Page 38 of Shallow

“Shiloh?” he groans, his lip ring clanging against my hoopearring.

“Yes?”

“I need you to do something forme.”

Blood is rushing through my head at such a frenzied speed, I think I may pass out. “Anything.”

“Be at the center at six instead of seven. The toilets need bleaching.” Smirking, he pulls away, one hand still pressed against the bricks, his cock hard against mystomach.

“When did you learn todance?”

That’s it? That’s all I have to say? How about,“What the fuck was that all about?”or maybe,“How can you go home to Taryn after dry humping me?”But no, all my brain can come up with is to ask him about his newly foundrhythm.

Cary is already halfway across the parking lot before he stops and glances over his shoulder. The clouds move away, causing the moon to spotlight the tight muscles in his jaw. “When people are ashamed of you, it kind of motivates you to prove themwrong.”

My mouth drops open, but no words come out. I want to tell him I’m not that same girl he once knew, but it’d be a lie. I’m absolutely still that girl. I left that girl, and I’ve come back that girl. The only thing that’s changed about me is my bank account and myfreedom.

I watch helplessly as Cary gets in his old black Mustang and revs the engine, leaving skid marks in the parkinglot.

Thirteen

Shiloh

Two weeks.

In the grand scheme of things, fourteen days doesn’t seem like an outrageous amount of time. But when you’re treated like a piece of furniture for a full eighty of those three hundred and thirty-six hours, they become the longest stretch of time inhistory.

That’s right. After leaving me questioning my sanity up against a brick wall, I can count the number of times Cary has looked me in the eye on one hand. Any communication between us has come in the form of grunts and one-word commands, which inevitably ends with my eyes glued to his ass as he slams his officedoor.

It’s poetic in a tragic Shakespearian kind of way. I figuratively slam the door on him, and he literally slams it on me. This fragile dance we’ve been playing for years has only amplified to a tango that has no structured steps. No rules. No way for me to protect myself by just walkingaway.

I’m stuck—held against my will by a court order and my own foreign responses to a man I have no business thinkingabout.

My days are occupied with masking my own confusion while my nights are filled with memories of his hard body commanding mine in dangerously seductive moves masked as a dance. A lethal mix of lust and retribution battled for control in his eyes, and honestly, I’m not sure which one I find myself fearingmore.

His desire, or hisjustice.

How in the hell is he capable of making me want both? Am I so damn self-destructive that the possibility of his touch is worth standing too close to a ragingfire?

“Are you sure you’re going to beokay?”

Snapped out of my thoughts, my mother’s breathy voice fills the backseat of the limo as it stops beside a graffiti covered curb. It’s early, and I’m still shocked she’s dressed and coherent beforelunch.

I glance up and watch her pop a tiny blue pill in hermouth.

Okay, somewhatcoherent.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask as she tosses her chin back and works the pill down her throat in a way that almost seemselegant.

Looking out the window, she wrinkles her sculptured nose. “I’m not comfortable leaving you here, darling. This isn’t exactly a desirable part oftown.”

I can’t help but laugh as I pull my phone out, verifying the address Will gave me against the numbers on the building. “Mother, everything three blocks south of our gated community is undesirable toyou.”

I’m glad no one else is in the car besides Malcolm, because that has to be the biggest case of the pot calling the kettle black in the history of stupidcomments.

“I’ll be fine. Just have Malcolm pick me up in anhour.”

“What are you going to do? You know,in there?” She waves her hand toward the rundown one-story building as if saying the words out loud might infect her with a sickness that has run in her veins for over twodecades.