AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That sent Joey into a fury, he drew back and brutally punched the man in the face several times.Blood spattered from his mouth before he dropped to the ground, and now Joey’s knuckles were smeared with the Boy Scout’s blood.
Layne grabbed Joey by the arm and tugged with all her might. “Stop it! Jesus! What the hell is wrong with you?”
Joey turned to her. “You, Layne! You’re what’s wrong with me!” He was breathing heavily from the surge of anger that had just blown through his self-control.
She shook her head in disbelief that this was even happening. The two of them together were like absolute dynamite and C4 both going off in the same place at the same time.
“Leave me the hell alone!” She turned to leave the spot there on the dance floor that had attracted some attention to the guy who had gotten on Joey’s bad side just by existing.
“No, you don’t.” He grabbed her wrist to prevent her from running off again.
Layne spun around, her hand flying and slapping him right across his face. Instantly, she regretted it.The hurt that washed over Joey’s face showed that he hadn’t expected it either, his hand dropped her wrist so she was free to go.
She left and pushed through the crowd, even though it wasn’t even clear which way the exit was.Her mind was too fuzzy to recall where they had entered.Pushing past a few groups of people close to the outskirts of the crowd, she finally got eyes on the exit and was hell-bent on making it there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Once Layne was outside and the bite of the cold air hit her skin, she was feeling confident she had left Joey behind. Oh, how wrong she was.
He called her name again. “Layne, stop!”
Fuck. She quickly walked down the street as fast as the heels on her feet would allow. He repeated her name a few more times, getting nearer. Then, finally, he rushed around in front of her to stop her unless she wanted to run right into him.
“Dammit, you don’t just get to run off like this again.”
Layne tried to side-step him only to be blocked again. “You don’t get to tell me what to do!”
Realizing that they were apt to draw even more attention to themselves standing out in the open, Joey maneuvered her a few feet back into the alley off to the side from the sidewalk.
His hands gently landed on her arms trying to persuade her to stay there with him. “You completely ghost me with nothing but a vague note full of bullshit, and you expect that I’m not gonna have something to say about it?”
Layne tapped into the only thing she had to work with as a defense - her temper.Her hands gave a firm shove to his chest to get him away from her. “It was never meant to be more than just a fling, take a fucking hint!”
He allowed her to shove him, but he soaked in the force and remained right where he was. Stepping forward, this time he firmly pressed her back up against a brick wall so she didn’t have room to push him away. The front of his body connected with hers.
“That’s the biggest bunch of cockshit I’ve ever heard. You and I were both on the same page, then you just took off.I get things got messy and complicated, but you could have grown a pair and given us a chance to talk it over and work through it. Just tell me what changed.” His eyes plead for her to be straight with him, and potentially herself.
Layne squirmed while being pinned up against that wall, disliking where this conversation was heading. While she was capable of defending herself, there was little she could do when he was using his strength to overpower her and his words to disarm her.
“Get your hands off of me. It’s over! Get over it! Go fuck your date in the club!” Her heart was leaping inside of her chest being so close to him, making her frantic to either escape or cave into the lustful feelings she had shoved down inside of her weeks ago.
“I was trying, Layne. I tried to get over it, and you don’t get to judge me on that! You didn’t give me a choice!” He verbally lashed back at her. He brought both his hands up to her face, holding it affectionately as he peered into her green eyes full of hurt. His thumb stroked across her cheek.
Joey pressed his forehead to hers while the rest of his body kept her pressed up against the side of the building in the dark alley. “You know I don’t ask questions twice, Layney,” his words softer now. “What has you running scared?”
She licked her lips in an effort to distract herself from the ache in her heart that was prompting her eyes to betray how she felt. Big, fat, salty tears were welling up. The way he called her Layney felt like home and all she wanted to do was run home, not away from it.
Swallowing hard she shifted her eyes to glance away from him, “I’m not sca?—”
Joey put a tattooed finger against her mouth to stop her mid-response. “Look at me when you say it.” He dropped his finger down away from the softness of her lips.
Pressing her lips together in a hard line, she looked back at Joey’s face which was intimately near to her own. The scent of his cologne full of sage and sweet leather contaminated the air around her. Her lower lip faltered and trembled involuntarily as she got lost in his eyes.
There was a long pause as time seemed to stop between them both. When she finally spoke up, she couldn’t say it any louder than a whisper. “Losing myself. Losing you.” It was like sharing some deep dark secret she had never revealed to anyone else.Her biggest fear was giving all of herself to him only to have him torn away from her much like so many other times she had experienced in her life.
He took a moment to analyze her response before responding. “Never happening.” Joey’s mouth passionately claimed hers in a blindingly hot kiss.
It was then that Layne couldn’t hold back anymore. She opened her mouth welcoming his tongue to come intertwine with her own. Her hands went to the shirt he was wearing and slid up inside of it to feel the ripples of his abs straight up to the swell of his strong pec muscles on his chest. The familiar heat that he always made her feel between her legs was reignited with a demand to have every part of him.
