Page 25 of Skin
“You had your turn,” he grimaces. “Now it’s my turn to have some fun.”
He turns away from me and starts back to Avery.
“I told you don’t touch her,” I growl. My composure is melting by the moment.
He begins to reach for Avery again. I could call security, but I won’t. I can’t allow him to put even a fucking finger on her again. By the time security gets here, he’d have violated her - just a touch on the delicate skin on her arm would be a grave violation in my eyes.
I ball up both of my hands under his chin, grabbing him by the collar, jerking him quickly away from her.
He knows I’m not fucking around, but he is an animal and doesn’t know what to do. He’s like a fucking rabid dog that’s escaped from its cage. He has all the stupid fucking energy in the world and no brain to regulate it.
“I saw her first,” he shouts as I push him toward the wall next to the table and pin him against it.
I deftly dodge a swing he makes for my jaw, ducking in time for his fist to miss my face.
“She isn’t for sale,” I say, shoving him hard against the wall.
“So you’ve bought her for the whole evening?” he taunts, noxious energy seeping from his body.
I glance over at Avery. With wide eyes, tousled hair and smeared eye makeup, she looks scared. Deep inside my gut I wonder if he touched her before I spotted him with his hand wrapped around her wrist.
Possessiveness crushes through me as I take a swing at the man. My fist connects with the left side of his lip and he collapses at the waist, bending down and sputtering and coughing.
And I look to Avery again. I’ve never hit a man before. Her lips are parted in an expression of shock.
I am not proud of what I’ve done.
But it was necessary.
Because this fucking asshole was not taking no for an answer.
Bright red drops of blood splatter across the floor as he coughs, putting his hand to his busted lip as he staggers back against the wall again.
“Don’t ever let me see you here again,” I growl at him, getting close to him. We are eye to eye, face to face, and his expression is blank.
He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and presses it to the cut in his lip.
“You’ll heal,” I say to him, “but if I see you here again, you might not be so fucking lucky.”
“Fuck you,” he whines. “You hit me. I did nothing wrong.”
“Yeah? Well I own this place, and I make the rules. Now get out before I call the cops. Harassment, intimidation, attempting to solicit. And what else were you planning on, asshole?”
He passes a glance over me, and then takes a final look at Avery.
My Avery.
She stands up slowly, moving past the table, and starts toward me. She turns around, looking at the crowd, thick with silence. The band’s stopped playing. Her heels click as she comes up next to me. Her fingers play at the edge of her corset top.
I want to shield her eyes. Protect her from seeing this disgusting fuck who wanted to hurt her.
Who wanted to buy her.
But her lips part slowly, and I feel the crowd behind us begin to thin. People begin to disperse and the band starts to play a few notes again, and the air is filled with something other than its thick, dark silence.
Avery’s lips close, and she remains silent for one more moment. Another faint click of her heel against the marble floor competes with the music as she takes one step past me, toward the stranger in front of us.
“I am not for sale.”
