The words finally came. A big fat no materialized on my tongue. I opened my mouth to object, but someone else was suddenly speaking.
“Sorry. This one’s mine.” Logan reached for my arm, fingers closing around my wrist as he guided me down from the table. Relief coursed through me. Until I remembered that I was a big girl who didn’t need rescuing.
Lineman scowled at him. I added my own scowl. I wasn’t his or anyone’s.
Lineman stepped between us, blocking me from total retreat. Logan still held my wrist. “You already had your fun.” He nodded at the pool table. “Now it’s my turn.”
Logan grinned like he wasn’t challenging the thick-necked guy who probably added steroids to his Chex Mix. “Sorry, man, but she’s not playing the game.” Logan clapped a hand on his muscle-sloped shoulder like they were old friends.
Lineman looked down at Logan’s hand on his shoulder and then back to him. “She took a ticket.” He sounded like a petulant child now.
“I—I’m sorry.” I finally found my voice. Stammer and all. “I didn’t know what the ticket was for.”
Lineman grunted and stepped out of the way. He held up a finger in my face. “You should always know the rules before you play.”
I nodded, feeling like an idiot. Like a child being scolded for not following the instructions so clearly written on top of the paper.
Logan pulled me through the crowd and out into the more open space of the loft. Only he didn’t stop there. He didn’t release me.
His long strides moved swiftly, leading us through the press of bodies. As if it was his right to touch me. As if his brother dating my best friend gave him the right to interfere in my life.
His grip shifted to hold my hand. I tried not to think about his hand. About how warm and firm and large it felt wrapped around mine. Harris wasn’t big for holding hands, but when he had it had never felt like this. For a guy, Harris’s hands just weren’t that large. Our hands were about the same size.
I shook my head slightly. I had to stop doing that. Stop comparing every guy out there to Harris. It wasn’t healthy.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.
“Out of here,” he said over his shoulder, his voice deep enough that he didn’t even have to lift it over the thumping bass for me to hear. I didn’t protest. Didn’t stop him. Eyes followed us as we moved across the room, and I just wanted to get away from the stares. At least I told myself it was that. I told myself it had nothing to do with the way my hand felt in Logan Mulvaney’s. Or that I couldn’t get the image of him and the way he had looked at me as he kissed those girls out of my head.
Chapter 3
HIS STRIDES WERE LONG. I took two steps for every one of his, trying to keep up. I spotted the elevator ahead, at the far end of the loft, directly in our path.
A voice called his name. “Logan?”
He stopped, turning partly to face the girl walking toward us. She was dressed all in black. Even her hair was dark as a raven’s wing. Dyed, I suspected. The only other color was the slash of cherry-red lips in her pale face. Her blue eyes shifted from Logan to me and then back again. I tried not to shift beneath her intense regard. She was beautiful in a devour-you-alive kind of way.
“It’s all right, Rachel,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded and turned with a sexy slink of her hips, heading toward the pool table and the crowd still gathered there.
Logan pulled me back toward the elevator. I wanted to ask about her. I didn’t think Logan had a girlfriend. After the pool-table scene that seemed evident. Girlfriends, plural, was more his thing. But something had passed between them. Something that wasn’t casual. Something proprietary.