Branded: You Own Me & The Virgin's Night Out

by Walker, Shiloh

  The elevator dinged and bodies spilled out. As the person next to them escaped the press, Ressa eased back. Dusky color rode along her cheekbones as she slid her eyes up to meet his.

  Tearing his gaze away, he looked at the lights flickering above the elevator door.

  It hit her floor and as she turned away, she slid her hand down, caught his.

  Sweat beaded at the nape of his neck and he had one brief moment of lucidity.

  Trey Barnes was a man who liked order. He liked to be in control.

  But he had absolutely no idea what in the hell he was doing.

  And he was absolutely fine with that.

  Her heart was still racing.

  Despite the fact that they’d been packed into that elevator like sardines in a can, for one brief moment, it had just been the two of them. Voices had faded away. The press of too many bodies and a woman’s drunken laugh. Everything faded.

  The only press she’d felt was his . . . the press of his body to hers, his arm under her breasts as he steadied her, his cock against her hip, pulsing in a way that her core tightening in response.

  The only voice she’d heard had been an internal one that whispered, I need to touch him. So bad. I need . . .

  No, as she swiped her key through the card reader, her hands were sweating, almost shaking.

  And the damn key card wouldn’t work.

  “Figures,” she whispered, her voice hitching.

  A warm hand came around, took the key. “Let me see,” he murmured, his voice way too close to her ear.

  Eyes closed, she stood there, struck dumb from the want ravaging inside her. The door clicked and she opened her eyes as he came around her to turn the handle, push it open. Then he turned his head, stared at her.

  Waiting. On her, she knew.

  Do or die, she thought, a little desperately.

  Kind of extreme, maybe. But it felt apt. Because in that moment, she knew if she didn’t take him inside . . . and then just take him—let them take each other—some little piece inside of her would feel like it had died.

  She slid past him, brushing up against his body as she did so. She felt his ragged intake of air and that hot, hungry need inside trembled, swelled.

  She didn’t turn on the light.

  As the door clicked shut behind her, she kicked off the spike heels and then turned to look at him.

  Abruptly, a line from the book Lynnette had been reading danced through her mind.

  With need and want a vicious tangle . . .

  Yes, this was a tangle, one that was entirely too twisted, considering how short a time she’d known him. Hours, really. Just a handful of hours when you added it all up.

  None of that mattered.

  She moved toward him.

  He met her halfway and as his arms came around her, everything inside her breathed out a sigh of delight . . . even as the need inside her demanded for more.

  The curls he tangled around his hand were every bit as wild, as soft, as crazy as he’d thought they’d be.

  And her mouth was pure, silken sin.

  Spinning her around, he pressed her to the wall and caught her hips in his hands, boosted her up. Her dress caught, stopped him from spreading her open and he snarled, shoved it up—only to stop, sanity trying to intrude.

  You should pull back. Pull back now before this just goes to hell—

  Pull back?

  Ressa hooked one leg around his and rolled her hips.

  Rolled her hips against him and his cock throbbed, pulsated behind the barrier of his jeans. Desperate, he shoved the skirt of her dress the rest of the way up and cupped the lush curve of her hips, fingers digging into the silken flesh. With a groan, she wrapped her legs around his hips and started to rock, rubbing herself up and down.

  His eyes all but rolled into the back of his head.

  She was already wet—he could feel her, through something silky and thin.

  Tearing his mouth from hers, he braced one hand on the wall, eased back.

  Ressa continued to roll her hips against his and he could hear the shuddery, shaking breaths as they escaped, felt his own echo within his chest as he looked down. He was still completely dressed. So was she—but her dress had been pushed up to her waist and a pair of panties painted a murder-red swath across her hips.

  And still she moved against him, like that contact was vital.

  To him, it was.

  But . . .

  For more on BUSTED, visit Shiloh’s site at

  www.shilohwalker.com

  The Virgin’s Night Out

  Shiloh Walker

  The Virgin’s Night Out

  Copyright 2015 Shiloh Walker

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Chapter One

  Shocking, vibrant red.

  The dress seemed even more so against her skin, but then again, Sloane Redding was ridiculously pale. Her hair was a nice, dark shade of brown and her eyes were a nice shade of green, so she wouldn’t complain too much about the fact that if she stood in the sun at the wrong time of day, the light reflecting off her skin might cause traffic accidents.

  She was really that pale.

  Or so she’d always thought.

  It looked good, though, in this dress.

  Or maybe the dress just looked good, period.

  There wasn’t a whole lot of it, the hem ending maybe four inches below the curve of her butt, and thanks to running and lifting weights, she actually had a curve to that butt, now.

  Nothing could be done for her dismally flat chest, but the criss-crossing cut of the front did plenty to play up her narrow waist and what curves she did have—namely her hips and her butt.

  She did have good legs.

  All in all, she thought she looked pretty good.

  Nothing like sad little Sloane who’d practically run out of town with her tail tucked between her legs six months earlier.

  Just the day before what would have been her wedding, too. The perfect Valentine’s Day wedding, when she would have married Rodney Satterfield, the man she’d been dating since she’d come home from college. He’d been working at the library where she’d accepted a job and she’d thought they were soul mates.

  Yeah. So much for that idea.

  Flicking an invisible speck of lint from the bodice of the dress, she leaned in and checked her lipstick, then inspected her eye makeup. Nobody had to know that she’d spent weeks learning how to apply it correctly—and yes, it had taken weeks. Three of them, visiting the makeup counters at the mall in Norfolk before one of the girls there had recognized her—and taken pity on her. They’d actually had a few classes together in college and May had figured out fast that Sloane wasn’t just showing a sudden late interest in current make-up trends.

  Within a few hours, she’d brought Sloane up to speed—and then she’d taken her under her wing in other ways.

  Her phone rang and she picked it up, recognized May’s number. She answered it, stomach jittering. “Hello?”

  “Get out of the bathroom. Put your shoes on. Leave the house.”

  Sloane laughed and looked around the pretty pink and gold bathroom. “Do you have a camera in here or what?’

  “Ew. No. I just know you. Have you left the bathroom?”

  Sighing, Sloane left the bathroom and made her way to the bed, sitting down. Her shoes waited for her, sitting neatly there, side by side. She slid one foot in, then the other.

  “What if nobody recognizes me?” she asked.

  “Even better.”


  “Okay, what if they do and everybody laughs?” She adjusted the strap and then rose, taking a few experimental steps before turning once more to look at the mirror.

  “Nobody will see you in that dress and laugh.” May sighed. “Come on, honey. You spent the past six months redoing yourself. You’ve got a job that makes you happy. You’re happier with yourself. For the love of all things awesome, you went to Europe by yourself—you had dinner with some English lord.”

  A small smile curved Sloane’s lips as she remembered. “Yeah.” Then she grimaced. “But this is different. This is…”

  “This is no different. You’re beautiful and you’re awesome and tonight, that schmuck will be at the bar in town because everybody goes to the bar on Fridays back in your hometown. That’s what you told me, right? Let him see you. Let him see what he missed…and if you’re lucky? Maybe you can hook up with some cute guy who comes in for your brother’s wedding.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Sloan rolled her eyes. “Okay. Ready or not…”

  • • •

  “Ready or not…”

  Boone studied the small sign.

  Welcome to Nowhere.

  Beneath it, in smaller script, read: Nowhere, Alabama, that is. Population 1941.

  He wondered if they’d subtracted a number when Pierce had died, but figured probably not. It was a depressing thought, even for him. Both of the twins, his two best friends, Pierce and Tyler Redding had still considered this small town—literally Nowhere—their home, even though they’d graduated and gone on to bigger and better things.

  Or maybe not.

  After all, Pierce was dead.

  And a few months ago, Tyler had quit his job working for DDX Security Specialists. The boss called it an extended hiatus. Probably because Hal Lenesco loved his boys, as he called them, almost as if they were his own, and he wasn’t quite ready to admit that Tyler was done.

  But they all knew the truth of it.

  Losing his twin had changed something inside him. Tyler was definitely done.

  He wouldn’t be going back to the private security group they’d all gone to work for after they’d done their tours. Sometimes, Boone wondered if Tyler wasn’t the smartest of them all. Getting out while he still could—while he still had a chance.

  But then Boone felt like kicking his own ass. It wasn’t like any of them had seen it coming. What had happened to Pierce had been an accident—a tragedy. When you made your living dealing with problems, sometimes those problems came back and bit you on the ass. Sometimes, even worse. Sometimes the problems ripped your throat out.

  They’d gone in to rescue a couple of clueless idiots who had the misfortune to get kidnapped while down in Colombia. The college kids hadn’t been there on a mercy mission, hadn’t gone down there to help with the unrest—not even to document the human rights violations. Not that Boone considered that the ideal way to spend your time, considering the body count racking up in that area of the world. But at least it was a worthwhile cause—dangerous, but he could understand why people put their lives on the line.

  No, these braintrusts had gone down there for thrills.

  They were adrenaline junkies. The two guys were behind a paranormal online web series and they’d decided to go investigate some illusive local urban legend.

  They’d trespassed on the wrong property and had been taken hostage. One of them had blabbed about his parents—Hollywood powerhouses and it was probably the one thing that had saved their lives.

  And because of those kids, Pierce was dead.

  Welcome to Nowhere.

  The sign mocked him and he shoved the heel of his hand against his eye. The need to whip the truck around and just drive straight back the way he came was strong. He could disappear. He had a month of free time spread out in front of him, courtesy of Hal. After his last job, a hard, fast and dirty one—the boss had insisted.

  Go to the wedding. Find some pretty young thing, get drunk, get laid and take it easy for a few weeks. Hell, longer, if you need it. You’re going to burn out, Boone.

  DB Cassidy, aka Boone to his friends, wasn’t going to burn out. He’d done that a long time ago. The husk sitting in the truck was all that remained.

  But he’d be damned if he turned tail and ran from the wedding of the one friend he had left in the world.

  Pierce couldn’t be here.

  So Boone damn well would be. He’d be there for both of them.

  But that was for tomorrow.

  Eying the neon of the sign he spied down at the end of the street, he knew he’d be elsewhere tonight. At the bottom of a glass sounded like the ideal place.

  Get some whiskey. Get wasted.

  It wasn’t quite the get drunk, get laid directive his boss had given

  him, but it would shut his brain down.

  Maybe if he hit the bottle hard enough, he could deaden the images of what it had been like to clamp his hands over his friend’s neck, as the blood pumped hot and dark.

  Chapter Two

  “Hel….lo—Sloane?”

  The shock was gratifying. The way Rodney’s eyes dropped to linger on her body was…not.

  Odd, she’d have thought she would have enjoyed that, the way his eyes roamed over her body like a caress, but all it made her want to do was back away.

  Still, the way he blinked, then shook his head, then looked at her again did more than a little to ease the pride that had taken a beating, thanks to him.

  As he eased in closer, she shifted her weight, putting more distance between them, although the movement was easy, deliberately casual. “Hi, Rodney.” She gave him the smile she’d spent months practicing. “How are you and Paulette doing?”

  “Paulette—oh. Fine. We’re…yeah. We’re doing good.”

  “That’s fantastic.” She waited a beat and then looked away, a patently bored expression on her face. “I hope to see y’all at the wedding. Have a good night now.”

  Then she turned and walked away, slowly, deliberately.

  May had taught her how to do just that, but there was more to the walk than just rolling her hips, more to it than just the unhurried, easy saunter. She concentrated on each and every step, because she was brutally aware of just how many people had stopped to watch that little interplay.

  A hundred eyes had turned her way when she came into Huley’s the one and only bar in Nowhere.

  She’d been inside Huley’s exactly four other times in her life. On her twenty-first birthday when her brothers had kept their promise—we’ll buy you your first beer, as long you promise you won’t do any of that stupid shit we did. On the day she’d told her two closest friends—at the time—that Rodney had proposed. Then the day he’d dumped her, she’d come here and done her best to get drunk, except the twins had been there and they’d decided to talk her out of that idea. Mostly because they’d had her convinced they were going to kill Rodney—and they could have. So she’d let them fuss over her and take her home.

  Then, when Pierce died, they’d had his wake here.

  She hadn’t been inside the bar since that night.

  As she slid onto a seat at the far end of the bar, she looked up, a fist squeezing around her throat.

  She hadn’t realized it would hurt like this to be here. All the memories she had of this place were memories of her brothers. Almost every memory she had of home was tied up in her brothers, and now one of them was gone.

  Pierce, the younger of the twins—the serious, studious one with the occasional macabre sense of humor.

  “Well, well, well…”

  She looked up as Huley himself came to lean against the scarred oak of the bar, studying her face. He wasn’t the original Huley who’d opened this place. That had been his grandfather, but he was happy to keep up the family tradition, running this place just as his father and grandfather had done.

  And right now, he was watching her with a grin on his face.

  “Looks like the city treated you just fine, Sloane.”

&nbs
p; “What did y’all think would happen? I’d get eaten up and spit out or left for dead in some alley?” she asked, the words popping out of her mouth before she’d even realized she was going to say them.

  Huley stared at her for a minute, and then he laughed, the sound of it echoing long and loud throughout the crowded bar. When he was finally done, he leaned over the bar, caught her head between his hands and tugged her close. She was still blinking in surprise as he smacked a loud kiss on her forehead. “Welcome back, sweetheart. Welcome home.”

  • • •

  Find a pretty young thing…

  There were plenty of pretty women in the bar. He’d already discouraged the attention of more than a few, too.

  There were pretty young things and women, who, while still

  pretty, had left the kiss of youth a while back. A woman with short dark hair and wide blue eyes caught his attention as he settled down and he thought maybe that was what he needed. She gave him a slow smile as she looked back at her friends and a moment later, her gaze came back to him.

  She was beautiful.

  She looked like a woman who wouldn’t mind a bit of hard and dirty fun—something that was over the minute he rolled out of bed—and he tried to work up the interest in grabbing a beer, moving over to her side.

  A flash of red caught his eyes as he went to do that.

  A flash of red and pale ivory skin.

  “What can I get you?”

  Boone looked up, saw the bartender waiting in front of him. “Ah…a beer.” He looked behind the bar and shrugged. “Whatever’s on tap.” He wasn’t picky. He just needed something to do with hands, something to wet his throat. Something to keep his brain occupied.

  Go talk to the brunette.

  But his gaze strayed to where he’d seen that flash of red.

  She was, most definitely, a pretty young thing.

  As his gaze lingered on her, she looked up, her gaze skimming the room and there was something…despondent…in that gaze. Something that made him think she felt about as alone in this crowd as he did. The bartender paused to speak to her and she smiled, shrugged as she reached for her drink, but the second the man turned his back, her smile faltered, then faded.