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Loving The Predator _ By Marcelle Sixx
Regal LeGrand might be a stacked young man with rippling abs, a delicious looking happy trail, and gorgeous honey colored eyes that would make most young women swoon at the sight of them, but Regal is not your typical youngster. Though he has riches, with plenty of charm, there is a mean flip side to him. When the rage engulfs him, or there’s a full moon, Regal shows his true self. Only one woman crosses paths with him that is not afraid of his infamous snarl. Unfortunately for her, he catches a whiff of her pheromones and she won’t be able to escape his claws.
Seven Brown considers herself invisible. It’s not that she prefers it, but she’s forced to live life as such. Residing in a broken home, it’s not easy for her to accept love and attention. Especially when it’s unexpectedly given by the one the town’s people refer to as the Savage— Regal. Something seems to spark between the two, whether it’s Regal latching on to Seven’s scent, or her not being able to shake Regal’s convincing grin Whatever it is, it causes Regal to stalk her, but not as his prey. After all, it is mating season, and Regal can smell the virgin that is Seven from a mile away.
Would she be able to handle it among his other flaws? Can she give in to the irresistible charm and the riches? However, Seven has her own secrets when coping with the pain. Would she look any different to Regal if he found out? Is she simply the perfect mate, or someone that Regal could live the rest of his immortal years with?
TAKE A PEEK INSIDE!
Prologue
Regal
It was midnight. Being in the woods as an eighteen-year-old young man would only draw horror movie clichés. One would think that I wasn’t safe out there on my own, but if they knew better, then they would close their traps and let me do my own thing.
Nocturnal life sang to me, almost throwing me off my hunt. Usually, I wouldn’t prey. I would simply stuff myself with steak, but no. I had an itch that needed to be scratched. A hunter decided to visit the woods near my house. I could smell his hormone levels from my bedroom on the second floor of my home. He was a health nut, a vegetarian, and he wasn’t in heat. Others like me had to watch what we ate. You get a fat slob full of high cholesterol or a disease, and it could either make you sick or slow you down. Not this one. He was a good challenge.
On soft feet, I inched closer to the exit of the woods into the pasture where he was seated on a log. He dabbled on his cell phone with a rifle right next to him. If I were with my friends, I would bet money on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to drop his phone and grab his gun in time to defend himself by the time I pounced.
He yawned. It showed me weakness.
To be an expert hunter, you needed to know when your prey was vulnerable. This big and buff buck was most definitely that, and he was most likely going to put up one hell of a fight. I needed one to last me for a few months until my next hunt, just to make this one worth it. That was only if I didn’t bite into his jugular first.
Seven
Thank God the rain had finally stopped falling outside, even though it didn’t help any of my emotions. As hard as the rain fell outside moments ago, red fluid seeped from my wrists and trickled down to my palm. It didn’t stop the words I had coming my way in an hour or so, and it wouldn’t stop the strange stares in the halls of my school, but it helped. I vowed a long time ago that I wouldn’t try and kill myself again. I would just resort to old habits. My personal high.
Every time I put a razor to my skin, it took me into a world that soothed everything else, and took my mind off the mental pain; distracting me with the physical pain. I dabbed the cotton ball soaked in alcohol on the cut I had opened, then put a slim band-aid on it. Afterward, I pulled my long sleeve shirt down to cover it.
“Venny, get your stupid ass out of the damn bathroom and make up the damn couch!” His voice boomed through the thin bathroom door and made me flinch at his order.
I rolled my eyes and applied my eye makeup just to hide the emotion on my face. If it weren’t for DKNY’s concealer and decent shadow, people would be able to see how much effect their words and stares had on me.
A brick. I wish I were nothing but a brick that could stop everything and everyone in my path. But I couldn’t be. Somewhere along the lines, someone surfaced that hated. Someone so weak and voiceless. Instead of a brick, I was but a soft mute. That’s all I could be.
“Venny!”
I snatched the door open, just as I had thrown my backpack over my shoulder. During the short trip down the hallway to the living room, I had imagined all the possible things I could do to the man that my mother claimed. All he ever did was take up space and bother me when he wasn’t passed out in a drunken mess. The pain started at home and ended there. There was no way out for me. Even if I decided to get rid of him, there would still be my own mother, who wouldn’t have given a breath to me had I suffocated.
“What?” I mumbled, staring at the tall and fat slob in front of me.
He was wearing a tank top that was stained with food he had already eaten. “Don’t fucking ‘what’ me.” Even was so fat his muffled voice whistled when he spoke below a holler. “Didn’t I ask you to make up the damn couch?”
I looked over at my mother, who was now standing in the hall, wiping her blood from the wall where he had shoved her head into it during the wee hours of the morning. I would never sleep when he beat her early in the morning. How could I when her screams kept me up? The only reason I looked over at her was for confirmation. Confirmation she would never give me.
“Don’t fucking look at your mama! She can’t help you!”
“I didn’t even sleep on the couch,” I fired back.
“I didn’t ask you if you slept on it! I told you to fucking make it up!”
I rolled my eyes at him, then popped the blanket that draped the pushed down cushions. Behind me, on the TV, the news anchor said something about what we called the Brockmoore Beast. I had to stop and turn away from the couch to see the sheriff speaking nervously about the ordeal. Apparently, a skilled hunter was mauled in the woods last night, and he was trying his best to make it seem like it was a group of kids who most likely murdered this man. He could make up excuses all he wanted. I had a feeling the urban legend was true. It even brought tourists into our small town to seek out the truth for themselves. Give or take a few more stories and the Travel Channel was going to show up to sign a deal with the mayor just to film a series about it.
“Venny, get your head out of that TV,” my stepfather, Robert, warned me.
I stormed out of the front door. Instead of driving me like he had always done, my mother said something under her breath before he hit the door, so he tossed the keys at me and slammed the door behind him. I didn’t want to hear her screams, so I hopped into the old silver Ford truck and drove off. It was people like him that made me thirst for the razor in the first place.
Chapter 1
The radio didn’t work. I didn’t want to listen to it anyway. I focused on avoiding the rain if it poured again because this asshole’s windshield wipers didn’t work. To add on to the annoyance, a car almost sideswiped me. It made me swerve over onto the shoulder of the road. It was then that I hit a broken piece of glass and had an immediate blowout. My morning couldn’t get any fucking better!
I hopped out, slamming the heavy door shut to look down at the tire on my side. Sure enough, it was resting on the rim. What the fuck am I going to do?
My stepfather had such a damn tight leash on my mother he believed if she had a cell phone, it would be another excuse or reason to cheat on him. What the fuck that had to do with me, I don’t know, but I stole one a while back, but fucking left it in my locker at school. Great.
I grabbed at my braids I had put in last night and started to panic. It was at least two miles until the next gas station that had a pay phone out front, and I was not about to walk those miles, in case it started to rain again.
What was I to do? I sat on the tailgate of the truck with my thumb out, hoping someone would have the decency to pull the fuck over and help me out, but they didn’t. Just a bunch of selfish motherfuckers. When I thought I would just give up and wrap myself in the hideous blue tarp in the back of the truck and walk like my life depended on it, a black Lincoln pulled up a few feet in front of me and stopped.
I wondered who the Good Samaritan could be behind the dark tint until he stepped out to show me who he was.
I held my breath like I had always done when meeting people. I was afraid of the unknown.
He walked up to me with his pocket chain on his black Dickie shorts dancing at his leg. It was all too familiar to me of how much of a savage he was. He was the guy that all the gangsters dodged. He made the toughest of them all sit down and pout like little puppy dogs. He was the badass silent one who made the hot twat girls drop panties by the color of his eyes, the mane on his head and the physique that said he spent many hours in the gym somehow. His presence was known to all, of not to bother him if you weren’t in his clique. But he would still talk to those beneath him, so to say.
I stared into those frightening pale hazel eyes of his and quickly looked away.
“You need some help?” he asked me quietly as he walked around to the driver’s side of the truck to see the tire.
Out of all people who could have stopped, why did it have to be him? Just by looking at him you could tell he’d rip your throat open. And the person I was… I was most definitely timid when it came to people period, let alone The Savage. Regal Legrand.
I waited for him to come back into my line of sight before I nodded. A few seconds beyond the appropriate time I was supposed to answer had passed.
“I’ll take you to the tire shop up the street.” He took the lead to his shining black luxury car. “I know somebody who can bring a tow truck for you.”
Still, I said nothing.
He turned to me and raised his slit left eyebrow, I guess trying to figure me out. “Got somebody to come and get you?”
I gulped before shaking my head.
“If I were you, I’d get in the car before the rain starts again.”
I carefully watched him pull open the door to his car before I nervously slid off the tailgate and approached the passenger side.
When I was inside the Lincoln, he pressed his iPhone to his ear to make a call. I squirmed a little in the seat. The warm air from the vent and the gentle vibration from the leather seat relaxed me a little.
“Morrow,” he said into his phone. “I’m about to bring somebody to you. She has a flat tire on a ‘81 Ford F-150… Okay. See you in a little bit.” After he had hung up, he looked over at me, merely trembling in my seat, and turned the heat up. “Aren’t you in one of my classes?” he asked me.
“No,” I lied right off.
Don’t get me wrong, The Savage was cute and all, but I wasn’t really a people person. I knew for a fact that if we were at school, he wouldn’t be talking to me. Truth be told, I wouldn’t be seen with me either. All the years I had passed him and he passed me, he hadn’t noticed me until I was somehow in distress.
“Are you sure?” he pressed. “I swear I’ve seen you before.”
No shit! You even had a few classes with me in junior high school, and you’re just now noticing me? “Maybe around.” I shrugged, suddenly depressed that I knew I was invisible, merely. Somehow, I was happy at the same time to know I almost succeeded until today.
“Maybe so.”
I sat back in the seat as he pulled away from the shoulder of the road. I tried my best to appear to be comfortable, though I wasn’t because I was near him. Him of all people.
Regal
The girl sitting in my seat seemed to be nervous as hell. Usually, I wouldn’t give a shit, but she looked like she needed help. I had been passing her when going back and forth to get my friends and take them to school. At first, I shrugged it off and figured she could’ve simply changed the tire on her own, but when I came to get gas, I passed her again. That was a red flag for me. I didn’t like new people, but there was something about her that made me want to help.
Maybe it was the look of hopelessness and depression written all over her face. Normally, I would’ve just passed someone up, but she looked familiar, it was about to rain, and I knew for a fact she needed help.
She was pretty, yeah, and she had a nice figure on her. She looked like she didn’t have a phone with her, like she was stranded. If she weren’t, I was pretty sure she would’ve told me. I knew for a fact I saw her in school before, but I couldn’t place a damn name with her face. Whoever she was, it was evident she didn’t talk much, so that’s why I wouldn’t have noticed her.
When I pulled up to this Mexican cat named Morrow’s garage, his truck was already fired up and ready to go. I assured him I would pay for the services, and he said he would send the bill to my mama instead. He had a thing for her, but a high-class bitch like my mama wouldn’t go for a grease monkey like him. It didn’t stop him from trying, though. The girl just hopped into her truck and burned out when all was said and done. Was she serious? No “thank you” or nothing. She couldn’t hide from me. I had a photographic memory and an impeccable sense of smell. I could track her if need be for my “thanks” she owed me. Besides, our school and our town were only so big. For certain, I would see her again.
During second period, I cut history class in peace and loitered in the hall after talking to my friends. A girl went bowling past me with her head in her hands. I was no fool. I knew she was crying. The closer she got, I noticed it was the girl I had helped earlier that morning.
Before I could reach out to her and ask her what the matter was, she bolted into the restroom door right next to me.
“So, you’re talking to trash now?” Cat asked behind me. I knew she was there because I could smell her.
I kept my eyes on the door as if the girl would come back out and say something to me, even though I knew she didn’t see me with her eyes covered. “I don’t have time,” I grumbled.
“Savage, there are other things you can be doing with your time,” she continued. “Don’t get caught up in this girl. She’s trouble. I can smell it on her.”
“I don’t. And if anything, she won’t be any more trouble than we already are.”
“Don’t do this. We have a semester and a half before we can finally go home.”
I put my hand up over my shoulder and listened. No, my ear wasn’t close to the door, but I closed my eyes and focused. I could hear a whimper and a wince before it all stopped together. Something else told me to just leave her alone and it wasn’t Cat that told me so. The sound of her heart had pounded in misery before it sped up to some sort of thrill. She was in some sort of trouble. What was she doing in there?
That night, I went home to find my mother and her “associate” laughing it up in the dining room near our staircase, but I didn’t stop to introduce myself or speak. I hated it when my mother brought these dudes over. They didn’t sit right with me. Maybe because I was very overprotective if I placed people close to my heart. And that girl today? For some odd reason, she was inching her way there without trying.
I dove into my king size floor bed face-first and hugged my pillow under my head. My phone hadn’t stopped vibrating in my pocket and I knew why. The Pack— my crew— was having another get-together tonight, and I just wasn’t feeling it now. It was my homie, Cypher, calling, and I still hadn’t answered. He probably needed an escape, or either he was trying to see if I could bring something. Still, I wasn’t budging.
It took for my mother’s loud moans and cries of passion to surface down the hall and through my bedroom door for me to hop up and grab my keys. To have a multi-million-dollar company, all she wanted was sex from these dudes and nothing more. She probably assumed I had put on my headphones and had drowned her out like I did every night. The churning of my stomach over my mama’s activities made me jog down the back set of steps to the back door, get in my car, and pull off.
Yeah, I could’ve just put in my headphones or blasted my music, but she hated it when I played my music loud when she had company. For the sake of argument and to keep my temper down, leaving was the best thing for me to do. It wasn’t like old boy would be there in the morning. He was about to be fucked and tossed out like yesterday’s trash because my mama wasn’t interested in finding me a stepfather. She knew her son was different in many ways, and she wasn’t introducing that into anyone else’s life.
I tossed my phone over onto my passenger seat after sliding into the driver’s seat. It was still vibrating. I hated ringtones, so I left my phone on vibrate. Loud noises didn’t do anything for me since I didn’t like loud noises by surprise. They angered me. But if I needed to calm down, the best thing for me to do was listen to my own heartbeat.
On the way to Cypher’s spot, I saw someone walking down the side of the road, wearing a hoodie and light colored jeans. Specks of something dark were on the backs of her calves. I knew it was a woman because of her body shape. I knew who she was because of her walk. And when I got close enough, I verified her by her smell.
When I rolled the window down, she noticed the car slowing beside her and sped up her pace.
“Why are you out this time of night?” I asked her, not getting any answer in return. “It’s okay, I don’t bite.” That was completely half-truth and lie. If she stayed in her place, she wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Still not getting a response, I swerved in front of her and cut off her path.
She watched me hop out of the car and started to step away from me until I gently caught her arm.
“Where are you off to? I don’t think you should be out here this time of night. You know the freaks come out—”
“I have to go.” She cut me off and pulled away from me. She then walked past me like I was actually going to let her do it.
I stepped in front of her and held my hands behind my back, showing her I meant no harm. “I can’t let you go anywhere,” I teased. “Not until you tell me your name, and why you’re walking around like you have nowhere to be.”
***END OF SAMPLE***
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Seven Brown considers herself invisible. It’s not that she prefers it, but she’s forced to live life as such. Residing in a broken home, it’s not easy for her to accept love and attention. Especially when it’s unexpectedly given by the one the town’s people refer to as the Savage— Regal. Something seems to spark between the two, whether it’s Regal latching on to Seven’s scent, or her not being able to shake Regal’s convincing grin Whatever it is, it causes Regal to stalk her, but not as his prey. After all, it is mating season, and Regal can smell the virgin that is Seven from a mile away.
Would she be able to handle it among his other flaws? Can she give in to the irresistible charm and the riches? However, Seven has her own secrets when coping with the pain. Would she look any different to Regal if he found out? Is she simply the perfect mate, or someone that Regal could live the rest of his immortal years with?
TAKE A PEEK INSIDE!
Prologue
Regal
It was midnight. Being in the woods as an eighteen-year-old young man would only draw horror movie clichés. One would think that I wasn’t safe out there on my own, but if they knew better, then they would close their traps and let me do my own thing.
Nocturnal life sang to me, almost throwing me off my hunt. Usually, I wouldn’t prey. I would simply stuff myself with steak, but no. I had an itch that needed to be scratched. A hunter decided to visit the woods near my house. I could smell his hormone levels from my bedroom on the second floor of my home. He was a health nut, a vegetarian, and he wasn’t in heat. Others like me had to watch what we ate. You get a fat slob full of high cholesterol or a disease, and it could either make you sick or slow you down. Not this one. He was a good challenge.
On soft feet, I inched closer to the exit of the woods into the pasture where he was seated on a log. He dabbled on his cell phone with a rifle right next to him. If I were with my friends, I would bet money on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to drop his phone and grab his gun in time to defend himself by the time I pounced.
He yawned. It showed me weakness.
To be an expert hunter, you needed to know when your prey was vulnerable. This big and buff buck was most definitely that, and he was most likely going to put up one hell of a fight. I needed one to last me for a few months until my next hunt, just to make this one worth it. That was only if I didn’t bite into his jugular first.
Seven
Thank God the rain had finally stopped falling outside, even though it didn’t help any of my emotions. As hard as the rain fell outside moments ago, red fluid seeped from my wrists and trickled down to my palm. It didn’t stop the words I had coming my way in an hour or so, and it wouldn’t stop the strange stares in the halls of my school, but it helped. I vowed a long time ago that I wouldn’t try and kill myself again. I would just resort to old habits. My personal high.
Every time I put a razor to my skin, it took me into a world that soothed everything else, and took my mind off the mental pain; distracting me with the physical pain. I dabbed the cotton ball soaked in alcohol on the cut I had opened, then put a slim band-aid on it. Afterward, I pulled my long sleeve shirt down to cover it.
“Venny, get your stupid ass out of the damn bathroom and make up the damn couch!” His voice boomed through the thin bathroom door and made me flinch at his order.
I rolled my eyes and applied my eye makeup just to hide the emotion on my face. If it weren’t for DKNY’s concealer and decent shadow, people would be able to see how much effect their words and stares had on me.
A brick. I wish I were nothing but a brick that could stop everything and everyone in my path. But I couldn’t be. Somewhere along the lines, someone surfaced that hated. Someone so weak and voiceless. Instead of a brick, I was but a soft mute. That’s all I could be.
“Venny!”
I snatched the door open, just as I had thrown my backpack over my shoulder. During the short trip down the hallway to the living room, I had imagined all the possible things I could do to the man that my mother claimed. All he ever did was take up space and bother me when he wasn’t passed out in a drunken mess. The pain started at home and ended there. There was no way out for me. Even if I decided to get rid of him, there would still be my own mother, who wouldn’t have given a breath to me had I suffocated.
“What?” I mumbled, staring at the tall and fat slob in front of me.
He was wearing a tank top that was stained with food he had already eaten. “Don’t fucking ‘what’ me.” Even was so fat his muffled voice whistled when he spoke below a holler. “Didn’t I ask you to make up the damn couch?”
I looked over at my mother, who was now standing in the hall, wiping her blood from the wall where he had shoved her head into it during the wee hours of the morning. I would never sleep when he beat her early in the morning. How could I when her screams kept me up? The only reason I looked over at her was for confirmation. Confirmation she would never give me.
“Don’t fucking look at your mama! She can’t help you!”
“I didn’t even sleep on the couch,” I fired back.
“I didn’t ask you if you slept on it! I told you to fucking make it up!”
I rolled my eyes at him, then popped the blanket that draped the pushed down cushions. Behind me, on the TV, the news anchor said something about what we called the Brockmoore Beast. I had to stop and turn away from the couch to see the sheriff speaking nervously about the ordeal. Apparently, a skilled hunter was mauled in the woods last night, and he was trying his best to make it seem like it was a group of kids who most likely murdered this man. He could make up excuses all he wanted. I had a feeling the urban legend was true. It even brought tourists into our small town to seek out the truth for themselves. Give or take a few more stories and the Travel Channel was going to show up to sign a deal with the mayor just to film a series about it.
“Venny, get your head out of that TV,” my stepfather, Robert, warned me.
I stormed out of the front door. Instead of driving me like he had always done, my mother said something under her breath before he hit the door, so he tossed the keys at me and slammed the door behind him. I didn’t want to hear her screams, so I hopped into the old silver Ford truck and drove off. It was people like him that made me thirst for the razor in the first place.
Chapter 1
The radio didn’t work. I didn’t want to listen to it anyway. I focused on avoiding the rain if it poured again because this asshole’s windshield wipers didn’t work. To add on to the annoyance, a car almost sideswiped me. It made me swerve over onto the shoulder of the road. It was then that I hit a broken piece of glass and had an immediate blowout. My morning couldn’t get any fucking better!
I hopped out, slamming the heavy door shut to look down at the tire on my side. Sure enough, it was resting on the rim. What the fuck am I going to do?
My stepfather had such a damn tight leash on my mother he believed if she had a cell phone, it would be another excuse or reason to cheat on him. What the fuck that had to do with me, I don’t know, but I stole one a while back, but fucking left it in my locker at school. Great.
I grabbed at my braids I had put in last night and started to panic. It was at least two miles until the next gas station that had a pay phone out front, and I was not about to walk those miles, in case it started to rain again.
What was I to do? I sat on the tailgate of the truck with my thumb out, hoping someone would have the decency to pull the fuck over and help me out, but they didn’t. Just a bunch of selfish motherfuckers. When I thought I would just give up and wrap myself in the hideous blue tarp in the back of the truck and walk like my life depended on it, a black Lincoln pulled up a few feet in front of me and stopped.
I wondered who the Good Samaritan could be behind the dark tint until he stepped out to show me who he was.
I held my breath like I had always done when meeting people. I was afraid of the unknown.
He walked up to me with his pocket chain on his black Dickie shorts dancing at his leg. It was all too familiar to me of how much of a savage he was. He was the guy that all the gangsters dodged. He made the toughest of them all sit down and pout like little puppy dogs. He was the badass silent one who made the hot twat girls drop panties by the color of his eyes, the mane on his head and the physique that said he spent many hours in the gym somehow. His presence was known to all, of not to bother him if you weren’t in his clique. But he would still talk to those beneath him, so to say.
I stared into those frightening pale hazel eyes of his and quickly looked away.
“You need some help?” he asked me quietly as he walked around to the driver’s side of the truck to see the tire.
Out of all people who could have stopped, why did it have to be him? Just by looking at him you could tell he’d rip your throat open. And the person I was… I was most definitely timid when it came to people period, let alone The Savage. Regal Legrand.
I waited for him to come back into my line of sight before I nodded. A few seconds beyond the appropriate time I was supposed to answer had passed.
“I’ll take you to the tire shop up the street.” He took the lead to his shining black luxury car. “I know somebody who can bring a tow truck for you.”
Still, I said nothing.
He turned to me and raised his slit left eyebrow, I guess trying to figure me out. “Got somebody to come and get you?”
I gulped before shaking my head.
“If I were you, I’d get in the car before the rain starts again.”
I carefully watched him pull open the door to his car before I nervously slid off the tailgate and approached the passenger side.
When I was inside the Lincoln, he pressed his iPhone to his ear to make a call. I squirmed a little in the seat. The warm air from the vent and the gentle vibration from the leather seat relaxed me a little.
“Morrow,” he said into his phone. “I’m about to bring somebody to you. She has a flat tire on a ‘81 Ford F-150… Okay. See you in a little bit.” After he had hung up, he looked over at me, merely trembling in my seat, and turned the heat up. “Aren’t you in one of my classes?” he asked me.
“No,” I lied right off.
Don’t get me wrong, The Savage was cute and all, but I wasn’t really a people person. I knew for a fact that if we were at school, he wouldn’t be talking to me. Truth be told, I wouldn’t be seen with me either. All the years I had passed him and he passed me, he hadn’t noticed me until I was somehow in distress.
“Are you sure?” he pressed. “I swear I’ve seen you before.”
No shit! You even had a few classes with me in junior high school, and you’re just now noticing me? “Maybe around.” I shrugged, suddenly depressed that I knew I was invisible, merely. Somehow, I was happy at the same time to know I almost succeeded until today.
“Maybe so.”
I sat back in the seat as he pulled away from the shoulder of the road. I tried my best to appear to be comfortable, though I wasn’t because I was near him. Him of all people.
Regal
The girl sitting in my seat seemed to be nervous as hell. Usually, I wouldn’t give a shit, but she looked like she needed help. I had been passing her when going back and forth to get my friends and take them to school. At first, I shrugged it off and figured she could’ve simply changed the tire on her own, but when I came to get gas, I passed her again. That was a red flag for me. I didn’t like new people, but there was something about her that made me want to help.
Maybe it was the look of hopelessness and depression written all over her face. Normally, I would’ve just passed someone up, but she looked familiar, it was about to rain, and I knew for a fact she needed help.
She was pretty, yeah, and she had a nice figure on her. She looked like she didn’t have a phone with her, like she was stranded. If she weren’t, I was pretty sure she would’ve told me. I knew for a fact I saw her in school before, but I couldn’t place a damn name with her face. Whoever she was, it was evident she didn’t talk much, so that’s why I wouldn’t have noticed her.
When I pulled up to this Mexican cat named Morrow’s garage, his truck was already fired up and ready to go. I assured him I would pay for the services, and he said he would send the bill to my mama instead. He had a thing for her, but a high-class bitch like my mama wouldn’t go for a grease monkey like him. It didn’t stop him from trying, though. The girl just hopped into her truck and burned out when all was said and done. Was she serious? No “thank you” or nothing. She couldn’t hide from me. I had a photographic memory and an impeccable sense of smell. I could track her if need be for my “thanks” she owed me. Besides, our school and our town were only so big. For certain, I would see her again.
During second period, I cut history class in peace and loitered in the hall after talking to my friends. A girl went bowling past me with her head in her hands. I was no fool. I knew she was crying. The closer she got, I noticed it was the girl I had helped earlier that morning.
Before I could reach out to her and ask her what the matter was, she bolted into the restroom door right next to me.
“So, you’re talking to trash now?” Cat asked behind me. I knew she was there because I could smell her.
I kept my eyes on the door as if the girl would come back out and say something to me, even though I knew she didn’t see me with her eyes covered. “I don’t have time,” I grumbled.
“Savage, there are other things you can be doing with your time,” she continued. “Don’t get caught up in this girl. She’s trouble. I can smell it on her.”
“I don’t. And if anything, she won’t be any more trouble than we already are.”
“Don’t do this. We have a semester and a half before we can finally go home.”
I put my hand up over my shoulder and listened. No, my ear wasn’t close to the door, but I closed my eyes and focused. I could hear a whimper and a wince before it all stopped together. Something else told me to just leave her alone and it wasn’t Cat that told me so. The sound of her heart had pounded in misery before it sped up to some sort of thrill. She was in some sort of trouble. What was she doing in there?
That night, I went home to find my mother and her “associate” laughing it up in the dining room near our staircase, but I didn’t stop to introduce myself or speak. I hated it when my mother brought these dudes over. They didn’t sit right with me. Maybe because I was very overprotective if I placed people close to my heart. And that girl today? For some odd reason, she was inching her way there without trying.
I dove into my king size floor bed face-first and hugged my pillow under my head. My phone hadn’t stopped vibrating in my pocket and I knew why. The Pack— my crew— was having another get-together tonight, and I just wasn’t feeling it now. It was my homie, Cypher, calling, and I still hadn’t answered. He probably needed an escape, or either he was trying to see if I could bring something. Still, I wasn’t budging.
It took for my mother’s loud moans and cries of passion to surface down the hall and through my bedroom door for me to hop up and grab my keys. To have a multi-million-dollar company, all she wanted was sex from these dudes and nothing more. She probably assumed I had put on my headphones and had drowned her out like I did every night. The churning of my stomach over my mama’s activities made me jog down the back set of steps to the back door, get in my car, and pull off.
Yeah, I could’ve just put in my headphones or blasted my music, but she hated it when I played my music loud when she had company. For the sake of argument and to keep my temper down, leaving was the best thing for me to do. It wasn’t like old boy would be there in the morning. He was about to be fucked and tossed out like yesterday’s trash because my mama wasn’t interested in finding me a stepfather. She knew her son was different in many ways, and she wasn’t introducing that into anyone else’s life.
I tossed my phone over onto my passenger seat after sliding into the driver’s seat. It was still vibrating. I hated ringtones, so I left my phone on vibrate. Loud noises didn’t do anything for me since I didn’t like loud noises by surprise. They angered me. But if I needed to calm down, the best thing for me to do was listen to my own heartbeat.
On the way to Cypher’s spot, I saw someone walking down the side of the road, wearing a hoodie and light colored jeans. Specks of something dark were on the backs of her calves. I knew it was a woman because of her body shape. I knew who she was because of her walk. And when I got close enough, I verified her by her smell.
When I rolled the window down, she noticed the car slowing beside her and sped up her pace.
“Why are you out this time of night?” I asked her, not getting any answer in return. “It’s okay, I don’t bite.” That was completely half-truth and lie. If she stayed in her place, she wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Still not getting a response, I swerved in front of her and cut off her path.
She watched me hop out of the car and started to step away from me until I gently caught her arm.
“Where are you off to? I don’t think you should be out here this time of night. You know the freaks come out—”
“I have to go.” She cut me off and pulled away from me. She then walked past me like I was actually going to let her do it.
I stepped in front of her and held my hands behind my back, showing her I meant no harm. “I can’t let you go anywhere,” I teased. “Not until you tell me your name, and why you’re walking around like you have nowhere to be.”
***END OF SAMPLE***
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