Page 29 of Wicked Angel
But ever since that moment, she’d hated me. I knew that.
Couldn’t say I was too fond of her, either. Boyfriend or no, she’d walked away from that kiss, never circled back around.
And now here she was, fucking looking at me likethatfor the first time in three years. While fucking wasted and wearing a T-shirt with her boyfriend’s face on it.
I needed to dump her off on Shayla. Stat.
“Shayla!” I hollered.
We both stared at each other when there was no sound from inside the house. I already knew there was a slim to none chance my sister was home.
“I don’t think she’s home,” drunk Angeline concluded, still staring at me.
“Where’s your boyfriend, the bodyguard?”
She frowned.
I glanced down. There he was, smiling at me from the picture on her ugly-ass men’s size XL T-shirt. It was a photo of her and him, on vacation or something, smiling at the camera. I’d seen him around often at parties, usually skulking around in the shadows on security duty; he worked on Dirty’s security team, as personal bodyguard to Angeline’s sister, Elle. But I couldn’t remember ever seeing the man smile in person. He was ex-military, super stiff, and how he’d ended up with a candy-coated wet dream like Angeline Delacroix, I’d never fucking know.
“I wouldn’t think Security Joe would be down with you getting a ride home with those assholes,” I prompted when she didn’t answer me.
“And why would you say that?”
“Because they don’t seem like your type,” I said sarcastically.
“And what’s my ‘type’?” she inquired, making sloppy air quotes on the word.
“You tell me. Judging by your actions, I’d say the over-protective, emotionally constipated type.”
She recoiled, making a revolted face. “If you’re talking aboutyourself, there was noaction. I’m not here to pick you up, Johnny O’Reilly.And his name is not Security Joe.”
“I’m not talking about myself.” Was that how she saw me? Over-protective and emotionally constipated? “I’m talking about Joe.” I pointed at her shirt.
Her face screwed up. “His name is not Joe,” she repeated. But I noticed she didn’t say his name at all.
Next thing I knew, she was tearing the shirt off over her head in a fit of disgust or defiance or insanity. It got caught on her earring or something, because she struggled with getting it off, her face covered with it for way too long while the rest of her wriggled in front of me half-naked. She wore a see-through lace bra, light blue, with little matching panties. Her soft breasts looked sweeter than candy and her little pussy looked like the gateway to heaven and I didn’t even try not to stare. She couldn’t see me anyway.
By the time she’d gotten the shirt off over her head, I’d peeled off my T-shirt. She tossed hers down the hall with an aggrieved huff and I shoved mine at her.
She looked at it like I’d offered her the carcass of a dead, putrefying animal. “What is that?”
“It’s a fucking shirt. You wear it over your body when you’re standing in front of your best friend’s brother, otherwise naked.”
“I’m not naked,” she said, pretty fucking indignantly for a woman whose nipples were clearly visible. But she glanced down and seemed to jolt into sudden awareness that I could see her nipples and her tiny swath of pubic hair, and her cheeks flushed pink so fast it was charming. I wasn’t feeling real charmed, though, just residually angry.
She took the shirt and again, took way too long figuring out how to work it. This time, I looked away. Mostly out of pity.
She finally pulled on my shirt and covered herself. The yellow T-shirt reached the top of her thighs so all that was naked now were her pretty legs and the visions of lace-covered temptation in my head. She just stood there tugging down the hem, like that could make me forget what I’d just seen.
“Now what?” she said blearily.
Christ. Could I even leave the girl alone like this?
“Bedtime,” I said bluntly. “Get your ass upstairs.”
She balked and looked around, like I’d purposefully dragged her here to defile her or something. Did she forget where the fuck we were?
“You’re in Shayla’s house,” I told her, trying to sound soothing and non-threatening. “You’re going to go sleep upstairs. Alone.”
