Page 18 of Dangerous Men (Fortune City Mafia #1)

SEBASTIAN

Those fucking idiots.

Sydney is shaky when Alec and Ashton leave her, legs still trembling from their attention, and even from my spot several tables away, I know exactly what she’s going to do before she does it.

And… there she goes. I watch, amused by her predictability, as she reaches for Alec’s abandoned drink and takes a sip. She pulls a face, clearly unable to appreciate the taste of top shelf scotch, but a few seconds later she gulps down the entire thing.

Morons. All of them. My brothers for leaving her on her own, and this girl for indiscriminately drinking that much hard liquor that quickly.

From my table, I had a perfect view of their little escapades with her. It didn’t take them long to make their move, and it was an admittedly flawless execution by the two of them. The way she’d just melted back against Ashton, letting him run his hands all over her while Alec tongued her mouth…

Fuck, I’d loved seeing that. And though this table is nearly as hidden as theirs, it’s not hidden enough for me to enjoy myself properly.

I’d wanted to, though. Seeing Ash roll her nipples through the fabric of her dress and seeing the way she’d reacted to it, I’d wanted to reach into my pants and stroke myself so badly.

The way she had rocked back against him had me wondering what it would be like to have that sweet, plump ass rubbing against me.

Ash knows I like to watch. Hell, Alec probably knows, too, but he’s never brought it up before. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he angled the girl just enough to give me a show, before...

Fuck. She’s moving.

I’m so lost in the memory that I almost miss it when she leaves their table and starts across the dance floor.

I make my way toward her without thinking, abandoning my table and moving across the room, eyes glued on her. Alec would kill me if I let her out of my sight.

Their whiskey has clearly left her a little tipsy. There’s a noticeable sway to the way she’s walking, and?—

Fuck .

She almost collides with a dancer and slips, arms flailing as she struggles to stay upright.

She’s going to fall.

I don’t hesitate. Shoving another couple out of my way, I close the distance between us just as she loses her balance, barely reaching her in time to catch her. She lets out a soft sound of surprise as I catch her elbow, wrapping my arm around her waist and steadying her against my chest.

Great. Just fucking great. This girl is already more trouble than she’s worth. Hot? Sure. But an absolute headache? Looks like it .

“Are you all right?” I ask her. Her heart rate is so fast I can feel it beating like a drum against me.

She looks up at me then, tilting her head back and opening her mouth to answer… but something flickers across her face, and she closes her mouth without a word. She just stares at me with big doe eyes, speechless.

Terrific. She’s clumsy and an idiot. I tighten my grip. I’d expected a bit more from someone who graduated summa cum laude from Fortune City University. What a scathing indictment of our local education system, if she’s among the best of it.

More than a few heads have turned to watch us, and while it’s not a surprise that I’ve drawn attention with my little rescue, I fucking hate it. I can’t stand being watched like this, can’t stand the looks and the whispers from the surrounding crowd.

“Can you stand?” I ask. She’s leaning her full weight on me, balanced on one foot.

Gingerly, she tries putting weight on her right foot, but the instant it touches the floor, she whimpers, burying her face into my chest and shaking her head.

“It hurts,” she complains. Her breath is warm against the fabric of my shirt.

Great. Just great.

“Hold on to me,” I tell her, briefly releasing my grip on her. “And don’t struggle.”

“Wait, why would I stru—” She lets out a high-pitched shriek when I hook my arm behind her knees and scoop her into my arms.

“ Put me down, put me down, put me down!” Her voice is shrill, panicked. Instead of relaxing in my arms like I’d expected, the girl clutches the front of my jacket, holding on for dear life.

“I need to get you somewhere where I can check your injury,” I say through clenched teeth. “And I told you not to struggle .”

I’m not going to stand here in this crowd, being watched, for one more second. Especially now that her hysterics are drawing even more attention. I’m aware of every eye on me, watching us.

“Where were you going?” I ask. When she just stares at me with that same panicked expression, I try again. “Before you tripped. Where were you going?”

Her grip on my jacket loosens when she answers. “Outside. Th-the garden.”

The garden. I glance over at the double doors that lead outside. That seems as good a place as any to take her now. I carry her through the party and away from all those prying, invasive eyes.

Outside, the garden is mercifully unoccupied, and—just as I’d hoped—there’s a stone bench just the right size, nestled in the shadows, well out of the way and almost hidden. Perfect.

“I’m going to set you down, so I can check your ankle,” I tell her. She isn’t holding on as tightly, but she’s so stiff in my arms it’s hard not to be a little insulted.

As I set her down on the bench, and she finally loosens her grip on me, I mentally review everything I’ve learned about Sydney Sinclair over the last few days.

It’s not that I don’t trust my brothers.

I absolutely fucking don’t, but that’s not the point.

Their liaisons with women are usually over so fast I don’t even bother looking into most of the ones they bring home.

But this one? With both of them focusing on her so completely, and spending so much time around her, there was no way I wasn’t going to look into her background.

Sure, from the outside she might seem like just an unassuming little bookstore owner, harmless and brainless as a gnat, but you never know for sure until you look deeper.

My misplaced trust almost cost us everything once, and I sure as fuck won’t ever let that happen again.

So while my brothers might be too stupid and too distracted by a nice pair of tits to help themselves, it's my job to know better. For all of us.

Luckily, their newest toy is no one we need to worry about.

She’s a nobody. A commoner with no red flags in her background whatsoever.

The only interesting thing I learned about her was that her parents died when she was sixteen, leaving her an orphan, just like the rest of us.

An interesting shared experience. But unlike the four of us, she didn’t get sent into the broken and fucked up foster system of Fortune City.

Oh no. She had a loving grandmother who took her in and, from what I can tell, she’s lived a mundane and uneventful life ever since.

I hate her a little for that. For how safe she must have been, while the rest of us suffered.

Loved.

I hate her even more for how helpless she is.

Weak. None of my research prepared me for what a fragile little thing this girl was going to be.

If I’d known I’d be spending the evening rescuing a damsel in distress who couldn’t even walk across a room without causing a scene, I would have stayed at home with Viper, where I belong.

Goddamn those fucking idiots. Goddamn this fucking girl.

When I kneel in front of her, she shifts a little on the bench, and the slit in her dress parts even further, falling open to reveal the entirety of her left leg from ankle to thigh. I refuse to let myself look too long.

“Oh God, that was so embarrassing,” she mutters, covering her face with her hands. “I can’t believe I just tripped in front of everyone like that. Do you think anyone saw?”

“I think everyone saw.” I slide the fabric of her dress a little further aside to get a better look at her ankle .

Her fingers part, and she stares at me in horror before dropping her hands to her lap. “That-that’s not comforting! You’re supposed to say no !”

I glance up, slowly raising an eyebrow at her. “I’m supposed to lie?” I ask.

The only answer I get is a scowl. She crosses her arms under her breasts, glaring out into the dark of the garden. Terrific. I pull at the buckle of her left high heel. “Maybe if you wore shoes you could actually walk in, this wouldn’t have happened,” I mutter.

That earns me an irritated huff, at least.

“Why is it always the handsome ones that treat people like this,” she mutters to herself as she starts to shift away from me. “Going around just manhandling people.”

My fingers pause in the middle of unbuckling her shoe, and for a moment, I feel my carefully curated mask slip.

Handsome? No. Ashton is the handsome one.

We might share some of our mother’s features, sure, but most people don’t look past him to bother seeing me.

He and Alec are the handsome ones, the ones women flock to.

The ones who get noticed.

“And why is it always the pretty ones that are absolute brats?” I retort, removing her shoe and setting it aside. When I start to remove the other one, she recoils.

“Careful!” she whines. “Oh God, I think it’s broken.”

This girl and her whining . I remove her right shoe with slow, deliberate care, and hold her gaze as I wrap my fingers around her ankle. “Does this hurt?” I ask, giving it a squeeze.

She sucks in a sharp breath and shuts her eyes. “Ow, ow, ow! Yes! Obviously!”

I let her ankle go. It’s a struggle not to roll my eyes. “Then it’s not broken. ”

“What do you mean?” she asks in a high-pitched, indignant voice. “I told you that hurt. ”

“And if it were broken, you would be screaming right now,” I explain, giving her a deadpan look over the frames of my glasses.

Her lip curls, and I don’t miss the flare of anger that crosses her face. “And who made you the expert on broken bones?”