by Anne Marsh
She lays her fingers in mine. Fuck me, but you’d think she’d grabbed my dick from the heat that sears through me. She looks up at me, one hand resting on the dock and the other dwarfed by my palm. She exhales slowly, like she’s gathering up her courage or possibly getting ready to rip me a new one for all but dragging her here. The blanket slips. Thanks to the way her wet tank top hugs her tits and a sodden shirt drapes every other wet, muddy, fucking glorious inch of her, I can see the exact moment she breathes in.
This has to stop.
I should drop her back into the boat and send her on her way. Bringing her here is stupid. I think about that for all of a nanosecond and then realize I’ve already decided to keep her. She’s here, she’s mine, game over.
I haul her out of the boat.
In the two seconds it takes me to lift her clear, my dick gets hard. Pretty sure she gets a good look at it too as she flies past the front of my jeans. As soon as she’s safe on the dock, I let go of her hand and stomp toward the house. Me and my dick need some personal space right now, or I’m gonna have her on her back, pants off, panties down, bare ass banging on the wood unless I’m feeling like a gentleman and let her be on top.
I suppose there’s a small risk she hops straight back into my boat and tries to boost it, but she won’t get far. I tie a mean knot, and she’d never be quick enough to get away from me. Sure enough, there’s a moment of startled silence behind me like she’s trying to figure out why I’d bring her here and then abandon her on the dock, and then she flies after me. I sense her hovering just behind me, trying to decide between hanging back and catching up. The thing is, there’s nowhere on this island where she’s safe from me if I want to hurt her.
What I can’t figure out, however, is why hurting her is the last thing I want to do. Why I’d rather cut off my own dick than scare her with it. Must have fucking swallowed some parasite when I dove in after her stuff. It’s the only possible answer.
We’re halfway up the path to the house when she decides to chance walking next to me. She catches up with a little hop-skip, her feet slapping the path next to mine. I slide her a sidelong glance, but she’s too busy taking it all in to notice.
“How long have you lived out here?” she asks. “How old is the house? Are there other places like this in the bayou? When did it go on the market?”
Not like I can tell her the truth. “Long enough.”
She nods like I’ve written her a fucking thesis in response to her interrogation. “Are there ghosts? Who lived here? Were they family? How did you end up with the property?”
Interest lights her face up, her pretty brown eyes flitting from place to place as she tries to take it all in. I’d noticed her banging body when I fished her out of the bayou the first time, but I hadn’t paid attention to much else. Plus, her extra-crispy coating of swamp mud was kinda a deterrent. Now with her drinking in my home like it’s the best thing she’s ever seen, I’m realizing that I like having her attention.
She’s got these eyes that draw me in. They’re brown, which isn’t uncommon. But hidden in all that brown are these little bits of gold, a kind of sweetness that makes you want to drink it all in or lick it. She’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in forever, and my job is to scare the piss out of her. It sucks. I’d like to pretend that I hadn’t noticed her curves (I totally had) and that this insane urge I have to trace my fingers over each wet, muddy inch was easily tamed. But I’d be lying, and not just because I’m jonesing after her because she’s got a great pair of tits and even nicer eyes. There’s just a certain something about her that makes me want to look twice—or possibly a thousand times.
When I don’t answer her first questions, she moves onto the next batch. “How far from town are you? Don’t you get lonely out here?”
The women I’d fucked at the MC parties had been fine.
Poppy?
She’s something else. I give into temptation and run my hand down the straight line of her spine, resting my palm against the small of her back so I can guide her forward. She stiffens briefly before relaxing into my touch. I keep it PG—I don’t drop my hand lower, don’t cup her ass the way I’d like to. Since it’s not like she’s rolling out the welcome mat for me, I take a shot at answering her questions. Or at least a few of them because the woman has clearly mistaken me for Siri.
“You got any more questions?” I think I might be smiling just a little as I look sideways at her. Fucking kills my bad guy image but I can’t bring myself to care. She turns her head from one side to the other, trying to take everything in.
“Is that a heron? Do you have neighbors? How do you get supplies out here?” She frowns, her forehead crinkling up. “You do have supplies, right? Do you have running water?”
“I promised you a shower,” I say easily. She trips a little over the uneven path, and I whip my hand up to cup her elbow, steadying her. I can feel the warmth of her skin through the blanket and her shirt.
“You didn’t promise hot,” she mutters.
“Gonna be plenty warm.” My fingertips go AWOL, tracing small circles on her arm. I don’t know what I’m doing here or why I’ve brought her to my island. Not really. I just keep drawing her up the path, holding onto this little bit of her because letting go suddenly doesn’t feel like an option.
“I think I’d get lonely,” she says a little too softly, twisting to take in a particularly large cypress tree. Guess she’s a fan of Spanish moss because she makes an admiring sound and mimes taking a picture of it. Even I can admit it’s pretty and way better than those fucking hanging baskets of ferns and flowers half of Baton Rouge has hanging off their porches.
I head up the porch steps. On the other hand, maybe I should get a fucking hanging basket or six because empty floorboards stretch out left and right, a whole lot of nothing. I could even buy a chair or two because Poppy strikes me as the kind of woman who would like to sit and look out at the bayou.
“You’re not lonely?” She stops at the top step to pry her filthy boots off her feet.
Never. Alone is how I roll.
“Alone is exactly the way I like it.”
“But can you get to the store or see friends without taking out the boat? Where do you keep your bike?”
She’s lost in all her thoughts and hypotheticals. I can practically see her painting some kind of story in her head where I’m the lonely recluse who needs drawing out or some such shit. And see, that’s where she’s wrong. I like alone, but others like it for me, too. Who the fuck needs or wants a big grumpy beast thumping around in their midst?
“Fuck people,” I say firmly and shove the door open. I never bother locking it—who would come all the way out here just to mess with me? Plus, I’ve never bothered much with furnishing the place (I mean, you’ve seen my empty porch, right?), so it’s not like there’s much to take.
She hesitates, her bare feet digging into the wooden planks. I don’t even own a fucking doormat, an omission that strikes me as a problem for the first time ever.
“In.” I rest my hand against the small of her back and press carefully.
Fuck me if she doesn’t take orders. She brushes past me and only then, when she’s standing in my place and at my mercy, does the light go off in her head that maybe this isn’t the smartest idea she’s ever had. It’s cute, the way her feet stop moving, as if I couldn’t just pick her up and put her where I want her.
“Are you planning on going all Goldilocks and the three bears on me?”
What the fuck does that even mean? Since she’s standing stock still, feet frozen to the floor, eyes getting wider by the moment, I take a stab at it. “Do I look like a bear?”
There are bear shifters deep in the bayou, but you have to go deep to find them. Like center-of-the-earth deep. They make me look like Mr. Rogers singing happy songs about the people in my neighborhood. The odds of Poppy having encountered them are just about nil.
She winces. “No.”
I lean down and tap her
bottom lip gently. “Good. So you want to explain it to me?”
“Goldilocks busts into their house, sits on all their stuff, and then falls asleep in their bed. They’re pretty pissed off when they come home and find her.”
She can get in my bed all she wants. I’d be happy to tell her which door and all my favorite positions. Fucking bears were morons, mouthing off at Goldilocks. They could have had some kind of kinky ménage a trois (after baby bear stepped out because even I have limits), but instead they scared the shit out of her and she ran. There’s a lesson in there for me.
She eyes my face again. Maybe she’s checking for signs of pissed off? Or I grunted my approval of the pornographic film running through my head? Fuck if I know, but she’s still wet, cold, and covered in the bayou, which are three things I—or my shower—can fix. I press the pause button on my mental fantasies.
“You think I’m mad at you?”
“I rammed your boat.”
And… we have a winner. I should probably feel guilty for letting her think that, but we’ve already established that I’m not a nice person. “Barely left a mark.”
“And then you had to rescue me.” She says this like rescuing is right up there with root canal or bail me out of jail. It’s not like I’m Superman or even something useful like a firefighter, but pulling her ass out of the bayou wasn’t much of an effort. Especially since I’m the one who landed her there.
“Anytime,” I tell her. I’m kinda surprised to realize that I mean the offer. If she falls in, I’ll be there for her, no questions asked. Yeah, as if that’s any better than killing her boat. I have no place in her life.
“So no Goldilocks?” She looks hopeful, which is my cue to nod—and tell her the truth.
“The big, bad wolf is more my style.”
She makes a choking sound that’s part mouse squeak, part WTF. And fuck me but now I’m imagining feeding my dick down her throat or licking my way up her pussy.
“Wolf?”
“My favorite animal,” I say, closing the distance between us.
Oui. I’m a fucking charmer. And maybe this is the first up close look she’s gotten at my face because she does some more staring, her fingers kinda twitching like maybe she needs to reach out and trace the scars on my jaw and my arm to make sure they’re real. My body scares most women bad. My face is a fucking mess on one side, and the rest of me doesn’t look like any kind of fucking teddy bear. I know she eyed me from the water, but it wasn’t like she had any choice out there. Between me and the water, I was the safer choice. My dick likes the way she looks at me, though. Hell, my dick wants to stake a claim on her. Make her mine. This is fucking stupid. I’m the beast man of the bayou, and she’s covered in mud.
She backs up one step. Then another. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she agrees with my whole beast assessment.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
Me too.
But since it’s not like I can change shit, and I have a job to do here, I give her what I can. The truth.
“We’re cool about the boat,” I tell her.
Her smile is hesitant, like she’s not sure if she should say anything more or not. “For staring,” she clarifies.
“You’ve got nothing to apologize about.” I don’t know what’s up with the apologies, but I don’t like it. Somebody’s made Poppy feel like shit at some point, so I immediately add him to my to-be-killed list. Her problem is my problem, and I’m fucking happy to be of service.
Poppy
When my grumpy white knight said he had a place in the bayou, I assumed he had a hunting cabin. Possibly one of those super cute, terribly picturesque shack-like buildings that occasionally pop up on the water’s edge. I’ve boated by more than one of them. They’re small, modest, and relatively weather-beaten. I figured he had four walls, most of a roof, and maybe a solar-heated shower—or a hose hooked up to a cistern.
This place… is something else.
I mean, it’s not even in the same zip code as a hunting cabin or your usual bayou property. Not only does he own the island, but he has a bona fide McMansion sitting on it. Two palatial stories high, his I’m-richer-than-God house looks like something straight out of Gone With The Wind but on a slightly smaller scale just so it fits on the island. If it were any bigger, it would need its own state or possibly a continent. It screams money. Age. Those columns lining the front of the house and the wraparound verandahs? I’m in love with them already, and Mother Nature’s idea to giftwrap the place in Spanish moss was downright inspired. This place isn’t what I’d imagine a biker would go for. First of all, it’s on an island—so roadways and biking and riding free are severely limited. Plus, the more I look around, the more it feels like I fell off my boat and into a fairytale. It’s possible I hit my head and I’m totally delusional, but I love it. It’s beautiful in a wild, overgrown way.
Just like the owner.
Previous Me picked a big authoritarian man who found fault with everything—and our love life didn’t end well. He thought he knew best, and at first the orders were kind of sexy. He looked out for me, just wanted what was best for me, and how could that hurt? It’s tempting to let someone else take the wheel. Not forever, but just for a few minutes. Hours. Days. You see that slippery slope my ass is sliding down? The crash landing that’s about to happen? I never do until it’s too late. One order always leads to another like paper rings in a construction paper chain.
I didn’t let Mr. Ex hit me. Not ever. But there are so many other ways to hurt. To hit back. No spanking games or kink for me. No bondage, no ropes, no handing over control—because my ex turned out to be an asshole extraordinaire and what should have been fun and games ended up hurting. He ripped me apart verbally until I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.
My not-so-white knight, however, doesn’t look like the kind of guy who plays games. He’d be all about the action. Domination. Pleasure. Sex with him would be straight up raw and gritty, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d get off on telling me off. Still, I have to stop thinking about him naked. Of course, my other problem is that I have no filter. I just blurt out whatever I’m thinking and I don’t know how to make nice. I suspect we have that in common.
Apparently, Mr. Not-So-White Knight’s fancy place doesn’t have a suitable bathroom on the first floor, because he steers me up a sweeping staircase that makes me want a crinoline and one of those big puffy Scarlett O’Hara dresses. Or maybe that’s just me wanting something, anything, that’s not soaking wet and covered in mud. Mud itches when it dries, as I’m finding out fast. I sort of trail behind him, indulging my curiosity as he stalks past door after door. There are lots of rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and big soaring ceilings—and not much furniture. The place is practically empty.
Okay. So maybe he spent his money on the house.
Maybe he’s really, really minimalist.
He stops when we reach the end of the hall. More long windows look out over an impressive sweep of bayou. I try to play it cool, but check this place out. How does he walk around like it’s no big deal? The view at my place is of next door’s brick wall.
“Fuck,” I announce way more loudly than necessary, coming to a dead stop in front of the window. I think there are two herons getting it on down at the water’s edge, or maybe those are swamp iris? I need my spare glasses stat.
Mr. Not-A-Knight just looks at me. And because he’s probably now thinking that was an invitation to have some dirty sex with me (literally, seeing as how I’m still wearing half the bayou on my body), I clarify. “Not literally. I have a problem. With my mouth.”
This time he’s definitely checking me out. His gaze runs over me, leaving stupid tingles in its wake. I like having him look at me.
“Seems fine,” he grunts. I can’t help but notice that he’s not big on talking.
So I clarify, partly to fill in the awkward silence. “I don’t think before I speak.”
And then I keep on going, when
really I should shut up. “It scares guys off,” I admit. “Gals too. Although I definitely prefer a penis. But my ex is a douche.”
And hello verbal diarrhea…
My companion jerks his chin in my direction, which has to be some kind of acknowledgement, right? Tacit permission to speak because this guy’s just so goddamned fascinated with all the painful, private details of my life? Even I know I’m stretching this, but I keep right on going anyhow.
“My ex was a professor. Is one. He was my professor. The chair of my thesis committee for my MS in biology.”
Can you date your professor? Absolutely. On a scale of one to ten, however, the idea is a solid negative million. Believe it or not, I dated the man for his brain and not his dick. He was the Biology God, the best at what he did, and my hormones decided that meant he could rock my world in bed. My hormones need to take a nice, long vacation or possibly even grow up because they’re zinging to life again around today’s noble rescuer.
“Didn’t work out?” Mr. Tall, Dark, and Aloof reaches around me, flattens his palm on the door at my back, and pauses. See? Maybe he does want to hear my story. Maybe he’s listening and his own hormones are doing some zinging—or stiffening—and he’s wondering what it could be like between us. We could do our own reenactment of Gone with the Wind in this place because he definitely looks like he could haul my not-so-small ass up the stairs and still have enough breath left to make me come twice. I’d just lean into him and he’d slide those big muscular arms under my legs, and we’d be off.
A big hand brushes the side of my face. Shit. My cheeks heat up.
“You gonna answer me?” Humor threads through his dark, rough voice. I think he might be laughing at me. With me, hopefully, because I’ve been the butt of enough jokes already, thank you very much. I’ve moved on.
“The sex worked out fine,” I tell him. “We did it—in the library, his office, his car, and even occasionally in his bed—and it was actually pretty good. Sure, he was fairly normal in the orgasm department, but he got me there and we had secretive sex for six months. Until someone found out.”