Chapter 6 #5
“Are you judging me?” Brenna asks, her voice low and not at all friendly.
“Bren—”
“It’s DirtyGurl,” she hisses at me. “And don’t you fucking dare judge me, sir.”
“What’s the problem—” Theo begins.
He’s the fucking problem. I lunge at him, but I’m pulled up short by a heavy pressure around my neck.
“He’s a cop,” Logan hisses in my ear. “You do not want to spend the night in jail for assaulting a police officer.”
In this moment, I’m willing to risk it.
“Get your hands off her,” I growl at Theo, straining against Logan’s arm.
Theo frowns at me. “What the fuck—”
Brenna shrugs his arm off and pushes right up into my face. “You don’t get to say who touches me. Not when you fuck off the morning after and leave me to drop into the Grand fucking Canyon of Subdrops. Fuck all the way off, Mac. I won’t be making any more time for you.”
She turns on her high-heeled boot and stalks off. She slams through another door in the long corridor and her heels clack on wood as the door closes behind her.
Theo frowns at me, then at Logan, before he turns to follow Brenna. “School your guest, Logan. That kind of shit doesn’t go down here.”
“Sorry,” Logan says, tugging on my neck. “Come on, Mac. Time to go.”
I try to shake him off, but he’s got a fucking grip and too much experience holding back his brother sailors in bar fights. “I need to talk to her—”
“Nope, not now. Not until you both cool down. Come on. We’re gonna have a cigar and another drink.”
I don’t need either of those things. I need the girl who just walked away from me.
“I don’t—” I begin.
“I’m not asking, sir. Come on.”
Logan manhandles me around the corner and back into the elevator. Once his glare breaks through my red rage, I lean against the mirrored wall and press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“What did I just do, Lo?”
“Lost your head over a woman. Can’t be the first time.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
I can’t remember ever fighting over a woman. I never fought for Amy. Quite the opposite: I shared her with the worst assholes I knew. She was an innocent and I broke her on them, and I kept breaking her until I married her, and she figured out how to break me.
“I’m just glad you didn’t end up in cuffs,” Logan says. “Theo’s pretty quick to throw his badge around. It’s one of the reasons Emily’s not his biggest fan. I’m glad you listened to reason.”
I didn’t. If Brenna hadn’t moved away from him when she did, I’d have gone for him. The idea that she was just in that room with him, submitting to him, letting him touch her, taking his cock—
I grind my palms against my eyes to shut out that mental image.
“Lo, I don’t think I can do this.”
He takes my arm and steers me out of the elevator.
Down a short hall, he thumbs through another security door and into a huge, glass-enclosed space, dimly lit by the city’s twinkling lights and the soft, blue, backlighting of a round bar in the center of the room.
Logan tugs me over to the bar and orders two Padron Family Reserve cigars and two more bourbons, before he steers me to a seating group with a commanding view across the roof and over the city.
I sink into a deep, leather armchair and contemplate how deeply I’ve fucked up.
“We’ve done one scene together,” I grumble to Logan as he hands me a lit cigar and a glass of amber liquid. “But she feels like mine.”
Logan takes a long pull on his own cigar before rubbing his forehead. “This is going to sound judgmental and I’m trying not to be, because you know my history with Emmy, but you’re jumping the gun, sir. I’m not sure DirtyGurl’s built that way.”
She is. I feel it. Or maybe I just want her to be so badly that I can’t envision her being any other way.
“I need to find out. I can’t leave it here, Lo.”
He smokes in silence for a moment and, reluctantly, I join him.
“How do you feel about grand gestures?” he asks at length.
“Such as?”
“Something you feel good about. I’ve made that mistake, sending a woman something I thought would be meaningful to her. I wasn’t sure about it myself, and then she questioned why I sent it, and I had no good answer.”
I blow out a breath. “Call me old fashioned, but in my day, when a man fucked up, he sent flowers.”
“I wouldn’t go down the red roses route with DirtyGurl, but flowers are a solid choice.”
I ponder flowers as I puff on the cigar, trying to savor the rich taste and let it soothe me. “Do they work with Emily?”
Logan grins. He’s such a smitten fuck. “You notice the pink roses that are always on the dining table? I get them delivered every week against the eventuality of me fucking up.”
That wrings a laugh out of me.
“Maybe I should place a standing order, because this isn’t going to be the last time I lose it if she keeps doing scenes with the Doms here.” I puff on the cigar then rub the bridge of my nose with my thumb. “I think about her walking out of that room after fucking him—”
“Don’t go there in your head, sir,” Logan interjects. “That’s a bad, bad place. If you’re thinking of DirtyGurl as yours . . . if Emily . . . just don’t.”
I nod and take a sip of bourbon to wash away the bitter taste of jealousy and regret. “I shouldn’t have left. The other morning, I shouldn’t have left.”
He rubs his palms over his knees, which is another of Logan’s tells. He’s about to say something I won’t want to hear. “Emily mentioned that you’d left DirtyGurl plugged. That bothered her. I don’t know, Mac. Brenna’s a tough nut. Do you think it made a difference?”
“She said she’d take it out herself and that she’d be fine.
I let her convince me because I was worried about Naomi and knew it would take me hours to get to her campus and track her down.
But I should have taken the time to do it myself.
I should have checked that she was okay and given her rules while I was gone so she felt my control.
I feel like she’s stepped back from me, and that’s my own fault. ”
Logan pats my leg. “Good thing women are forgiving creatures.”
“Are they? That hasn’t been my experience.”
My experience has been so, so much the opposite.
“That’s because your experience is with Amy. Fuck, Mac, don’t project any of that on DirtyGurl. There couldn’t be two more different people.”
“I know that here.” I point at my head with the cigar. “It’s just knowing it here that’s the problem.” I point at my heart.
“Look, Brenna’s not perfect. God knows, I couldn’t top her. She’d drive me around the twist. But she’ll never pull the shit that Amy pulled. She’s loyal, and under the hair and the tattoos and the attitude, she’s pure platinum.”
“I like her hair. And her tattoos. And her attitude,” I growl.
“Good thing, you have to put up with them. Mac, Amy only ever tried to divide and conquer. She pitted Naomi against you. She manipulated your friends, your own fucking C.O. DirtyGurl will never, ever do that.”
“No,” I agree. I know that in my gut. Brenna’s nothing like Amy. Which makes me all the more desperate to get her back. “You really think flowers, huh?”
Logan nods. “They work for me.”
I puff on my cigar and pray they work for me, too.