Disengaged: A Dangerously Forbidden Love Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

slide open. Even then I was slow to open the door. I wasn’t sure if we were being invaded, if he was leaving and locking me in, or if by some miracle all of this drama was meeting a very anticlimactic end.
    He was the one who had opened both doors, and now he was on his bike walking it out of the unit. With my mouth agape, I stared as he dismounted then ticked his head for me to come to him. Walking to him was easier said than done, beyond my unsure steps I had to navigate through the now dark and quiet unit. He’d shut everything down.
    Once I reached his side, he secured the unit, and as he did so, I cast my gaze in every direction trying to gauge the time of day along with any immediate danger. I didn’t see anyone but us. All I could hear was a train rambling by. But then again, my father, a million times over, had told me that I was oblivious to the danger I walked through daily.
    The sun was starting to set which meant it was well into the evening. By now, my father would’ve surely picked up on the fact I hadn’t showed. I’d left my phone at home by accident, a mistake I didn’t realize I’d made until long after I was in Slayton’s world. Dread for the fight I’d have one way or another with my father stirred my gut.
    Slayton handed me a helmet like we were nothing more than an ordinary couple heading out for the night.
    “Wh-where are we going?” I inwardly cursed myself when it dawned on me that I’d yet to speak to this boy without a stutter much less without a tremble in my tone.
    He scuffed his boots across the ground as he moved closer to me. At first, I only stared at his chest, at the cross he had dangling there between his hard pecs, but then I forced myself to meet his steely gaze. His head was angled and tilted down at me. In one slow sensual swoop, he leaned down and claimed my lips. I couldn’t help the strong draw of breath I took in, at the same time I had to question why he’d done the same—why he was acting like a forbidden delicacy had just grazed his lips. Like I was affecting him just as deeply as he was me.
    His arm reached around me and pulled me gently, but possessively to him, the way old lovers would hold each other. I felt the heat of his palm slide down my ass and give it a smooth, playful squeeze. He leaned away from our kiss taking my bottom lip with him. When I felt the helmet crash down over my head once more, my eyes were still closed, spellbound by him.
    I was astride the bike, molding my body to his before I figured out he never answered my question—that he’d yet to speak to me. At the same time, I noticed the short asshole from the night before leaning against the edge of the units we were driving by, smoking, glaring Slayton and me down. A danger I never sensed or saw.
    Slayton had saved me again with a heart-stopping kiss. And I’d be damned if I knew why or exactly how dangerous my life was just then.

FOUR
    This time, he didn’t have to tell me to hold on, I would’ve been a fool not to. He had to have been going nearly a hundred miles per hour, and half the time he wasn’t even using a legit road. At first, we raced along the tracks, then through warehouse after warehouse parking lot—sometimes through them. Then he moved on to racing down every back alley my father told me to never go near.
    From the outside looking in, this side of the city seemed like a ghost town, a shell of what once was. Like the buildings were just waiting for a developer to find the patience and cash to come in and kick out the squatters then tear it all down, to make it new again. But even I could sense the stares landing on me, the ones coming from the dark shadows of everything we passed. To say the least, I was abundantly grateful for the helmet and tinted visor I was sporting. I had hoped that no one would give me a second thought once I figured out how to unwind myself from this drama.
    Most of our ride, I was sure we would be pulled over or shot at any second. But the