by C. M. Owens
I’m not sure why he seems so insistent on me staying here. I barely know him, and I really don’t know his friends. But a break from Jenny and the unwanted houseguest could be… nice.
“Sure,” I finally say with a shrug.
He grins before dipping his head, moving in as though he’s going to kiss me, but I panic and take a step back, narrowly dodging his far too tempting lips.
“Easy, sweet girl. I wasn’t going to devour you or anything,” he says, still smiling. His confidence is astounding, and I wish I had an ounce of it. Why did I move away from him?
Instead of making another attempt to kiss me, he winks at me and walks out, grabbing a shirt off the dresser before leaving my sight. I drop to his very, incredibly, amazingly comfortable bed, somehow managing not to spill a drop of my drink.
Oh damn. I never want to move off this bed; it feels that good.
“You must have the magic touch,” Ella says as she walks into the room, hopping on the bed and settling in as though we’re old friends.
“Um… huh?”
She grins widely. “Thad is a tiny bit obsessed. The party tomorrow night should be interesting, considering he has never brought a date to one before—at least not since I’ve known him.”
Her eyes are full of excitement—genuine excitement. Apparently she and Thad are really good friends, which is hard to believe, considering how she looks. She might as well be a walking fantasy for men.
“He’s nice,” I mumble, feeling as though I should say something.
“Who’s nice?” a blonde girl asks as she walks in, looking just as strikingly gorgeous as Ella. Damn. But this one I remember—Kimber. She’s Gage’s girlfriend.
“Thad,” Ella drawls, leaning back on her hands as she looks over at the new model in the house.
I never even heard the door open or close. Is Thad gone? They must live close if Kimber is already here.
“Thad is nice?” Kimber asks, seeming far too amused. “People usually have a list of other ways to describe him. Nice isn’t on there unless you’ve known him for a while.”
This is not a fun conversation.
“Can I ask you something?” I look between the two of them, waiting for an answer.
“Sure,” Kimber answers.
“Why the hell is everyone in your group so freaking hot?”
***
ROSLYN
The sun is pouring through the room, and I stretch, waiting to touch the edge of my small bed, but all I keep finding is more brilliantly soft bed. My eyes fling open, and I groan. How did I fall asleep here?
Glancing around, I notice there’s no sign that Thad has been back, and I relax slightly. But then I see a green lizard curled up beside me, and I jerk in the bed. Its head lifts, and I swear it smiles at me.
Relaxing, I stare at it, and find myself smiling back. Then, of course, I roll my eyes. Have I really become such a loner that I’m smiling at lizards now?
The lizard scurries off the bed, and I lose track of it. Dropping off the heavenly mattress, I get on my hands and knees and start searching, looking under bed to see if I can find it.
“Now that’s what I like to see first thing in the morning.” Thad’s voice has me jerking back, and I slam into the nightstand, popping my head against it as my eyes scour the room.
Leaning against the doorjamb, the shirtless masterpiece is watching me with an amused grin and his arms crossed over his chest.
“There was a lizard in the bed with me,” I say quickly, but immediately cringe because of how random that sounds.
He doesn’t look surprised, but he pushes off the frame and heads toward me, putting his hand in front of me to help me up.
“Lucky lizard,” he says, his damn cheeky grin displayed proudly. “And what do you plan to do when you find him?”
“First of all,” I say, taking his hand and ignoring the electrical charge of his touch as he helps me up, “it could be a girl lizard. But I just want to put he or she back outside. Wild things don’t need to be trapped in houses.”
He grins larger, brushing a piece of hair off my cheek. “Is that so? I think I like you just a little more now.”
I spent most of the night hearing stories about him from Ella and Kimber. They definitely want me to like him. They didn’t have to make any effort because I’m very seriously interested.
Using my eyes, I implore him to try kissing me again, but then I remember I haven’t brushed my teeth. Damn.
“What’s that frown for, sweet girl?” he asks seriously, coming closer and tilting my chin up.
That has my cheeks going red.
“Why do you assume I’m sweet?” I ask in deflection.
He moves in a step, pushing our bodies together, and without any warning, his lips come down on mine. When I try to gasp, he seizes the opportunity to show me how skilled he is with his devilishly talented tongue.
My hands go to his shoulders to steady myself when my knees quite literally give out, and he growls low in his throat before lifting me off the floor. I don’t even have the chance to catch my breath before we’re on the bed, and his lips don’t move from mine as he shows me exactly how good he is with his mouth—and his tongue.
He bites down on my lower lip, and my hips buck up in response as he fully settles between my legs, giving me the incredible pressure and friction in just the right place.
“So damn sweet,” he murmurs against my lips when he breaks the kiss. “When you’re turned on,” he adds, moving his lips down my neck, “your arousal smells fucking intoxicating.”
My eyes spring wide, and he chuckles when he sees the mortification on my face. He can smell me? Oh damn.
“Everyone woman has her own scent. Yours has been my favorite. Such a sweet, sweet scent unlike any other I’ve ever encountered before,” he says, confusing me. “That’s what I smell every time you see me or hear my voice.”
My hands slide down his bare chest, feeling the defined muscles that are breathtakingly close. It feels even better than I thought it would, especially when my touch seems to be only turning him on more.
I’ve never smelled anything sweet. And I have a damn good sense of smell.
“You want to know what my favorite part about your scent is?” he asks, nipping my lip while rubbing himself against me.
I can’t speak. There’s no way in hell I could articulate a sentence if my life depended on it. So, like an idiot without any cognitive functions, I just stare into those honey-colored eyes and wait for him to explain.
“My favorite part is that it’s only for me,” he murmurs, pressing into me again. “No one else evokes that scent from you but me. You have no idea what that does for me—what that does to me.”
The door slams shut, and he chuckles as someone on the other side curses. Shit. I forgot that it was open, and I forgot all about the fact that we’re not alone.
Thad grins as he starts tugging my shirt up, but I catch his hands as my eyes widen.
“Little too fast,” I say, gulping down air.
His hands stop, leaving my shirt lifted just above my navel, and he slides his hands down to my hips, making no effort to move off me as he lowers his lips to my neck.
“See?” he asks softly. “Sweet.”
Damn it. I’m not sweet!
“I just… I barely know you. I’m not some sweet, innocent girl, but I also don’t rush into something that intimate without knowing the person first.”
I feel his smile against my neck as he continues doing things with his lips and tongue that have me writhing underneath him and questioning my own morals.
“Then get to know me, Roslyn.”
It’s… a little… hard to think with him doing all… that.
“Right now?” I squeak.
His laughter rumbles around me as he nips at my neck, and his hands shift my legs farther apart for him to better settle against me, pushing his erection all the way against my core. When I suck in a breath, he pushes against me harder, as th
ough he’s rewarding or torturing me—not sure which.
“Yeah,” he murmurs softly. “You can’t get to know me unless you start asking questions. What do you want to know?”
What do I want to know? It barely seems important at this moment, because my whole body is on fire and telling my mind to shut the hell up for a while.
“Um… how old are you?”
He moves his lips across my neck, directing his attention to the other side, and some stupid sound escapes me.
“Older than I look.” His answer is dry and vague, which does nothing to help me, but he finally says, “Twenty-three?”
Why does it sound like a question? Then again, I’m incredibly distracted. Besides, he looks about that age.
“Where… um… were you born?”
He pauses his kissing assault, and I don’t know whether to breathe in relief or demand that he continue.
“You need to know this stuff?” he asks, rising up with a wry grin on his perfect lips as he stares down at me with those honey eyes. “Because I expected more in-depth questions. But for your information, I was born in Ireland.”
Ireland? “You don’t have an accent,” I point out, questioning how honest he’s being. “And you don’t look Irish.”
He laughs at me. Again. I’m apparently a source of constant amusement.
“I trained myself to speak without it a long time ago. Besides, I didn’t live there for too long. And what exactly do Irish people look like?”
He pins me with a gaze that dares me to say something he can mock me for, so I bypass that question before I say something that is stereotyping and stupid. It’s probably good he doesn’t have that accent, since I doubt I’d be able to turn him down at all then.
“Why do you like me?” There’s an in-depth question that I need answered.
He studies me very intently for several long minutes, his gaze shifting from my mouth to my eyes a couple of times.
“I should probably say something cheesy and romantic right about now, like how I’ve never met any girl like you, but I’ve always been bigger on being honest when I could.”
That has my ego deflating quickly. Lying under him, feeling his desire wrapped around me, for some reason I was starting to feel a little special.
“What’s the honest reason?” I ask unsurely.
He brushes his lips against mine, tugging it between his teeth, and he grinds against me again. Before I know it, the chaste touch turns into a fiery kiss, and I lose myself in him, forgetting the whole I-need-to-get-to-know you thing.
His tongue dances with mine as though we’ve always kissed like this, and he pulls me as close to his shirtless body as he can manage. His skin is so smooth and tightly stretched over the hard lines of muscle. I swear he’s built like a completely new specimen of the human race. And I stupidly shattered the illusion by asking him why he liked me.
“Because,” he says, pulling back and breathing a little hard, dragging his lips away from mine completely as though he can’t stop kissing me if he stays too close, “Well, I don’t know. You’re beautiful, but I’ve known plenty of beautiful girls. You’re sweet—even though you don’t like to admit it—but I’ve met sweet girls before. I’ve met bashful girls who blush when they see me, girls whose heartbeats pick up the second they hear my voice, and girls who act speechless. But I swear there’s something about you that has me scrambling to get closer. And I can’t seem to shut off this switch you flipped on the second I saw you. And I don’t want to.”
That really is honest. It’s hard decide whether I like that answer or not. Then again, I’m not stupid enough to think I’m unique in any way, but it’s nice knowing that he doesn’t want to stay away from me.
“How often does someone… flip your switch?”
His grin curls back up, and he thumbs my bottom lip. “That’s the thing that has me chasing you, sweet girl. Never. Not like this. So now I want to know why you’ve done this to me,” he says before dipping his head and kissing my neck again. Now that has my smile growing.
“Coffee is ready,” one of the girls—I think Ella—calls out from the other side of the door.
Thad smiles bigger before standing up, tugging my shirt back into place, and he walks out of the room as though he’s been expecting that announcement. A few garbled conversations muddle together, making no sense to me from in here.
“Cream and sugar?” Thad calls.
I assume he’s talking to me so I answer, “Nothing in mine.”
Then Thad is suddenly back in the doorway with two steaming cups.
“My kind of girl,” he says with that perfect smile still intact.
Sitting up, I brush my hair away from my face, wishing I didn’t look like I just crawled out of bed. I’m still not sure how I fell asleep here to begin with.
As he hands me my cup of coffee, he takes a seat on the edge of the bed and pulls my feet into his lap. Thankfully, my toenails are freshly painted instead of looking like polish-cracked/chipped death. Thank goodness for sandal season.
“I don’t have anywhere to be until six this evening, so you have the day to get to know me,” he says with that devilish grin. “Then I’ll be picking you up at ten to get to know you even better.”
Like my body loves to betray me, I blush when he winks. He really doesn’t have an ounce of subtlety in him, but that’s something I like. No games.
“I take it you don’t want to get to know me since you’re not asking any questions.”
It’s not a question, but I admit it sounds a little insecure and possibly bitter. As hot as he is, I’m not a toy. Even though I really want to be wild enough to jump in bed with a complete stranger, I’m not. I can’t believe I’m even over here right now. I’m not acting like me at all.
His smile only broadens. “Easy, sweet girl. I’m letting you catch up. I already know the basics about you.”
As my brow furrows in confusion, he reaches and opens a drawer. Then he pulls out a file and hands it to me. Warily, I open it, and a slight gasp breaks free from me.
It’s me. My life. Everything on public record has found its way into this file. Even some things that aren’t public knowledge, such as my medical records.
“Um… This is a little creepy,” I admit uneasily, but he only laughs while I continue to flip through the pages.
“I’m cautious about who I spend time with, Roslyn. I’m pretty damn rich, so I have to be careful.”
Confused, I look up. “You’re rich?” Yeah, that sounds a little more insulting than I meant for it to.
His eyebrows cock up in surprise. “You sound very shocked by that.”
My eyes slowly scour the room. Decorations are minimal, the walls are plain, and the house is larger than mine, but nothing particularly astonishing.
“It’s just… This is a lake community, and a lot of the lake homes are… huge and luxurious. I just assumed—”
“That I would live on the lake in a big fancy house if I was rich?” he asks, finishing what I was going to say, seeming all too amused. “I have those in other places. I bought this house a while back to help keep an eye on a friend. And I don’t usually get rid of anything that’s mine. Besides, I have one very sexy neighbor that I want to get to see, so I think I’ll stick around.”
I grin and blush on cue, and then lean back to study him. I’m not sure if he’s rich or not, but I can’t imagine why he’d lie about it. Unless he’s trying to impress me. Money doesn’t impress me.
“So you read all this about me?” I ask, swallowing hard when I see one thing in the file that makes my skin crawl.
He looks down at the page I’m on, and he frowns. “That’s one thing I couldn’t get much information on.”
Shuddering, I close the file and hug myself. “He was one of my foster fathers.”
Thad’s face grows very serious for the first time since I’ve been in here this morning. This is so not getting-to-know-you conversation material.
“One of the ones
who hurt you?” The hard edge to his tone doesn’t go unnoticed.
How does he… Oh… The medical records.
“He was the only one who hurt me. The rest of this”—I gesture toward medical records that tell the tale of my broken bones, deep contusions, and hefty gashes that needed numerous stitches—“is me being clumsy.”
He doesn’t look convinced. “Jeffrey really was the only abusive one,” I reaffirm. “And had it not been for his hunting accident, I’d have continued to be beaten regularly for crossing any arbitrary line.”
He leans back, studying the gruesome details of the page as he picks it up and pulls it to his face.
“Says it was a bear attack. The claw marks were too big to be anything else. I guess that was pretty scary.”
It was terrifying. Everyone in that small town went hunting for that damn bear. It’s not easy to walk around with everyone carrying a shotgun or rifle, primed and alert. Five men were accidentally shot in the quest for the elusive bear.
“After the fifth gunshot victim, they declared the bear must have left town, and they told everyone to put their guns away. It was fortunate that all the wounds were mostly superficial. Only one was a serious injury, but it didn’t result in any long-term damage.”
He lowers the paper, studying me again. “Where were you?”
“I was having a sleepover the night before—my foster mother was determined to make me socialize with the popular girls from school. He was attacked early that morning. My foster mother woke up twelve sleeping pre-teen girls at five in the morning and told them to call their parents to come get them. She was freaking out, and we had to sit at the police station for hours.” Groaning, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “This is so not the way to get to know each other. Way too heavy for a coffee conversation.”
He chuckles while leaning back against the wall. “If you ask me, I’d say it’s better to hit the hard stuff right out of the gate. The small-talk shit gets on my nerves. Now it’s your turn to ask a question.”