Unwillingly Yours (Warning: Love Moderately) Read Free Page A

say that?”
    She said baldly, “You don’t go to parties without a date.”
    “That was before.” His gaze challenged her to ask the obvious follow-up question to his words.
    She didn’t take up the gauntlet he tossed at her, but the silence that followed only made her feel more skittish. She wanted to look around for Marcy. Her friend’s vivaciousness would allow her to blend back into the background. Angelo was like that, too. He took care of small talk whenever they were out, and she liked it that way.
    “So…” She felt like she had to say something again. “Were you here long?”
    “Not that long.” A slow sexy wink followed. “But I would never mind waiting longer if I knew you’d be coming.”
    “Stop saying things like that!” She scowled at him even as her body finally succumbed to the teasing seduction in Derek’s tone, her nipples hardening, her breasts aching for the unknown feel of his touch.
    His eyes trailed down, causing her nipples to stretch longer, poking against the cups of her bra. “Oh, but I think I should.”
    “You can’t say stuff like that. It’s not right,” she muttered, hating how only someone as insanely confident as Derek Christopoulos could say something like that without sounding cheesy.
              Derek raised a brow. “What’s not right about it?”
    “Because I have a boyfriend, that’s why!”
              Derek stopped smiling.
              The sight of it made Jaike instantly regret her words. It wasn’t his fault she was stressed out tonight. Jaike started to apologize, but the words remained stuck in her throat when a familiar figure had crossed her vision.
    “Is that…” She tried to sidestep Derek, but he moved to block her way. “Hey! Let me pass.”
              “Not until you say ‘sorry’.”
              “Sorry.” Then she shoved him aside, taking Derek by surprise.
    “Shit! Jaike, don’t---”
    Jaike remembered the last time she had seen her boyfriend.
    This morning, Angelo had visited her at her dorm, his eyes widening when he caught her stepping out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her body.
    She had cried out in surprise, turning away to dress because it wasn’t like that between them. But Angelo had stopped her, his hold firm and commanding, and Jaike slowly faced him again.
    “Sit,” he had told Jaike, drawing her to the velvet-cushioned stool in front of her dresser. And then taking the brush from her hand, he had brushed her hair ever so gently, as if he had all the time in the world and wanted to spend every moment of it caring for her.
    That Angelo was gone, her memories now overlaid by another image, the present blackening out the past.
    Angelo was here, a tall dark figure standing near the doors, a bottle in his hand, his head bent as he gazed at a girl wriggling her ass on his crotch.

 
    The lascivious picture that Angelo and the unidentified girl painted hurled Jaike’s entire world into chaos. Angelo had been her rock, the one stable presence she depended on and looked up to. But now his role in her life had disintegrated, shattering with every second Angelo did nothing to stop the girl’s obscene take on booty shaking.
    “You knew about this?” Jaike asked numbly, sensing Derek’s taut form as he stood next to her. Shame and hurt scalded her cheeks as her heartbeat slowed down into a dull throb.
    “No.”
    She believed him. In the three years she had known Derek, he had never lied to her, not even if it had been in his better interests to do so.
    “I just got here a while ago and I saw him first with another girl. And then I saw you.”
    “And then you tried to help him out,” she ended flatly.
    Hands settled on her shoulders, forcing her to look back at Derek, whose beautiful face was cold in anger.
    Girls were not the only ones who were lovelier when angry, Jaike mused absently. Derek Christopoulos was proof of it. Rage made the angles of his face more defined,