Page 144 of The Silent Note

“I didn’t say there was.”

“Sleeping around doesn’t make you superior. It just opens you up for STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Not to mention the effects on your mind. The crippling anxiety. The hit to your self-esteem. It can make you stay way too long with douchebags just because they have good?—”

“Are you calling me a douchebag?”

“I’m just saying.” I flounce back in my seat.

“Tiger, I really don’t mind that you’re inexperienced.” Zane sees me roll my eyes and adds, “But it’s obvious you’re the one with the problem. Not me.”

“You’re the one with the problem,” I mock his voice and fold my arms over my chest.

“Miss Jamieson, are you sulking?”

“Mr. Cross, do you know the definition of sulking? Because I am definitely not doing that.”

“And suddenly, I’m the mature one.” He chuckles. “I’ll remember not to call you inexperienced in the future.”

“Thankyou,” I mumble harshly.

Zane barks out a laugh.

The car slows at a red light and I notice him watching me in the reflection of my window. Stubbornly, I stare outside. To my surprise, Zane turns my head, brings me forward and plants a hard, firm kiss on my forehead.

Eyes hooded, he looks at me with that familiar, barely restrained obsession. It’s a glint in his eyes, a possessive tilt of his mouth, an aura that expands like a black shadow around his shoulders.

“I’ve been with a lot of girls. A lot.” He stresses, exhaling deeply like he’s purging all the other women from his skin. “But they all pale compared to you. Your body is like poetry to me. Your groans, your whispers, the way you say my name?—”

“Zane,” I whisper, feeling on the verge of a heart attack.

“Like that. Just like that.” He closes his eyes and tilts his chin like he’s hearing a tempting song. “The way you bring order to the chaos in my head is like magic, Grey. I don’t need you to be anything but what you are. In the real world. In the bedroom. Your being, your strength, your innocence… it is perfectly indecent.”

I feel a thrill. Like I’m plunging down a roller coaster. The weight and sincerity of his words are collecting in my stomach. I’m suddenly overcome by a powerful lust. The kind that struck Othello’s wife when she heard his story. Purely carnal.

It makes me want to kiss, touch, please him in the most filthy, depraved ways that my unskilled, inexperienced brain can think of.

A horn honks behind us.

Smoothly returning to his seat, Zane notices the light turned green and keeps driving.

I sit, frozen and unseeing while my heart gallops like a runaway horse on the set of aPride and Prejudiceremake.

Get it together, Grey. What are you thinking right now? You want to enter your hooker era in the Redwood parking lot?

Zane gives me his signature smirk, which isn’t helping to stop the wild thoughtsat all. He offers me his phone, driving with one hand. “The password is your birthday.”

The device is heavy in my hands. I stare at it in shock.

He arches a brow. “You haven’t subscribed to Jinx’s app, have you? You can use my phone. I’m a premium subscriber. I will warn you though, there are a lot of stories about me in there. Not all of them are true. Feel free to ask me whatever you want. I won’t hide the truth from you.”

I cough and hand him his phone back. “I-I have Jinx’s app.”

The phone makes a clanking sound as he drops it into the cup holder.

“Why is it so hot in here?” I mumble, pressing a hand to my cheek.

Zane turns up the air conditioning.

I shift in my chair.