Page 37 of Savagely Scarred

“What?” He pushes his dark strands out of his face, and I notice his ears are red. He avoids eye contact and looks down into his whiskey glass, “I may have borrowed one of Liv’s books.”

My laugh starts as a low rumble in my chest and grows into boisterous chaos, throwing me back into my chair. The other two join in and we spend the next few minutes laughing hysterically.

The girls show up at the table just as I’m wiping tears from my eyes. They are smiling ear to ear, glancing around at us.

“What’s so funny?” Ava asks, picking up her glass.

“Nothing,” we all say in unison.

“Uh huh.” Liv looks at me suspiciously and sips her drink.

My eyes focus on her deep red lips around the straw and suddenly I’m imagining what that color would look like around my cock. It throbs in my pants when she pauses long enough to lick her lips.

Her slurping sounds, signaling an empty glass, pull me from my impure thoughts. She points at her glass on the table as Ava hauls her back up for another dance.

“Can you get me another one? Please?” Smiling, she lets Ava drag her away. Waving a hand back to me, she adds, “Love you!”

And then Dorian’s words hit me again. Because I would do anything for her. Live for. Die for. Especially that one. No one deserves to live a full, happy life more than her. I will make sure nothing stands in the way of that, even if it means dying to protect her.

My gaze finds her on the dance floor and time seems to slow. Her hands are above her head, swaying her hips back and forth. A sliver of skin shows when the motion pulls her top higher.

The strobe lights bounce off the sweat rolling down her chest and between her breasts. She drops her arms to grab Ava’s hands and her eyes lock on mine. They glow under the lights making her look ethereal. She bites her bottom lip, taunting me.

Such a fucking tease.

My attention shifts when I notice a couple of men staring at the girls, making their way toward them.

“Mierda,” Lorenzo spits.

“Dorian,” I bark, “go out there with the girls.”

“I can’t dance,” he protests.

“You don’t have to. Just keep the creeps away from them.”

He nods in agreement and downs his drink before standing.

We watch him slink through the horde of gyrating bodies and stop next to them. Excitement lights up their faces when they notice him, and they immediately try to get him to dance. I smile, watching the other men turn around in defeat and push through the crowd heading the opposite direction.

I look across the table at Lorenzo who is still scowling. The veins in his neck are bulging, and the grip on his glass is one flex away from making it combust into tiny pieces.

“You know, jealousy isn’t a good look for you.”

“Fuck you,” he snaps, his eyes still on Ava.

“Dude, you need to move on. You’ve been pursuing her for a while now. She’s not interested.”

“Yet,” he says so low I almost didn’t hear him.

“Which I don’t even understand because she was all over you last year. What the fuck did you do to piss her off?”

He finally looks at me with disdain. “I wasn’t interested in being on her roster. She doesn’t date. And I don’t share.”

I nod in agreement because I would feel the exact same way if I was in his shoes. There’s no way in hell I would’ve watched from the sidelines while waiting for my turn. After being with Liv, I don’t know how I was ever a player. Oh, how the tables have turned.

He takes a few sips of his whiskey before pausing with it on his lips. “She will be mine though,” he murmurs into the glass before draining the rest of it.

The girls flop down in their seats completely out of breath, panting. They reach for their newly placed drinks and begin chugging them like they’re dying of thirst.