I’m beyond irate. I passed that a while ago, back when I realized she’d gone to a party. I don’t know what’s a million times more angry than irate, but that’s me.
I’m flying down these windy roads, taking the turns without breaking. If some guy so much as lays a finger on her…
I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles white.
I can’t think straight, even when I reach the house. Cars line both sides of the street, so I just stop mine in the middle of the road and leave the lights on. Tearing down the walk that leads up the lawn, I see her.
There she is, leaning awkwardly against some guy who’s trying to steer her away from the house.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I yell. Kate’s eyes open wide at the sounds of my voice, but she's obviously intoxicated.
“I’m just standing,” she slurs.
“She’s with me,” the guy says. “Who the fuck are you?”
Kate wrinkles her forehead and pushes her hand against his arm. “No,” she says. “He’s helping me stand up. He’s a cab driver.”
“Mind your own business,” he mouths, but he lets go of Kate, who stumbles a step forward. I don’t think about anything -- I just hit him, hard, my fist connecting with his face. I can hear the crunch of cartilage, and he falls back. “My fucking nose, you psycho!”
I sweep Kate up in my arms, carrying her across the lawn toward the car. “You had better not puke in my car,” I say.
“Did you hit him?” she murmurs. Her head is against my chest, and I inhale the scent of her shampoo, jasmine and lemongrass. It smells like Thailand, and I wonder if she’s been there.
“I hit him.”
“He wasn’t a cab driver.” Her voice is soft.
“Just some asshole.”
“You rescued me.”
I don’t answer, turning so I can angle myself to open the car door with the same hand that’s holding up her ass. I’m trying to ignore the fact that the fabric of the very short skirt is barely covering it, her smooth skin pressed into my palm. I deposit her in the seat and buckle it and she smiles at me. “You like me.”
I roll my eyes before I shut the passenger door and get behind the wheel. We’re silent for a few minutes, and I think she might be passed out.
“You like me,” she says. “You came to get me.”
“You were incoherent and drunk at a party.” I keep my eyes on the road, refusing to look at her, sitting in the seat with that skirt riding up her thighs. “I would have to be the worst person in the world if I didn’t come to get you.”
“You punched that guy in the face,” she says. “For me.”
“It doesn't mean I like you, Princess. So don't take it personally.” I don’t look at her. I don’t want to look at her as she insists that I like her. Because it's the truth.
When we get back to the house, she stumbles against me as I help her out of the car. “How much did you have to drink?” I ask, my arm around her as we walk.
“One beer,” she says.
“What the hell -- were you roofied?”
“And --”
“And what?” She starts to step away from me, but stumbles again, and I pick her up the same way I did before.
“I don’t need carried,” she says. “I’m perfeckly -- perfectly -- able to walk.”
“Yeah, you’re real steady on your feet, Princess,” I say, carrying her inside the house and up the stairs to her room. I’m trying really hard not to focus on the fact that my hand is cupping her bare ass again. My cock is more than aware of that fact, though, pushing up against the zipper of my jeans like it wants to be unleashed.
“I took something,” she says.
“Something like what?”
“A pill,” she says. “I was anxious. Jo gave it to me.”
“Your friend, Jo?” I ask, thinking about murdering Jo. “Was she at the party?”
“Yeah,” she says. “But I don’t know where she went.”
“Was she drunk too?” I exhale heavily as I set her on her bed. “Give me your phone. You could have told me this before we left, so I knew if I had to go get her ass out of there too.”
“Don’t read my messages,” she says. "That's private."
“Relax, sweetheart,” I say, my tone sarcastic. “I’m not interested in reading your text messages. I’m trying to make sure you’re friend isn’t at some party being gang raped by who the fuck knows.”
Her eyes go wide. “You think that’s what’s happening?”
“No. It’s not. Calm your tits down.” Still, I scroll on the phone until I hit Jo’s number. The phone rings a bunch of times before going to voicemail. I dial it again.
I swear, if I have to go back to that party to track this fucking chick down, I will strangle someone. A female answers the phone. “Is this Jo?” I ask.
“Yeah, who the hell is this?”
“Jo!” Kate yells. “It’s Caulter.”
“Oh. Caulter.” She hushes someone in the background. “Hang on, I’ll be right there, Maverick.” Maverick? Are we in New Hampshire or a fucking eighties movie?
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
Now I’m irritated. “Are you still at the party?”
“As if it’s any of your business, I’m hanging out with someone.”
“So you left your friend at a party alone to go screw some guy?” Kate reaches for the phone, and I move away. “She’s trashed. What the hell did you give her?”
“I thought she was hanging with someone,” Jo says, her mouth away from the phone as she talks to the dumbass she's there with. “What’s your friend’s name? Dan? Derek?” She pauses. “She was hanging out with Dan. She wasn’t drunk; she only had a beer.”
I’m breathing deeply to keep my voice calm, despite the fact that I want to reach through the phone and rip Jo’s fucking head off. "What exactly did you give her?"
"What's your problem?" She laughs. "Kate was right, you are a real asshole. She took some anxiety medication to calm down before the party. She'll be a little loopy but she'll be fine."
"And then you gave her beer," I say. Deep breath. Calming breath. I'm practicing that yoga shit my mother is constantly doing.
"One beer," she says. "It's not going to kill her."
"And after that, you left her at a party with some guy whose name you don't even know," I say. "Are you fucking stupid? Do you know what could have happened to her?"
"Calm down, cowboy," Jo says. "I think she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself."
"You stupid bitch." I throw the phone across the room, incensed with Kate's so-called friend, before I whirl around to look at Kate, where she's lying on the bed.
Naked.
The red dress is in a crumpled heap on the floor, her bra and panties casually tossed on top of it. Kate is lying on her stomach, her legs kicked up, her cheek against the pillow, looking at me over her shoulder.
I have the impulse to walk over to the bed and grab her thighs, to pull that perfect curvy ass up onto my lap and slap her flesh hard, for being so colossally stupid as to trust that friend of hers. I'm so livid I can barely breathe.
"Come here," she says.
I shake my head. "Not tonight, Kate."
She pouts. "I'm naked, lying on the bed, telling you to come over here because I want to suck. your. cock." She punctuates each of the words.
Groaning, I shake my head again. "It's not happening, Kate."
My words come out harsher, gruffer than I intend, and she rolls over, sitting up on the bed, her tits bouncing.
Those fucking tits. My mouth practically waters at the sight of them. They're perfect. The girls out in Malibu have fake ones, even chicks my age. It's like a joke -- get a pair of tits for your sixteenth birthday, you know? It’s the same thing in New York, except no one’s getting implants -- they’re just skin and bones, starved to the point of being so rail thin there’s nothing there, ass or tits.
But Kate’s tits aren't like other girls’. They're perky, on the smaller side, but I like the way they fit in my hands, a handful of perfect flesh. They make the tits on the girls I usually screw look just...tacky.