Page 11 of Shattered Veil

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said just loud enough for only Cassie to hear. “I’m sorry.”

Cassie pulled her wrist from mine in a subtle act that came across as her coyly waving me goodbye, and she stood.

As if our interaction had never happened, she strolled away from me casually, and I stared blankly as she sauntered her way over to Tommy. Though comical to note that his teeth—which I had no doubt were cheap veneers—were glowing light purple under the blacklight, any trace of humor I could have had regarding that was whisked away. Cassie had bent at the hips slightly, placed a hand on Tommy’s chest, and he tipped his head so far back that his sunglasses looked to the ceiling. Her touch traced its way up to his neck, and she spun to face away from him.

Our eyes locked, and for just a moment, I saw her anger. Her hurt at my unnecessarily harsh words. The expression washed off of her face, replaced with a mask of general seduction, and she lowered herself to brush the back of her body against his. My jaw clenched as I watched her. Watched her angle her face to his and whisper something in his ear. Watched her hips circle to the left and right on top of him. Watched his hands reach for her, find her ribcage, and squeeze.

He wandered, one hand up to her right breast and the other down to her left hip, and I felt my gaze widen, focused on his touch on her chest. Cassie’s free hand flashed out to remove his hand from where I was glaring. She placed it pointedly against her other hip and continued on. One sashay to the right, one sashay to the left, and the grip that she had moved was gliding from her hip down to her inner thigh. It grazed along the seam of her bottoms on her crotch, and I was certain that my nostrils flared with the jagged breath that I took at the sight.

Cassie mouthed what I could barely make out as, ‘Stop,’ Tommy’s fingers flexed into her skin, and the metaphorical colored tinge of my sight shifted rapidly from green to red.

Jealousy foregone, I could feel blood boil through my veins as Cassie’s seductive little smile was wiped from her lips and replaced with annoyance. She grabbed at each of his hands, pushing them aside as she clearly was moving to make her way away from him, and he wrapped around her tighter. One grip back on her top, his other arm reached across her lap and pulled her onto his.

“Tommy, she said stop,” Shawn called to him, but it didn’t appear to reach his ears.

Cassie tried to scramble to her feet, having toppled off of them and onto Tommy, and she chastised him in words that I couldn’t hear. She twisted her body sharply away from his hand on her chest, his grasp on the fabric remained strong, and her breast was exposed as it was yanked aside.

“Tommy!” Shawn yelled this time, and by the time his name left his mouth, I was standing.

I rushed to them in a matter of two steps, grabbed his fingers that were touching her, and yanked, twisting them backward with enough force for the digits to touch the tops of his hands. I heard multiple satisfying cracks, and Tommy responded angrily:

“AH, the fuck is your problem, Turner?!”

I grabbed Cassie by her upper arms and pulled her to stand.

“Jay,” she spoke to me in a warning as she gathered her balance, quickly adjusting her top. I ushered her behind me, ignoring her call of my name.

I leaned down to Tommy’s eye level. “She said fucking STOP!”

It came out in a scream that reverberated through my vocal cords, and before I could say—or do—anything else, I felt her hand on my shoulder.

“Jay—” Her words to me were cut off short, and she spoke to someone else, “Where the fuck were you?!”

I stood straight, staring at Tommy with an unspoken, ‘Don’t move.’ It didn’t appear that he was intending to at any time soon, though, for he was grimacing at his fingers that looked to be immobile. A man replied to Cassie from my right.

“I was helping Skylar,” he noted. “We good?”

“No,” she retorted angrily, “we are not good, Trevor.” I saw her throw a hand toward Tommy in my peripheral vision. “Fucker yanked my tit out.”

Tommy grumbled, “We were gonna see them eventually—”

I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Tommy, I will fuck you up.”

“James,” Cassie admonished me.

“Alright, alright,” the man, who I assumed was a bouncer, spoke again, and I glanced his way to see a bald man around my height and approximately one hundred pounds heavier than me. He held up a hand at us all. “No fights, guys—time to go.”

“Yup,” I replied quickly. “Let’s get out of here—Shawn?”

“Uh huh,” he immediately returned, pushing himself to his feet. “Leaving. Got it.”

“Don’t leave. You’re my ride,” Tommy complained.

“You’re getting kicked out, guy,” Trevor, the bouncer, told him plainly.

Shawn scoffed at Tommy. “I’m not your ride anymore. You can get yourself back to wherever you’re going. Jay—leaving?”

He clapped me on the shoulder, and I huffed out a breath. “Yeah, ah…” I looked at Cassie, and she muttered a forcedly casual:

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