Page 21 of Savage Suit

I wasn’t in love with that belly-crawling cretin. But damn, if I hadn’t gotten my little Rabbit and fantasized about fucking him and having his beautiful mouth all over my body, especially between my legs.

Goddamn him.

Scowling, I crawled back onto my crowded couch and picked up the laptop resting on the old wooden coffee table that had gotten in the way of my head. It had been a gift from my older sister, Armani, when I moved out of the brownstone we grew up in, just blocks away from my apartment. As their eldest child, she was the lucky one who inherited the century-old row house from our parents when they passed. They had inherited the residence from my father’s parents.

The glare of the laptop hurt my eyes as it flared to life, glowing in the room’s darkness. I blinked, needing coffee. Once I checked my computer and found it only struggling not to overheat, I sagged in relief.

Banging resumed on my door. Damn! I hadn’t imagined the noise. My little sisterwasat the door. But why so early, and where the hell was her key? And why the fuck didn’t she use the doorbell?

I continued to ignore her and got to my feet, stumbling through my dark apartment to the lone bedroom, where I flipped on a light and carried my laptop to my desk to let it charge and cool down.

Glancing at the clock on the desk revealed it wasn’t early morning but late evening. After paying bills, checking the balance in my bank account, and suffering a brief breakdown, I’d stretched out on my sofa, mentally exhausted, and fallen asleep—early this morning. Now, when I should’ve been winding down, I was awake.

Quinn’s door pounding turned into noisy kicks. Cursing her, I quickly plugged in my laptop, recoiling when I accidentally caught a glance of myself in the mirror above my desk. My curls were plastered to my head, and dark circles marred the skin under my eyes. Noah Keegan wouldn’t look at me with such lust if he saw me now.

Oh, fuck him.

“Ryan!” Quinn screeched.

Not wanting her to alarm my neighbors, I relented and walked out of my bedroom. Scratch that; they understood Quinn and me by now. Knocking and yelling weren’t the worst things heard here. Even though my apartment building wasn’t in the most dangerous part of town, it was not the safest either.

After flicking on a light, I stalked to my door and yanked it open, glaring at my little sister. In response, she beamed at me, her purple-blue ombre hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. Long ago, her hair had been even curlier than mine, but years of processing it had made it wavy at best.

I stepped aside to allow her to enter; she bounced into my apartment.

“This better be important with all that knocking. You woke me up.” I slammed the door shut.

She tsked. “So grumpy, and itisdire. You know Paul, right?”

I stared at her blankly. I should, but Quinn was a lover, not a girlfriend. She had more flings than Casanova. Others might call her a ‘ho’. I called her a free spirit. Besides, we all managed grief differently. I searched for men who wanted long-term, took relationships extraordinarily slow, and never allowed myself to get too attached, afraid I’d awaken one day to tragic loss. Quinn scoffed at commitment, went from man to man, and swore never to settle down—afraid she’d awaken to a devastating loss one day.

Our fear of losing a significant other stemmed from the same thing—our mother’s passing. Quinn was supposed to have gone with them, but Daddy told her to stay home at the last minute. No matter how much she’d begged and pleaded, he’d remained firm when usually her demands worked.

His death had been doubly hard on Quinn. She’d believed she should’ve insisted Mama and Daddy stay home until a time when they’d allow her to go with them. Quinn had been so inconsolable. Even now, I shuddered at the memory. Back then, I’d wondered how much guilt and grief Mama would experience once she recovered.

I needn’t have worried. After losing our father, we believed Mama would survive.

My siblings and I long agreed the accident hadn’t killed her. Instead, she’d died of a broken heart. Comatose for a week, she had beaten the odds and woke up. She had shown signs of recovery for days until learning her husband, our father, had been killed on impact. As cheesy as it sounds, my parents were made for each other. In every sense of the word, they were soulmates. And when Mama discovered her soulmate had died, all the progress in her recovery disappeared. Hours later, she slipped back into her coma and never awakened.

Armani hadn’t ever allowed me, Quinn, or Logan, our youngest brother, to see their death certificates. She’d shielded us from the press coverage the crash garnered. The major accident that left three minors orphaned. Whatever she’d received concerning their automobile crash was claimed by her, and she’d never shared it.

As an adult, I still didn’t want to look at the macabre mementos. Neither did Quinn. Most importantly, our parents were gone, killed in a car crash, and never returning. Nothing would change that, so we’d let it rest.

“Paul!” Quinn’s exasperation snapped me out of my thoughts. “The guy I mentioned?”

“You tell me about three men a week, so no, I don’t know Paul.”

She placed a hand on her chest, releasing an overdramatic gasp. “Are you slut-shaming me?” She sniffed. “How regressive, Ryan.”

I rolled my eyes. “Cut the theatrics, Quinn. I’m just stating a fact. Tell me why you’re here since you woke me up from a beautiful snooze where I was on an unknown beach, fucking a fine-ass man.”

Maybe that had been the dream, and maybe not. Noah Keeganhadbeen fucking me, though, but Quinn didn’t need to know the fine-ass man in question had been my almost boss. It was just too embarrassing to admit to her I had been fantasizing about the man since I met him. Even though he was a dick, he was a very handsome one. Our moment at the door was the most intimate I’d been with a man in months.

“Ohhhh,” Quinn said with an understanding nod, her loose bun bobbing. “That’s why you’re so annoyed. Pussy-blocking would annoy me, too.”

Instead of allowing her to see me wrinkle my nose at her comment, I walked away from her. We’d been standing right near the door. Since I decided I wouldn’t open it again and shove her ass back into the hallway, there was no need to stay there.

“By the way, where the hell is your key?” I threw over my shoulder, heading to my kitchen and pausing in the room’s entryway, where everything stood against one wall.