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Confused, turned on, but confused, I looked quickly away.
"Else, you okay?" Rome asked, his breath warming my ear in a way that felt oddly too intimate.
"What?" I asked, jerking back slightly. "Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Sorry. Scatterbrained," I explained, waving my free hand while bringing the one holding my drink up to my lips for a long sip.
"Gotta leave the office at the office," he advised. "You're gonna be here, be here, right? Have a couple drinks, unwind, forget about all that shit."
"You're right," I agreed, silently thanking the foresight to call a cab and not drive to the bar. I needed booze and I needed a lot of it if I was going to be in the same bar with Paine.
Twenty minutes and two and a half drinks later, I was laughing at something Rome said, loving the fact that once he got a couple drinks in him, he loosened up and actually had a rather risque sense of humor. My arm was up and out at my side with my almost empty drink, my head thrown back, my laugh loud and uninhibited, when suddenly my aloft wrist was tagged in a firm grip and I was being pulled.
"I'm borrowing her for a minute," Paine's tense voice informed Rome whose face fell as his eyes landed on me.
"Um, Paine, I'm here with my friends..." I started, wanting to wipe that look off Roman's face as I realized for the first time that Paine was right; he wasn't fully aware that he was not and would never be my boyfriend.
"Two minutes," he said, pulling my wrist harder as he pried the drink out of my hand and passed it off to a Bea who was too surprised to do anything but take it from him.
"Oh, um, I'll be right back," I told Rome, eyes begging him to understand as Paine turned and started walking, dragging me behind.
"Paine what is your proble..." I started to ask as he pulled me outside and walked down the small alley between the buildings. He pushed me up against the wall, hard enough to make me stiffen, wondering how safe I was with him after all.
Before I could open my mouth to try to either diffuse the situation or start yelling about his treatment of me, his hand was at the side of my neck, yanking at the knot I had tied there and whipping off the scarf so fast that I couldn't bring my hands up to stop him. "Jesus fuck," he growled, balling up the scarf in one hand as his other raised toward my neck. I felt myself flinch; I wasn't sure if it was just a knee-jerk response after being choked or because I genuinely felt fear right then, but I flinched. Hard. And Paine noticed. His eyes flew up to my face, the tightness around his eyes softening. "Babygirl, never. I'd never put my hands on you that way," he said and punctuated the statement as his hand closed the space and gently stroked up the side column of my neck. The whisper-soft touch sent a shiver through my body, seeming to end in a strong tightening at my sex. His hand flattened around the side and back of my neck and he leaned forward, resting his forehead against mine. "Who did this?"
"I don't know," I said honestly, my voice sounding almost shaky to my ears.
"What'd he look like?"
How the hell did he expect me to recall something like that when he was all up in my personal space, causing all kinds of chaos in my system that had gotten used to fantasizing about him while I self-completed over the past few days? I took a slow breath, pulling in the slight spicy scent of his cologne and his skin and knowing nothing else had ever smelled quite so erotic before.
I pushed the thoughts away, drawing up the image of the night before. "Um. Tall, but not as tall as you. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Built but not as big as that other guy who chased me the other night. He wasn't too distinctive. Except he had... a scar..."
"Scar?" he repeated, pulling back just far enough so that our foreheads weren't touching and his eyes could look into mine.
"Yeah, here," I said, my hand raising and touching the space above his upper lip, resting there as I spoke. "Like maybe it was a cleft lip repair?" I surmised, but my eyes were suddenly on his lips. I felt my own part slightly, like an invitation.
"Keep looking at my mouth like that and I'm gonna have to kiss you," he said, calling me on my staring and making my eyes snap up. "And, babygirl, it won't be no lame ass two second meeting of lips this time," he said, referencing the kiss that had still managed to make me tingle for hours afterward. "No, this time," he went on, hand curling slightly into my skin, his other hand with my scarf in it raising and cupping my jaw at the other side of my face, "it will be long and deep and you'll feel my lips on yours for a fucking week afterward."
