Chapter 7 A New Roommate?

• My God, am I never going to see her again? Is that it? She has simply disappeared into thin air? I can’t stomach the knowledge that she’s out loose in Vegas, possibly falling prey to debauched men…when I was presented with the chance to keep her safe. How could I squander such a gift?
• I’m strong enough to withstand the temptation of sex, aren’t I? If it means her safety?
• I’ll never know. Because I fucked up so severely. So unforgivably.
• That bellow is threatening to rip out of me, so I hasten toward the driver’s side—
• And that’s when I see her, curled up in the back seat of the car beside mine.
• At first, the relief nearly knocks me onto my knees, but right on the heels of that is utter outrage and denial. She is shivering. Sleeping in a parking garage. My angel? I begin to shake with renewed rage, burning with the need to punch a hole in one of the concrete walls. It takes me long minutes to get myself under control enough to knock on the window of her ancient Nissan. She stirs on the back seat beneath a threadbare jacket she’s using as a blanket, yawning with such abandon that my heart zip chords up into my mouth. Then she blinks up at me, going very still.
• “Please don’t call security,” she says, her voice muffled by the glass.
• That’s what she thinks of me. That I would get her in trouble.
• I loathe knowing that, but I suppose it’s better than the fear I was expecting if I ever saw her again. The way a young girl would fear a man who spanked her without permission.
• She even spread her thighs for those strikes of your palm.
• She let you see that pretty little asshole.
• Doesn’t matter. I acted abominably and it won’t happen again.
• God obviously put this down-on-her-luck girl in my path for a reason and my dick needs to stay the hell out of it.
• “I’m not going to call security,Angel. Open the door.”
• Several beats pass. “Why?”
• “So I can bring you home. You can’t sleep in a parking garage.”
• “I don’t have a home.”
• My heart isn’t going to survive the morning. “That’s why I’m bringing you to mine, honey.”
• “Oh.” She chews on her bottom lip a moment. “No, I think I’ll stay here.”
• I hold on to my patience by a thread. She’s shivering, dammit. “You would rather sleep in your car than come home with me?”
• She nods.
• My stomach sinks to my knees.
• “Why?” I manage, already knowing the answer.
• “Because you think I’m evil.”
• “Open this door,” I demand, prepared to rip it off if necessary. “Forgive me for what I said. You are pure and everything good. I simply wasn’t prepared for the…power of my attraction to you. But I’m prepared now to ignore it.”
• Liar.
• I am saying these things to reassure her, but she only seems more upset. “Ignore it?”
• “Yes,” I say, even as my cock is growing stiffer at the sight of her bare legs. She doesn’t need to know about that. I can put a leash on my attraction. I can. She is barely an adult and living on the street. I would be an absolute bastard to take advantage of her.
• “I have a spare room at my apartment. It’s warm. I have food. You have my word that I won’t lay a hand on you again.”
• The promise sounds thin, but I’ll work on living with the hunger for her.
• I’ll master it.
• Right.
• My breath is fogging the glass because I’m trying to get a better look up her skirt. What is it going to be like when she’s living in my home? Torture. But not knowing where she’s living or if she’s safe would be a hundred times worse.
• She leans closer to the glass and I can’t help it, I can’t keep my gaze from devouring her perky tits where they spill out of her neckline. Braless. She obviously took off the white underthing to sleep. God help me.
• “If you give me the waitressing job,” she says through the glass. “I’ll come with you.”
• This girl is going to cause absolute bedlam in the casino. But in that moment, I would give my life in exchange to have her warm in my apartment, eating a meal. Safe. “Very well, Angel. But there will be rules.”
• A few seconds tick by. Then she unlocks the rear passenger door. I waste zero time wrenching open the rusted metal barrier and scooping her off the back seat, marching around the back bumper of my SUV with my eyes resolutely ahead. Don’t look. Don’t you fucking look. Don’t acknowledge how good she feels in your arms.
• “What kinds of rules?” she asks softly, her voice stroking my cock like a velvet fist.