Moody Bastard

The blood began to pound in Sydney’s temples as a surge of reckless anger continued building within her.

“Why are you even talking to him?” he asked.

“I’ll explain everything later, I can’t do this right now, Court,” she tried to say as sweetly as she could.

She charged across the lobby, then outside, overcome with a thousand different emotions. Her body ached, and yet her spirit was raging to lash at him. To hurt him like he always, always, hurt her.

He was outside, getting pounded by the rain as his chauffer pulled a Bentley around the curve.

Sydney came over without him noticing.

Rain pounded on her face, but she didn’t care. As soon as she’d spotted him, something flared inside her like a torch. She felt feral. Furious out of her mind.

“Damien?”

When he turned around at the tentative question, she slapped him.

His head whipped from the unexpected impact, and still unsatisfied, Sydney lifted her hand again, but he snapped out a curse and caught it, jerked the car door open with the other and pushed her inside.

“You!” she screeched, scrambling to the end of the seat to avoid him.

“To my place,” he commanded to the driver.

“No! What are you doing? I need to go back!”

He slid the compartment window closed so the driver wouldn’t hear them.

Sydney fumed and struggled to put distance between them, but he grabbed her and, with one jerk made her slide back down to where he was. “Who do you think you are? You’ve ruined tonight for me! You’ve ruined my life! How am I supposed to have sex with Court tonight after he saw you mauling me the way you did?” Sydney cried.

“Do you really think I will allow you to give to him what you first offered to me? DO YOU?” he growled-yelled.

An icy sensation spread across her skin, the clothes plastered wetly to her. Heat warred in her core, making the cold on the outside seem even more glacial.

He raked his gaze across her inexistent curves, perfectly delineated by the flimsy silk blouse she’d worn. “It’s me you want, Sydney,” he ground, cupping her breast in one hand with unexpected gentleness. “You want me…in here.” He squeezed her breast, but it was her heart that pounded beneath his palm. “You want me badly.”

Her teeth chattered, and he covered them with his lips, swiping his tongue across her lower lip, then stealing inside for a hot, heady taste. She wanted him so much, a fire burst open in her belly, incredibly hot, while her skin was growing numb.

She stopped breathing and tensed at the contrast, trying to speak but her jaw locked and chattered, and he stopped.

He cursed and swiftly unbuttoned her shirt, pulling it off her. She squirmed and whimpered, angry and in lust, not wanting him to touch her, not wanting to be desperate for him to touch her.

She moaned through chattering teeth as he peeled off the sleeves of her blouse, then removed her skirt. She wanted to cry with relief that he would touch her, set her on fire so she could burn down all this anger at him, but instead, he reached for a black wool gabardine lying across the other seat, and gruffly said, “Put this on.”

Her fingers were cramped as she slid them inside, the coat huge on her frame. Huge and smelling of him. She buried into it and fell quiet, trying to get warm, feeling cold and hot, confused, angry, frustrated. Her breasts ached, her toes, her fingers, her eyes—at the sight of him so near. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to kiss him.

He’d made her teenage years miserable. Every word he said to her torture. Even the kind ones. Especially the kind ones.

His shirt was still plastered to his chest, and she had the strangest urge to take it off and make him warm as well. But she wouldn’t. She was angry at him. She had a right to be angry at him! He had kissed her in front of Court! He could freeze for all she cared.

She loathed the sound of her teeth chattering, but couldn’t shut it up.

Finally he yanked his own shirt off and sent it with a splat to the opposite seat. Then he reached out and brought her against his chest.

“You’re like that twilight guy that never has a shirt on,” she said scathingly.

“Am I supposed to know who the teen stars of your generation are?” he whispered back, his tone soft against the top of her head.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot you were so old.”