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“Are you saying it’smyfault that the local scumbags decide to harass innocent women minding their own fucking business on the street?! Do you even hear yourself?!”
“I’m not saying it’s your fault,” I bite back. “I’m just saying that from what I’ve observed of you, you seem to have little awareness of any kind of danger around you.”
She dumps her bag on the ground, eliciting a glance from a passing waitress. Splotches of red flush upon her chest as she places one indignant hand on the curve of her hip, one I’ve wanted to carefully explore since the first minute I met her. “Is that so? Well, how about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your involvement didn’t exactly calm things down, did it?”
“I was trying to get you out of a mess that you created,” I bark.
“Oh really? By rushing up to them like some caveman with a club?!”
I balk at the accusation, although deep down, I realize that from the second I saw the way they were looking at her, I felt out of control. Jealous. Enraged.
Murderous.
It’s new.
Only in the last year of our attempt at a relationship did Gabriella learn to tolerate the absence of jealousy I felt when she talked to other men. Hell, I felt close to nothing when she fucked other men when we were on one of our numerous breaks when I couldn’t keep up the pretense anymore. In fact, I encouraged her to, a fact that used to drive her nuts, but which she now understands is part of the limitations of what I can feel for others.
So having this woman, a woman I barely know, make me want to rip a man’s limbs from his torso in five seconds flat is the first and last time I ever want to experience this fucking feeling of being out of control… especially when I’m at the mercy of a girl who conducts herself with about as much forethought as a tornado ripping through a town.
“What did you think you were trying to achieve?!”
“Protecting you,” I growl, narrowing my eyes at the insubordinate woman who has no idea how harsh and thorough a lesson I want to teach her. “From yourself.”
She shakes her head at my deliberate provocation. “You’re blaming me again, aren’t you? What is it with men taking no responsibility for their bullshit and blaming women for all the crazy shit they do?!”
“I’m not blaming you, but look how you’re dressed.”
“What of it?! I just got out of a fucking yoga class! I was driving straight back home. I didn’t know some drunkard was gonna come careening into me at fifty miles per hour and that I’d have to walk home, did I?”
“You should keep a shirt or something in your bag for situations like these.”
I don’t really mean it. In fact, I don’t mean it at all. She should be able to wear whatever the fuck she wants without being bothered. I’ve just learned too harsh a lesson about the dangers women face at the hands of men. It’s a point of weakness for me, of fracture, which is why the women I usually frequent are poised and in control of themselves and not some untamable storm of chaos like this one.
“Do you hear yourself?!” she yells, her voice only just about drowned out by the music as another waitress gives me a smile as she walks past. “You’re saying I need to walk around covered from head to toe otherwise I deserve to be sexually harassed in the most graphic way.”
“No. I’m saying that men arepigs, at best anddangerousmonstersat worst, and you need to start waking up to that fact. I would have thoughtyouof all people would have understood it.”
Her face falls pallid, as I realize I said something I had no right to.
“What… What is that supposed to mean?”
She shakes her head slowly as I remain quiet, my face softening as I observe the glistening jade flecks in hers, realizing I went too far.
“I didn’t tell you about my ex so you could use it against me and throw it in my face every time I do something you disapprove of.” She picks up her bag from the wooden floor of the restaurant. “I’m never entrusting you with anything about my private life.Ever. Again.”
Before I can speak, she pivots on her heels and heads down the steps of the restaurant in the direction of the pool where I watch her dump her bag onto a sun lounger and drag out a towel which she drapes across it. As she pulls what just about passes as a T-shirt off her torso and throws it onto the lounger, I walk towards her and down the steps to the pool just in time to see a group of four men on the far-right side.
One of them taps another on the arm and they ogle her as if she’s some piece of cattle at a market. One licks his lips as he runs his greedy piglike gaze up and down her body as she unbuttons her shorts and tugs them down her legs, leaving her wearing only what look like black cotton panties and a matching bralette. Neither of them are see-through, but they’d better not be when she gets out of the fucking water.
The touch of a hand has me looking into Gideon’s keen brown eyes. “You okay?”
I turn to watch Indigo walk towards the open shower halfway down the pool as the men make the kind of lewd noises that make me want to rip their lungs out through their throats.
I shake my head, my shoulders stiffening. “I’m gonna end up in prison with this girl. I can feel it.”
