The sound of boots hitting the ground helps me say what I need to.
“I’m sorry, but you’re too good for this shit. I—I’ll see you around, Rachel.” I squeeze her shoulder before my eyes land on a fiery blue. Red’s on her way over, but I walk toward her, dragging her from Rachel, brushing past her. Sparks sizzle under my skin at the brief contact and our mouths part, eyes lingering. That voice surfaces, pleads…but I push it away, lock it up, and look away.
Inside, I find Mike and Ian and a few other guys doing shots.
“Got room for one?” I sidle up to them, and they give me strange looks.
“You okay there, Rocky?” Mike teases, flashing me his pearly white teeth.
“Perfect.” I smile through a pained bruise. Feeling silly that I’m still holding it and the coldness that feels like a glacier sitting on my skin, I set the pack of peas down. “Why?”
I nervously flick my eyes over to the open patio, where Red is watching me with a smirk and crossed arms. Ignoring the skip of my heartbeat, I train my eyes on the line of shots.
“Apart from the girl who broke your heart staring at you from across the room…” Ty begins, nodding ahead, but I keep my eyes on the prize. Liquor. It’s supposed to whisk me away to a world of oblivion, right? To help me forget?
“I’m fine,” I tell them, and they raise their brows. “Seriously. But thank you for the shot. Means a lot.” I grab one of the shot glasses filled with vodka and, ignoring their calls, I move to one of the busiest rooms in the entire house—the living room. The air is thick with smoke and sweat, and people are gyrating against each other. I dodge a few football players wearing the school colors on their faces and jerseys on their backs, disappointed with myself for making the team look bad.
I down the shot in hopes of it washing away all of my problems, but it only highlights the tightness in my chest when I catch Red’s eyes somewhere in the crowd. Watching me like a predator stalking her prey—and I’m that stupid, naïve prey. Rolling my eyes, I walk farther into the crowd. I get offered a drink in a cup and, despite my better judgment, I drink it all in one go and throw it away. I need to forget Red. She got inside my veins and poisoned me when I least expected it.
“Hey, you’re that guy that fought at the football game,” a dark-haired girl says to me. She pushes her thin arms against her cleavage that’s held tightly in a purple bondage dress, her brown eyes popping behind a large swipe of sparkling purple eyeshadow.
“Yeah?” I say unsurely.
A giggle pops out of her too-red lips. She grabs my bicep kind of harshly, fluttering her eyes in a flirty way. I think. “That was sooooo hot,” she leans in to whisper.
Ignoring the cerulean eyes focused on me, I lean down. “Would you like to dance?”
“Would I?” She giggles, and I inwardly cringe at the nauseating sound. But she is a distraction, and if Red’s looking, I want to hurt her like she hurt me. She guides me to the middle of the pit of drunk idiots and begins grinding on me. I wrap an arm loosely around her and let my head rest in the crook of her neck. Again, I cringe at the over-saturated perfume, but I don’t move. Not even as I feel a tap on my shoulder.
Red growls at the girl moving against me vigorously. Her blue eyes are fire pits, arms crossed her chest. “Really? This is your type? She looks like a Jersey Shore reject.”
“Why should you get to judge me when brooding assholes like Ian seem to be your type?” I slur and grip the girl’s hips. This is so petty. So unlike me…but damn it! Red makes me this way. She makes me feel something so bad for her, I would resort to using this girl who admittedly isn’t the kind I’d blink at twice.
Red’s face hardens, and she blinks like I caught her, but she sinks back into her natural state of annoyance and rudeness and snaps, “I never took you for this kind of guy, Noah.”
What?
“And I never took you for a girl who leaves a guy in a motel to go fuck someone else!” I scream louder than I intended.
She opens her mouth, eyes ablaze more than ever, but the girl I nearly forgot I am dancing with turns and whines.
“Stop arguing with her and focus on me. Ya cutie!” She giggles, sounding like nails on a chalkboard, before wrapping her clammy hands around my neck and bringing me down to her short height. Her lips are on mine before I can even say anything. I try to pull away, but her hands are too strong.
But that doesn’t even matter because Red yanks her back, turns her around, and drives her fist in the girl’s makeup-caked face.
Chapter Nineteen
“What the hell?” the girl screeches like a banshee, blood pouring out of her nose like Niagara Falls. She stumbles back and there is commotion, and I can hardly think as she lurches after Red. Long nails as sharp as a blade, eyes wide like a dog on crack, she screams and goes for Red’s eyes. But Red punches her again without much effort.
“Red! Stop!” I shake her shoulders and yank on her hand frantically. We have to get out of here before this girl’s friends come after her. And as much as she can handle herself with one, I doubt she can take on five, maybe even eight. Just like I predicted, a herd of girls dressed like the one with the bleeding nose rushes over to her and scopes the crowd.
“I can handle some bitches, trust me,” Red sneers and tugs me around, making me bump into her. We bump into a couple making out and, apologizing, she shouts, “I am not walking away when I’m not fucking done with her. That bitch fucking kissed—”
I smack my hand over her furious mouth. “We need to get out of here before it’s bitchy hell in here.” I am not messing around. I may be pissed at her, but I’m not leaving her to fend off hyena-like girls in glitter. Well. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. Ever. “Now, stop arguing and come on.” I pull at her hand, making my voice firm.
Her eyes flash with something, and she opens her mouth, but she’s interrupted by a hyena battle call behind her. Not having enough time for her simmering thirst for blood, I turn back around and begin running. We squeeze between grinding bodies that reek of body odor and alcohol until we reach the stairs. The floor is clearer up here. I pull her into my room and lock it behind me. Thankfully, it’s empty.
“Come on.” Grabbing the first aid kit on my bed from when Rachel patched me up, I lead us into the ensuite, locking the door behind me. I also lock the door that leads to the hallway, in case they go searching for us. Hopefully they’ll assume a couple is using the room and move on. The door jiggles for a moment, causing me to hold my breath and Red to roll her eyes, but it stops after a second, and I hear whining and stomping heels.
“Pack of wild bitches,” Red murmurs as I get close to her. She’s gripping the sink, head hung in front of the mirror. “I should have skinned her alive!” She whips around, eyes wide and blue and lips snarling. She looks insane…so why am I smiling?
I take her hands and look into her eyes. “Take a breath,” I instruct.
She looks away, ignoring me. “I’ll take a knife and—”
I press my lips against her forehead, bringing her head back. Her eyes snap open like she’s just realizing I’m in the room with her. I pull away when her gaze becomes too much and grip her wrists lightly. “Breathe, Red. Now.”
Clicking her tongue in her mouth, as if telling herself to not kill me, she does as told. Her eyes flutter closed, hands tightening around mine, before she mutters, “I didn’t fuck him.”
My heart stammers and my fingers loosen, but seemingly fearing me letting go, she tightens her hold and flashes her eyes open, face softer than before. “Who?” I feign ignorance because if I acknowledge what she’s talking about, it’ll be my turn to turn blood-thirsty. For his blood. On my knuckles. I wiggle my fingers just to loosen the vein thumping under the bandages, but not knowing that, she tightens her hold and tugs me closer to her.
“You know who,” she says, her voice low like she’s afraid to acknowledge it too. Is she…nervous? She doesn’t get to be nervous, though. She left me.
So
, as much as it physically pains me to, I take my hands away from hers. She jerks forward and her eyes close. I swear I think she’s going to cry, but when they open, she looks forcibly hard and I shake my head at her, incredulous.
“You don’t get to be ominous,” I snap, and she bites her lip, tongue playing with her lip ring.
“Noah,” she says in a breathless way.
“No. Don’t Noah me.” I sound breathless too in a way, but it’s because I’m hurt. Even after bashing Ian’s face in and sulking in the dark, I’m faced with her and the pain. Dropping into the edge of the bath/shower, I plunk my head in my hands. “Just tell me…is it true? What he said? At least—you going to him?”
Silence greets me. It wraps around me like a banshee in mourning. Screaming against my eardrums but sad and—and I just want her to tell me. To make me kick myself for jumping to conclusions. But her silence just confirms what I truly didn’t want to believe.
“Jesus, Red!” I finally snap, lifting my head. I find her gripping her hair, rolling her beautiful blue eyes.
“I didn’t fuck him!” she seethes and takes a single step forward…then rocks back one step, stumbling into the counter. Then why does she look so hesitant? So guilty? I don’t understand, but I want to.
“Then what did you do with him?”
Her tongue sweeps against her top lip. “Nothing,” she lies.
I push to my feet and storm over to her. “Why are you lying to me?”
“Why do you care?” she screams, walking backward to escape my approach, but she ends up hitting the wall. I trap her with my arms, think about pushing the wild curl by her eyes back, and end up pushing my hands over my hair, tugging at the ends. But the urge to cage her before she can be a coward and flee, leaving me unanswered and pained, surges, and I let my hands rest on either side of her head.
“Because I fucking like you!” I let out before I can think it over.
Her eyes blink rapidly, and she looks to the ground. Fuck. Now she’s going to twist this around and make it seem like I’m some stupid kid that shouldn’t have gotten involved with her. She’s going to brand me some more, like hearing what they supposedly did wasn’t enough to scar my heart.
“Well, that’s your fault now, isn’t it?” she says, plunging those blue knives she calls eyes into my soul. She pushes against me, and I go stumbling back. I catch myself before I can trip and storm over to her because she’s seemingly desperate to flee.
“Stop running away and tell me what you did!” I am desperate myself, I realize, as my voice comes out strangled, the liquor I ingested earlier pushing out the frustration into a burst of frustration and sizzling need. I need to know. I need her to tell me. “And while you’re at it, tell me what you were doing with Tanner after you left me.”
She pauses. “How…how?” she sputters, either too guilty or stunned to talk in a complete sentence.
“Don’t worry about how, and tell me why,” I tell her. I’m finding it hard to not scream my lungs out, to tell her how much she’s gutted me.
Silence ensues before she whispers, “It was just one kiss. I tried to do more…but I thought of…of you and us and I stopped it. Completely. Left him. Tried again with Ian. Failed a-fucking-gain, because of you.”
What? “Are you seriously trying to blame me for you going around screwing with other guys?”
“I didn’t screw either of them! Okay?” She still isn’t facing me, and it’s pissing me off. “Before you, I didn’t have to think about a fucking moral compass, okay? But now it’s instilled in me, and I can’t stop thinking—” She stops. Why did she stop? Why doesn’t she ever speak her mind? I mean, really, truly, speak her mind?
“Don’t stop talking, Red! Red!” I shout her name, my patience growing scary thin.
Spinning on her boots, she hits me and screams, “I left you, okay? I left you and I went to him because I wanted to get you out of my system. I was so close to screwing him, but I—I left before I could. Okay? You enter my mind every time I don’t want you to. You and your stupid face, and your stupid smile and laugh, and your stupid, stupid ability to look past the warnings people tried to throw at you. You trusted me. And you still do because you’re not letting me go. You’re trapping me with your stupid—your stupid arms. And I need you to let go before I kiss you—” Her eyes are glued to my lips.
I shouldn’t do this, I battle myself as I glance at her lips. I really, really shouldn’t do this. She hurt me.
And yet, I find myself leaning forward, connecting my lips to hers in a bone-chilling kiss.
Chapter Twenty
I press forward, head ducked, and our lips collide. Short circuits seem to explode between our mouths. Opening and closing around each other. I taste the cigarettes, the beer, the dangerous toxins lingering on her tongue. But I don’t care. She tastes so sweetly poisonous; I want to drink her up in one go. As her arms wrap around my neck, I pick her up by her hips and slam her on the counter. She kisses me passionately like she’s been craving me for years, and I kiss her with a ferocity I’ve longed to bestow upon her since the second I knew what these beautiful, tasty lips felt like on mine.
Between quick breaths and teasing bites, she whispers, “I didn’t like when that skank put her lips on you. I have…” Nibble. “Half a…” Lick. “Mind to…” Suck. “Murder her.”
“To say that means you have feelings for me,” I explain, slowly drawing a breath before smashing my lips on hers. She moans lightly, back arching, breasts pressed against me. Oh, fuck. “So, what—” Her fingers glide underneath my shirt, nails digging. Goddamn it. “Are we? What is this?”
She groans and tugs at my bottom lip, lifting my shirt and groaning again at the sight underneath. I can’t even hold back my smirk. She seemingly giggles, making my ears perk and a smile to grab hold of my cheeks, but she stops and pulls me in for one long kiss. “Nothing,” she answers.
“Nothing?” I pull back, and she stares at my lips.
“This doesn’t need to be anything serious. Just—come here.” She takes hold of the hem of my shirt and drags me back into her embrace. Lips of hers, sweet and toxic and so utterly intoxicating, drown me in the red. I almost get lost in them, in her, when her words resonate in my head until I literally can’t swim between her lips anymore.
I pull back again, and she half groans, half whines, eyes rolling into the back of her head. “No, don’t be like that. What you’re doing, suggesting, is cowardly. And I like you too much to just not be anything.”
She blinks rapidly, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes. “Cowardly? How am I being cowardly?”
“By not giving us a chance—”
“That doesn’t make me a coward!” Her voice rises.
“Yes, it does!”
“I’m not being a coward!” She sounds strained, on the verge of crying. I close my opinionated mouth and step closer. I begin to push her reckless hair behind her ear to soothe her when she snaps up, lifting her sagging shoulders, but avoids my worried gaze.
“Red, look at me,” I say around a sigh, trying to find her brilliant blue eyes under their shadows.
My heart shrinks as she shakes her head to herself.
“Red.” I nudge my finger under her chin. Her eyes, dimmer than usual, look into my green ones, and I lean my forehead against hers. “Talk to me,” I plead softly.
Her warm breath fans against my nose as she sighs. I smell mint and nicotine. “I just—” she begins slowly. “I’m not…I’m not good for you, Noah. And you need someone good.”
“Like the glittery hyena from downstairs?” I tease, and she chuckles. I look at her smile from underneath my eyelashes and nudge her head up by her chin again. Her eyes meet mine, fierce and fiery like the soul behind them. “You gotta have faith in me. Or this—whatever we are—will. Not. Work…okay?”
Her eyes dart down to my lips, and she leans forward, biting her own. I watch with intense hope that she’ll say, “Yes, I do trust you, Noah.” I want her to put her
trust in me—in us—and I want to feel all of that under the pressure of her fine, sweet lips.
“Okay, Noah,” she says softly, lips brushing mine. Teasing me. But hell will freeze over before I let her get away with it.
“Ho bisogno di più rossa,” I whisper back, licking her bottom lip slowly. Teasingly. She moans, and I smirk. Payback, I think in my head. (I want more, Red.)
“Wait, what does that mean?” she begins, but my lips crush hers into silence. Silences me. Silences the entire freaking world.
Chapter Twenty-One
A light buzzing sensation under my skin on my forehead wakes me groggily. The groan that ripples from my mouth into the warm air massages me out of the sleep I desperately cling to, but it slips through my long fingers. I fall in my dream, once in a cloud where red butterflies and blue oceans swam between my bones, and onto cold concrete pavement. Slowly, I lift my head and prop myself onto my elbows, rubbing my buzzing head.
What happened last night? I begin to wonder, then am hit with memories by the boatload: Rachel wrapping my hands, Red showing up, her punching a hyena wearing glitter…? Anyway, there’s more. Better things. Like, kissing her in the bathroom. So caught up in her strangely addicting lips. I rub my own lips, feeling the shit-eating grin before realizing I’m even doing it. I rub and rub as if it’s a genie bottle and Red will appear out of thin air.
Red.
Where is she? Did she go home or wherever that ball of fire lives?
Sitting up fully against the wall, I run a hand through my hair. Eyes foggy, I focus them on the empty, wrinkled sheets of Ty’s bed. She isn’t there. My head hurts with a soft pang as I try to remember what happened after we left the bathroom. I recall us going downstairs, after I did a thorough search for the pack of glittery hyenas. They were nowhere in sight, most likely opting to head to a sorority party where there weren’t fiery punching girls.
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