Page 48 of Crave

The colour bled out of his face. “You’re serious.”

“Always about business, Tricky.” The nickname slipped out before I could stop it, softer than the rest of me. “Even after a kiss like that.”

I straightened, ready to step back. To put distance between us, but my eyes stayed on his mouth. The blood. The mark I’d left. Normally, I’d take pride in that. Proof of control, a warning to anyone watching. But this time, it felt different. Possessive. As if I hadn’t marked him to hurt him, but to claim him.

“How…do I bring you the stuff?” His question landed small but earnest, and for a second the hard edge of the alley softened.

“First job is to get it or find out where it is.” I tossed him a look that was half warning, half agreement. “And you should tell whoever’s in that back room to shift their toys. Burglar’s dream, innit?”

“That’s my room.” He flushed, the colour hot and absurd on him. I couldn’t help the laugh escaping.

“Nice side piece, then. No wonder the ex couldn’t keep up.”

The coy smile tugging at his mouth made my chest unknot. Then he went scarlet proper. Ridiculous and cute and infuriating. Because that side piece was the massive dildo I’d seen in the drawer. I stepped back, laughed, and started to go. Before I turned the corner, I heard him call after me, voice swallowed by concrete.

“How will I know where to find you?”

I didn’t look back. “You don’t.” Then I walked, the echo of his eyes on my back. “I find you.”

The city swallowed me whole, the alley sealing shut behind me like a door.

A door I shouldn’t open again.

Chapter eleven

Tristan

It took a while to pull myself back together after that.

I stayed there in the alley behind my house, surrounded by the bins and the pile of Ollie’s crap I’d thrown out only days ago, just trying to breathe. And despite me being amongst Ollie’s shoes, his broken lamp, and a shirt half buried in rainwater, it all felt as if it was from another life. As if I’d shed the man who’d owned those things somewhere between the wall and Razor’s mouth.

Jesus Christ.

Razor.

Even the name had me in goosebumps.

I’d gone from the sensible, long-term boyfriend of Oliver bloody Montgomery to whatever the hell I was now. Someone who let a stranger—no, not just a stranger, a brute—punch me in the face then drop to his knees in the same breath.

Fuck.

My jaw throbbed. The blood on my lip had dried sticky, sharp with that metallic taste of bad decisions. I touched it, winced, and waited for the guilt to come. It didn’t. Nor did the shame. Or horror. All that was left was a dizzy pulse of what I’d done tingling under my skin.

I should’ve been disgusted. I wasn’t.

I felt alive for the first time ever.

And fuck, if that wasn’t one of the best, most obscene, most electric things anyone had ever done to me. I’m no virgin. No saint. Hardly a wallflower either, that much had already been proven the first two times I’d crossed paths with him. But that? That had been something else. Behind my own house, in my own street, trousers around my ankles. His eyes fixed on me and watching my cock twitch and leak while he held me there, pinned, with nowhere to go. Fuck. It wasn’t fear I’d felt. It was raw, unfiltered, unholy lust. Burning through reason and making me grateful to be ruined by it.

If he’d told me not to move, I wouldn’t have. If he’d stopped, I’d have begged him to start again. I’d have stood there like that, exposed and weak, for as long as he wanted to keep me there. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I dragged a hand down my face, trying to erase the thought and failing miserably. My forehead throbbed in time with my jaw. So I bent down, grabbed my laptop bag from the mess I’d dropped in the scuffle, and tried to walk back onto the street as if I hadn’t just been blown against my own garden wall by a man who’d punched me first. My hand trembled as I fumbled for my keys, but I finally managed to get the door open. The sound of clattering came from the kitchen. Plates, probably, or Henry attempting to cook again. I shut the door quietly, trying to steady my breathing.

“Tris?” Henry’s voice carried from the kitchen. “That you, old boy?”

After the voice I’d just had in my ear, Henry was so posh it hurt. He could make a death sentence sound like an invitation to brunch.

“Uh… yeah.” My voice cracked. “Just got in.”