Page 1 of Angry Lion’s Naughty Little Neighbor (Company 417 Shifters #60)

Chapter One

Kelsey

Wait… wait. What’s… what’s happening? That question makes it through my muddled mind pretty clearly but the problem is that the answer takes too long.

Tommy is still talking to me and so is that other guy.

I don’t know his name, so it makes no sense at all that he’s got his hand under my shirt. Over my bra but still under my shirt.

Tommy is unzipping… Wait, what? He’s unzipping his pants and…

and how am I naked from the top up now? Holy crap, I drank so much.

Damn it, I really don’t want to sleep with Tommy.

I mean, I’ve slept with him before, too many times, but I don’t want to sleep with him right now and I don’t even know the other guy.

Holy crap, he’s unzipping, too.

Wait… Wait…

“I don’t… I think… I don’t…” Damn, my voice sounds so far away. Why do I always fucking do this? Why do I drink or smoke or swallow pills or… Why do I do all that until I can’t function? Holy crap, I’m going to sleep with two guys tonight and I don’t want to sleep with either of them. “I… I don’t…”

“Shhhh, Kel. Relax.” I think that’s Tommy’s voice but I’m not sure.

“Okay but I don’t want…” That’s as far as I get. I think I’m about to fall asleep now.

I hear the other guy, I know it’s not Tommy’s voice. “Was that a no, man?”

Tommy says, “No way. Kelsey doesn’t even know that word. She just doesn’t want us to think bad about her tomorrow or tell people anything about it.”

No! No! You ever do that thing when you scream in your mind? You say your response as loud as you can but just in your mind. You ever do that? Well, I’m shouting to let them know that I know the word and I don’t want to sleep with them but, of course, I’m completely silent.

Yeah.

This is my life.

Look, I really want to tell you that I wasn’t always the kind of girl who ends up screwing two guys at once in a drug and/or alcohol induced haze.

I want to tell you that this is just a one-time thing but I can’t tell you that.

For a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, I don’t even know how many times this has happened.

I’ve been blacked out for way too many parties.

And as for screwing guys…

Yeah, I don’t want to talk about that right now but this circumstance, except for two guys being involved, isn’t rare.

Also, it doesn’t take a whole lot for me to sleep with a guy when I’m cognizant of everything.

See, I’ve been partying since I was in eighth grade.

I’ve been partying ever since my dad died.

My mom died when I was little, and my older sister did her best with me but what the hell is a nineteen-year-old girl gonna do suddenly stuck with a fourteen-year-old girl.

Dad died and when he did, I went into his den and drank his bottle of whiskey.

It was a very special bottle. Cost fifteen hundred dollars or something.

The deal was when I graduated high school, he was going to drink a glass with me.

He’d already done the same thing with Danni, my sister.

That bottle was tequila and similarly expensive.

Yeah, I finished that bottle off later that week.

You would have thought that still having half the tequila bottle after a year would have told me that Dad didn’t keep booze in his den in order to get drunk.

Well, I wasn’t in a position to really hear anything at all.

I drank the whiskey as a sort of emotional thing trying to feel close to my dad.

That month, I drank all the booze in his den, and I don’t know when it stopped being trying to feel close to him and when it started being not wanting to feel.

Anyway, that was seven and a half years ago.

You can probably tell from the cost of the alcohol, but my dad was very wealthy.

I got the trust fund when I turned twenty-one and bought this house for myself.

I’m lucky because I got a lump sum payment that allowed me to get the house and a car but the rest comes in a monthly stipend so I can’t actually waste all of my money.

Well, my sister still lives in the place where I grew up.

I guess if I had to work like a normal girl, I would never put myself in this sort of a situation.

“I don’t want to…” I can’t finish.

“Shhhh,” Tommy says.

“Put your dick back in your pants, boy. You’ve got five minutes to get everyone the hell out of this house. Five minutes.”

This new voice shocks me into semi-consciousness for a bit and I try to focus on the guy talking, but my eyes are having trouble focusing now and he’s moving anyway. I see him walk toward the guy whose name I don’t know and the guy yelps and takes off.

Tommy steps back and tries to act brave. “Listen, man, I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but we’re all consenting adults here, and you are at a private party.”

I fade out there for a minute and then, I hear Tommy start to freak out. “Jesus! Jesus! Okay, man, okay!”

He takes off and starts yelling at everyone to get the hell out. I hear a lot of grumbling and complaining, and some things crashing around and breaking sounds, then it starts to get a bit quieter and I drift off again.

When I come back around again, I’m being picked up by this new guy. He turns and heads through the living room with me in his arms.

I see that there are some stragglers. I’m still trying to keep things steady and not have them fade in and out. The stubborn partygoers try to stand their ground with my new, uh, protector? I guess that works. They try to stand their ground but he’s having none of it.

“Get your scrawny little asses out of here now.”

“What the fuck are you going to do about it, asshole?”

I hear the vague challenge and kind of smile at it, like I’m watching a movie moment inside my head. It just hits me as funny.

But my rescuer absolutely does not. “I will split you in half, little man.”

He says that with a voice that’s all quiet and deep, and even out of it as I am, I can hear the confidence in his voice. This man really knows that he can take care of this guy without breaking a sweat.

My party guest, another guy I don’t even know, hears it too and takes off.

I fade out again.

I come to as we are walking up the stairs to the landing for the second story. I feel a bit more stable, for a brief moment, long enough anyway to realize that I’m basically naked in this guy’s arms. I only have my panties on.

Now, I remember that Tommy and his friend had been undressing me and, well, I didn’t have the ability to really stop them. I wasn’t even that aware of what they were doing until I heard Tommy unzip his fucking pants.

I feel a wave of humiliation and then, I feel sad.

This guy isn’t my rescuer, he’s just someone who wanted the little drunk all to himself.

I want to struggle and fight and make him put me down, but I have zero coordination right now.

I don’t even know this guy. I try to focus on his face and my vision swims.

God, how horrible to be like this. A wave of anger at myself and the whole mess that was currently my life.

Why was I so fucking stupid?He finds my room and walks in.

I try to resign myself to the coming nightmare.

Actually, as unwanted sex goes, this guy won’t be as bad as some I’ve slept with.

That voice of his threatening to split a guy in half was sexy.

But it’s so terrible to realize I don’t have a protector at all, and I hate that I’ve found another terrible way for me to be humiliated.

Then, I’m dropped down onto my bed. The covers are pulled back and then, arranged gently over me. I almost cry as he turns out the light and leaves me to my dreams.