Make Me Sin Read Free Page A

away. After that, we never have to see each other again. Let’s just try to ignore each other until then. For Kat and Nico’s sake. Okay?”
    There’s another long, uncomfortable silence. A.J.’s gaze on me is burning. I catch a whiff of him, a warm, masculine scent of skin and musk and maybe cigarette smoke. I notice details about him I’ve never noticed before, like the way his hair is every shade of blond, from darkest copper to palest wheat. It needs to be cut. Stubble glints gold along his jaw. There’s a small white scar above his left eyebrow. On his neck, there’s a tattoo that disappears into his collar. I can just make out the shape of a cross.
    His gaze drops to my mouth. When he looks into my eyes again, his voice is husky. “You were wrong, before.”
    Confused, I frown. “About what?”
    His jaw works. For the first time, there’s a flash of emotion in his eyes, something other than contempt. “About not doing anything to make me hate you. You’ve done plenty.”
    He turns on his heel and stalks away, out of my shop. I stand frozen, watching him go, watching as a white convertible Audi pulls up to the curb and a woman waves from it.
    The brunette.
    A.J. swings his bulk into the passenger seat, slams shut the door, shoots me a smirk, and they’re gone. I release the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. So much for trying to strike a peace accord with the fire-breathing dragon.
    I won’t make the same mistake again.
    And Kat owes me ten bucks.

B y the time I get home from work, it’s dark, there’s no parking available on the street, and the migraine that had been threatening me earlier has descended in full force. My head feels as if it will explode.
    I wish it would. Then at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the play-by-play, slow motion reruns my brain is torturing me with of the meeting with the Jerk today. At least Kat and Nico were happy with the way the meeting went. I fibbed and told them A.J. and I made a truce so they wouldn’t worry my feelings had been hurt. They have more important things to think about. Then I told the truth and said he’d left to spend some time with his new special friend he’d met in the candle aisle. Kat snorted. Nico rolled his eyes, trying to hide a smile, and said, “Figures.”
    It “figures” that he runs off with a woman he just met to have sex. Probably amazing, animalistic sex. In her convertible.
    In my next life, I want to come back as a rock star.
    I circle the block four times, crawling through traffic, until finally someone pulls out from the curb just in front of me and I whip into his spot before it’s stolen by all the other apartment dwellers circling behind.
    When I moved in last year, the sales girl from the management company that maintains the building failed to tell me that finding a parking spot in this neighborhood after five o’clock is as likely as finding a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk. She failed to mention several other important things, too, like how when she described the building as “full of character,” she actually meant “decrepit.” The faucets drip, the pipes rattle, the walls are so thin I’ve become uncomfortably familiar with the nighttime intimacies of my neighbors. But since I sank all my money into Fleuret, I can’t afford to move. And there’s no way I’m taking any money from my parents. I’m going to make this work one way or another, without their help.
    I drag my sorry self from the car, sigh at the sight of the security gate cocked open because the lock is still broken, climb three flights of stairs—elevator’s on the fritz again—and let myself into my apartment just in time to hear the phone ringing. When I pick up, it’s my mother.
    “Thank goodness! I was just about to call the police to report a missing person.”
    I lived at home until I was twenty-four. My mother is having a hard time letting go. She’s also convinced that living in this part of town, I’ll be