Dirty For Me (Motor City Royals) Read Online Free PDF Page B

proving a point.”
    “By being threatening and intimidating?”
    “Yeah. You needed to feel how vulnerable you are.”
    “Right, so I would know how stupid I was?” She tore her gaze resolutely away from his hands. “If so, point made.”
    “It’s not about you being stupid. It’s about being able to protect yourself.”
    “I can protect myself just fine.”
    “Like you did back in that hallway? That’s why you accepted my ride, right? Because you could protect yourself and weren’t afraid standing around out there on the sidewalk by yourself.”
    Anger roiled in her gut. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him. It picked at an old scab, one that was painful. One that had been healing very well on its own. “Violence is not the answer.”
    “You think it’s about violence?” He gave her another searing glance. “Pretty girl, it’s about control.”
    * * *
    She stared at him like he was insane. Well, whatever. He wasn’t wrong. People who spouted all that anti-violence bullshit generally had no appreciation of the realities of life. It was all violence as far as he was concerned and pretending otherwise was just putting your fucking head in the sand.
    What mattered was the control. In life, in the fight. Control of your actions, your decisions, your emotions. Every damn thing you did. Because once you lost control of yourself, you were fucking meat. He’d learned that lesson very early on.
    That’s what he enjoyed about his fights. They were a carefully controlled burn-off, allowing him to let a little of the darkness inside him out, in a place where everyone knew the rules. Where there were no surprises. You either won or you lost, there was nothing in between.
    Because you couldn’t fight the darkness. Everyone had it, everyone. Possibly even her.
    But then what would she know? She was fucking money from head to toe. She reeked of it. Polished and perfect, she probably had never had to fight for anything in her whole damn life.
    Christ, why was he pushing her again? If she didn’t want to join the class, she didn’t want to. He sure as shit wasn’t going to force her.
    What he was going to do was take her home—if the address she’d given him was indeed her home and he suspected it probably wasn’t. Then he’d go back down to Gino’s for this evening’s fight, let off some of the steam that had been building up inside him.
    Silence fell inside the car. She didn’t ask him any more questions, withdrawing into herself, hiding behind the walls he’d seen in her cool, dark eyes.
    If she’d been a different woman he might have found that intriguing. But she wasn’t a different woman. She was the kind he’d never touch, not in a million years. Not after what had happened to Madison.
    Christ, if he wanted pussy there’d be plenty of it at the fight anyway. The girls there never asked for his number afterward. They were as happy to fuck and run as he was.
    They were drawing up to the address she’d given him, some nice-looking Midtown brick building with a café at street level and apartments up top. The gentrification had well and truly happened here, nothing like the first stages that were going on down in Royal Road, his own neighborhood. There were a few things that had been revived, an old warehouse—much like his shitty gym—that was now a nightclub. An abandoned row of stores that had been converted into a restaurant and café. The old building housing Rachel’s tattoo studio that she was looking to turn the rest of into an art gallery. Yeah, it was happening all right. Part of why he’d stayed in Detroit when common sense should have told him to get out and get as far away from the city as possible. Because, fuck, if Detroit could rebuild itself, come out good as new, then so could he.
    Slowly he drew the Trans Am up beside the curb and stopped.
    She began to fiddle with her seatbelt. “Thank you. I appreciate the trouble you took to—”
    “I know this isn’t your