by Maisey Yates
It didn’t last long.
On the creature’s second roll forward, Faith was unseated, her lips parting in an expression of shock as she flew forward and onto the mats below.
And before he could stop himself, he was on his feet, making his way across the space. She was on her back, her chin-length curls spread around her head like a halo on a church window. But her expression was anything but angelic.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She looked up at him, and all the shock drained from her face, replaced instead by a spark of feral-looking rage. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing getting on the back of that thing?” He moved closer, ignoring the crowd of people looking on. “You clearly have no business doing it.”
“It’s not your business...what I have business doing or not doing. Stop trying to tell me what to do.”
He put out his hand, offering to take hold of hers and help her up, but she ignored him, pushing herself into a sitting position and scrabbling to her feet.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I know you’re fine,” he returned. “It’s not like I thought the thing was going to jump off its post and trample you to death. But it’s also clear you’re being an idiot.”
“Well, look at the whole line of idiots,” she said, indicating the queue of people. “I figured I would join in.”
“Why, exactly?”
“Because,” she said. “Because I’m tired of everyone treating me like a kid. Because I’m tired of everyone telling me what to do. Do you know that it was almost impossible for me to sneak away to our meeting today because my brothers need to know what I’m doing every second of every day? It’s like they think I’m still fifteen years old.”
He shrugged. “As I understand it, that’s older brothers, to a degree.”
“Are you an older brother?”
“No,” he said. “Only child. But still, seems a pretty logical conclusion.”
“Well, whatever. I went to boarding school from the time I was really young. Because there were more opportunities for me there than here. I lived away from my family, and somehow...everyone is more protective of me. Like I didn’t have to go make my own way when I was a kid.” She shook her head. “I mean, granted, it was an all-girls boarding school, and it was a pretty cloistered environment. But still.”
“Let me buy you a drink,” he said, not quite sure why the offer slipped out.
You know.
He ignored that.
“I don’t need you to buy me a drink,” she said fiercely, storming past him and making her way to the bar. “I can buy my own drink.”
“I’m sure you can. But I offered to do it. You should let me.”
“Yeah, you have a lot of opinions about what I should and shouldn’t do in a given moment, don’t you?”
Still, when he ordered her a rum and Coke, she didn’t argue. She took hold of it and leaned against the bar, angling toward him. His eyes dropped down to her breasts, a hard kick of lust making it difficult for him to breathe.
“What are you doing here?” He forced his gaze away from her breasts, to her face.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m here to ride a mechanical bull and make a statement about my agency by doing so. Not to anyone but myself, mind you. It might be silly, but it is my goal. What’s yours?”
“I’m here to get laid,” he said, holding her eyes and not blinking. That should do the trick. That should scare her away.
Unless...
She tilted her head to the side. “Is that what you were here for last night?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.
Her lips twitched, and she lifted up her glass, averting her gaze. “How was she?” She took a sip of the rum and Coke.
“As it happens,” he said, “I didn’t go home with her.”
She spluttered, then set down the glass on the bar and looked at him. She didn’t bother to disguise her interest. Her curiosity. “Why?”
“Because I decided at the end of it all I wasn’t really that interested. No one was more surprised by that than I was.”
“She was beautiful,” Faith said. “Why weren’t you...into her?”
He firmed his jaw, looking Faith up and down. “That is the million-dollar question, honey.”
That same thing that had stretched between them back at the house began to build again. It was like a physical force, and no matter that he told himself she was all wrong, his body seemed to disagree.
You dumbass. You want something harder than she can give. Something dirtier. You don’t want to worry about your partner. You want a partner who can handle herself.
But then he looked back at Faith again, her cheeks rosy from alcohol and the exertion of riding the bull, and maybe from him.
He wanted her.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to change that.
“I have a theory,” Faith said.
“About?”
“About why you didn’t want her.” She sucked her straw between her lips and took a long sip, then looked up at him, as if fortified by her liquid courage. “Is it because...?” She tilted her chin upward, her expression defiant. “Are you attracted to me, Levi?”
He gritted his teeth, the blood in his body rushing south, answering the question as soon as she asked it. “You couldn’t handle me, baby girl.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“But it’s an important thing for you to know.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “That’s what you think. Again, putting you on the long list of men who think they know what I should and shouldn’t do, or want, or think about.”
He leaned in and watched as the color in her cheeks deepened. As that crushed-rose color bloomed more fully. She was playing the part of seductress—at least, in her funny little way—but she wasn’t as confident as she was hoping to appear. That much he could tell.
“Do you have any idea what I would do to you?” he asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “I would assume...the normal sort of thing.”
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, I was locked up for five years. I’m not sure I remember what the normal sort of thing is anymore. At this point, all I have to go on is animal instinct. And I’m not totally sure you should feel comfortable with that.”
She shifted, and he noticed her squeezing her thighs together. The sight sent a current of lust straight through his body. Dammit. He was beginning to think he had underestimated her.
“That still isn’t what I asked you,” she said softly. She looked up at him, her expression coy as she gazed through her thick lashes. “Do you want me?”
“I’d take you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Hard. And believe me, you’d like it. But I don’t want you, sweetheart. I just want. It’s been a hell of a long time for me, Faith. I’m all about the sex, not the woman. I’m not sure that’s the kind of man you should be with.”
She squared her shoulders and looked at him full on, but the color in her cheeks didn’t dissipate. “What kind of man do you think I should be with?”
He could see it. Like a flash of lightning across the darkness in his soul. A man who would get down on one knee and ask Faith to be his. Have babies with her. Live with her, in a house with a lot of bedrooms for all those babies.
A man she could take to family dinners. Hold hands with.
A man who could care.
That was what she deserved.
“One who will be nice to you,” he said, moving closer. “One you can take home to your family.” He cupped her cheek, swept his thumb over her lower lip and felt her tremble beneath his touch. “A man who will make love to you.” She tilted her face upward, pressing that tempting mouth more firmly against his thumb. “All I can do is fuck you, sweetheart.”
She look
ed down, then back up. And for once, she didn’t have a comeback.
“You deserve a man who will marry you,” he continued.
That mobilized her. “Get married? And then what? Have children? I’m twenty-five years old and my career is just starting to take off. Why would I do anything to interrupt that? Why would you think that’s what I’m looking for right now? I have at least ten years before worrying about any of that. A few affairs in the meantime...”
He snorted. “Affairs. That sounds a hell of a lot more sophisticated and fancy than what I’ve got in mind, princess.”
“What have I ever done to make you think I’m a princess? To make you think I need you to offer more than what I’m standing here showing interest in? You don’t have access to my secret heart, Levi.”
“If you had any sense in your head, you would walk out of this bar and forget we had this conversation. Hell, if you had any sense at all you would forget today happened. Just do the job I hired you to do and walk away. My wife let me go to jail for her murder while she was alive. And whatever the authorities think, whatever she says...”
He bit down hard, grinding his teeth together. “She was going to let me rot there, in a jail cell. While letting me think she was dead. Do you know... I grieved her, Faith. I didn’t know she was in hiding. I didn’t know she had left me on her own feet. All I knew was that she was gone, and that I hadn’t killed her. But I believed some other bastard had. My motivation while I was in prison was to avenge my wife, and in the end? She’s the one who did this to me.” He laughed hard, the sound void of humor. “Love is a lie. Marriage is a joke. And I’m not going to change my mind about that.”
“Marriage is an impediment to what I want,” Faith said. “And I’m not going to change my mind about that. You’re acting like you know what I want. What I should want. But you don’t.”
“What do you want, sweetheart? Because all I’ve got to give you is a few good orgasms.”
She drew in a sharp breath, blinking a couple of times. Then she looked around the bar, braced herself on the counter and drew up on her toes as high as she could go, pressing a kiss to the lower corner of his mouth. When she pulled away, her eyes were defiant.
If she was playing chicken with him, if she was trying to prove something, she was going to regret it. Because he was not a man who could be played with.
Not without consequences.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, crossed her to his chest and hauled her up an extra two inches so their mouths could meet more firmly.
And that’s when he realized he had made a mistake.
He had been of a mind that he would scare her off, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the way his own control would be so tenuous.
He had none. None at all.
Because he hadn’t been this close to a woman in more than five years. And he’d imagined his wife a victim. Kidnapped or killed. And when he’d thought of her his stomach had turned. And not knowing what had happened to Alicia...
It hadn’t felt right to think of anyone else.
So for most of those five years in prison he hadn’t even had a good go-to fantasy. It had been so long since he’d been with a woman who hadn’t betrayed him, and it was hard for him to remember a woman other than his wife.
But now... Now there was Faith.
And she burned brighter, hotter, than the anger in his veins. He forgot why he had been avoiding this. Forgot everything but the way she tasted.
It was crazy.
Of all the women he could touch, he shouldn’t touch her. She worked for him. He had hired her to design his house and he supposed that made this the worst idea of all.
But she was kissing him back as though it didn’t matter.
Maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe she made a habit of toying with her rich and powerful clients. Maybe that was part of why she’d gotten to where she was.
No skin off his nose if it was true. And it suited him in many ways, because that meant she knew the rules of the game.
Because you need justification for the fact that you’re doing exactly what you swore to yourself you wouldn’t?
Maybe his reaction had nothing to do with his ex-wife making him into a monster. Maybe it had everything to do with Faith making him a beast.
Uncontrolled and ravenous for everything he could get.
He cupped her chin, forcing her lips apart, and thrust his tongue deep. And she responded. She responded beautifully. Hot and slick and enthusiastic.
“You better give an answer and stick to it,” he said when they pulled away, his eyes intent on hers. “Say yes or no now. Because once we leave this bar—”
“Yes,” she said quickly, a strange, frantic energy radiating from her. “Yes. Let’s do it.”
“This isn’t a business deal, honey.”
“That’s why I didn’t shake your hand.” She sounded breathless, and a little bit dazed, and dammit all if it wasn’t a thousand times more intoxicating than Mindy’s careful seduction from last night.
“Then let’s go.” Now he was in a damn hurry. To get out of here before she changed her mind. Before he lost control completely and took her against a wall.
“What about my car?” she asked.
“I’ll get you back to it.”
“Okay,” she said.
He put down a twenty on the bar, and ignored the way the bartender stared at him, hard and unfriendly-like, as though the man had an opinion about what was going on.
“Tell the man you’re with me,” he said.
Faith’s eyes widened, and then she looked between him and the bartender. “I’m with him,” she said softly.
The bartender’s expression relaxed a fraction. But only a fraction.
Then Levi took her hand and led her out into the night. The security lights in the lot were harsh, bright blue, and she still looked beautiful beneath them. That was as close to poetry as he was going to get. Because everything else was all fire. Fire and need, and the sense that if he didn’t get inside her in the next few minutes, he was going to explode.
“Levi...”
He grabbed her and pulled her to him, kissing her again, dark and fierce and hard. “Last chance,” he said, because he wasn’t a gentleman, but he wasn’t a monster, either.
“Yes.”
Seven
Faith felt giddy. Drunk on her own bravery. Her head was swimming, arousal firing through her veins. She had never felt like this before. Ever. She had gone on a couple of dates, all of which had ended with sad, sloppy kisses at the door and no desire at all on her part for it to go any further.
She had begun to think the only thing she was really interested in was her career. That men were irrelevant, and if men were, then sex was, too. She had just figured that was how she was. That maybe, when the time came, and she was ready to settle down, or ready to pull back on her career, she would find her priorities would naturally restructure and sex would suddenly factor in. But she hadn’t worried about it.
And now... It wasn’t a matter of making herself interested. No. It was a matter of life and death. At least it felt like it might be.
He took her hand to his heart, and helped her into his truck. She didn’t say a word as he started the engine and they pulled out of the parking lot.
Her heart was thundering, and she was seriously questioning her sanity. To go from her first make-out session to sex in only a few minutes might not be the best idea, but it might also be...the only way. She was half out of her mind with desire, just from feeling his lips on hers. Even so, she honestly couldn’t imagine wanting more than sex.
This man, her secret.
It had been almost funny when he had said something about taking a man home to meet her family. There would be no way she could ever take him home to meet her parents.
His frame would be so lar
ge and ridiculous in that tiny farmhouse. The ice in his veins, the scars on his soul, so much more pronounced in that warm, sweet kitchen of her mother’s.
No, Faith didn’t want to take him home. She wanted him to take her to bed.
And maybe it was crazy. But she had never intended to save herself for anything in particular. Anything but desire, really.
And this was the first time she had ever felt it.
What better way to get introduced to sex, really? An older man who knew exactly what he was doing. Because God knew she didn’t.
And for once, she wasn’t going to think. She wasn’t going to worry about the future, wasn’t going to worry about anyone else’s opinion, because no one was ever going to know.
Levi Tucker was already her dirty secret in her professional life. Why couldn’t he be her personal one, too?
Suddenly, he jerked the car off the highway, taking it down a narrow, dirt road and into the woods. “This isn’t the way to your house.”
“Can’t wait,” he growled.
“What’s this?” she asked, her heart pounding in her chest.
“A place I know about from way back. Back when I used to get in trouble around these parts.”
Get in trouble.
That’s what she was about to do. Get in trouble with him.
She felt...absolutely elated. She had gone out to the bar tonight to do something. To shake things up. She had seen riding the bull as a kind of kickoff tour for her mini Independence Day.
Oh, it wasn’t one she was going to flaunt in front of her brothers or anything like that. It was just acknowledging that sense of resolve from earlier. She was going to have something that was just hers. Choices that were hers.
It had all started with taking this job, she realized. So, it was fitting that the rest of it would involve Levi, too.
“Okay,” she said.
“Still good?”
She gritted her teeth, and then made a decision, feeling much bolder than she should have. She moved her hand over and pressed it against his thigh. He was hard, hot. Then she slid her hand farther up, between his legs, capturing his length through denim. He was big. Oh, Lord, he was big. She hadn’t realized... Well, that just went to show how ignorant she was. Maybe he was average, she didn’t know. But it was a hell of a lot bigger than she had imagined it might be.