense after her admission. “I was your first kiss too, wasn’t I?”
“N-no.” She tries to lie to me again, but her eyes, even though they’re colored by contacts, emote her truth. So does the way she swallows and rubs her lips together as she tries to scoot away. “I should go.”
If anything can make a guy feel cocky it’s knowing the girl in his lap is all his. Whether she’s ready to accept that fact yet, or she needs to fight me on it a little longer, the truth is Uma Cookie was destined for me. And so is the girl hiding behind the cute alter ego. “How about we play a game first?”
“What? Why?” She quits her wriggling, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“Will you humor me?”
“And then you’ll let me out of these cuffs?” She lifts our wrists.
“Sure.” I shrug as I flex the fingers of my free hand against her waist.
She blinks at me like a sleepy owl. “Okay.”
“Two lies and a truth.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be two truths and a lie?”
“You’ve already told me two lies,” I remind her. “All you have to do is answer my next question with the truth.”
She presses her lips together, but nods. “Interrogate me, officer.”
“Hmm.” I smirk. The whole role play angle is hot and I could get behind it, but there’s no way she’s tricking me into throwing away my question on whether this is a fantasy for her. Even if I really hope it is. “You want me to touch you right now.”
“That’s not a question.” Her whole body seems to vibrate; her chest rising and falling a little faster.
“Let me rephrase myself then.” I settle my hands on her parted thighs and start running the pad of my thumb up the wedge of material between them. So close to where she wants me to touch her, and yet just far enough away to give her reason to answer. “Do you want me to take these cuffs off you and say goodbye once and for all or would you rather I toss you in that big bed over there and touch you until you scream my name?”
