Closing the bathroom door, I hurry down the hallway to the stairs.

Away from Jarett Lowe. Or Jarett Fenris? What name does he go by these days? I didn’t ask him.

God. As if I could think straight when he was pressed to me, so beautiful and aroused.

My pulse is thudding in my ears, in my throat, between my legs. My lips burn from his kisses, and desire is a heavy coil in my belly.

The feel of his hard cock in my hand, that low growl and the way his body jerked as he came, oh wow… I need to fan myself.

So sexy.

This is ridiculous. And bad. I stop at the top step and take a bracing breath. Think, Gigi. Use your mind for a change.

I can’t want Jarett. That way madness lies. He demanded this as a fee for helping my friend.

Though he didn’t try to exact it by force.

He did take it, however. Didn’t stop me. Let me jerk him off. Kissed the hell out of me.

And I enjoyed it.

It doesn’t matter. God, what’s wrong with me? Why do I consider turning back, finding him again and rubbing myself all over him?

Truth is, that kiss was so hot. Hottest kiss I’ve ever had. Possessive, near violent, his tongue thrusting in my mouth, his hands gripping my face.

Perfect.

But I can’t go back. Slowly I make my way down the stairs, even as every fiber of my being calls me back to him. No. He showed me what kind of a man he is. Asking for sexual favors in exchange for help. No matter how sexy, what an amazing kisser he is, he showed his true colors.

I hate him.

Liar, liar, pants on fire, a little voice chants in the back of my mind as I wander through the house, looking for Sydney with little hope of finding her. I bet she left with one of her harem boys. You don’t hate him.

You want him. So damn much.

Yeah, well. Too bad. Can’t always have what you want, especially if it’s a jerk with an attitude and a big dick. I mean…

Never mind. Forget it, okay?

Predictably, Sydney is nowhere to be found, and I don’t know if to be more angry or depressed. I walk through the rooms of the frat house a bit longer, on the off chance I missed her, ignoring assholes with awful come-on lines and dodging wandering hands, until I’ve had enough.

Time to call it a night.

My heart is heavy as I call an Uber and make my lonely way home.

My friendship with Sydney is on shaky ground. What she told me when I walked her back to the frat house earlier didn’t reassure me. Something about one of her guys going off and about drugs and medication. It didn’t make much sense. And she didn’t promise to explain, or stop.

And Jarett…

What do I do about him?

The Uber leaves me in front of home, and I get out and stand in the cold, wind whipping at my legs, lancing through my jacket. I hug my arms around me, lost in thought, lost in the memory of that kiss, that encounter that shook me so much.

I should feel dirty. Ashamed. Angry with myself.

But strangely all I feel is sadness. I wish… I wish old Jarett was back, the silent boy I talked to. The new Jarett is confusing me. I dislike him and want him in equal measures. I want to slap his handsome face—and I want to suck on his lips like he did on mine earlier.

God, he tasted so good, bitter like pine needles and spicy like mulled wine, and underneath it all was his taste, an echo of his scent, like… like fresh tobacco and leather and sweet anise.

The throb between my legs returns with a vengeance, an aching need for something, someone.

For Jarett.

My eyes sting, and I stomp up to the house, open the gate and march up the porch to the front door. This is silly. I have to stop thinking about him and find another way to keep Sydney safe.

That deal with him is off. I shouldn’t have paid him in the first place. I mean, I practically dragged him up the stairs, but I wanted to touch him, press myself to him. I went a little crazy, seeing him banged up because of helping Sydney, and I just…

I just forgot for a moment why getting worried about him, caring for him is such a bad idea. Why being close to him is dangerous. I can’t seem to control myself around him, can’t be rational and see him for who he really is.

A bad boy, an arrogant man who uses girls and then throws them away.

I won’t let him use me that way, I won’t let a guy use me… not ever again.

* * *

The lights inside the house are out, and I ease the door open carefully. It tends to stick and then creak as it opens.

Someone is sitting in the dark, and I jump five feet off the ground before the shape becomes familiar.

“Merc? Good God, you scared the crap out of me.”

And, crap. My brother is the last person I want to see after what I did in that bathroom with Jarett.

He gets up and clicks on a lamp, giving me a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Didn’t expect you back so early.”

“It’s, like, one in the morning.”

“Exactly. Usually when you and Sydney go out, you don’t come back before dawn.”

He has a point.

“Is Mom in?” Because I was wrong. Mom is the last person I want to see right now.

“Nah. She’s out. Hot date.”

I nod, relieved, and pleased with that. I’m happy she’s living her life again, at last.

“Is that cake I smell?”

“Oh yeah. She baked about a hundred cakes before she left. Doing her usual rounds tomorrow.”

Mom has this hobby. A philosophy of living, I guess. She bakes for us, for all her friends, all the people she has ever known, and plenty she hasn’t—homeless people, people in old people’s homes, people in hospitals. She believes that everyone deserves a cake, that indeed a life without cake is sad.

Her cakes are so good that I’m inclined to believe she’s right.

Shrugging off my jacket, unwinding the scarf from my neck, I sink into the sofa.

“You haven’t answered my first question.” I take off my high heels and lean back, letting the warmth of the room seep into my chilled skin. “What were you doing, sitting in the dark? That was creepy.”

“I wasn’t alone.” He lifts a glass with amber liquid.

“That’s not healthy.” I sigh. “Gimme.”

Chuckling, he passes me his glass, and I take a sip. “Ugh.” It burns. “What’s this, battery acid?”

He retrieves the glass, still chuckling. “It’s a manly drink. Too potent for the likes of you.”

“Pff. It sounds like you’ve been reading epic fantasy again.”

“Get thee hence, maid, and pour me some ale,” he intones, trying to keep a straight face.

I laugh and tuck an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “Alright. And what were you doing here, meditating with the elves?”

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Things.”

“You mean girls. Girls are not things, brother.”

He shrugs. Sits down beside me. “Doesn’t matter either way. I’m done thinking. So what’s up? Why are you back so early? Did something happen with Syd?”

“Why would you say that?” A shudder runs through me as I remember her down on the grass, her eyes round as Jarett fought off the two other guys. Drug dealers. Whatever they were.

Merc gives another shrug. “The other day I overheard some of the things you were discussing, is all.”

“Yeah?” I cast my mind back, trying to remember what he might have heard. “So?”

“So I know something happened with that guy, Jarett. Did she sleep with him?”

“What? Of course not.” My heart booms just at the thought.

God.

“Okay, relax. I thought you were mad at her, that’s all. And since you’re in love with Jarett…”

I shoot to my feet. “Holy frigging crap, I’m not in love with Jarett, okay? How many times do I have to say it?”

“Whoa.” He lifts his hands, the booze sloshing in the glass, brows shooting up to his hairline. “I thought that was an established fact.”

“It’s not… jeez, Merc. It’s not a fact.” I walk over to the window, then turn back around. “And that’s not why Syd and I fought.”

“So you did fight. I knew it. You had that constipated expression on your face you always get when you’re mad.”

“What? I don’t do that.”

“Sure you do. Like this.” He crosses his eyes and frowns, mouth pursed. “Exactly like this.”

Oh my God. I clap a hand over my mouth, snickering madly, momentarily distracted from thoughts of Sydney and Jarett. “You look like a deranged alien rabbit.”

And then I smell Jarett on my hand, even though I washed it before leaving the frat house, and my whole body clenches so hard and deep with desire that I gasp.

“Gigi?” Merc gets to his feet, his frown real this time. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Hand still over my mouth, I return to the sofa and sit back down. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? You can tell me.” He sits down beside me. “Maybe I should pour you a drink, too.”

“Maybe you should.”

I can’t talk to my brother about this. He’ll probably go shoot Jarett and then lock me up in my room and stand guard outside. Merc is pretty protective, even if he’s a year younger than me.

Okay, I doubt he’d shoot Jarett. Punch him in the face, maybe. Hard.

“Tell me what happened.” He hands me a fresh glass with the radioactive booze he’s been drinking. I think it’s whiskey. Cheap whiskey. “Do I need to go kick ass?”

See?

“Nah, I’m good.” If I couldn’t still taste Jarett’s lips, hear his ragged breathing, feel that powerful body convulse with pleasure against me… “Pinky swear.”

God, my own body is strung tight like a violin string. Something has to give, or I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

“Did Sydney do something to upset you again?”

“No… yes. She’s been acting weird.” The whiskey tastes better the more I drink—or maybe it burned off my taste buds. “Reckless.”

“Why?”

“No idea. She won’t tell me. She gets herself into danger, and then Jarett saved her ass—”

“Wait, what? Rewind.”

I put down the glass, lick whiskey off my lips. “He fought with two thugs, and she was sitting on her ass in the wet grass, and he had this frigging huge bruise on his face, and blood, and I just…” I wave the glass, and suddenly it’s all too funny. “I just grabbed Syd and dragged her inside, leaving him there.”

Merc’s brows rise. “Seriously. And then?”

“Then he came in, and I…” I take another sip. Hey, my glass is empty. I shake it, in case it magically refills itself. “I took his hand, and…”

“And?” Merc removes the glass from my hand. “Focus, Gigi. What the hell happened?”

“Nothing happened.” I shrug, and pout. “That’s it! Can I have some more battery acid, please?”

“No. How can you be wasted with just this?” He gives my glass a disgusted look. “What the fuck did you drink at this party you went to?”

“Um. Some shots?”

“You’re a fucking lightweight. I worry about you.”

I worry about me, too. Especially with this business with Jarett. Because he did take out those thugs, chased them away, and I’d feel much better knowing Sydney has his protection. Who else would have kept her safe?

I saw him take the thugs down, watched the end of the fight from the door, frozen, not sure what to do. Jarett unleashing violence on those douchebags was beautiful to watch. He moved like a dancer, every movement sleek and smooth, power uncoiling with every strike, every punch connecting.

Brutal.

Lethal.

Hot.

“You seem to be seeing Jarett everywhere you go lately,” Merc mutters, swirling his drink in his glass.

I open my mouth to deny that, but nothing comes out. Crap, Merc is right. Jarett was there every time Sydney was in trouble these past couple of weeks.

Why?

“Look, I don’t like you seeing him,” Merc says, glancing sideways at me, worry lines creasing his forehead. “I was hoping you’d get over him. In fact, I thought you had by now.”

“Why?”

“Because last I heard, he’d been hanging out with a gang, and you don’t want to be around guys like that, trust me.”

“Gang?” I roll the word in my mind. I don’t understand… “Jarett’s in a gang?”

“That’s what I heard. Happened to overhear a girl talk about him at work. She, uh, was interested in him—”

“She wanted into his pants.”

“Well, she was talking about the size of his dick, so—”

“She slept with him?”

Merc winces. “I guess.”

“That bitch.”

He snorts and shakes his head, grinning. “You’ve got it bad, Gigi.”

I don’t. I don’t give a damn about Jarett and his conquests, or his dick.

Seriously.

The dick I held in my hand tonight, that I stroked and squeezed until Jarett shook against me and came, his cum scalding hot, his face tight with pleasure.

I did that to him. He was hard because he wanted me, and God… I wanted him, too.

“I’m going to bed,” I declare to the living room and Merc, and get unsteadily to my feet. “Good night.”

“Need help to go up?”

“I’m good,” I mutter, and drag myself upstairs. “I’m done.”

Please dear God, let this be over. If Jarett breaks my heart, without even knowing he has that power, that’d be too much.

It’s not until I’m up in my room that I realize Merc never did tell me what he was really doing in the dark, what girl he was thinking about and what the problem is.

Crap.

* * *

Alone in bed, I listen to some music, but I yank the earphones out before the song is over. My head is pounding. I squirm under the covers, in my soft cotton jammies, and grab a book to read from my nightstand, a sci-fi classic Merc has been pestering me to read for a while.

But the words swim on the page. I rub at my eyes and reread the same paragraph, but it’s no use. Who cares about alien spaceships and distant planets when my brain is busy replaying the evening in every tiny detail, from the fear of not finding Sydney, to the worry at seeing Jarett’s bruised face, and then the toe-curling sensation of his mouth on mine, and then…

I push the book off the bed, letting it drop to the floor.

My body is thrumming with arousal. I can’t sleep, and I can’t listen to music, or read, caught in this web of desire.

Jarett, Jarett. Shit, how do I fight this attraction? How can I stop thinking about him?

My hand dips down, between my legs. I don’t often pleasure myself, and that’s not because I don’t enjoy it. Orgasm without the complications of being with a guy, of safety precautions and the puzzle of trying to fit together and get enough stimulation to come before he comes and loses interest in the proceedings… it’s all good.

But sleeping with a guy—with Jarett—would be different. And I’ve slept with guys, though I can count the ones I let close enough to me on one hand. It just never clicked. I never wanted them enough. There was never enough interest.

Just because boys are attracted to me, Octavia thinks I sleep with all of them. She thinks I don’t feel much.

Funny how that works. I mean, boys are the ones chasing after me, not the other way around. And sure, having all that attention feels nice. It feels good, no denying that. But it doesn’t mean I’ll sleep with them all. Or with any.

But I would with Jarett. I totally would.

Shit. No, I wouldn’t. I shouldn’t. He’s a bad guy. Part of a gang, if Merc is right. A total dick.

I have to stop thinking, imagining, fantasizing about him—but my hand has taken a life of its own, and it slips inside my jammies, under my panties.

Oh God, I’m soaking wet, and so sensitive. So excited as I rub my fingers over my clit.

The tactile memory of my hand around his hard-on is driving me crazy. Before, my fantasies of him were abstract. His eyes, his mouth, his shoulders, and then I’d imagine him kissing me, touching me.

But now I’ve kissed him, touched him, made him come, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek not to moan out loud as I relive it all, my fingers rubbing harder, then pushing into me.

Not me. It’s not me doing it. In my mind, it’s him.

I can see him. Jarett. He’s on his knees in front of me, those pretty cat-like eyes trained on me. He’s stroking me, smirking down at me as he ratchets up the pressure in my belly, in my pussy, as he stretches me and prepares me for his cock. As he prepares to fuck me into the mattress, and I’d let him.

Hell, I’d beg for it. Beg him to shove that thick, hard cock into me, to fuck me so hard the bed will bang against the wall, that he’d have to put his hand over my mouth to drown out my cries as I came apart.

And I do come apart as the fantasy plays out in my mind, my fingers buried inside me, my hips rocking and my heart hammering. The pleasure drowns me, and I sink into the mattress, into the possibilities and another fantasy where this could really happen, where Jarett would want more from me than this.

Where he’d care for me, want to be with me, where he wouldn’t pretend not to know me in front of his friends, where he’d ask me to be his girlfriend.

My head falls back on the pillow, and I close my eyes, shivers running through my body.

Crazy.