“Are you okay?” a soft voice asked. He didn’t know if he heard it or dreamed it, hovering in the gray between awake and oblivion.

“Go away,” he said all the same. His voice sounded like his throat was made of gravel.

It didn’t go away. That soothing hand kept right on rubbing, exploring his back, just barely squeezing his arm, his neck, moving downward until it grazed his bare side where his shirt had ridden up a bit. It slipped under to score his flesh lightly with those nails. Something strangely familiar about that. Familiar and…oh yeah, f**king hot. His dick twitched and swelled. He groaned. He thought of Macy. Her soft hair. Her smell. Sinking into her wet heat. Vanilla filled his head, almost as if she were here with him.

Strong, sure fingers rubbed his erection through his jeans, and he lost his breath, grinding into the touch. A sigh escaped from somewhere behind him. It turned into words. “I missed this so much.”

He missed her. Oh f**k, he missed her. Even through the dense fog in his head, he saw her face. He couldn’t even drink enough to make her go away. What kind of hell was that to be in? What the f**k did he ever do to deserve to go there?

Soft, cool lips brushed his neck. Warm breath tickled his ear. He thrust hard against the hand rubbing his now rock-hard cock, and before he knew it, those deft fingers had freed him.

Whoa, f**k, what was happening? Jerked out of his funk, he jacked up off the couch and grabbed whoever-it-was by her arms. Yes, definitely female. A surprised gasp sounded. He’d heard it a thousand times before, when he sucked on her nipple rings or her pierced clit or thrust hard into her always-willing pu**y.

Raina. Motherfucking Raina with her hands on him.

It was no wonder all his thoughts were sex-oriented; he was so hard it hurt. But it wasn’t because of her crazy ass.

“What in the f**k are you doing?” he demanded. She wrenched her shoulders out of his grip and tried to push him back down. He wasn’t going—or so he thought. His uncoordinated muscles said otherwise, and she managed to get him halfway reclined again and her fishnet-covered leg swung over his hips. Her splayed hands slid up his chest.

“Fuck me, Ghost. Oh, God, I’m so wet for you. You remember how it was, don’t you, baby? No way that piece of rich-bitch pu**y gets you off like mine did.”

Oh, shit, she did feel good smearing against him. It would be so easy, and who the hell was there to care? He grabbed her wrists and wrenched them behind her back, capturing them both in one hand. A strangled growl tore from her throat; she loved that.

“Yes! Baby…oh, please. Please. Come into me.” He stared up at her shadowed, frantic form as she tried to squirm into position without the use of her arms. “I love you so much. Let me love you.”

He believed her. Putting pressure on the small of her back, he brought her down over him. Her hot, wet mouth fastened to the side of his neck. He growled, waiting…she was a biter. And a scratcher, and a slapper when she really got carried away. Yeah, she’d whacked him more than once in their wilder, rougher escapades. There was a reason he’d had a thing about pinning Macy’s hands down. Not that she would ever do that, it had sort of just become his thing. Especially with her.

Macy.

Raina’s teeth scraped at his skin, but only for a moment. Her throaty voice poured seductively into his ear, raising gooseflesh on his arms. “I haven’t been with anyone since you. I’m only yours. This is only yours.” Her wetness slicked over him…she’d already lost her panties before she’d climbed on top of him, if she’d been wearing any to start with. “Only yours. Take it.”

“Raina…”

Just his utterance of her name seemed to set her off again. Her wrists tugged sharply against his hold, but he tightened it, and she wasn’t going anywhere. “Let me touch you. I’m here, baby, you know I’m the only one who’s always here for you. Right? Don’t you know that?”

“I do know that.”

“God, I f**king missed you.” It was said in a rush against his lips. “You don’t know how much.”

“I know you did.” He slid his free hand up her side. She gasped and tried to insinuate her breast into it, but he eluded her and placed his palm flat to her chest. “Raina?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Get. The f**k. Off me.” And he shoved her upward, getting her mouth off him but making damn sure he kept his grip on her hands.

She thrashed and cursed, and he thought she tried once to headbutt him. The struggle continued until finally he managed to leverage himself off the couch, dumping her ass-first onto the floor. Disadvantage being, he no longer had a grip on her, and he couldn’t see. For all he knew, a lamp might fly at his skull any second now.

“You bastard!” she screeched.

“That’s right, I’m a bastard. But I’m a bastard who could’ve f**ked you just now and gone back to ignoring you tomorrow. Would that make you feel better? Because that’s all anything between you and me would ever be.”

“She doesn’t love you like I do. She won’t. No one ever will. She’ll f**k you over and f**king walk away like that other cunt did. Why can’t you see that?”

“I already see that. It doesn’t make any difference.”

“No. You love me. You have to.” Tears in her voice now. Shit. “You have to. What we had…”

“What we had was something you could go out and have with any motherfucker in this building. Fighting and sex and more fighting. Maybe you need that toxicity to be fulfilled, but I don’t. It wasn’t love, Raina; it never was. It was something else. It was ugly.”

“That is what you need,” she said, voice seething in the dark. Her hands found his thighs—she must be up on her knees—and he was so off-balance he almost fell back on the couch. Fuck, he had to get out the door. “Not these squeaky-clean sunshiney bitches you and Brian have. You need ugly. No one else will understand that about you.”

“Then I guess I’ll be alone.” He shook her off, stepping back out of her reach and just then realizing he needed to stuff himself back in his pants in a big friggin’ hurry, before she got to him again and he did something stupid.

“Seth…?”

“What.”

“I can’t live without you.”

Amazing, that the angry little she-devil on stage, the unhinged banshee every guy in the crowd would’ve killed to take home and have her violate him twenty different ways, was reduced to this weak, sniveling, disjointed plea in the dark. Over him. He wanted to stay angry at her, but all he could muster at the moment was pity. And sadness, that he could understand. Hell. He’d been there.

He was there now.

“Here’s a thought, Raina. Try.”

He was zipping up his fly when the door flew open.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was amazing. Brian seemed to know every person in this building. At least ten of them stopped him to ask about ink. Most of them he indulged for a minute or two, ever edging toward the back. Always, the questions involved some variation of, “When are you gonna leave that one-horse f**khole and set up shop here, man?” Perish the thought that he and Candace should leave. At least he always replied with, “I’m needed there way more than I am here,” which was comforting.