Page 55 of Silver Fire
“Hey!” Maia rapped on his car window. He had texted her a few minutes earlier that he was waiting in front of the apartment building. Derek bleeped the locks.
Maia got into the passenger seat and gave him a playful punch. “So how did it go last night?”
Derek waited for a bus to pass him before pulling out of the loading/unloading zone. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
But Maia, being Maia, was tenacious. “Are you telling me you’re going six days without sex?”
“I fucked up—OK?” Derek replied tersely. “I had the most incredible sex of my life, and I blew it.”
“Derek Lockwood!” Maia exclaimed in a censuring tone. “Do not tell me you did the shower brush off with Sophie.”
He sighed and felt Maia bludgeon him with the binder she was carrying. “Fucking moron! I can’t fucking believe this! Why? Why would you do something like that to Sophie? Why even touch her if you’re going to treat her like any of your regular fucks?”
“You’re a potty mouth this morning,” Derek muttered.
“Do not change the subject, Derek!”
“Truth?”
“Yes!”
“I freaked out.”
“Oh Derek.”
His jaw tightened as he heard the pity in Maia’s voice. Great, now he was just plain pathetic. He kept his eyes straight ahead as he took the ramp that led to the interstate.
“Are you ending it with her?”
“Hell no,” Derek growled.Shit. That was it. The thought of ending things with her had sent his most primal instinct of possessiveness to the surface.
“Well, what’s the status then? Derek, you can’t be on a break, you guys had barely begun.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“And you fucked it up already …”
“Thanks for rubbing it in.”
“The very morning after the first time you had sex.”
“Maia—”
“Incredible sex.”
“Shut it, Maia!” Derek wanted to strangle his friend.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Did she notice the brush off?”
“I didn’t touch or kiss her this morning, so I figure that’s an affirmative”
Maia was shaking her head. “And I thought you were the levelheaded one. You always gave great advice.”
Derek didn’t answer. His mind and his gut were in turmoil, but he was not too distracted not to notice that a car appeared to be following them. He glanced in the rearview mirror; an old Saturn sedan was two cars behind them. Derek noticed the car when he pulled in front of Jack’s apartment. The Saturn had shot past him and parked a few vehicles down. It then pulled out when Derek had passed it with the Escalade, and it had been trailing them ever since.