Free Disengaged: A Dangerously Forbidden Love Affair by Jamie A Magee

over me, trying to take the emotion out of his eyes but failing. “I fought because I collected a payment Vinnie was hunting. Then I claimed he was wrong about you. I made a fool of our crew. Fair punishment.”
    “M-me?”
    He clenched his jaw. “They didn’t know if you were Bloom’s piece of ass or his daughter. Just that he kept you on lock down. When he didn’t pay, we needed to push him. It was either you or his blood.”
    Ice-cold fear rushed through me as ruthless reality overshadowed this infatuation I had for Slayton.
    “You—you were coming to kill me?”
    Slayton glared into nothing. “They sent me to back up Vinnie on the job, to be his enforcer.” His eyes darkened. “Your dad is hardly the biggest Unicorn, but he was growing. Getting harder to manage. Rumored to be linking with other crime circles. A message had to be sent.”
    To say I felt dread, entrapped, was an understatement. I always knew my father was a stranger that I’d never really understand. But hearing this made me feel dirty. It broke my heart knowing he did it all to himself. That he had a chance to live straight, more than one, and this is where he was.
    “But then they just believed I was your girl?” I was clicking into survival mode again. I didn’t trust those men I’d seen last night.
    “No,” he slowly turned his gaze to me. “That’s why they made me fight.”
    I shook my head silently saying I didn’t understand.
    Resentment flashed in his expression. “They knew I wouldn’t have fought unless it was real. Unless I was telling the truth about you.” When I leaned forward hanging on his every comment, soaking in the priceless words that he was slow to give me, he hesitated. “I told them never again a while ago. Hard limit.”
    “And they were just good with that?”
    He was slow to answer. “Worth more alive than dead.”
    My mouth fell open. I didn’t understand why he risked so much for me. I really didn’t. How could he threaten an already turbulent standpoint between him and those men? All I could muster was his conscience had gotten the best of him. That one look at me told him I was blameless when it came to this world he was in. Which only slammed guilt on top of all my other sparring emotions.
    “Do they believe you now?” I asked shakily.
    Slayton grazed his teeth across his bottom lip. “There’s no honor among thieves.” His gray stare trickled over me. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
    “He’ll never pay you back,” I said as tears welled in my eyes. “My dad doesn’t even realize what he’s doing, much less is he able to stop. Me being here may have sobered him a bit, but it won’t last.”
    He only stared.
    “I can’t let you risk your life for me, a stranger.”
    Anger washed down his expression as he looked away.
    The seconds passed by, the tension between us built. “Why would you want to if all I do is make you feel that way?”
    He breathed a smile. A true smile, one that only made him all the harder to look at because it redefined the word beauty. It would have stolen my breath if there weren’t a degree of anger and disdain; I was beginning to understand he was writhing in it. “What way is that, little girl?”
    “I’m not a little girl,” I hissed. I went to build my argument but shut up when the waitress came out and set steaming cups of coffee down. The whole time she set things up behind the counter we didn’t say a word.
    When she vanished into the kitchen, he spoke. “Your life is in danger. Your father made sure it was, two-fold. If you want to live, you roll with this.”
    “This,” I whispered.
    He leaned closer to me, studied my searching gaze then brushed his lips across mine. I shuddered in response, so did he. The next thing I knew our kiss was deep and he’d pulled me to straddle his lap. “You make me crazy,” he growled as he kissed down my neck.
    The admission that I had any kind of power over him turned me into a vixen. I’d forgotten