Viktor's crew owns your business. And you have no idea what I do or don't want in my life."
"But this—" I begin to speak, and Gray reaches out and puts one long, calloused finger against my lips. I gasp, my lips parting. He doesn't move his finger for a moment, and when I look back at him, I feel his entire being change. There's something in the air between us, something charged. Something heated.
This can't be happening.
I have to be imagining this.
"Get out of the car," Gray orders.
I glance out my window. "Oh my God, we're at my apartment. How did you know where I live?"
There's immediate shame that he's seen my shitty apartment building. And that's before he's seen the mess inside. But how did he know where to drive to? I can't imagine he and my father run friendly terms, but maybe dear old dad told him.
"Gray, how did you know where I live?"
He doesn't answer. He just opens his car door, and before I know it, he's around the SUV and opening my door. He takes my hand, which almost disappears in his giant, slightly calloused one.
I'm scared to touch him. I'm scared of this vibrating intensity in my chest, in my stomach, in my head…okay, between my legs. Everywhere. I can't still have a crush on Gray. Not now. Not after today, not after all this time.
I begin to step out of the car and he puts both hands around my waist and lowers me gently to the ground like I don't weigh more than a feather. Once I'm on my feet, he takes my hand again, and leads me inside my apartment.
We walk up the crumbling concrete steps and Gray pauses at the outer security door.
"Key?" he says, his voice low. He's glaring at the broken porch light like it personally offends him.
"Don't need one." I smile brightly, like I'm delighted I live in a craptastic apartment, and push the broken security door open. I try to tug my right hand from his firm, warm grasp. He doesn't release me.
And then I realize Gray's going to see not only the crummy exterior of my low-rent apartment building. He's going to see my actual "home," which is full of unwashed dishes, clothes strewn everywhere…and a framed photo of him on the dresser in my room.
Unless I can get in there first.
8
Gray
H er apartment is shit . When she pushes open the broken security door—a ninety-year-old grandmother could've forced her way into the building—I'm already seeing red.
Then the lights aren't working, outside and inside the first-floor hallway. There's no elevator, and the stairs are steep with the railway falling off the wall.
"Motherfucker," I mutter, ushering her ahead of me and up the stairs.
"What?" she says, her green eyes going wide.
"Nothing," I growl. She flinches, and then I feel worse than I did when I realized what a shithole this place is. It hadn't seemed this bad on the nights I'd driven by it. It had looked decent from the outside.
But I shouldn't rage at her or scare her, because it's not her fault she lives here.
It's her dickhole of a father's. But she's not under his "protection" anymore—she's under mine . And that motherfucking means something.
"Your father lets you live here?" I say as she climbs the steep steps. I can't help but watch her ass as she walks; it sways in time to my hardening dick. In all the years we'd been apart, I'd held onto the picture of my little Kat as just that: little.
But from the moment she fell into my arms, so full and round and warm, I can't get the feel of her curves out of my mind. And now they're right in fucking front of me.
"Lets me?" she says, turning at the landing and starting up yet another flight of stairs. "He's never been here. He probably doesn't even know where I live now."
"Jesus, he never got any better, did he?" I say.
She turns onto the fourth-floor landing and walks down the dingy hallway to a battered-looking door. Number 407. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a keychain.
"Better? No, he didn't get better," she says. "But life got better when I left home."
I glance