I'll Show You Mine

by Lauren Gallagher

  “Oh? What ‘things’ are we talking about?”

  He kissed her again, and broke away just long enough to murmur, “Things that leave marks.”

  Please, please don’t let me wake up…

  “That just raises one question.”

  “Hmm?”

  “When you play with those things that leave marks,” she whispered, running her nails along his scalp, “do you play with them hard enough to leave marks?”

  “You’d better believe it.” He grinned. “Go big or go home, right?”

  Alyssa whimpered.

  Shane leaned down and kissed her. “Are you telling me you like it when someone leaves marks?”

  “Mmhmm. Make it hurt, and make me remember it for days.”

  “Oh God,” he breathed, closing his eyes as he visibly shuddered. Almost groaning, he said, “At the risk of using a lame cliché, where the fuck have you been all my life?”

  She would’ve laughed if she’d had enough breath. “Don’t know. But I know where I’ll be all night if you want me to be.” She ran her nail around his hard nipple. “If you promise to leave marks, that is.”

  Shane didn’t answer.

  He kissed her. Hard.

  And she had no doubt he’d leave a few marks before sunrise.

  Chapter Six

  Shane couldn’t remember the last time he woke up next to a woman. Whenever he slept with someone, he was usually gone well before the sun rose. Hell, he and Alyssa had still been at it when the sun rose.

  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he rolled over, and sure enough, she was still there. The room had been too warm to keep all the covers over them, especially with their bodies so close together, so they’d kicked everything off but the sheets. They’d separated during the night, Shane lying on his stomach with his arm draped over the bed, her on her side with her back to him.

  She looked amazing like that, with the sheet draped over her perfectly curving waist and hip, exposing the circle of roses tattooed in the middle of her back. He didn’t touch her yet. Just gazed at her, drinking her in the way he’d been afraid to at the wedding.

  She really was fucking gorgeous. Fit and curvy, just the way he loved. She might’ve had a baby before—he couldn’t tell for sure, but he guessed she’d gained and lost some weight in her life. On her side like this, the profile of her hips reminded him a lot of how his friend’s wife had looked after she’d had their baby. That observation was hardly a criticism, though. He’d been mesmerized by her from the second he’d seen her at the wedding, and she’d looked even better once her dress had come off. Alyssa wasn’t skin and bones. She had muscle, she had just the right amount of curves, and that ass… God, he loved her ass. He’d never found flat butts all that attractive. Alyssa’s was just gorgeous. Round. Firm. Perfectly proportioned to the rest of her body.

  She was gorgeous, clothed or naked, and she was amazing in bed. Everything they’d done had driven him wild. And the way her eyes lit up when he’d taken off his belt?

  Oh, Alyssa. What kinky dark side are you hiding, and how do I get to it?

  And what the hell was he doing looking when she was right there where he could touch her?

  He curved his hand over her sheet-covered hip. She murmured softly in her sleep, and when he slid up beside her, naked skin to naked skin, she pressed back against him.

  “Morning,” she murmured.

  He kissed her shoulder. “Morning.”

  “What time is it?” She craned her neck toward the nightstand. “Damn. Checkout time is in an hour.”

  “Already?” He lifted his head and looked at the alarm clock. “Fuck.”

  She rolled over and cuddled closer. “I don’t want to leave yet.”

  He nuzzled her neck. “I don’t want to leave either. But I guess you’ll need to catch a flight or hit the road, won’t you?”

  “No. I don’t live far away.” She lifted her head, smiling sleepily. “I just knew I wouldn’t feel like driving home last night.”

  “Is that right?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m local. I live on the north end.”

  “Do you? So do I.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “So would it be presumptuous of me to ask if we can—”

  “See each other again?”

  He blinked. “Yeah. That.”

  Alyssa grinned. “Not presumptuous. And I definitely want to see you again.”

  He returned the grin and brushed a few disheveled strands of hair out of her face. “There you go, pushing all my buttons again.”

  “And you like it, don’t you?”

  “I so, so do.”

  “Thought so.” She ran a hand down his abs. “Are you in any hurry to leave?”

  “In a—” He sucked in a breath as her nails teased his nipple. “Fuck…”

  “We do still have an hour.”

  “Mmhmm.” He met her eyes. “What do you think we should do with it?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “Hmm.” He cupped her breast and drew light circles around her nipple with his fingertip, grinning when she gasped this time. Her nipple slowly hardened, and goose bumps appeared all over her smooth skin. “I could think of a few things.”

  She bit her lip and shivered.

  Even as he kept teasing her nipple, he murmured, “God, if I spend another hour with you, I won’t be able to walk for a week.”

  “I won’t either. Don’t care.” She kissed him and rubbed her hips against his dick. “I don’t want to walk. I just want you to fuck me.”

  “Jesus.” He pinched her nipple hard enough to make her whimper. “You’re insatiable, aren’t you?”

  “When a man is as dirty and rough as I am? You’d better believe it.”

  “Oh God…”

  “This isn’t enough,” she whispered. “I want to see you again.”

  Shane tensed.

  She met his eyes. “What?” She cringed a little. “You don’t?”

  “Oh, I do.” He ran his hand from her breast to her hip. “It’s just, uh, not quite that simple.”

  Her expression hardened. “Please tell me there isn’t a wife in the picture.”

  A laugh burst out of him, and he shook his head. “No, no. Never been married.” Humor fading, he met her eyes. “But before we agree to do this again, there are…” He hesitated, his stomach fluttering as it always did when he broached this subject. “Look, I have a past. I—”

  “Don’t.” She put a hand on his chest. “Please. I don’t want to know.”

  Shane blinked. “What?”

  Alyssa licked her lips and met his eyes. “I don’t want to know.”

  “But…”

  She sighed. “Listen, I have a past too. And I…to be blunt, I don’t want to talk about it.” She ran the sole of her foot along his calf. “I’m tired of my past dictating everything about my future, so just this once, I want to forget about it.”

  He stared at her. “But if we’re going to keep seeing each other, then who we are, what we’ve done—it’s kind of relevant here, isn’t it?”

  “Does it have to be?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “I just want things to be simple,” she said. “I want you. That’s it. Not a relationship. Nothing long term. For once in my life, I just want to enjoy sex with someone who enjoys sex with me, and not give a damn about anything else. Past or present.”

  He chewed the inside of his cheek. If he’d been right about her being a mother, she was probably tired of men who turned tail and ran the minute they realized she had a kid. And if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t usually one for dating single moms. But a child at home wasn’t quite on par with the past he didn’t want to—but felt obligated to—divulge.

  Alyssa held his gaze.
“Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t want to know, and I don’t want you to know.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “We have great sex.” A cautious grin played at her lips. “Does it really have to be more than that?”

  “We do have great sex,” he whispered as a shiver went through him. He rolled the idea around in his mind as he traced the swell of her hip with his palm. Maybe he’d regret it when he was clothed and alone and thinking straight, but lying here now with her, he liked the idea. Just sex. Hot, rough, no-holds-barred sex with someone who didn’t know and didn’t care who he’d been in a past life. Though he was getting more and more curious about her past, the fact that she was willing to pretend his didn’t exist was both refreshing and tempting.

  And dangerous.

  He swallowed.

  Alyssa trailed her nails down the center of his chest. “We can make our own rules. Everything we’ve done since we walked into this room has been perfect. I don’t want any more or any less than that.”

  He cocked his head. “Just a bit kinkier, right?”

  She grinned. “Of course.” Her expression shifted to something more serious. “I mean it. We just meet, fool around, enjoy some crazy things together, and then go back to our separate lives.”

  He mulled it over for a moment. If there were cons to counter the pros, he couldn’t think of them. Not with this gorgeous, feisty women lying right here beside him.

  “All right.” He slid his hand from her waist to the small of her back and drew their bodies closer together. “No pasts. Just sex.”

  Alyssa grinned. “I had a feeling you’d see things my way.”

  “Well.” He kissed her lightly. “When you’re naked in bed with me after you’ve left claw marks all over my back, you’re at a bit of an advantage when it comes to being persuasive.”

  She batted her eyes. “Am I?”

  “Yes. You are.” He raised his eyebrows. “So how does this work? We’re just fuck buddies?”

  She nodded. “Works for me. We seem to have”—she licked her lips—“similar tastes.”

  “We do.” He reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Are you suggesting you want to…explore some of those similar tastes?”

  “Is that a gentlemanly way of asking if I want you to tie me up and flog me?”

  There was no masking the shiver her words sent straight down to his toes. “Do I look like I do anything ‘gentlemanly’?”

  Her grin broadened. “Do I look like I’d want you to?”

  “Not even a little,” he growled.

  “So are you in?” She hooked her leg over his hip, drawing him closer to her. As his cock brushed the hair of her pussy, he groaned, and she murmured, “Fun, kinky sex with no strings attached?”

  “You’d better believe it.” He pressed his lips to hers and rolled her onto her back. She wrapped her legs around his waist and dragged her nails up his sides, and there wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t have done for her—or to her—right then.

  He wanted to ask what happened if this went too far. If things went deeper than sex, and suddenly the past mattered as much as the present and the future.

  But then she was reaching for a condom. And he was putting it on. And she was begging him to hurry.

  And he was inside her.

  And nothing else mattered.

  Chapter Seven

  The day after Alyssa woke up beside Shane, she could still barely move. He’d promised to leave marks, and he’d been good to his word—faint bruises darkened the edge of her hip bones, and a crescent-moon bite mark on her shoulder still made her shiver every time she saw it in the mirror. Even her scalp was a little tender from when he’d grabbed a handful of hair and kissed her.

  At her desk, in the privacy of her office, Alyssa closed her eyes and sighed. Focusing today was going to be one hell of a chore. She wanted to believe she was just reeling from some long-overdue sex, but she knew damn well it was more than that. One-night stands weren’t that hard to come by. She even had a guy as a fallback for when they were both hard up and needed to blow off some steam.

  But sex like that?

  Now she understood what it meant to say “he rocked my world”. Because he had. Good God. And they were going to see each other again. There’d be more sex like that.

  Alyssa shook her head and stared at her computer screen. Before she could see him again, she still had to do…whatever it was she did for a living. Work. Reports. Database. Spreadsheets. Blinking a few times, she made herself focus on the words and numbers on the monitor.

  Get it together. Come on.

  Her phone vibrated beside her keyboard, startling her, and her heart jumped again when Shane’s name appeared above a text message.

  Did you know claw marks sting in the shower?

  A laugh burst out of her. She clapped her hand over her mouth, cheeks burning as she glanced at the closed door. The mental image of Shane getting in the shower and sucking in a hiss of breath when the water hit his raw skin was…

  Warmth rushed through her body. Could that man do anything without making it sexy as hell?

  She texted back, I’d apologize, but somehow I don’t think you minded.

  Not at all. A moment later: Was almost disappointed to take my tux back this morning. Still smelled like you.

  Alyssa grinned. Wear something like that again, I can promise a repeat performance.

  He came back almost immediately with, Duly noted. ;)

  A second later, he added, Anything you wear is getting torn.

  Alyssa shivered, nearly dropping her phone. Promises, promises.

  Without missing a beat, Shane replied, When it comes to pleasing a lady, I always keep my promises.

  Alyssa licked her lips. She’d known a few men who talked a good game—insisted they loved going down on women, promised to be attentive and rough, bragged they could make her come multiple times—and turned out to be duds in bed. More often than not, those were the guys who rolled over and went to sleep while she quietly got herself off.

  But Shane had already put his money where his mouth was, as it were. He’d made her come so hard she’d almost cried. He’d left marks. This was a man who’d make a promise and deliver on it.

  Thumbs not quite steady, she texted back, Bring it on.

  And just how much was he willing to bring on? She drummed her fingers next to her coffee cup. Shane had obviously not been repulsed by the idea of getting kinky. He also didn’t strike her as the overbearing type. Dominant, she suspected, but maybe a little…flexible in that department. And he seemed to have both a sadistic and masochistic side.

  She wasn’t sure why, but she was a little nervous as she wrote, So when you say you’re kinky…how kinky are we talking?

  No response.

  As the silence wore on, punctuated by the ticking clock on the wall and underscored by the low hum of her computer, her stomach knotted tighter. She imagined him shutting off his phone and shoving it away—maybe even blocking her first—and quickly getting back to work before anyone saw the suggestive messages. Damn. Couldn’t she have waited until she saw him face-to-face before asking—

  The phone vibrated.

  She snatched it up off the desk.

  Well, I saw you looking at my belt the other night. What did you want me to do with it?

  Alyssa exhaled, a tingle of arousal working its way through her. What were the options?

  You went there first. Let’s hear it.

  She thought for a moment, then, I would’ve been equally thrilled if you’d hit me with it or tied me.

  Maybe I’ll bring two belts next time. One for each.

  The shiver went all the way to Alyssa’s toes.

  Heart pounding, she wrote back, Promise?

  He didn’t even hesitate: Absolutely. Before she could send a reply, a second message beat her t
o the punch: You’re making it very difficult to get any work done, you know.

  Likewise.

  I’d suggest meeting for lunch, but we’d probably never get back to work.

  Lunch with Shane? Oh, tempting. There was a lot that could be accomplished in the space of an hour, even with a five-minute detour for condoms. But prying themselves apart and returning to work? Unlikely. Not that she’d get anything done today anyway.

  Laughing to herself, she wrote, I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate again until we’ve had a rematch.

  I promise you won’t be able to afterward either.

  Yeah. No focusing happening today. Jesus. She still couldn’t believe how straightforward and to the point this man could be.

  When do you want to put your money where your mouth is?

  Let me take you to dinner. And then… ;)

  More than ever, Alyssa was grateful for her private office—she didn’t need her coworkers to walk in and see her grinning like an idiot.

  Sounds good. When?

  Soon. Pause. Wear something hot.

  She laughed quietly and wrote back, I’ll dress hot if you do.

  After a few seconds, he replied, Deal.

  They worked out logistics, settling on Friday night. Both had to work all week, and a late night together didn’t bode well for an early morning at the office. They planned to meet at a restaurant downtown that she’d never tried, and then Alyssa had to cut the conversation short to go into a meeting.

  She took her seat at the round table in the conference room and, as her colleagues and department head joined her, tried to remember what they were supposed to be discussing. Normally, she was one hundred percent focused, especially during meetings, but today? Not so much.

  Something told her that was going to be her default state for a while.

  At the stroke of five, Alyssa hurried out of the office and across the street to the café where she and Tina sometimes met for dinner.

  Tina wasn’t there yet, so Alyssa grabbed their usual table by the window and played on her phone while she waited. She’d been texting off and on with Shane throughout the day, but he was on his way home, so he’d gone quiet. Funny, she’d gone through thirty-four years of her life without texting him, and after a few hours of swapping messages with him, she barely knew what to do with herself now that it had stopped.