Fury on Fire (Devil's Rock #3)(6)

She smiled crookedly. “Sure you do.” She sighed and shook her head with an air of defeat. Which was just as well. She didn’t want to fix him. She liked him just the way he was. Always up for a good time between the sheets. “You should meet her.”

Nice. He didn’t do nice. He didn’t have nice in his life. It wasn’t that he didn’t want it. He just wouldn’t know what to do with it if he had it. For the majority of his life, he had been swimming in shit.

He reached for the shirt he’d tossed on the recliner in the corner of his room and pulled it over his head. “Let yourself out.”

“I always do.” Rolling her eyes, she sighed. “I guess this is my cue to go.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say you had to go.”

“Didn’t you?” She slipped on her underwear and hooked on her bra. “You know someday I’m gonna get offended at your wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am attitude.” She grabbed her T-shirt. “Fortunately for you, I just want you for your body.” Reaching between them, she fondled his dick. “And for what you can do with this.” Grinning, she stepped back and finished getting dressed.

“Really?” he smirked. “Someday?”

She sniffed and rubbed under her eyes, where her mascara had smeared. “Not today apparently.”

“Night, Serena.” He turned to leave the bedroom.

Her voice stopped him. “You should come by the club. My friend Marcy was asking about you.”

“Marcy?” he asked blankly.

“Yeah. The other redhead. The fake one.” She tossed her mane of red hair proudly. “She said she’d like to be on your list.”

North winced. He didn’t like it when Serena referenced his “list” like he actually kept a running catalog of women on hand to access when he needed a quick f*ck.

Don’t you?

He only ever did one-night stands. It was never messy that way. No one became entangled. Occasionally, those one-night stands were repeated. As with Serena. Sleeping with the same woman was sometimes convenient.

Turning, he passed through his bedroom door. Serena followed him down the stairs. She slipped on her high heels where she’d kicked them off near his kitchen table and motioned to the plate of scones.

“You should try one. They’re amazing.”

Homemade scones. So f*cking domestic.

He stared at the plate. He owned a few dishes, but he usually ate off paper plates that he bought in bulk. He didn’t own a plate like this—cream colored with tiny little flowers edging the border. Briar would own plates like these. His brother would eat off a plate like this. Knox could pretend he was someone else. That he’d never been kept inside a cage.

Not North.

She sighed. “Fine. Be stubborn.”

He didn’t look up from the plate as Serena pressed a kiss to his lips and slipped out of his house. He heard her car door slam in the night. The engine started and faded away. He began to turn, intending to head out back to his welding shop, but then he was spinning around. He had plenty of work to finish—his own freelance and custom pieces he was hired to do for the garage where he worked—but first he had to deal with this. He snatched up the plate and pulled open the front door.

He stalked across the shared front porch. The light was on and he could see there was already a welcome mat in front of the door. Of course.

Bending, he set the plate with the three remaining scones on the mat.

He didn’t want to make nice with his new neighbor. He didn’t want homemade scones. He wasn’t that man. His time at Devil’s Rock had seen to that. Twelve years turned men into animals, and he was nothing less than a f*cking brute. Scarred inside and out.

Two years free on the outside didn’t erase that. Nothing could be undone. Nothing was ever erased.

He knew it. He wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

He couldn’t if he wanted to.



She was still awake when she heard the back door open and slam shut next door. The slam reverberated for moments, traveling into the bones of her house. It was strange that she was connected to another person like this, sharing and sleeping within one actual structure, only a wall dividing them. And yet they hadn’t met yet. She didn’t even fully know what he looked like. Just the sound of him f*cking.

She bounded from her bed and made it to her bedroom window in two strides. She peered through the blinds, craning her neck to get a better view of the figure striding across the backyard.

It was him. North Callaghan. The guy who had just made a woman scream like a porn star. She shifted in place on her feet, suddenly feeling itchy inside her own skin as she observed the way his jeans hung low on his hips . . . the denim hugging his ass perfectly. Her already alert girl parts clenched.

From her position at the second-floor window, she could see into both her yard and the neighbor’s, a fact she had noticed when she initially viewed the property. A work shed of some sort sat at the far back of his yard.

Usually the double doors were shut, but tonight they stood open, revealing various tools, machinery and equipment inside.

She sighed as he disappeared into the shed. Out of sight, out of mind. Well, not exactly out of mind. She was standing rooted to the spot, still staring after him like he was the hot lifeguard at the community pool the summer she turned thirteen.

God. She was hard up if the sight of a man’s back got her this flustered.