Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(39)

Sierra.

Sierra.

Sierra.

The need to kick something dangles on the edge of feeling almost numbing when my cock grows hard, pressing against the zipper of my jeans. There she sits, all perfect posture and self-aware. Straight faced and confident. Pale peach lips, sharp cheekbones, strong jaw. She doesn’t smile, pout, or frown. Her full lips remain in a straight line, completely still, like she’s promised herself a giant margarita if she doesn’t so much as budge them with a strong exhale.

The peach blouse she wears is the same shade as her lips, making them pop that much more. It frustrates me that I can’t figure out exactly what she’s thinking behind those blank silver eyes and long, thick black lashes. She’s put up a wall, it’s easy to tell. One that she doesn’t plan on letting anybody at her table have the chance at sneaking past. I can’t help but stare as she briefly narrows her sights on the slightly hunched over man sitting across from her. The same one that I can see clear as fucking day dragging his foot up her leg from beneath the table.

He’s fucking ballsy.

I’ve never wanted to rip a limb from someone’s body more than I do right now. I stand rigid, glaring daggers at the fingers of the guy's left hand as they lay on his thigh before bravely travelling away from him, knuckles brushing the outside of Sierra’s exposed knee.

I blow out a hot gush of air when she flinches, angling herself away from his touch.

She flinches when he tries to touch her, yet invites him for dinner with the other people at the table that I assume are her family? Confusion clouds my judgment, making it harder to stay calm. My jaw aches from clenching it for so long, but I can’t manage to relax it. It feels like I’m about to slip on my boxing gloves and put on a show for the entire restaurant.

My lips curl inward at the thought that maybe she’s been out, able to fuck around with other people, while I now have a hard-on for the first time since being inside of her. It’s infuriating. Absolutely maddening. A spiked pit grows in my stomach that feels a hell of a lot like jealousy.

Every muscle, bone, and fibre in my body wants me to stalk over there and toss the prick from his seat until he’s not even in the same building as Sierra. From the fitted suit jacket and shiny black dress shoes that look like they’ve never been worn before tonight, I know that he’s here to impress. And that’s the last damn thing I want to let him do, for reasons that I will deny over and over and over again until they burn to ash.

I don’t want him to see the way her eyes burn with something primal and unapologetic before she tosses out a sassy comment or how her bottom lip pulls slightly to the right side when she’s nervous. They’re completely selfish thoughts. Ones that I have no right thinking about. Maybe that’s what pisses me off the most.

And when the guy wraps an entire palm around Sierra’s turned knee and straightens it out, she doesn’t flinch or move from his touch this time.

It’s then that I don’t bother continuing to watch.

I straighten myself out and get the fuck out of there before the last remnants of my pride are squashed like an ant on the pavement.





Chapter Seventeen





Sierra





Voices around me mesh into a symphony of utter misery. My heels click clack on the sidewalk as I move towards Clare’s SUV like my ass is on fire. A deep, more dominant voice rambles on and on about something with my father, becoming louder and louder by the second. I know Logan is trying to catch up with me, but I only move faster.

My hackles are still raised, beyond frustrated with the way Logan touched me during dinner like he had a right to do so. What started off as simple, yet unwelcomed brushes of his foot along my calf soon became firm squeezes of my knee under the table regardless of how far I had tried to pull myself away from his wandering hands.

I’ve never been one to love the attention that comes with causing a scene in public. I become far too nervous and self-aware to let multiple strangers watch my every move, judging you from the way you handle yourself to if you spit when you sneer angry, spiteful words. Now add in a very impressionable child to the mix, and I knew that there was no way that I could get away with backhanding the son of a bitch without risking teaching my niece that that is an appropriate way to act.

I can’t even remember the last time that I was so livid my hands shook and my chest constricted like a python had coiled itself around my ribs, planning on making me its dinner. Logan was supposed to stay rotting in a cemetery filled with all of the other figures of my past that had hurt me in some way over the years. I’ve been working so damn hard at moving on with my life, to not see reminders of him in every bottle of rum in my cupboard or picture of London on the wall of my home office.

But of course, it was my own mother that had to pour gasoline all over everything that I’ve accomplished before sending it all up in flames. I’m not sure why I’m even remotely surprised.

My most prominent childhood memory of her is from Christmas 2005. I had just turned ten the week before Christmas, and Clare had promised me that she would no doubt be winning the Best Sister In History award with the combined birthday and Christmas gift she had bought me a few days prior.

Turns out, Clare had saved up all of her babysitting money from the past two summers so that she could buy me the dollhouse that I had been begging our parents for for the past three Christmases. My big sister hadn’t even managed to wrap it in christmas paper yet before my mother had forced her to return it, claiming that her and Dad had already bought me one while accusing Clare of trying to become my mother when I already had one that loved me just enough.