Page 83 of Laila Manning
Something wasn’t right.
“Are you okay?” I asked, loosening the button of my shirt at my throat as it started choking me with the anxiety in the room.
“I’m fine.” She replied, taking a sip of her wine. “How did you find me?”
“Why were you hiding from me?” I countered, leaning back against the door and sliding my hands into my pants pockets. It was a power move to pretend I was unaffected by the entire thing, and probably thewrong decision altogether. But I was grasping at straws, desperate for some control.
I was always desperate to hang on to the control around Laila.
“You embarrassed me.” She lowered her bottom lip to the rim of the glass and held it there. “Why did you do that?”
I regarded her, hearing the steadiness of her words. At first, I thought she would be drunk. Yet when I walked in, my assumptions were proven wrong.
No, something else was wrong.
“You spent time with Diesel.” I admitted exposing my weakness to her. She wasn’t my enemy; she was someone I was trying to make into my partner, so I gave her my vulnerability without her even asking for it.
“Wrong.” She sipped from her glass. “He followed me around on the street like a little lost puppy dog.” She leaned back and rested her head on the chair, “The same way he has since I first met him. I’ve never given him anything, especially not my time. Yet you punished me for it.”
Her backbone was iron-straight as she stared down her nose at me.
And my God, what a magnificent sight she was to behold.
I’d never seen her act so sure and strong before.
Yet now, and even earlier today at the shop, she told me off.
“Correct.” There was no point in lying, we both knew why I did what I did.
“Did you feel big?” she asked and cocked her head to the side with a bit of a sneer on her perfect wine-stained lips. “Did it make your cock hard to push me down into my place?”
I raised an eyebrow at her and leaned off the wall. No woman had spoken to me like that for years.
Not one that lived long afterwards, at least.
“No.” I slowly stalked across the office toward her. “But I’m getting harder now by the second.” Her eyes ignited, and I couldn’t tell if it was anger or arousal behind them. “I was wrong.” Her thoughts eluded me, and I hated it. “I was jealous. And a fool.”
Her teeth clenched, and she looked away from me for a moment before she snapped those beautiful eyes back at me. “I don’t think you grasp how it made me feel.” She pursed her lips before taking her feet off the desk and leaning forward in the chair to stare up at me directly. “The things it made me feel—,” She hesitated, “They took me back.”
She didn’t need to say where or when they took her back to. I knew. And my stomach rolled at the mere thought of causing her any sort of flashback to that time. That was why she looked so detached when I walked in. She was disappearing back into survival mode, where she disassociated from her surroundings to protect herself.
I took the glass of wine from her fingers and set it on the desk. Her breath caught, and for a moment I thought she was going to yell at me, but she didn’t, sinking into the space in her head meant for escape. Slowly, so she wouldn’t be alarmed, I sank to my knees at her feet, sliding my hands over her thighs as I tried to connect us. Her inky black eyelashes widened as she watched me present myself in a way I’d never done for another woman before.
“I’m sorry.” Kneeling before her, I met her gaze as my thumbs gently circled the tops of her thighs, connecting us through my touch. “I was wrong to talk to you like I did. I’ve never had to share this part of my life with a woman before. I’m not used to explaining what I do or why.”
“He’s a kid.” She repeated the same mantra she had fought with earlier over the scrawny street kid that had started with the crew a few weeks ago. “He deserves a chance.”
“We can’t save every kid.” I reasoned with her. “But we can give them an opportunity to earn the things they need. No one else gives them that.”
“In exchange for what, though?” She pleaded, and the indifference in her eyes shifted to the glowing life normally burning so brightly when she was passionate about something. “Their life? Don’t try to tell me they aren’t doing dangerous things on the street for you and Ryker, because I already saved him from a beat down once.” She jabbed her finger into my chest. “Over your drugs.”
“Not my drugs.” I grabbed her hand and held it tight so she couldn’t jab me again. “And what he did to deserve the beat down was his choice, not the crew’s.”
“Whatever.” She scoffed, fighting my hold, “We’re obviously not going to agree on this.”
“Why is it so important to you?” I asked, reading her body language, watching as she went from fiery and passionate to cold and defensive. “Why does he matter to you?”
She licked her lips and stared off at the lamp on the desk as her mind took her far away from me and that room. “He should matter to someone.”
