Chapter Six
As she hurried down the sidewalk, Peyton heard Luke’s angry voice behind her, snapping into what she assumed was his cellular phone.
“Graves? Man I have a shitload of people in my fucking place and I need your help getting the place vacated, stat!…Hell, send a bomb threat or shit…Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, thanks, you’re a pal, man.”
Scowling as his voice approached, Peyton clutched her coat to her chin while the cold night wind slapped her hair around, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t walk faster than she already was, and within seconds Luke was at her side. He grabbed her elbow and spun her around. “What part of ‘wait here’ don’t you fucking understand, babe?”
She glared at him and yanked free. “So? Were those all your buddies who saw my butt picture?”
His diamond stud earrings glinted mockingly in the streetlights. God, could she have ever believed they weren’t real? They were probably the only thing that hadn’t been bullshit about him!
“They’re just the assholes I party with when my friends are busy.”
Holding her gaze snared within the depths of his, he stretched out his open hand, quietly summoning her to him.
Peyton didn’t want to think of how the mere sight of him disintegrated her. Of how she wanted to pull up his sweater and lick all of his tattoo. Of how her heart ached so badly that his mere presence tore her apart. She was hurt, shaken, and confused far beyond what her mind could even process.
She started backing away, needing distance from him, from the way she throbbed, physically, at his nearness.
His eyes ignited like a panther’s. “Pretend that you don’t miss me.” He signaled to her, and then to himself, as he advanced. “Pretend all you like. But you and I both know you came here for me.”
“I only came to tell you to your face what a fucking manwhore you are!”
He caught her before she could retreat any farther, his firm hold on her sleeve burning her skin through the fabric. “Curse me if it makes you feel good, Peyton, I don’t give a shit. You’re angry because you’re dying to get the exclusivity, and guess what, woman? You’ve got it. It’s yours. It’s been yours since the day you begged me to have a fling with you, and it’ll be yours until I’m dead.”
Peyton swatted off his hand. “Hah! You seemed very happy tonight planning your next orgy!”
Luke jerked her against him so hard, she gasped, his eyes unmistakably proprietary on her face. The feral clench to his jaw and the possessive glimmer in his eyes made Peyton’s insides spin with all sorts of swirls of wanting. He had never looked at her this way before. Never.
“You were the one being pawed tonight, baby girl,” he said, low and threatening as his eyes practically gorged on her lips, “and the next time you try that shit with me, I won’t be so forgiving. I’m going to break the fucking man’s bones into bits so tiny he’ll never be able to be put back togethe
r, and I won’t even get into all the shit I’m going to do to punish you. You’re mine, Peyton. No one touches you but me.”
Her insides heated at the intensity in his eyes, drowning her in those blue pools of desire. Afraid how her knees had become butter, Peyton lowered her voice to a pleading whisper. “Luke, please. We should stop this right now. This has disaster written all over it.”
He cupped her cheeks, his violently tender eyes boring into hers. “We work, Peyton. You and I. This relationship is the best fucking thing that’s happened to me since I was born—”
“The only relationship we seem to have is that you fucked me, just like you did the rest of the city, so that’s about as exclusive a group as a Yahoo e-mail account. Now, good night, Luke!” She whirled around and started walking, and he laughed behind her.
“Ah, God. I really didn’t want to have to do this.”
Before she knew it, he’d thrust her up onto his shoulder like a potato sack and headed back to his building as a stampede of people shuffled onto the sidewalk.
Gasping as the blood started pooling in her shocked brain, Peyton kicked the air and slammed her fists into his impenetrable back. “Let me go, Luke! Are you crazy?”
“About you, yes.”
He shoved through the crowd and into the lobby, and then pressed the up arrow on a different set of elevators that were off to the east and totally empty.
Peyton squirmed furiously as they boarded, gasping and screeching in outrage, until Luke set his palm on the curve of her ass and rubbed it meaningfully. “I’m getting real fucking turned on here, Peyton, so by all means, keep up the fight, baby.”
“Put me down, Luke!”
“As soon as I can pin you down underneath me.”
“I don’t want you anymore.”
He slipped his hot, splayed hand under her skirt, up her inner thigh, and Peyton became brutally aware that she no longer wore hose or panties. “I can easily prove that you do. Yep. You do.”