He pulled his brows together. “What was?”
Seeing the confusion on his face, I decided he didn’t need to know I’d beat my ex-best friend unconscious. I wasn’t sure how many people knew about what I’d done, and I didn’t want to talk about it in case Ma got pissed at me.
“Never mind,” I told him as I headed for the stairs, figuring Violet was in her room.
Upstairs, I knocked on her closed door and waited for her to answer. I heard footsteps, and a moment later, Vi stood before me. Her appearance took me by surprise.
She’d changed from her school uniform into a pair of baggy sweats that practically hung off her, making me wonder how much weight she must have lost since I’d last seen her. Plus, her face seemed to have a few sharp angles to it now. Her hair was pulled into a knot on top of her head, but the strands looked dull as if they, like her eyes, had lost their shine. Dark shadows were under her purple eyes, and there was a blankness to her expression that had me lifting my hand to make sure she was real and not a beautiful mannequin that looked like sweet little Vi.
When my fingers touched her cheek, she stepped back. “Hi,” she greeted in a voice that seemed… I couldn’t put my finger on it other than it just seemed off to my ears.
“Hey.” I smiled down at her, hoping to get one in return, but she just stood there without even blinking. “Luca wanted me to check on you, make sure you’re okay. Now I can see why.”
I didn’t miss the way she flinched at the sound of her boyfriend’s name, and I knew something was seriously wrong.
“Are you two arguing?” I asked quietly, afraid to spook her. But she wasn’t talking, and I was worried about her.
“I have homework, Jags,” she murmured.
“It’s Friday,” I reminded her. “You have all weekend to get it done.” Grasping her gently by the arms, I moved her aside and stepped into her bedroom. Once I was inside with her, I closed the door and walked her over to her bed. Urging her to sit, I crouched down in front of her. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She crossed her arms stubbornly in front of her. “If you want to hang out, that’s fine, but I’m not in the mood to talk. Especially about anything concerning Luca.”
“Okay,” I agreed with a nod. “No talking. How about I just camp out on your bed until you get sick of me?”
Her lips twitched in the first sign of emotion from her, and I grinned. “I almost killed a guy for you, Vi. I think you can spare a few hours for me.”
That had her brow scrunching up. “Who did you almost kill?”
“Cannon. Your parents didn’t tell you?” She shook her head. “Huh, I guess they didn’t want that little bit of news spreading around. But yeah, I kicked his ass and would have happily killed him if Barrick hadn’t stopped me.”
“Um…thanks?” I snorted out a laugh, and she shook her head at me. “No, really. Thank you. That makes me feel a little better. Aunt Dallas told me she was sending him to Texas, but… I don’t know…” She glanced toward the window as she lifted one of her hands to touch her mouth. “It just didn’t seem like it was all that harsh of a punishment at the time. I guess I wanted some of his blood spilled.”
“I can assure you it was. Ma said he needed stitches and I may have fractured a few ribs.” I moved to sit on the bed beside her. “Honestly, though, I’m surprised Luca didn’t hunt Cannon down in Texas and finish him off.”
She stiffened, and I could feel her withdrawing completely. Standing, she walked to the door. “I really do need to get this homework done. I have a paper due Monday.”
Sighing, I reluctantly got to my feet and walked to the door where she was waiting. “Whatever’s going on, all you have to do is tell me, and I’ll make whoever put that vacant look in your pretty eyes pay.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor for a moment before straightening her shoulders. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“Ah, Vi.” I wrapped my arms around her. After a small hesitation, she hugged me back. “I don’t like seeing you like this. Just say the word, and I’ll make it all better.”
She gave a small sniffle then stepped back. “You’re just like your mom,” she muttered. “But there are some things not even she can fix.”
I gasped in mock outrage. “Lies. Emmie Armstrong can make anything better with just a flick of her wrist.” Grinning when she rolled her eyes, I kissed her brow. “Fine, fine. I’ll let you go back to hiding behind your oh-so-important homework. I need to stop by and talk to Shaw anyway.”
By the time I got to the top of the stairs, she’d closed her door again. I stopped long enough to say goodbye to Mason and then drove over to Shaw’s. As I pulled into her driveway, nervousness attempted to flood me, but I pushed it down and walked up to her front door.
Shaw’s car was parked in the driveway where Cannon’s used to sit, and I grinned as I remembered the call I’d had with Mia only a few days after the fateful party. She’d been pissed at me, so she wanted to bitch at me for being a stupid dumbass. But then she let it slip that Uncle Ax had raged so hard over what his son had done that he’d auctioned off Cannon’s car to the highest bidder—apparently some weird stalker fan who then took pictures of himself pissing all over the inside of Cannon’s precious car.
It had been a wild story in the tabloids for all of five seconds, but Mia had screenshotted the pictures from the website and emailed them to me. I’d cracked up so hard when I saw the desecrated interior that I’d nearly bust a gut. I could imagine Cannon losing his mind if he saw those pictures, so I’d forwarded them to him just in case he hadn’t seen them yet.
I didn’t get a reply, so I didn’t know if he’d even seen my email or not, but it made me grin just thinking about how pissed my ex-best friend probably had been, and maybe even still was.
Snickering, I pushed the doorbell.
“Just a sec,” I heard Shaw call out, and I wiped the grin off my face just as the door opened.
At my first sight of her in weeks, my breath caught in my throat. Her honey-gold hair was pulled up in a messy knot on top of her head, with several strands floating around her face. She didn’t have on a drop of makeup, and she was dressed in running shorts and a sports bra.
She looked like she was about to go for a run, but I knew better. Shaw didn’t run unless someone or something was chasing her.
As soon as she opened the door, she started to shut it again right in my face. Moving quickly, I pushed forward and entered the house. As I passed her, I inhaled her perfume, and if I hadn’t been hard before, I was about to explode in my school uniform slacks now.
“What do you want?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest and causing her tits to push up against the tight material of the sports bra.
I shoved my hair back from my forehead and glanced at the stairs behind her. “Are your parents home?” I asked, hoping they weren’t even as I prayed they were. I needed one of them to come stop me from what I was about to do. Needed them to kick my ass out before I touched their daughter.
Because as soon as I did, there would be no stopping me.
Her brow pinched in confusion. “No, it’s date night. They’re in the city with Vi’s parents. Probably won’t be back until late.”
Ah, fuck.
Sweat started to roll down my back, and as hard as I tried to look anywhere else, my gaze kept going back to her body. The sun-kissed skin of her chest and tight abs. Her mile-long legs. No one had legs like Shaw. They went on forever. I’d dreamed of those legs wrapped around me so tight I couldn’t move. Just had to lie there and let her…
As I was standing there imagining exactly what I’d dreamed of her doing, the doorbell rang again. The door had barely even closed behind me, and I pulled it open, only to glare at the guy standing there. He was maybe an inch shorter than me with shaggy, curly dark hair. He was wearing sunglasses and a black T-shirt that was tight over his chest. His jeans sat too low on his hips, and I was about to snarl at him to get lost w
hen I realized he was holding a pizza and the T-shirt he was wearing had the logo of the Italian place we always ordered from when I spent the night with Cannon.
I snatched the pizza and carefully pushed it into Shaw’s hands before pulling out my wallet. I shoved two twenties into his hand and slammed the door as the guy mumbled a “Thanks.”
Shaw huffed at me as she waved the bills in her hand that I hadn’t seen her holding. “I could have paid for my own dinner, thanks,” she growled.
“You thought I was him,” I accused, jealousy eating at what was left of my willpower. “You were just going to answer the door to that dickhead dressed like that?”
“He’s hot,” she said over her shoulder as she turned and stomped toward the kitchen. “And since I was grounded for so long, he’s been the highlight of my life for the past few weeks.”
“She’s sixteen,” I remind myself before following her. “Sixteen is underage when you’re eighteen, dumbass. Sixteen means you will do time. It’s a felony. You can’t see her like you crave if you’re doing hard time…”
The words dried up when I entered the kitchen and saw her bent over in front of the open fridge. I nearly swallowed my tongue as she shifted her hips from side to side ever so slightly, causing her shorts to ride up and showing me the undersides of her luscious ass. I quickly adjusted myself as she grabbed two diet drinks off the bottom shelf and turned to hand me one.
I took it and downed the ice-cold drink in two swallows in hopes of calming the inferno trying to burn through my entire body.
She rolled her eyes as she popped the top of her own and took a small sip before crossing to where she’d placed the pizza on the island and opened the box. The smell was enough to make my stomach growl, and she smirked as she lifted a slice.
Taking a bite, she watched me as she chewed. “As I’m sure you know by now, my brother isn’t here, so I’m a little lost on why you would willingly want to be in this house.”
“I’m not concerned about your brother.” I reached for the box, not bothering to wait for her to offer me a slice. I was not surprised to find the damn thing was covered in meat and jalapenos. It dripped with grease, and the first bite made me groan at how good it tasted. Shaw always had the best choices in pizza toppings.
“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here, Jags,” she huffed.
“I missed you,” I answered honestly. Her snort was full of disbelief, and I dropped my slice back into the box before reaching for her. The sound of her gasp when I grabbed her hips went straight to my cock, and I pulled her roughly against me, letting her feel exactly how much I wanted her. “I’ve missed you so fucking badly, Dimples. I would have been here sooner, but I’ve been grounded.”
She tilted her head to the side, appraising me for a silent moment. “Because you beat the living hell out of Can?”
“You know about that?” She shrugged. “Vi didn’t when I stopped in to check on her a little while ago.”
“Cannon let it slip when he was trying to get me to talk Dad out of sending him to military school,” she admitted. “My parents haven’t mentioned it, and I doubt they will. They probably think you gave him what he deserved. Did you see the pictures of what that freak did to his car after he bought it?”
“Mia sent them to me. And then I emailed them to Cannon.”
Her dimples popped when she grinned wickedly up at me. “I might have sent them too. Wanted him to see what some perv did to his precious baby.”
“That was a lot of cash that guy dropped just so he could piss all over the leather seats,” I teased, and she giggled, making my heart clench at how pretty that sound was while my cock flexed against her. She was still pressed up against me, not pushing me away, not stepping back. Shaw wanted to be in my arms as much as I wanted to keep her there; she just didn’t want to admit it because I was stupid enough to have fucked everything up.
“I heard he did more than that,” she said with a snicker. “But I really don’t want to think about that.”
“Gross.” Keeping one hand on her hip, I reached for my pizza with the other. After taking a bite, I lifted it to her lips.
Those baby blues locked with mine as she leaned in to take a bite. I groaned when she licked her lips as she pulled back, the devilish look in her eyes telling me she knew exactly what she was doing. She was teasing me, wanted to make me ache for her, maybe even beg for her.
And I would if that was what she really wanted.
I’d known Shaw her entire life. There was very little I didn’t know about her. Including how many guys she’d kissed. The two models she’d kissed for some perfume commercial were on my shit list, and I’d come close to begging Ma to ruin their careers just so I knew they would never get the chance to touch Shaw’s sweet lips again. I was pissed for weeks after the first time I saw that damn commercial. And each time I saw it after that, it only got worse, until I’d been close to murdering someone. Then suddenly the commercial had stopped airing, and I’d begun to calm down.
I hated her job. Hated that every fucking guy with access to the internet could see her in those tiny little excuses for bikinis. Hated that there was probably a guy right at that moment fucking his hand while looking at a picture of her or watching one of her commercials. Or just thinking about her in general. I hated it, but there was nothing I could do to change it. I had no right to step in the way of her career.
But fuck if I didn’t want to.
I knew how many guys she’d kissed—three, including me—and I knew how many guys had gotten into her panties. Zero. Absolutely one hundred percent without a doubt, no one had touched the nirvana that was Shaw Cage’s secret treasure.
But I sure as fuck was going to be the first.
And the last.
“Sixteen,” I muttered to myself, knowing that as much as I ached for a taste, I had to wait. Waiting was fine. If I got this beautiful girl who was the only one to own this part of my heart, got to call her mine for the rest of our lives, it would be worth the pain in my balls.
“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I am. But that’s not what stopped you before.”
“No,” I agreed, my fingers flexing on her. “But it should have been the only reason I kept my hands to myself.”
Chapter 11
Shaw
As soon as my grounding was over, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do anything to get put on my parents’ shit list again anytime soon. I’d been good—mostly—as far as my parents knew anyway. And since worrying about Violet had taken up the majority of my spare time, I hadn’t really had the chance to think about Jagger.
That was such a huge, pathetic lie.
I might not allow myself to think about him at all during the day, but as soon as my head touched my pillow every night, he was the only thing on my mind. Each night, I would torture myself with every memory I’d ever made with Jagger. And then, before I cried myself to sleep, I would relive our kiss and the moment my heart shattered when I found him kissing someone else.
I couldn’t understand, if he really cared about me as much as I cared for him, how he could even stand to have someone else’s lips on his. Fuck, to even allow them to touch him. Just the thought of anyone putting their hands or lips on me other than Jagger was enough to make me shudder.
But then I would remind myself that he didn’t feel what I felt. Maybe he thought he did, but deep down, he couldn’t possibly and do what he’d done.
That wasn’t the only lesson I’d learned from the consequences of that stupid party. I’d been faced with the realization that a person really can live without their heart seeming to beat. I learned firsthand that all guys—even the ones who claimed to love a girl more than life itself—were full of bullshit. And I’d learned that Violet Stevenson was perhaps the bravest person I’d ever met.
Violet was silently going through the worst time of her life. To protect a guy who didn’t deserve her continued love and devotion. My sweet, kind, beautiful Vi was dying inside, but I couldn
’t do a damn thing to help her.
And the thing I hated the most was that it was all my fault.
If I hadn’t chased after Jagger like some love-sick little girl, Violet never would have been at that party. Cannon wouldn’t have done what he did, so she never would have called Luca, and Luca never would have cheated. The guilt of knowing my best friend was only a shell of herself because of my idiocy was a hard pill to swallow, and I didn’t know how to fix any of the damage I’d caused.
Having Jagger show up after weeks of not seeing or even hearing his voice made it hard to think for a few minutes. It took a moment to comprehend that he was there to see me since Cannon was in Texas having that entitled asshole personality of his ground into dust—I hoped, at least.
I wanted to be mad. Jags never would have shown up just for me a month ago. If anything, he probably would have turned and run in the other direction if he saw me coming. But part of me was so happy to see him that I couldn’t hold on to my anger at first.
Then he’d touched me, and I’d lost my damn mind.
As he’d pulled me into his hard body, and I’d felt just how much he wanted me, my mind had blanked, and all I could think about was how good he’d tasted when we kissed. How good he’d felt when he’d been between my legs and his cock had pushed unrelentingly against my core.
“Sixteen,” he muttered half under his breath.
“Yeah, I am.” I knew the significance of my age. He wasn’t even a full two years older than me, but with him eighteen and me sixteen, it was a huge chasm on the legal front. But that was only if the wrong people found out about it. “But that’s not what stopped you before.”
“No,” Jagger said, regret flashing in his eyes as his fingers flexed on my hip, making that ache deep between my thighs throb. “But it should have been the only reason I kept my hands to myself.”
I could hear the apology in his voice, but it didn’t have the effect I was sure he was hoping for. Maybe he thought I would melt against him and tell him I forgave him. Perhaps he even thought I would be grateful he was finally showing me some attention.
Wanting Shaw Page 7
