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“So just turn around, head back, and maybe I’ll—”
A hand closed over my wrist. It happened fast. Almost with black belt-like reflexes.
“You really should see my place,” he said, forcing the same smile he’d put on all night. Only that smile was twisted now. And there was something akin to malice behind it. “Like I told you, my roommates are gone. We’d have the whole place to ourselv—”
“Let fucking go of me.” I seethed.
I pulled abruptly, as hard as I could. Pain flared up my arm. He still had my wrist.
“Are you SERIOUS!?” I shouted as loudly as I could. My frosted breath hung in the air for a moment before dissipating. “ARE YOU REALLY—”
He pulled me in, looking around frantically, and that’s when his other hand clamped over my mouth. A second later he was pinning me against his chest. Trying desperately to hold me there as I writhed left and right, working to shake myself loose.
“Harper, PLEASE!” he begged. “Just listen to me for a minute!”
He was losing control fast, I could tell. Everything he’d tried had gone cataclysmically wrong, and now he was merely reacting to a series of miserable failures.
I pulled again, this time even harder, and somehow I broke free. The instant momentum sent me spinning sideways, throwing me completely off balance…
FUCK!
My head hit the lamp post with an explosion of silver stars. I collapsed backward woozily, falling ass-first into the wall of snow. When I looked up again, my attacker was lunging forward. He reached for me with both hands.
“Don’t be like this!” he pleaded again. “It’s not like I’m trying to—”
The man’s sentence ended in a strangled gasp, as he was suddenly and violently flung backwards. Before he could recover, two sets of hands seized hold of him. They shoved him sideways, straight through a narrowly-shoveled area, where he bounced hard off a brick wall.
Thank fucking God.
Absurdly, the worst first date in the universe dropped into some kind of karate fighting stance. His expression was murderous. His eyes were wild, shifting back and forth between my two saviors as they advanced toward him.
Then, wisely, he slipped around the corner and fled down the nearest alleyway.
“I’m on him!”
One of the two men bolted forward in pursuit, quickly disappearing from view. The other turned his attention toward me. Two big hands closed over mine, powerfully yet somehow gently extracting me from the snow bank.
“Hey… are you alright?”
The man pulled off his gloves, and two warm fingers tilted my chin upward so he could get a better look at me. His eyes went immediately wide. His mouth curled instinctively into a half-snarl.
I might’ve been shocked or offended, if I wasn’t already scowling back at him.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he growled, as we both took a step back. “YOU?”
~ 2 ~
HARPER
There were small assholes and big assholes, and then there was Jackson Ripley: an asshole of such enormity, he had smaller assholes orbiting around him. He was the king of cockiness. The crown prince of total arrogance, with a head so swollen, no crown would ever fit.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” was all I could say.
He was staring down at me like he’d seen a ghost. In a way he had.
“That’s how you greet me?” he scoffed. “After I just saved your ass?”
“Saved my ass?” I laughed, pointing. “From that loser?”
