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She’s furious, and she’s terrified, and her body saw me and lit up like Christmas.

“Are you serious?” she screams over the music. “Are you fucking serious right now?!”

“Let’s go.”

“I’m not going nowhere with you!”

“Dylan.”

“No! I’m out with my friends! I’m dancing! You can’t just break people’s arms every time somebody looks at me!”

“He wasn’t looking. He was touching what’s mine.”

“It’s a club, Sasha! People dance!” She shoves my chest with both hands. I don’t move an inch. She does it again. “You don’t own me! You put me behind a gate! You took my job! You track my phone…”

“You left your phone on my pillow.”

She stops.

I see it flicker in her eyes. Pride. Like she won something.

She didn’t win shit. She just found out how far I’ll come.

I bend down, put my shoulder in her stomach, and throw her over it.

* * *

She screams bloody murder.

She’s kicking. She’s beating on my back with her little fists. She’s cussing me out so loud I can hear her over the bass, every word her mama ever told her not to say. Her dress has ridden all the way up and her ass is right next to my face, round and soft and bare except for a little red thong, and I clamp my hand on it and squeeze, and she screams louder.

Every head in this place is turned. Phones up all over the room. Somebody’s gonna post it. Good. Post it. Let every motherfucker in Los Angeles see whose hand is on that ass.

Tasha’s filming. “Dylan, girl, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m on his side!”

Nobody gets in my way. Not Enzo. Not the bouncers. Not Ray, who flattens himself against the bar like I’m a freight train. I take her up the back stairs to the VIP level, down the hall, and into the private room at the end.

Leather couches. Low light. Champagne sweating in a bucket.

And one whole wall is glass.

Floor to ceiling, looking down over the whole dance floor. Every light. Every body. Every face turned up toward the stairs, waiting.

I kick the door shut and put her on her feet in front of it.

She slaps me.

Hard. Open-handed, right across my face. My head turns with it. It stings like a motherfucker. I taste copper. My cock jerks so hard it hurts.

I turn back and look at her.

She’s breathing hard. Her braids are wild. Her hand’s still up like she’s gonna do it again. She’s scared to death. I can see it all over her. Locked in a room with the man who snapped somebody’s wrist in front of three hundred people, and she just slapped him in the face.

Her nipples are trying to poke holes in that dress.

“Do it again,” I tell her.

She swings.