Primal Pursuit

“Fuck, no. There’s one person who gets to bruise you. Me. And not like that. Not even if you fucking beg.”

“How good of you.”

“I’m a goddamn saint.”

“You’re the devil.”

“Close enough.”

She turns from me, but I catch her arm and keep her there. “Let go,” she warns.

“Not even if you use your fucking safe word. Who the fuck did this to you, Poppy? Someone you know? You’re ready to go out and?—”

“I knew you were watching me.”

“I stood across the street and waited for the cops to leave. Now I know why they were here.”

“Tell me, how did you manage to get the sexy priest involved?”

I hit her with my coldest stare. “Keep the fuck away from him.”

“How do you know him?”

“Is that important?”

She shrugs. “I just wanted to know why you were lying in wait.”

“You think it doesn’t take me long to find shit out, Rabbit? Your address is fucking easy. And I wasn’t lyingin wait. Not here. I came looking because you didn’t show.”

“What if I’d run off? Or decided I wasn’t interested?”

I put my mouth to her ear. “Because that’s not how our game is played, and you would never have sent that burn the house down hotness of a video if you weren’t going to show.”

My dick gets hard just at the thought of that.

Rabbit’s dangerous.

Just how I like my rabbit.

“What. Happened. Poppy?”

A shuddery breath leaves her. “You’re such an ass.”

“It gets you hot.”

She presses her lips together. “I…Davian, it’s stupid, really.”

We’ve never yet discussed how she knows my name. It’s a little slip I keep letting her make. Partly out of curiosity about what she’ll do when she realizes, and partly because I like my name coming from her lips.

“Start talking, Rabbit.”

“My landlord was drunk, okay? He thought he could extort more rent from me and cop a feel. He just managed to surprise me from behind when I walked out of my apartment. He’s not going to do it again.”

Oh, fuck me, the confidence of the young. He tried it once, he’ll wait and try it again. This place is a shithole owned by a slumlord.

He won’t live here. It’ll be living in the suburbs somewhere.

“What’s his name? Address?—”