Every Part of You: Takes Me (#5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

without slowing. “If I miss this one, I have to take a cab.”
    “Let me give you a ride home.”
    She flicked a glance at him, that lush mouth lifting in a small sneer. “No.”
    Not even a No, thank you . Shit, she was still pissed off. No wonder she hadn’t answered his texts. Elliott frowned.
    “C’mon, Simone. I need to talk to you.”
    That stopped her, but only for a second. Then she shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder and kept walking. Faster now. Her heels click-clicked on the concrete.
    “Simone!” His shout echoed in the parking garage, but she didn’t even turn her head. In three strides he caught up to her. He grabbed her elbow so that she had to stop or yank herself from his grip. If he’d been a betting man, he’d have picked the second, but Simone let him turn her.
    “I’m not getting in your car or going anywhere with you, Elliott.” She lifted her chin. In the harsh, orange-white light, she looked very pale. Her eyes, very blue. Shadows feathered beneath them and in the hollows of her cheeks.
    He’d put them there, though he knew her well enough to know she’d never admit it to him. But he knew it, and it was another stab inside him. “Please. I want to talk some shit out with you, Simone.”
    “Text me.” She took her arm from his grasp.
    He didn’t point out that he already had, and that she’d blown him off. “Too much to text. Simone, c’mon. Wait!”
    She paused and hiked her bag higher again, clutching it against her. “You need to talk to me?”
    “I want to, yes.”
    “Need would be okay, too,” she told him with another of those chin lifts that meant he’d managed to hurt her feelings again.
    Elliott softened. “Okay. I need to talk to you.”
    “Fine. Talk.” She crossed her arms.
    But now that she’d given him permission, Elliott discovered he didn’t know what to say. He’d been ready to talk to her earlier, but his father’s phone call had derailed him. Now everything he’d so carefully planned to say had disappeared behind the red-hot filter of his frustration.
    He wanted to say he was sorry.
    He wanted to say he wanted to try again.
    He wanted to tell her about his dad, and Molly, and the woman who’d birthed him but who’d never been much of a mother. He wanted to tell her about why he didn’t want to let her in. He wanted to ask her what he should do about his father, who’d said he wanted to see him. Most of all, he wanted to tell her about the list and her place on it.
    Instead, he fucked it all up with a sigh and a shrug.
    Simone stared at him, long and hard. Unblinking. Then she turned her face, her jaw clearly clenched. Her fingers had gone white-knuckled on the strap of her bag. She seemed to get a little smaller in front of him. To fade.
    “Forget it, Elliott,” she said in a low voice without looking at him. “I don’t need your sympathy or whatever the fuck you’re trying to do.”
    He let her get a few steps away from him before he found his voice. “Is that what you think?”
    She kept walking. He caught up to her again, this time grabbing too hard. She did yank away from him, eyes blazing.
    “Get your fucking hands off me,” Simone snarled. “Don’t you touch me!”
    “You used to like it when I touched you,” Elliott answered in a raspy voice. His heart thumped. His cock stirred, and he cursed himself for it.
    Simone caught her breath and took a step away from him until her hip nudged a parked car. Her head fell back, just a little, exposing the line of her neck, where he swore he could see the throb of her pulse. Her lips parted with a sigh.
    “Fuck you, Elliott,” she whispered.
    He was on her a moment after that, one hand on her hip. The other going to the hem of her dress. Lifting it. Fingers sliding along her thigh to press the marks he’d seen earlier that day. The ones that made him want to hunt down whoever had been with her.
    “You used to beg for me to touch you.”
    “Fuck you,” she repeated, this time