by Aubrey Irons
“For?”
I shrug. “For letting me talk about it all. I don’t- well, I don’t have a lot of people to talk about this sort of thing with.”
“You mean arranged marriages.”
I roll my eyes, grinning. “Not what it is, but sure. Yes.”
“You and Chastity don’t have long talks into the night about this?” He chuckles before I can even answer that one, before glancing at his watch. “You know what, I should get you home before the good Pastor Ellis sends out a search party. Let’s go get the last few boxes.”
Back in the storeroom, Rowan drags a mini ladder out and props it up against one of the shelves.
“Last of the paper cups,” he says with a shrug as he starts to steady it.
“Oh, I can get that.”
“Nah, I got it.”
“I’m smaller,” I shrug. “Plus you’re stronger, so you hold the ladder, I’ll climb.”
I slip past him before he can say anything else and start to climb up.
“Whoa, easy,” Rowan mutters, leaning in to steady it. “Careful, this thing is slippery as-”
And just like that, with a shriek, I go skidding right off the step. The world goes still, my heart skips a beat, and the air rushes out of my lungs as gravity yanks me down.
I gasp as I land in his arms. My hands cling to his t-shirt and his arms as I let the air out in a whoosh, every single nerve ending in my body firing at once. I jerk my head up, and our eyes lock.
My heart pounds.
His arms cradle me against him.
My fingertips brush his bare arms.
Whoa.
Rowan clears his throat as he sets me down. “Lets, uh-”
“Yeah, okay,” I say quickly, stepping back from him the second my feet touch the ground and pulling at the hem of my shirt.
“Let’s go ahead and leave that one up there,” he says with a small grin. He grabs the last two cases of soda, and I can feel my face pulsing with heat as I watch him effortless lift those as well and walk out the door.
I follow, my heart still pounding.
I get into the passenger side of the truck as he closes up the back of the truck. His door opens with a creak, and he slides in next to me in the cab and turns the engine on.
“Look, are…” he takes a breath. “I’m not asking you to lie, I’m just asking if you could keep this between you and me.” He shrugs. “The whole big dude with money thing.”
I turn and smile at him, hoping the ridiculous blush is off of my face by now. “Only if you don’t spill about me being a huge klutz back there.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m keeping that one to myself.”
He winks at me before pulling the truck around, and my face goes bright red all over again as we drive away.
Chapter Nine
Evangeline
My heart is pounding by the time Rowan drops me off at the rental house and drives away. Hands shake as I unlock the front door, and my lip catches between my teeth as I climb the stairs to the second floor.
The door to my room closes quietly, only the sound of my telltale heart beating in the dark giving me away.
Giving away the sin I’m holding inside.
Temptation of the flesh.
Rowan Hammond is wicked.
Filthy.
No good.
And I’m trying so hard to drown out the voice inside that screams that I want something no good.
I want bad.
Don’t be silly, I chide myself. It’s a ridiculous thought. This is weakness, is what this is. This is me giving in to temptation — giving in to the sin of lust.
And really, this isn’t me. I don’t think thoughts like this. At least, I never did with Joseph.
So why is it Rowan who’s creeping into my head like this — late at night, alone in my room with my heart pounding, all manner of wicked thoughts coming up from somewhere hidden?
I dress for bed quickly and brush my teeth. I do so as fast as I can, rinsing and washing my face, avoiding making contact with my own eyes the whole time.
I can’t look, because I know what I’ll see on my face.
Want.
Need.
The sin, written large on my face.
Back in my room, I slip under the covers, trying to squeeze my eyes shut and squeeze the impure thoughts of him from my head. The thoughts of those arms, those eyes. Those perfect lips and that wicked tongue.
A heat begins to bloom inside of me, one that I try to stamp out, but it’s too late.
There’s no stopping it.
The heat grows, a fire hungry for more as it slowly consumes me from the inside out. I squeeze my legs together, clenching tight, but it only makes it worse. The heat teases through places it shouldn’t. Wicked, sinful thoughts igniting fires in wicked, sinful places.
I want to resist, but I’m weak.
In my head, he’s there, in my room.
In my head, he’s pulling back the sheets. He’s pulling his clothes off, and I’m seeing again what I saw that first day in his office — that sinful body carved from marble. The way his tattoos and his muscles ripple.
Other parts of him that I’ve pretended I’ve forgotten about, but I know that I haven’t.
And I left something out tonight. I didn’t tell the whole story. I told about Joseph, and about being engaged, and then it being over. I admitted to never having had a one-night stand with a stranger.
I left out the part where I’ve never done it at all.
I left out the part where I’m a virgin.
The thought of him knowing that only makes the fire inside grow hotter. There’s something filthy about him knowing, some sort of carnal knowledge that’d be dangerous in his hands.
The best kind of dangerous.
In my head, he’s slipping under the covers with me, his hands moving over my body.
Hands slip beneath cotton, fingers find my skin.
My eyes close and my lips part in sweet, sweet agony as they move lower and lower — pushing at my panties, slipping under the edge, teasing so close.
With a gasp, somehow, I break the spell.
Somehow, I yank myself back from the edge of damnation and sin. I quickly sit up in my bed, panting, my chest heaving with the danger of how close I got. I swallow, pushing my hands up through my hair and shaking my head.
Chastity was right. Father says the devil is in the details.
Well, the devil is certainly in Rowan Hammond.
I know it’s wrong. I know it’s a sin. But heaven help me, he’s leading me into temptation.
Sweet, sweet temptation.
And I think I might be helpless to resist.
Chapter Ten
Rowan
“So, I’m just curious.”
I glance over at Jade working the left hand side of the bar. We’re busy for a Monday. That’s not a bad thing.
“What’s up?”
“Are we going to just ignore the giant, fist-sized bruise on the side of your skull?”
“Ideally, yeah.” I glance back at the frat-boy standing in front of me — the last dregs of the summer tourists crowd. “Thirty-nine bucks.”
“Cool, thanks bro, keep the change!”
He drops two twenties on the bar, and he and his buddy somehow grab the four beers and four shots of Irish whiskey and head back to their table of cronies.
“Douchebag,” I mutter, snagging the cash off the bar.
“C’mon.”
“Jade, leave it.”
“Boyfriend?”
I shoot her a look. “I’m fairly positive my sexual orientation has been made abundantly obvious by now.”
She snorts. “Not yours, tool, I mean the boyfriend of whatever skank you banged.”
“Isn’t it against your feminist code to be slut-shaming like that?”
“If it walks like a duck and fucks its way through the entire male population of Shelter Harbor like a duck…”
“This duck have a number?”
>
She grins and rolls her eyes. “Not going to tell me are you?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Anything to do with the huge dude who I saw you talking to out back the other night with that church girl?”
“Nope.”
“Right, so who was that?”
“Jade, fuck. A beer delivery guy, I don’t know.”
“They deliver pretty late now, huh?”
I ignore her.
“Seemed a little past church girl’s bedtime, too. Little late for her to be slumming around the backdoor of a place like this with a dude like you.”
“You going to pour drinks or keep quizzing and insulting me?”
She rolls her eyes again before she turns and smiles at a couple of men who are wildly misreading her body language.
Except, Jade’s at least half right. About the Eva part at least. It was too late for me to be bringing her around here. It was too late to have her out alone, just the two of us, and her looking like, well, like she does.
Because the thing is, I’m not sure how not to flirt with a girl that catches my eye like she does. However forbidden, however off-fucking-limits Evangeline Ellis is, I can’t seem to just shut the fuck up and leave it be around her.
Throw in driving home side-by-side in the pickup, the windows down, the early fall breeze blowing in and tussling her blonde hair, and the moon just catching her face?
Forget it.
Throw in her literally dropping into my arms ten minutes before, her body tight against mine and her hands on my skin, and it’s a lost cause.
I’d been rock hard the whole damn drive back to the rental house. This sweet, sinfully, untouchable piece of temptation sitting in the truck next to me.
Any other situation in the world, or any other girl? Done deal. She’d have been home two hours later after I fucked her eight different ways all over that truck.
Clearly not the case with Eva Ellis.
Not even fucking close.
Besides the fact that she’s clearly not the kind of girl who goes for the cocky, filthy-talking type like me, I’m actually curious what kind of guy she goes for.
If any.
There’s also the part where my dad would kill me. Not literally, but he and I have taken years to get back to good after my whole bullshit when I was younger. Screwing around with his friend’s daughter? Not high on the good graces list.
Then there’s Leonard Ellis. I don’t know Eva’s dad, but I do know that fanatical look in his eyes. I’ve never bought into religion much, not even with my dad being a minister. But he’s on the tamer, “religion is humanism” side of things. Leonard? Leonard’s a true believer. A bible-thumping, sulfur and brimstone and hell-fire kinda guy.
I’m not sure if he’d actually kill me or not.
In any case, it’s a moot point. Eva is not the kind of girl I go for, and I’m certainly not the kind of guy she gets with. So fantasy — a filthy, totally off-limits fantasy she remains.
“What’re you drinking?”
I’m cranking through orders, and I don’t even look up as I say it to whoever is next in the crowd.
“Hey stranger.”
I freeze.
Now there’s a voice I know — a voice, I might add, that is staggeringly appropriate to hear right now given my conversation five seconds ago with Jade concerning boyfriends of skanks I banged and punches to my head.
I slowly look up, and lock eyes with Fiona.
Red lips, raven hair, tits falling out of the way-too-tiny tank top she’s wearing, and that goddamned constant look of smugness on her face. It’s the look of a girl who is very used to getting her way with men.
It’s the look of a girl who is very used to getting her way with me, actually.
“What are you doing here, Fiona?”
“Heard there was this hot bartender workin’ here that would put out.”
“I think Jade’s a little busy right now.”
She smirks, her eyes burning into me with that hungry, predatory look she gets. “What time are you off?”
“I’m a little busy right now, Fi.”
“Well take a break. I thought you owned the place.”
“Hold that thought.” I shove a finger at her before looking past her at the actual customers crowding behind her. “Yeah?”
“Three vodka sodas, two Sam Adams, Coors Light.”
“You got it.”
I spin, grabbing a pint and spinning it in my palm as I whirl back for the beer taps.
“You’re busy.”
I turn back to Fiona. “I literally just said that.”
She rolls her eyes, batting a hand at me. I ignore her as I pass the drinks to the guy next to her, grabbing the cash off the bar and tossing it in the register.
I’m shaking up a double order of raspberry martinis for two of the co-eds from the frat-boy table before I have time to glance back at Fiona.
“C’mon, take a break.”
“Can’t.”
I pour out the drinks and slide them with a charming grin towards the two blushing sorority girls. When I look back up, Fiona’s glaring at me.
Shit I know the look.
Fiona and I had fun, once. Well, many times. I mean once as in once upon a time, but we sure as fuck weren’t a fairytale. In fairytales, the princess usually isn’t still living with her boyfriend, and she’s also not usually getting fucked over the hood of her boyfriend’s car in the garage by the bartender she’s been banging behind his back.
I don’t really see that flying very well with the Disney crowd.
A fairytale also wouldn’t usually involve Fiona melting into batshit insane fits of jealous rage at the slightest provocation. Like, for instance, when some girl I’ve never met before smiled at me in a bar, provoking Fiona to stalk after her and smash a fucking martini glass over the poor girl’s head.
The irony that she was the one with a boyfriend she was casually cheating on with me was apparently way lost on her.
“Easy, Fi.”
She whips her head back from staring lasers at the two girls walking away. “What?”
“Deep breaths?”
She rolls her eyes. “That happened once, Row. And I was wicked drunk.”
“Just trying to keep my customers out of the E.R.”
She grins at me, and I suddenly wish I wasn’t done with that bar rush I just had.
“So, you free tonight?”
“You still seeing Jeff?”
She chews on her lip.
“Fiona-”
She holds out her hand, and my brows shoot up at the giant rock on her hand
“Jesus fuck, Fiona.”
“I know, I know. Crazy, right?”
“You’re fuckin’ married?”
“Engaged,” she says in a bored tone.
“Well, congrats?”
She shrugs before grinning that hungry smile at me again. “So you free or not.”
“I thought you’re getting married.”
“I am.”
“Then not.”
She rolls her eyes. “C’mon Row.”
“Why the fuck are you here if you’re engaged? I thought you and Jeff were doing better.”
Doing better as in “her not skipping out four times a week to let me fuck her any way I pleased”.
Amazing what “not cheating” can do for a relationship.
“Oh, we are.”
“Then why are you here,” I mutter through gritted teeth.
“You wanna know?”
Not really.
I frown at her as she grins and leans across the bar — her tits almost falling right out of her shirt as she crooks a finger at me. I lean forward despite every voice in my head that tells me not to.
“Because he doesn’t fuck me like you do, Row,” she husks into my ear. “Because I can’t have sex with him without closing my eyes and dreaming of that big dick of yours fuckin’ me senseless.”
Fuck.
Thi
s is how the trap gets sprung.
This is what happened every time before when I’d try and walk away. I’d get hooked right back in.
Why?
Because it’s easy. Because I’m an asshole, because I think with my dick more than I should, and because Fiona has a great pair of tits and a mouth like a goddamn machine.
I close my eyes and grit my teeth as she giggles and purrs into my ear. And I’m seriously about to throw in the towel and admit she wins, when something stops me.
I can’t do this. I won’t do this.
Not again.
“I think you should probably leave, Fiona.”
She pulls back from me with a look of fury on her face. “Are you serious?”
“You’re getting married.”
Her eyes narrow to slits suddenly, her lips going tight. “Who is she?”
I frown. “What?”
“Who the fuck is she!” she hisses, eyes darting around the bar as if looking for someone.
I roll my eyes. “Jesus, there’s no she, Fiona, I’m just not getting involved in whatever train-wreck you and Jeff are headed for next.”
“I’m gonna find out who this bitch is that you think is so fuckin’ special, Row,” Fiona spits at me, shaking her head and furiously snatching her purse off the bar. “We’re not done with this.”
“Yeah, we are,” I mutter under my breath as she storms out the door.
But a few hours later, as we’re closing up for the night, I keep coming back to what she said, “Who is she?”
And I lied when I said no one. Well, half lied. Am I seeing someone else? No, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone on my fucking mind. It doesn’t mean there isn’t someone planted deep inside my head in a place she shouldn’t be, giving me ideas she shouldn’t be.
It doesn’t mean I haven’t been having daydreams all night about what sweet, innocent, prudish little Eva Ellis would look like on her knees wearing nothing but a hungry look and that silver cross around her neck.
Jesus I’m going to hell.
Jade leaves first, but I sit at the dark bar, lit only by the neon Red Sox sign in the corner I haven’t turned off yet. I let the last of the Led Zeppelin record spin out through the jukebox before I’m finally sitting in silence with an empty beer and thoughts like these about the last girl in the world I should be having them about.