Edie Van Der Zee.

I heard her before I saw her, and even when I did see her, it was through bushes and fog, shadowed by the night. In fact, I only recognized her because her wild, wavy blonde, out-of-catalog hair was cascading down her bare shoulders and because of that throaty, hoarse laugh. She was wearing a loose ROXY top, little shorts, and her unlaced Dr. Martens. She looked so much like a kid I wanted to punch myself in the balls for imagining her writhing under me while I’d pounded into Amanda the other night. Edie’s legs were still curveless, two straight toothpicks. Not very different from Luna’s.

You’re fucking disturbed.

She stood in front of two guys and a girl who were sharing a bench, sitting on the back of it, because they were such fucking rebels. Not.

I only wanted to slow down so I could hear what they were laughing about, but ended up stopping completely behind a wall of wild bushes when I realized my black car blended perfectly with the night. This was the point where I should have probably acknowledged that I’d crossed a hard line of some sort. I was stalking my employee, my teenage employee, late in the evening. But I chose to dismiss the level of creepiness I was exhibiting by pointing out to myself that A—I hadn’t actively sought her out, I’d happened to bump into her. And B—if she was in some kind of trouble and I turned my back on her, I’d never forgive myself.

Far-fucking-fetched, but I’ll take it.

One of the guys, who was wearing a hoodie in the middle of the summer and deserved to die a slow death for this alone, stood up and sauntered over to one of the reservoir’s most iconic symbols—the old town’s city hall. It was deserted, decaying, and made out of sandstone. Big, boasting of empty rooms, and last time I was there fifteen years ago, every one of them had been occupied with a couple or a threesome getting lucky on dirty mattresses or sofas that had been dragged into the place and were probably contaminated. My teeth clenched as he threw his arm over Edie’s shoulder, hooking her by the neck and jerking her toward him for a forehead kiss.

“C’mon, Gidget. We haven’t fucked in forever and all the new girls at the beach are too vanilla,” the tool said as they zig-zagged toward the entrance. Gidget? And why did his choice of words grate on my every nerve? I used the word fuck as a verb, adverb, noun, and a simple decoration in every other sentence. If I could marry it, I most likely would. Yet I hated that it left his mouth, and hated it even more that it was directed at her. Mostly, I loathed that the tool was wearing a hoodie so I couldn’t even see the goddamn face I was about to smash with my fist.

“Wait, let me get a blunt from Wade,” Edie’s husky voice murmured and she jogged in the other direction, toward the losers on the bench. Was she really going to screw some asshole in an abandoned building? I wasn’t buying it. Then again, what the hell did I know about this chick? Oh, right. She was a pickpocketing, self-centered liar who’d ditched my daughter’s party to hang out with pot-smoking idiots. And she was a teenager. Of course, she was going to fuck him in an abandoned bastion. And, of course, she wasn’t vanilla.

My dick stirred in my pants and I did the unthinkable, cupping it with my fist and squeezing hard. My way of saying it was never going to happen. She wasn’t even my type. Too small, too blonde, too sweet-looking, though at this point, I knew she was nothing like her looks. Girl had some serious baggage.

In my desperate plea not to jerk off, I failed to remember my headlights were still on. Her friends on the bench craned their necks to see what—or who—was lurking behind the bushes. I needed to do something. That something was to get the fuck out of there.

Then again, I was always the bastard who did stupid shit, preferably with the most poisonous woman in his locale. Why stop now?

Instead of U-turning and leaving, I hit the accelerator, my car speeding silently—justifying its 170k price tag—and slammed the brakes when Edie’s ass was directly in front of my window, mere feet from the doors to the city hall.

“Van Der Zee,” I roared. She whipped her head around so fast I thought her spine was going to snap. I leaned sideways and popped the passenger door open.

“Get in the car.”

Her mouth fell open and for a second, I wanted nothing more than to shove my tongue into it. Instead, I pushed the door open wider, growling.