Page 14 of Flagrant Foul (Totally Pucked #3)

The music faded to nothing.

Everything slowed.

My blood pressure spiked and my vision tunneled until the only thing I could see clearly was Teddy.

He was half-naked and surrounded by men.

Men who were horny and much older than him.

I scanned the room and saw danger everywhere.

Faces. Teeth. Dark eyes slick with arousal.

Men were looking at him. Their gazes stuttered when they landed on him, pausing and dripping off him like thick, sticky grease.

They were close to him. Too close. Close enough to touch him.

Boom.

Another wave hit me, and a tinge of red mist colored the periphery around Teddy. My hands clenched and I felt my pulse in my face.

A man bumped into Teddy. Accidentally? On purpose?

I couldn’t tell. The force of the impact jostled Teddy to the side, causing him to reach out to me to steady himself.

The man had oily eyes that glinted with lecherous intent.

He put his hand on Teddy’s hip, unnecessarily, and smiled, also unnecessarily, as he apologized.

It was a smile that tasted like sweat that had gone cold.

Boom.

Boom.

BOOM.

Wave after wave crashed into me.

It was the bad rage. The old rage that takes me over. A seismic fury that powers me and leaves me weak afterward, sated and calm, but unclear about what happened.

My nails dug into my palms as muscles began to engage.

Teddy slapped the man’s hand away, top lip twisting to one side as if to say Ew .

It gave me pause. A fraction of a second to try to come back to myself. My fists unclenched a bit, but the rage had taken root too deeply to ignore.

“Out,” I said to Teddy as I tried my best to suppress the snarl that was building in my rib cage. “You’re getting out of here. Now.”

I took him firmly by the upper arm and began steering him to the stairs.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, glaring at me in disbelief as his eyes flashed with his own brand of fury. I didn’t answer, but I did keep manhandling him toward the exit. “Help! I don’t know him,” the little shit cried.

People around us stopped and looked.

“He’s underage and he’s been drinking, and I’m taking him home,” I explained without attempting to tamp down the snarl. “Would anyone like to try to stop me?”

One or two heads shook, and the attention shifted away from me. My change in momentum had swung Teddy around, so he was no longer at my side. He was in front of me. His hands were on my chest, lightly, but they burned like a brand.

I looked down at him, and my life changed.

It was one of those moments that had a before and an after. A watershed. A divide. A now and a then.

Teddy’s lips were curled into the prettiest smile I’d ever seen. Plush pink flesh pulled back to reveal an icy stripe of white. There was a certainty to him I’d never seen before, and something in his eyes that scared the unholy shit out of me. Something unhinged and raw.

Something scratchy.

Something very, very wrong but strangely comforting.

Recognition.

He recognized the face of my rage as surely as if he were looking into the face of an old friend. Someone he hadn’t seen for a while but had shared history with. Someone he liked despite the fact that he shouldn’t.

He began to laugh, the sound climbing higher and higher, hitting different parts of my body until I couldn’t tell if it was portentous or if it was the sound an angel made when it was happy.

The confusion that usually reigned when the bad rage died down began to find me. It felt different. Woolly. Other. The mist was clearing, but there’d been no physical outburst from me. No adrenal relief. No bruised, bleeding knuckles. No satisfaction.

“Walk,” I instructed.

Pretty lips bowed into an even prettier smile. “No.”

I was still far from reasonable, and the only clear thought I had that still made sense was, I have to get him out of here , so I picked him up and threw him over my shoulder.

There was a density to his bones that I didn’t remember, but he wasn’t heavy. At least, if he was, I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was a bone-deep heat that leached into my shoulder where we were touching.

He kicked his legs and began pummeling my back when we got outside.

I ignored it, adjusting my grip to make it a little tighter, and kept walking until I got to a spot far enough from the club entrance for my liking.

I released Teddy, and as he slid to the ground, his body pressed firmly against mine.

The knotted net of his top scraped against my pecs, chafing as it was dragged over my skin.

The top, if we’re still calling it that, rode up. All the way up.

It was a hot, humid night. Late July in New York.

It had rained earlier. Not enough to cool things down significantly, but enough to make the air heavy.

Across the road, a neon sign blinked at an angle.

The streetlight was dim. The pool of gold it emitted made puddles of water look like mercury that had been spilled on the sidewalk.

Pale-pink nipples pointed at me.

They were pebbled and proud.

The part of me that spun when I saw Teddy in the club spun again. Or perhaps it hadn’t stopped spinning. Perhaps I’d been spinning since the second I saw him, and I was only just beginning to notice it because everything around me had started to go quiet.

My mind raced, desperately trying to play catch-up. What the fuck was going on? Teddy was a skinny boy who wore hoodies and too much hair product. What the hell was he doing on a grubby street, in the middle of the night, in Manhattan, and what the fuck was up with all the mesh and skin?

Jesus Christ, why were there tiny crystals dotted all over that fucking mesh top?

And fuck me, why were his nipples so hard and so pink?

Scratch all that. None of it mattered. The real question, the only question that mattered, was why was I looking? My eyes were glued to the mesh. To the crystals. To the pale-pink nipples on Teddy’s chest.

I tore them off him.

For what good it did, I yanked his top down and smoothed it as much as I could. “What are you thinking? Are you crazy? What are you doing in a place like that? How the hell did you even get in?”

He gave me a similar look to the one he’d given the man who’d groped him on the dancefloor, and his head twitched as he spoke.

“Um, it’s called a fake ID, Sev. I know you’ve heard of them because I was in Nate’s bedroom when the two of you took the photos you used to get your fakes made.

” He cocked his head and placed a single finger on his chin.

“And let’s see… How old were you then? Hmm…

oh yeah, that’s right. You were eighteen.

You did shit like this all the time, why can’t I? ”

I was aghast. Astonished that he’d think the two things were related. “That was completely different. It was in no way the same thing.”

He dropped his hand from his face and raised his chin in challenge. “How do you figure that?”

Pools of mercury shimmered around him. The glow from the streetlight etched contours into the side of his face that hadn’t been there before. Or if they had, I’d never noticed.

Not like this.

A jaw muscle tensed. Pale-blue eyes narrowed. A perfect pair of lips bowed.

The air around me slowly rotated.

My taste buds almost exploded.

“’Cause, Nate and I weren’t this pretty,” I said before I had time to censor myself.

He laughed again, and that time I was sure the sound was angelic. His eyes softened, acid robbed of its harshness, and a slight tremor shook his bottom lip. “You think I’m pretty?”

Before I had time to respond, his hands locked around my neck and he pressed himself onto his toes. Despite the warning, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember how my arms or legs worked. He moved closer, eyes dropping shut, head tilting to the side .

I didn’t move.

I’d love to say that I had no idea what he was doing, that he took me by surprise. That what happened was so unexpected, I had no idea what he’d been thinking or planning.

I did though.

I knew.

And I still didn’t move.

His lips met mine with only the slightest of hesitation.

They were soft and warm and sweet. The bolt of lightning they delivered was anything but.

It was instant. Deadly. A buildup of static electricity caused friction between clouds and air.

A sudden release of energy. A bright flash of light.

It pushed me back with enough force to land me on my ass, and jerked me forward at exactly the same time.

The shock was severe enough that I remembered my body and how my limbs worked. I pulled away sharply and heard myself say something like, “No…Teddy…you’re drunk. No.”

He stepped back, flinching like he’d been slapped.