Her big eyes dropped down to the front of her dress then back up at me. “What’s wrong with my—”
“Everything!” I shredded the single word through gritted teeth, desire and rage boiling together into something fierce and unstoppable.
“Dav.”
I ignored Nero, lost in the billowing cloud of my own fury, lost in her velvet eyes, her parted lips, the little catch in her every breath.
Fucking Mia.
How did the scrawny, awkward girl I’d see running around town become … this, a woman with an eerie ability to make me forget I wasn’t the kind of man she deserved.
“Looking at you in that dress,” I began, tone a barely controlled vibration rumbling up my chest, “All I can think about is getting you out of it, ripping it off and...” I trailed off with the growl I couldn’t contain. “Fucking you until neither of us can walk right again.”
Her shaky gasp was nearly my undoing. It was solely the fact that we were literally standing in the center of a three way, in the dead of night that kept me from stripping her naked right there and losing myself as deep inside her as I could possibly get.
I smirked at her wide-eyed stare. “Still think it was a good idea to come here?”
To my surprise, she gave a little shake of her head and replied, “I wouldn’t regret it.”
Maybe I had too much blood rushing to both heads and wasn’t thinking straight, or maybe I had waited too long, thought about her too often that I was incapable of stopping my hands when they reached for her. I didn’t know what was happening until the line of her waist was clasped between my palms, until the soft material of her dress was crushed under my curling fingers.
I had her.
The lion had finally captured the bird.
She was mine.
“Don’t test me,” I bit out, struggling with everything in me for control. “I’m not capable of gentle.”
To her credit, she never batted an eye at my warning. She didn’t pull away. She wasn’t even rigid. She stood between us, a mouse caught between two feral cats, oblivious to the danger she was in. It went back to my earlier comment about her complete lack of self-preservation. She had none.
“Gentle’s overrated,” she whispered so low, I nearly didn’t hear it over the pounding of my own heart.
“You,” Nero broke in, interrupting my inner war with his hands joining mine at her hips, “need to stop.”
He wasn’t talking to me. The cautioning was hissed into Mia’s ear while his fingers fisted into her skirt, bunching the fabric, lifting it slowly up her thighs.
“I haven’t done anything,” she panted, making zero effort to stop us.
“Haven’t you?” Nero taunted. “Do you think we haven’t seen the way you watch us? The way you get so wet you drip?”
For the first time, Mia stiffened. “How—?”
“I. Saw. You,” he snarled each word. “I saw how wet she was.”
There was panic in her eyes now. I expected her to tear away and tell us to fuck off, but she stayed, trapped between us while Nero continued to hike up her dress.
“No panties, as I recall,” he went on, his voice a mocking purr. “Did you put any on before coming down here?”
To my every loving madness, she hesitated, but the answer was painfully clear when she dropped her gaze.
I had no idea what Nero was talking about. I hadn’t seen a damn thing, a fact that severely pissed me off. But it was shoved aside when Mia gave a startled whimper and jerked in my grasp.
Nero had reached her hem. The fabric was pulled up to her hips on both sides, forming a plaited curtain over her ass and front but revealing everything of her toned legs. His fingers were on her skin, tracing the curve of her hipbone.
“Still no panties,” he taunted, confirming the fact for himself.
Fuck me, I was hard.
I’d been hard from the moment I’d seen her, but now, it was throbbing with an intensity that I could barely stand. Just watching Nero with her, watching his hands disappear under the folds of her skirt, watching her eyes close and her head fall back the closer he came to her center was enough to make me want to...
A shot cracked somewhere behind us. The unmistakable sound of a gunshot ricocheted through the night, obliviating the moment we’d been captured in. Mia jumped, a startled cry leaving her lips. Her fingers leapt up and closed around my wrists. My own tightened around her.
“We need to go,” was all I said, desire overshadowed by the prospect of something happening to her.
Taken off guard by my tug, Mia stumbled when I pulled her into moving. I caught her without slowing our pace.
Nero didn’t say a word, but I knew he was thinking the same thing I was just from the way his dark eyes were raking over our surroundings. His hands had gone to the back of his pants where I knew he kept his Glock tucked inside his waistband and didn’t fall away until we’d reached the station doors.
“Gunshots?” Mia asked once we were inside.
“Car backfiring,” Nero answered almost automatically.
I didn’t know why he was lying to her. We’d heard enough gunfire to recognize the sound. But then I peered at Mia and understood. The flush we’d put in her cheeks had dissolved to white. The sultry passion in her eyes were clouded by fear. I hated it. Hated the way she was glancing around us as if expecting someone to attack. Hated the way she’d shrunk into the arms she’d folded around herself in protection, because it wasn’t for warmth.
“You’re safe,” I told her with more sharpness than I’d intended. “No one will touch you while we’re here.”
Her chin trembled and it was all I could do not to find the fucker with the gun and pistol whip them into unconsciousness.
“I know gunshots are a normal thing, but—”
“Hey,” Nero turned to her, features set in a firm line, “I told you, it was a car.”
To her credit, she didn’t cower under the stare that had most men pissing their pants. “Then why are you holding your gun?”
She had him there and Nero knew it. He narrowed his eyes at her, but very gingerly pulled his hands down to his sides.
“I’m a cautious man,” he mumbled.
Mia’s grin was slow before breaking into a full smile with teeth and a low chuckle that echoed off through the empty platform. “I’m glad for it.”
Nero seemed as startled by the smile as I was. We didn’t normally have people smiling at us, especially not good girls in white dresses. Those girls were usually warned never to make eye contact, to cross the street when they saw us coming, and for good reason. But not Mia. She never looked away, never crossed the street. She had no sense.
“The gun?” Nero asked, struggling a little with his question.
She shook her head. “You.”
With that world altering declaration, she moved to the time board bolted into the wall a short distance away. Most of the glass was covered in graffiti, but she stared through it like someone accustomed to reading through the paint. Neither me, nor Nero stopped her, both oddly fascinated by the tiny creature we’d found ourselves stuck with.
“We should go with her,” he said after a moment of silence between us. “Make sure she gets home.”