a finger up and motions for him to come to her while she licks her lips seductively.
I’m prepared. I’m prepared. I’m prepared.
He appears.
Bare-chested.
I’m not prepared.
I swallow hard. Good God, there are no words. He’s an Adonis.
My eyes yell at me when I force them away, but I soon give them what they want and look at him again. Why am I doing this to myself? I’m beginning to hate this man. He irritates me, makes my blood boil with rage, and those things should make him unattractive. But they don’t. If anything, it’s making him even more enticing. I just don’t get it. I’m done with pricks. And Becker Hunt is the king of pricks.
I torture myself further by watching as he moves in slowly until his hard body is pressed up against her super-skinny frame, pinning her to the wall. He’s going to kiss her, and the distressed ache I feel completely muddles my mind. I should be cheering her on, thankful he clearly has someone else to occupy himself with. I should feel lucky to have escaped his so-called charm.
But I don’t feel lucky. I feel sick with jealousy. Quite frankly, I’m prepared to pull her off him by her hair. What’s got into me? I need to remove myself from this god-awful situation, but just as I’ve convinced my dead muscles to help me do that, I see him pause right before his lips meet hers. His profile is perfect, and I manage to blank out the women, who’s a whisker away from his face, and relish in it. Then he slowly turns towards me.
And I stop breathing.
His hazel eyes are serious. ‘Enjoy your date,’ he growls, a hint of a salacious smile gracing his perfect mouth. Then he roughly grabs the woman’s arm and drags her towards the curved stone staircase to his apartment.
My teeth grind and my jaw aches from being clenched. The absolute, first-class, total and complete arsehole. I should slap his face.
But . . .
Oh my God. I see something.
Something monumental, something that’s knocked me sideways, more so than the unreasonable hurt I’m feeling. I’m distracted from my unwarranted wounded feelings by the biggest tattoo I’ve ever seen, which spans Becker’s back.
I step forwards to get a better look, but I can’t make it out, can’t fathom the design; he’s too far away. It’s just shadows of grey ink, but it’s alive and swelling on his broad back. Riveted. I’m absolutely riveted by the revelation. A tattoo. Not just a tattoo, but an enormous piece of art.
When he reaches the foot of the staircase, he pushes Tiger Bird up and looks back at me. My lip involuntarily curls. Then he disappears up the stairs, and the last thing I hear before a door slams is the sound of a highly excited scream. Then silence. Then the hurt surges through me like a hurricane. That was all for my benefit. And it fucking stings like hell.
‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Potts says quietly, yanking me back to the here and now. ‘Oh dear, dear, dear.’
I shake my head on a disbelieving, quiet laugh, and muster all my strength to face Mrs Potts and appear fine when I’m far from it. He’s humiliated me. I fucking hate him. ‘Good night, Mrs Potts.’ I pass her quickly before I confirm what I know she’s thinking, if I haven’t already.
The fresh air hits me like a brick when I make it to the courtyard, and though the alleyway is perfectly lit, I’m blindly following the path that’ll lead me to the outside world – a world that is far more appealing right now than the wickedness than resides in The Haven. I’m in no mood for a date, but the alternative is sitting at home and torturing my mind with constant reruns and flashbacks of Becker Hunt pushing that woman up against a wall. A woman, I admit, I stupidly wish was me. I’ve never been at once so attracted and repulsed by a man. It’s fucking with my head. Everything else is going so smoothly, my new life exactly where I want it to be. Screwing with that now would be monumentally foolish of me.
Becker Hunt does things to me – things I’ve never encountered before – and although he delivered one stinger of a proverbial slap to my face, I know it was tactical, if only to prove to himself that I would be bothered by it.
And he succeeded.
I’m delusional if I try to convince myself he