Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,130

such a fucking chump. I’d want to smack her bare ass until it was good and red for punishment. Bend her over the closest car and fuck her brains out. But, yes, I would still want her, even if she told him what I know.

She wouldn’t tell him.

My heart is screaming at me—pleading its case.

I want to believe it, but it’s at war with my mind. I didn’t get this far into my career and become this successful for being a dumbass.

As soon as she hails a cab, I hunt for my own. One whips up to the curb next to me.

“Where to?” he asks, eyeing me in the mirror.

“Follow that cab,” I bark out, pointing as the one she’s in passes by us. “Go.”

He guns it, cutting off a car, earning a honk. I’ll tip extra for that move. When her cab gets lost in a sea of cars, I tell the driver her home address. I’m hoping like hell she’s going home and not meeting Ryan at his place.

The familiar rage is burning hot like an inferno. I can’t get the imagined vision of him on top of her, rutting like a fucking barnyard animal. I’ve never been a violent man, but right now, I could beat that twerp’s ass until he stopped breathing.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I’m obsessed.

And, apparently a fucking stalker too.

The normal, smart me would tell the cabbie to take me home so I could sleep off all the whiskey I drank. To think rationally once more.

She ruined the normal me.

Long ago with a tempting, forbidden smile that lured me over, I was enraptured by a girl too young to be fooling with. Back then, my moral compass worked. I flirted with Chelsea Parker, but never made a move. Now that she’s no longer forbidden as far as the law goes, I’m tangled up for other reasons.

Mason’s daughter. Barely legal. My employee.

Those reasons seem like a stupid hurdle I jumped the moment she stepped into my office on her first day. I didn’t look at her as my friend’s daughter or someone too fucking young for me or an employee. I devoured her in one glance. Staked a claim on her in an instant. Inhaled her scent, knowing good and damn well I’d become addicted to it.

I’m going to find out what she was doing with Ryan.

And then I’m going to…

“This is it,” I grunt out, pointing out the window. “Thanks.”

He chokes out his thanks when I hand him a few hundreds. I step out of the cab, making a beeline for her front door. She better fucking be here and not at Ryan’s. Pounding on the door, I wait impatiently as my blood burns through me, a mixture of anger and lust.

“Who is it?” she asks through the door.

“Foster,” I bark out. “Now, open the fucking door.”

The locks begin unengaging and then the door wings open. Chelsea Parker stands there, no longer wearing her tall shoes, a frown of confusion on her gorgeous face.

I step into her personal space, gripping her jaw and tilting her head up. Her green eyes are wild as she searches my face for answers. My thumb strokes along her jaw line, making her lashes flutter and her lips part.

I’m here to demand answers.

To confront her.

Soon enough.

For now, I crash my lips to hers for a searing kiss. All plans to interrogate Chelsea and make her tell me the truth take a back seat to the need to claim her. Seeing Ryan’s paws on her bred a feral, animalistic need to mark her as mine.

She is mine.

She was since that first smile…I just didn’t realize it yet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Chelsea

I don’t know if it’s the brutality of his kiss or the feral look in his stormy blue eyes that knocks the breath from my lungs, but whatever it is… this kiss is lethal.

I grab onto him thoughtlessly, like he’s the life raft that will keep me afloat instead of the storm that shredded my sails. I stumble as he walks me backward, slamming the front door shut behind him without tearing his lips from mine.

I don’t know what I expected to find on the other side of that door, but not this.

Not that I’m complaining.

It takes a moment for my shock to dissipate. He’s still walking me backward like he knows where he’s going, but he stops just outside Daddy’s office and pushes me up against the wall.

My heart pounds, my tummy twisted up with a mix of nerves and