Page 46 of Worse Than Wicked
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he counters. “Throwing rocks at my window like a lovelorn puppy?”
“More like a dog lured by the scent of a bitch in heat.”
He stops on the railing on the big wooden deck that wraps around their house. “You can’t come here, Duke.”
“Why?” I ask. “I thought our families were on good terms now. So we can be friends.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not inviting you in,” he says. “We have company.”
“I don’t want to come in.”
He sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair, which is disheveled from sleep. Unlike Mabel’s straight, silky strands, his is curly and chaotic. I imagine running my fingers through it, how they’d tangle in the strands, how it would make him moan.
“What do you want?” he asks, sounding weary and defeated, as if I’ve been here every night in more than my mind. Maybe I haunt him like he haunts me, and he’s as sick of me as I am of him.
“I want a cigarette.”
“Fuck, Duke,” he says, smacking his palm down on the railing. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I just can’t get right, you know? You’re the only person who understands.”
“I don’t think I do,” he says, but he sounds so beaten that I know he’s lying.
He might hate it, but he gets it.
“Let’s go sit in the hot tub,” I say, starting for the back.
Colt doesn’t move from where he’s standing. I stop at the corner of the porch and gesture for him to follow.
“You know I won’t give you what you want,” he says, his expression guarded.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“Oh, but I do.”
He smirks at me, his hair blowing in the breeze like a lion’s mane, looking all mussed and rumpled. I can almost smell him again, the masculine scent I used to know so well, tobacco and leather and smoke. I itch to move closer, to see if I can catch a hint of it on the wind.
“Fuck you,” I say.
“Pass,” he says, reaching into his robe pocket and pulling out a pack of smokes. “I’ve got Lo for that.”
“And I’ve got your sister,” I say. “If I wanted to fuck, I’d bust in one of her holes.”
He tries to act like he doesn’t care, tossing his hair back all cool and lighting a cigarette, but I see the tick in his jaw. I know Colt. I’ve watched him simmer for years. I always thought he’d erupt one day, but he never did.
“Then what do you need me for?” he asks, sucking casually on his cigarette.
“I just wanted someone to talk to.”
“Sounds like something for your therapist.”
“I’m not a pussy,” I snap. “I don’t go to therapy.”
He arches a brow like a cocky bastard and drags on his cigarette. “Explains why you’re at my house at four in the morning instead of at home in bed with your girlfriend.”
