18. Piper
EIGHTEEN
PIPER
Heat flamed across my body as I moved to the reckless rhythm of the song.
It’d been so long since I’d been this free, yet still, I felt tied.
Bound to this place as if there was a reason I’d been called here all along.
I knew exactly what held me trapped.
Those inky eyes that were kissed by the moonlight.
And they were honed on me.
I let go beneath them. Beneath the sense of being seen.
Reckless and stupid and foolish, but right then, I couldn’t find it in myself to care.
I wanted to experience it.
Experience life in a way that I hadn’t done in years.
The rest of the couples had gotten swallowed by the crowd, and I gave myself over to the wave, dancing by myself like I was only dancing for Theo.
Which meant I was totally unprepared when some guy came up behind me. A complete stranger who rubbed himself against my backside.
Anxiety blazed, and I flinched and tried to dodge him, but he just pushed himself closer.
“What the hell is the most gorgeous girl in the club doing dancing by herself?” the guy mumbled at my ear, his words slurred and clearly inebriated.
Bile lifted. That fight or flight that I was always subjected to surging.
I attempted to control it. Not to freak out and run as I tried to sidestep the man’s advances.
Violence suddenly cracked through the air. A wild possession that lifted the hairs at the nape of my neck.
A shivery concoction of fear and anticipation and unquestionable want ripped through me as I felt the atmosphere shift.
My belly fluttered when in my periphery I saw Theo rise from the booth.
A dark demon who began to cut through the throng.
Menace was carved in his features.
All brutal, serrated edges.
The man written in peril, that shredded strength vibrating through the space with each foreboding step he took in my direction.
I already knew he was coming, and still, a gasp raked up my throat when he was suddenly standing in front of me.
One arm slipped around my waist to tug me against him at the same second he sent what I could only imagine was a death threat to the man behind me.
A statement made.
A claim.
Mine.
But I wasn’t. I couldn’t be.
That didn’t mean relief didn’t batter through me the moment he pulled me against the hard, rigid lines of his body.
Desire flamed and shivered through my insides. It was so obvious I was sure Theo could feel it pulse against his palm that he had splayed over the small of my back.
My senses were consumed by him.
Mossy woods and worn leather and the faint trace of sweet whiskey on his breath.
A sound akin to a growl rolled through his chest and up his throat as he spun me away from the stranger and wound his free hand into my hair.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing to me? Making me feel like I’m going to come out of my skin at the thought of another man touchin’ you?” Theo’s voice was a raw rasp, and he began to move with the music, guiding me deeper into the roiling mass.
“I think it’s you who’s destroying me.”
Blinding me.
Hypnotizing me.
The man a dark spell that had been cast.
He moved faster than I could process, and he shifted around so he was behind me.
Air heaved from my lungs at the sudden change in position, his hot, dangerous body plastered against my back.
He looped an arm around the front of my waist and the other was still wound in my hair. He tilted my head to the side and exposed my neck.
He pressed his lips against the sensitive flesh as he ground himself against my ass.
His cock was huge and hard.
Need skittered beneath my skin, and all the oxygen scattered from my lungs.
It was nothing like I’d felt when the stranger had done it.
Out of control, I rolled against him.
Wondering what it would be like to give into this .
This want that throbbed and pulsed and begged to be acknowledged.
“No, Piper, it’s you who’s got me,” he murmured up and down my neck. “You who’s driving me out of my fuckin’ mind. The way I can’t stop thinking about you. Way I can’t stop dreaming about you. What it would be like to disappear into the sanctuary of this body.”
He spun me again and pinned me to his front. He clutched tight to my hip, and his fierce jaw was clenched as if he were searching for restraint.
He angled in closer. His aura all around. “All while I want to pick apart your beautiful mind to discover everything that you are. And I can’t fuckin’ go there.”
His confession dumped a bucket of ice over my head, and I froze in his grasp.
Because we couldn’t. We absolutely couldn’t.
Stumbling back, I broke the connection. My breaths were raspy and my head was spinning. People still writhed and thrashed around us while I just stared up at this man who’d gained the power to demolish me.
“I think it’s time I went home,” I finally wheezed.
Theo hesitated, a battle waged in the depths of his eyes, before he gave a slight nod. “How’d you get here?”
“Uber.”
He dipped his head, and he started to turn as he said, “I’ll give you a ride.”
“I don’t?—”
He whirled back around, snatched me by the wrist, and hauled me against him. My heart hammered and my stupid body sang.
I wanted him so badly I couldn’t think straight.
“Don’t argue with me about this, Pipes.” He inflected my grandmother’s nickname, dragging it out. Half taunt and half praise. “Not going to have you riding with some random stranger in the middle of the night.”
A random stranger would likely be a whole lot safer than him, but I sucked down the bedlam he incited and fought for a way to throw up a wall.
“Tell me you didn’t ride your motorcycle here in the zero-degree weather because I’m sure as hell not getting on the back of it if you did.”
I watched as Theo tried to keep the easiness in his expression, though there was no missing the way sadness slipped into it. “Already told you, the only person riding on the back of my bike belongs to me . Don’t worry yourself, sweetheart. My truck is sitting right outside.”
Somehow, I was sure the cruelty in his voice was directed at himself.
Tension clamored up and down my throat, and I forced out, “Fine.”
“That seems to be your favorite word when it comes to me.” His mouth was suddenly back to my ear. “And I can promise if I had you, it wouldn’t just be fine .”
I was held in it for a moment. In the million flashes of what that might be like, before I shook myself out of it.
One-Star. One-Star. One-Star.
I silently chanted it, trying to convince myself it would be a horrible, terrible experience.
Turning from him, I wound through the crowd and headed for the round table where I’d left my purse and coat.
Theo somehow made it there before me, and he unclasped the hook on the rope to let me through.
I slipped into my coat while he moved over to the booth and slung into his leather jacket. He shared a couple words with Cash that I couldn’t make out before he came striding back my way.
Dark thunder rolled beneath my feet.
“You ready?” he asked, that casual confidence gliding back into his demeanor, as if what had happened on the dance floor hadn’t affected him at all.
“Sure.”
He grabbed my hand. I should have yanked it away, but instead, I let him lead me through the throng that was packed shoulder to shoulder in the club.
His palm a current against mine.
Energy pulsed through the connection. A buzz that burned through my body as he cut a path through Kane’s.
I thought every person there must feel the same danger oozing from him that I’d sensed the first time I’d seen him.
Because the sea parted and allowed us to pass.
When the bouncer manning the door saw us coming, he opened it, and the giant of a man dipped his head as he said, “Goodnight, Theo. Be careful out there.”
“I always am,” Theo returned. He hauled me through the door and out into the wintry bite.
I shuddered against it, and Theo tucked me against his side to shelter me from the freezing wind that cut through the trees.
“Another storm is supposed to be comin’,” he rumbled low as he hurried us toward the parking lot that ran the side of the club.
He clicked the fob on his keys, and the lights flashed as we approached his truck. He kept one arm bound around me as he used the other to open the passenger door.
I gasped a surprised sound when he moved behind me and grabbed me by the waist so he could hoist me up into the high cab.
A long groan left him as he stalled midway, just as one of my knees hit the seat and my body bent over a fraction.
“Fuck me, Piper. This ass could do a man in. The things I would do to it.”
I realized it was basically in his face, the skirt of my dress so short he was likely getting a peek at my white satin underwear.
I hurried to shift around and plopped onto the seat.
I sent him a glower. “Is that why you wanted to give me a ride, Theo Mallin? So you could steal a peep at my panties?”
His thumb came out and stroked along my jaw. “No, Piper. I needed to give you a ride so I could see to it that you make it home safe.”
Then wickedness hooked at the edge of his mouth. “That peek at your delicious ass was just a bonus.”
He backed out and shut the door before I could form a rebuttal, and he rounded the front of the truck and climbed in on his side.
He pushed the button for the ignition, and his truck rumbled to life.
He shifted into gear, and his arm came up to the back of the seat as he peered behind him to back out.
Severity rolled off him in waves.
The man a dichotomy.
Razor sharp and ridiculously sweet.
I didn’t know which was the true exterior.
Which was the front covering for the other.
He made a left at Culberry Street, and he kept our speed slow as we drove through the main part of the sleeping town.
I could feel him working up to something, and he finally glanced over at me as his big, tattooed hands clenched and flexed on the steering wheel. “So, you got a job at Ivy Threads?”
There was a question woven in the obvious.