Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

“Go home,” I tell her, tired and angry at myself. “Leave.”

She grabs my legs to stand up, digging too long nails into my thighs. “You must be kidding me,” she whines. “You’re not going to throw me out. Are you crazy?”

That sounds like a trick question. Am I crazy? I have a hot, willing chick in front of me, clad in straps of lace and about to go down on me, and what I want is my music and my bed.

What I want is Sophie—the funny, sweet Sophie, the cat-T-shirt Sophie—but I can’t fucking have her. Hell, I can’t fucking find her, half the time, only her bad-tempered double.

“I changed my mind. Now go.”

“You’re an asshole,” she spits the words at me, and grabs her clothes from the floor.

That, too, it seems. Never would have pegged myself for such a douchebag, yet here I am, throwing a girl out for the sole reason that she’s not the girl I want.

This is fucking pathetic, Merc. You know it. You need to get over it.

Over her. Damn…

If I only knew how.

Chapter Eight

Cosima

A strange relief fills me just by being back in town. We grew up here, my sis and I. That was before our parents started to fight and eventually divorced, before Dad took us and started moving around, never settling down until we fled the family home.

Of course Sophie returned. She loves it here. And I… I love it, too, but Dad said he never wanted to go back, and I got a job in another town, so…

Why didn’t I ever come back to stay? I quit job after job, but never made the move back to my hometown. After all, my sister lives here. What more reason do I need? I could convince Lin to follow me. Find work here.

It’d be much easier to help my sister, too. Even if her cat is still terrified of me. Maybe she thinks I’m a paler version of my sister?

Kitty wouldn’t be so wrong there.

God, I want to talk to Merc. Not the best idea, I know, but it’s not like I can avoid him, either. I have Calculus class with him.

“Admit it,” Lin told me before I left. “You’re too far gone, let yourself fall for him, and you just want to see him again, gaze into those baby blues and ogle his muscles.”

Yeah. There’s that, too.

It’s just that I liked him so much.

Lin was right.

Only it doesn’t matter because Merc doesn’t appear in Calculus class, throwing me off my plan yet again.

I’m annoyed. I even wore my favorite black skirt today for him, and—I couldn’t help it—a black cat T-shirt that says “Sorry, not tonight, I have plans with my cat.”

With cowboy boots. Yes, I did. Call it an act of rebellion.

I tap the back of the seat of the guy in front of me.

“Hey,” I say when he turns, a question in his eyes, “Do you know Mercury Watson? You know, the guy who… a blond guy, blue eyes? Um. Muscular.” I flex my arm to give him an idea. “Cute?”

He shakes his head.

Crap. “But… He’s just…” So hot. You can’t miss him.

But the guy has already turned back around and is talking to the girl beside him. So it’s true guys don’t check each other out unless it’s to measure dicks.