Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,31

his hand, his eyes imploring.

“She’s one of us,” I said ferociously, daring him to test me on this.

“So was Maverick,” he countered darkly and those words drove into my skin like needles.

My lip peeled back to berate him, but JJ reappeared with a little white dog in his arms, scratching its head and making its eyes droop happily.

“Here, give him to me.” I took the dog from his arms and it immediately started chewing my hand as I carried him down the hall then pounded my fist on the door to the room she was locked inside.

“What?” she snapped.

“I’ve got your dog,” I said and she gasped.

“Don’t hurt him, you fucking bastard!”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to hurt him. I came to give him to you.”

She fell quiet for a moment and I reached into my pocket for the key, pushing it into the lock and twisting. I knocked the door open and the devastation beyond it was pretty unfathomable for how little time she’d had in here. The curtains were ripped down, the bedsheets torn to ribbons, the closet doors looked half ripped off their hinges and anything that had been in the drawers was now scattered everywhere.

She reached for the dog demandingly but I lifted him up above my head on one hand. “Come out here and talk to us,” I ordered and she glowered at me like she was trying to rip my throat out with her eyes alone.

Her upper lip peeled back for a moment then she schooled her features, tossed her hair and shrugged. “Fine.”

She held out her hands for the dog and I placed the little mutt in her arms. She hugged him to her chest as if I was going to snatch him back from her at any second and gut him, but I wasn’t interested in the dog. I was interested in her, and who the fuck had laid their filthy hands on her body. Hands I was going to enjoy cutting off in payment for this unspeakable act against her.

I gestured for her to walk ahead of me and she did so, my gaze immediately dropping to her ass peeking out from those tight denim shorts she wore, and I wet my lips with how much I wanted to sink my teeth into that tanned flesh. My cock throbbed like I was a virgin aching for his first taste of pussy and I felt like one again too. A fucking teenager lusting after his best friend. A girl who I would have done anything for. Who I would still do anything for.

JJ stood in the kitchen with his elbows pressed to the island and Chase stood behind him with his arms folded and smoke seeping between his teeth like a pissed off dragon.

I moved up close behind Rogue, then leaned past her, tugging a stool out at the island and gesturing for her to sit.

“Yeah…no, I’m good,” she said coolly, moving away from me to stand on her own side of the island, stroking the dog’s head while she looked between us all with a casual disinterest.

“Who hurt you?” I growled, the rage in me pooling up to the surface, barely able to be contained.

“A guy,” she said lightly, shrugging one shoulder, but I guessed that was progress from the seagull bullshit.

“Which guy?” I snarled the exact same time JJ and Chase did. For all Chase’s bullshit about getting rid of her, he suddenly seemed seriously interested in getting that answer. We all would have died for her once. That apparently hadn’t changed for me. And one sweeping glance at my friends’ faces told me it hadn’t changed for them either.

“Not your business,” she said airily. “Just like the rest of my life isn’t your business. Like it hasn’t been for ten years actually.”

“Why are you back?” Chase bit at her, but I didn’t snap at him for his tone because I needed the answer to that as keenly as I needed air to breathe.

“Not your business,” she answered in that same light tone as if we were nothing to her. And maybe we were. Maybe she’d moved on a long time ago and we were just a distant memory which she never bothered thinking about. The idea of that pained me in a way I could barely digest.

“Not our business?” JJ tsked, shaking his head. “You have no idea, do you?”

“Pfft, she knows,” Chase muttered, glaring at her.

“I know what?” she asked like she didn’t really care, but