Stuck: A Secrets and Lies prequel

by Booth, Ainsley

  “She didn’t tell me you’d reached out,” Hazel murmurs. “We talk semi-frequently. Follow each other’s lives online.” She hesitates. “She’s married. Did she tell you?”

  “Yeah. Two kids. She seems happy. I’m glad.”

  Hazel nods. “She is happy.”

  “Does she know that I kissed you, back in the day?”

  Her eyes blaze. “Of course she does. I wouldn’t have kept that from her.”

  No, of course not. My neck flushes and my gut twists in shame.

  “I’ll tell her about this, too.” Hazel drags her lower lip between her teeth. “Although now I’m wondering why she didn’t tell me you’d been in contact.”

  “Maybe for the same reason I wrote to her, and not to you? You were very clear with me that you didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  She smiles ruefully. “True.”

  Then she wrinkles her nose.

  “What?” I ask.

  “This is all quite…weird. Don’t you think?”

  “Oh yeah, for sure. I’m a riot of intense emotions over here.”

  She laughs. “Stop it.”

  “Don’t I look it?”

  She drags her gaze over me. Takes her time, too, until I’m aching for more than her eyes. “No,” she finally says, lifting her attention back to my face. “Although maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. What are you feeling right now?”

  Nothing appropriate to say on a train, no matter how private our seats feel. “That I’d really like to continue this conversation when we get back to Toronto. You could—”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “Hear me out. Then you can say no, and we’ll go our separate ways if you really think that’s best. The next time I see you—if I ever have the pleasure—I’ll wait for you to introduce yourself, with whatever name you’re using then.”

  She presses her lips together and waits.

  I can’t read the expression on her face, but I forge ahead anyway. “It’s three days before the holidays. Like you said yourself, what kind of rooms are they going to find you? My place isn’t far from Union. I have a spare room. You’re welcome to stay with me tonight. And it would mean that our fun doesn’t have to end just yet.” I lean in. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know you again, Hazel. For what that’s worth.”

  “A spare room?”

  “If you want.”

  She turns her head to the side and looks out the window. “We’re nearly there. I can see the lights of the city.”

  “The station is going to be a madhouse. Do you really want to stand in a chaotic line when I can offer you…” I do a mental cataloguing of my fridge contents. “Wine, water, and maybe tea, if my milk hasn’t expired.”

  She doesn’t answer right away. The announcement comes on overhead that we’re five minutes away from Union Station.

  By the time the train steams to a halt under the cavernous roof, I’m sure she’s going to say no. My chest twists as she slowly gathers her belongings, then gives me a bittersweet smile.

  “I’ll walk you to the concourse,” I say, putting off the goodbye a few more minutes.

  She opens her mouth, but whatever she was going to say dies on her lips. She snaps her head in a quick, decisive nod. “Sounds good.”

  Chapter 3

  Hazel

  We’re the last ones off the train, and as soon as I step down onto the platform, Sam’s beside me. He takes my carry-on suitcase and crosses it to his far side, letting our close arms brush as we walk together.

  I can feel him even through our winter jackets. Me in my parka, him in a proper wool overcoat.

  “So,” I say after we walk up the ramp. There’s a long line of people at the ticket counter. None of them look happy, and there’s an angry buzz of conversations as hundreds of holiday plans get discussed and revised and ruined all at the same time.

  “So,” he repeats. “Look—”

  “I should figure out what I need to do with my ticket.” But I don’t move.

  I don’t want to get in that line.

  I don’t want to say goodbye, because we’ve done this once before. We’ve left unfinished business on the table for a decade, and it didn’t feel good.

  “Would you want to have sex?” I blurt out. That is not at all how I’d write it in a book. Nothing ever happens the way I write it in a book, though, so why should this be different? “If I came back to your place.”

  He grins and shoves one hand through his perfect hair, making it even more perfect. “Want to? Hazel, I got one kiss ten years ago and I’ve always wanted more. I’m not going to pretend to be a Boy Scout. But whatever we do is up to you. We can just talk. Or maybe we could…” He drops his gaze to my mouth, and I can feel his lips there. The one kiss we shared. The reason I never wanted to talk to him, ever again. “Would you want to try another kiss?”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “Wait. No.”

  I look around. Not here.

  Reaching out, I wrap my hand around his wrist and tug, leading him away from the main concourse and down a hallway past the business lounge.

  It’s not a dark nook at a club, but it’s a bit more private.

  I stop and turn in, closing the space between us. “Hi,” I say, and my voice wavers a bit.

  “Deja vu,” he murmurs. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s been a long day and I was supposed to start a mini-break getaway for one, but instead I ran into a guy I once kissed, on the train, and then an ice demon stopped us in our tracks and now I think I’m going to kiss him again. It’s all a bit overwhelm—” I swallow as he brushes his fingers against my cheek. “—ing,” I add in a whisper.

  “That’s quite the day.” He leans forward, his breath warm as our faces get closer to each other. “Are you going to kiss him, or do you want him to kiss you?”

  I push up on my toes, giving him my mouth. His lips are warm and firm, yielding to my exploration. He feels like he’s smiling, and I like that. I like it even more when he slides his hands into my hair.

  Ten years has changed how he kisses. The setting is wildly different, too.

  But I know this mouth. Not well. Just a fleeting, perfect memory. A bittersweet what-if remembrance that would pop up from time to time, and is now blooming once again in my mind.

  A long time ago, when we were both different people, we’d wanted to sleep together and for very good reasons we chose not to. I chose not to, anyway.

  Tonight, I want to make a different choice.

  I lean back against the wall, finding an inch of space between us. Too much, but necessary for a conversation. “So, your offer…”

  “Yes.” Sam brace exhales hard, then braces his arm above my head and looks down at me with a kiss-drunk smile. “Tea, and uh, friendship. Spare room if you want it.”

  “I don’t want the spare room. When I asked if you wanted to have sex, I meant, I want to have sex. With you.”

  He blinks down at me.

  “Is that too forward?”

  He swears under his breath and crushes me against the wall in the gentlest way possible, his mouth hot and demanding against mine.

  No. Not too forward for Sam Preston.

  Excellent.

  Eventually we stop kissing long enough for me to get in the (now shorter) ticket line. The ticketing agent explains they’re trying to add another train on for the next day, but they can’t say yet what time it will be at.

  I’m definitely missing my afternoon check-in at the fancy Christmas lodge.

  But I don’t care.

  When I return to Sam’s side, he has good news. The collision on the train tracks has finally been confirmed by the provincial police, and it’s a holiday miracle, because there were no fatalities.

  This time, I kiss him right in the middle of the concourse. When we break apart, Sam takes the lead, guiding me outside. It’s relatively quiet now, just a few pedestrians trudging through heavy sludge on Front Street. Snow has been falling steadily on the city fo
r a while, blanketing it in a lovely silence.

  He flags a waiting taxi and hustles me into the back. He gives an address I don’t recognize, and when we head west, I realize why—Sam lives in an area that was nothing but old warehouses when we were in university. Now it’s an in-fill village inside the city, with impossibly attractive townhomes on newly created streets, glittering restaurants, and retrofitted lofts in the warehouses.

  It’s one of these we stop in front of.

  Despite his legal troubles, Sam has done okay for himself.

  He doesn’t say anything until we’re in the elevator. But when we’re alone, he leans in and brushes his lips against my temple. “Did I make it clear that, while I gambled and lost a lot of money, I paid back all my debts? I spent two years living on my brother’s couch. I moved here six months ago. I wouldn’t seduce you back to my den of ill-gotten gains.”

  I tip my head to the side so I can see the edge of his profile. “I was wondering. A little.”

  “I’m an open book.” His voice rubs against my skin. “About my mistakes, or anything else.”

  “Anything?”

  His lips twist into a smile. “Ask your questions.”

  Instead, I confess a deep, dark secret. “I wanted you so much back then. It was awful, because I thought you were awful—”

  “I was.” He grins, and it makes my insides flip-flop.

  “But I wanted you anyway. Actually, no, I wanted you because you were awful. That unrepentant bad boy appeal.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re disappointed to discover I’ve straightened myself out.”

  I laugh and turn more fully so I can look right at him, and so he can see my face. “Not at all. When I realized who was sitting across from me, I was…wary. The Sam I knew had a twisted appeal which my foolish twenty-one-year-old self was briefly into, but I wouldn’t have come home with him.”

  “He didn’t deserve you.” He presses against me and brushes my hair away from the collar of my jacket. “But I can still be wicked.”

  “Good.” I lick my dry lips. “I can be wicked, too.”

  “I have no doubt. Can I ask you something?”

  It’s only fair. “Yes.”

  “You started to tell me something on the train. It made you blush.” His fingertips trail up my neck and onto my cheeks. “I like the way you blush. Would you tell me what that was? What do you remember from the night we kissed?”

  My pulse pounds. “You circled my wrist with your fingers. It was—I mean, maybe you were just dragging me off the dance floor, but there was something about how you held my arm. It felt good.”

  He groans as the elevator comes to a stop. “And remembering that makes you blush?”

  Heat swarms through me. “Yes. Definitely.”

  He cups my face and kisses me softly. “Good. Let’s play with that.”

  I’m not any kind of innocent. I’ve spent the last ten years doing my best to navigate the dating swamp, but too often sex is a mediocre experience.

  The good sex I’ve had has been amazing.

  The bad sex, though—to call it off-putting would be a kindness. So I’ve learned to be straight up with my desires. Some guys get weird about that.

  Not Sam. Not this Sam, anyway. Grown-up, owning his mistakes, and—as he opens the door to his apartment—coming out the other side of that with a very nice loft.

  I whistle as I step over the threshold. It’s ruthlessly empty, but not cold. There’s an obscenely large couch in the middle of the space, covered in pillows and a generous throw blanket. Soft, touchable. But the dark plank floors between us and the sofa are completely bare. Beyond it, there’s a television on the wall and a low, wide walnut bookshelf below that. That’s it for the entire living space. Everywhere you look is an endless expanse of wood floor, leading to an open kitchen area at one end, and a set of doors at the other. Abstract art and sculpture decorate the space, making his loft more a gallery than a home. It takes my breath away.

  “This is a nice place. You have a, wow, gorgeous art collection.”

  “It’s almost all my sister-in-law’s work, and the paintings she curated for me. It was a housewarming gift, because she was so glad to get me off her couch. I’d mooched far too long while I was feeling sorry for myself.”

  I shrug out of my coat, and he takes it. While he hangs it up, I move closer to a mixed-media sculpture of a woman. “Is she…masturbating?”

  He laughs, then sighs. “Yes. Most of it has an erotic bent. That’s Gemma’s thing. Woman-focused erotic art.”

  “I love it.” I move to the next piece, a painting that’s mostly atmospheric, and finally stop in front of a statue set into a nook on the wall. “I love all of it. She has great taste.”

  “She’ll get a kick out of that compliment, and from a fellow creator, too.”

  I turn my head and smile at him. “I still haven’t told you my pen name. Maybe I made all of that up because of our ice demon story.”

  “Did you?”

  I don’t answer. “We started an interesting conversation in the elevator.”

  He’s taken off his suit jacket as well as his overcoat, and I reach out, pressing my hands against the soft, white cotton shirt stretched across his broad chest. He’s bigger now than in university. But he’s also grown into his body.

  “I wrote a poem about you once,” I murmur as I trace the shape of his body.

  He shudders. “There once was an asshole from Toronto?”

  I burst out laughing. “No. It’s nice. It’s called…” I trail off and step back. He moves closer. I step back again, and we pace across the loft like that, him chasing me.

  By the time we reach the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side, my body is humming.

  “Hazel,” he growls. “Tell me.”

  “The sounds I imagine you make.” I whisper as he cages me in against the cold glass. “A growly burr/A slow fade into exhalation/A groan/A gasp.”

  “I’ll groan for you,” he whispers as he unzips my hoodie.

  I close my eyes as he finds the bare skin at my waist, then slides his hands underneath my t-shirt, against my belly. My ribs. Just shy of my breasts. “When I’m on my knees/Or above you, head curved low.”

  “Will you suck me? I’d like nothing more than to see my cock in your beautiful mouth.”

  I smile and keep going. “Beneath you, shifting/As you pin my arms against the bed.”

  He groans now, for real, and buries his face in my neck. Open-mouthed. Wet, hungry. He sucks on my skin as heat ratchets up between us. But I’m not done yet.

  “I would love to wring your pleasure/In a thousand ways/As the sounds I imagine you make/Get me every time.” I gasp when I finish. “Sam, please.”

  He lifts his head, his eyes dark and glittering. “Tell me that’s in the poem. Sam, please. Nothing would make me happier. I’d die a king in my own mind.”

  I grin. “It’s not, but I’ll write it out for you that way if you make me come twice tonight.”

  “What do I get for the third and fourth orgasm?”

  “I see you’re still cocky in some regards.”

  “Only my commitment to your satisfaction, my sexy little poet.” He kisses me again, deep and intensely, his tongue rough and perfect and then soft, which is perfect, too. “Turn around.”

  I spin in his arms, my hoodie being discarded in the process, and I gasp. The storm has picked up in a sudden flurry of white mess. We’re up high enough we can see that flakes aren’t just falling to the ground, but being pushed upwards by the wind as well. It’s a rolling, angry fight of the elements.

  “The ice demon’s still not pleased,” Sam murmurs in my ear. “What’s wrong now?”

  “Maybe he’s not angry,” I pant. “Maybe he’s worked up. Excited.”

  Through his suit pants and my yoga pants, I can feel the thick length of Sam’s cock. It twitches, a heavy push against the curve of my ass. He nips at the curve of my ear.

  I’m pressed against the
glass, and if it weren’t snowing, someone on the street below would be able to see me. But right now, we’re all alone up here. Lovers caught in the middle of a snow globe.

  “Do you want to fuck me here, Sam? Up against the window?”

  His teeth scrape against the nape of my neck. “I want to stretch you out on my bed and pin you down.” He finds my arms and wraps his fingers around my wrists. “Unless you want it here.”

  I want his cock in my mouth first. I want to crawl around on top of him and taste him, make gasp. But I like the squeeze of his fingers on my arms. I want more. Harder.

  “Harder,” I say, repeating my inner thought. “If you like.”

  “Oh, I like.” He tightens his grip, but his thumbs stay soft and stroke up and down on my skin as he presses against me obscenely. “You can ask me for anything, Hazel. I want to consume you in every possible way. I want to crawl between your thighs and kiss you there, too. I want to taste your breasts, your belly, your back. Your ass. Every inch of you. Do you like all of that hard, or sometimes soft?”

  “Yes,” I breathe.

  It doesn’t matter what we do. Not really. All of it will be right, because I can’t pretend any longer.

  As messed up as it is, Sam is the one who got away. And that’s a good thing, but my body doesn’t care. I’m back in university, about to do something reckless and crazy hot. A gorgeous, glorious mistake.

  I tug against his tight grip on my wrists. He doesn’t let go, and my thighs tremble all the way from my knees up to the slick, swollen space between them.

  “Tell me, Hazel,” he croons in my ear. My pussy floods with a fresh wave of arousal. “Tell me how hard you want it.”

  “Force me to my knees,” I gasp. “Make me suck you.”

  Chapter 4

  Sam