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My eyes scan the people in the hallway. I can make out three men and two women, all of them clearly drunk and high, swigging from bottles and laughing as they stare at the scene.
Rage whelms up inside of me, touching every part of me, electricity pricking and surging up and down my body. I try to tell myself to calm down, but before I know it I’m striding forward, aiming my finger at them.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hiss, stopping just short of them, so close I can smell the smoke and liquor. “You can’t just break in here. You can’t just—”
“Relax, you silly slut.” Todd cackles and his cronies laugh behind him. “I can make it up to you. You’re not really my type, but if I can get my hands on something I’m sure I can make you feel real special.”
Suddenly Conrad is at my side.
I look at him and a confusing feeling surges through me, longing and lust and the need to climb into his embrace and never leave, to lay my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat and do nothing else, think about nothing else, forever.
It’s a crazy urge to be having right now, amidst this mayhem, but it persists nonetheless.
You’re not paying for the damn car, he said.
And he said he’d buy me a new car.
Why the heck would he do that? And why is he so angry right now, his jaw ticking, his blue eyes blazing. His fists are clenched and his whole body pulses in his blue shirt, every part of him hard and ready for battle.
“Apologize and leave,” he snarls.
Todd steps back, tilting his head, as his friends laugh at Conrad’s words. “Easy there, old man. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I almost scream when he calls Conrad an old man.
Conrad’s age – his steel hair and his mature bearing – makes him so much more appealing to me. He’s nothing like Todd or his stupid friends, a bunch of twenty-something lowlifes who think partying makes them better than everybody else.
“Apologize. And. Fucking. Leave.”
There’s no fear in Conrad’s voice, no uncertainty. It’s like he’s channeling something from deep inside of him, a primal energy.
But there are so many more of them, all of them as muscular as Conrad, even if I’m certain they gained their muscles through using Todd’s steroids.
“Or what?” Todd snaps. “Eh? What the fuck are you going to do?”
“I’m going to beat you all until you can’t walk.” Conrad takes a step forward, his tone dead serious, unflinching. “I’m going to make it so you can’t remember what it’s like to be able to breathe properly. I’m going to fucking break you.”
“Yeah?” Todd laughs, but there’s a shiver in it now, as though part of him can’t help but take Conrad’s words seriously. “Now that I would pay to see.”
Conrad chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. He sounds like a man ready to commit serious damage. “You don’t get to talk to Callie like that. Nobody gets to talk to her like that.”
Heat blossoms and fills my belly, spreading and moving through me as though powered by effusive light. I can’t help but let a smile quirk my lips, despite the circumstances, despite the danger.
But it doesn’t make any sense.
Why would Conrad, a total stranger, care about the way these men speak to me?
Maybe he’s just being a Good Samaritan, wanting to help a girl in need. That’s probably it. He probably has a girlfriend and a life of his own, maybe even a wife and a family.
I can’t let myself read too much into his actions, lest the desire scorching through me becomes too much to handle, or I’ll throw myself at him, wrap my legs around his waist and claw onto his muscular back.
Focus.
I need to stay in the now, try and diffuse this situation.
But then Todd leaps forward, throwing a punch right at Conrad’s face.
I scream, but Conrad barely flinches.
His hand lashes out and he squeezes onto Todd’s fist, crushing it so that Todd lets out a wailing animal sound. His voice cracks and the man at his side takes an involuntary step back, as though he doesn’t want the same to happen to him.
“Apologize,” Conrad snarls, as Todd gasps and tries to pull his hand away. But Conrad won’t let him, squeezing even tighter, his forearm bulging and swelling. “And leave. Or I’ll break your worthless fucking body.”
“I’m s-sorry,” Todd whimpers, his gaze moving to me, eyes flooded with tears. “Fuck, okay? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have done that. Oh, God, please. Please. You’re going to break my hand.”
Conrad turns to me with an icy quality in his azure eyes, a question nestled within his gaze.
Do you accept?
He’s asking me if I want him to do even more damage to Todd.
