Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,241

that he had no right to call her his anything. If she belonged to anyone, she belonged to all of us. But I still thought the best thing we could do for ourselves would be to cut her loose and agree she belonged to no one.

Still…

The beer was giving me ideas that I shouldn’t have been entertaining. But after we’d won the race together and she’d smiled at me like she had when we were kids, my dumbass dick was getting ideas. Dirty ideas. The kind that would lead me down a seriously dark path. Because I knew if I allowed myself one taste of Rogue Easton, I wouldn’t be able to get enough. I’d keep coming back to drink the poison at her well until I helped fulfil the prophesy of her return destroying us all. A prophesy I’d admittedly made up. But I’d already seen how Fox and JJ were acting now she was back. They were pussy whipped and JJ was either going to have to lose that starry look in his eyes when he was around her or Fox would figure out his feelings were as strong as his own and they’d clash. And JJ and Fox never clashed. It was expected of me, but J was the peacekeeper. If he went up against Fox over this, it was going to be apocalyptic.

I hadn’t voiced this to either of them though, partly because they disregarded my fucking opinion on the subject and partly because while they were busy staring at her, I was stealing glances too. And today I could have sworn she’d looked at me with want in her eyes. The alcohol in my bloodstream certainly seemed to think so. What was the harm anyway? I’d promised myself a kiss from her lips if I survived the night destroying Maverick’s drug warehouse. Technically I was owed it. Didn’t have to be some feelings-filled headfuck, I just wanted to satisfy a craving I’d had when I was a teenager. That was all. And screw what Fox or JJ would think of that.

I dropped my beer bottle into the hands of a waitress then forged a path out of the foam towards the marquee. Maybe Rogue and JJ had headed in there to get more drinks, but as I walked towards the entrance, a lull in the music made my hearing snag on a breathy moan. My heart twitched in recognition and I fell entirely still as Rogue moaned again.

A deep and primal urge to rip apart whoever was touching her filled me and I circled around the side of the marquee, taking a long drag on my cigarette, preparing to spill blood.

Darkness thumped through my veins as I reached the end of it and stepped into the shadowy area behind the marquee that backed onto a group of palm trees.

Smoke coiled up around me as I stopped breathing, taking in Rogue pressed back against a tree with JJ’s hand moving beneath her waistband, her shorts’ button popped open and his other hand circling beneath her bikini top. Her head was tipped back, her eyes shut, her teeth digging into her lower lip. And JJ watched her like the world began and ended with her fucking pussy.

I was dragged back into the past, standing before the summer house on the Rosewood property, watching as Rogue stood topless in front a very naked Maverick. She’d chosen him and now she’d chosen fucking JJ. Pain rippled through the centre of my chest and anger sent a knife slicing down my spine. I was blinded by rage, stalking forward as I let my smoke fall from my lips, doing what I should have done the day I caught her with Maverick and shoving JJ hard, sending him stumbling away from her.

Rogue’s eyes flew open and I dove on JJ as realisation spread across his face. I threw my fist into his gut and snatched his wifebeater in my fist, forcing him back against a thick tree trunk. His knee came up into my side before he slammed a rib-crushing punch into my chest and I growled as I threw another punch of my own.

“Stop it!” Rogue snapped, launching herself onto my back and slapping her hands over my face so I couldn’t see.

JJ took the opportunity to sucker punch me and I ripped Rogue’s hands from my eyes, lunging at JJ again with a snarl. I tackled him down onto the sand and Rogue tried to heave my shoulders back