Squatting down in front of her, I took both her hands in mine and looked her in the eye.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I think what you saw was a raccoon. He’s probably thrilled to find your trashcan. But other than that, he’s got no interest in you. He ran off when I arrived.”
“A raccoon? He looked really big, Sam. I don’t think it was a raccoon.”
“Look, I’m used to the woods. I can assure you there are no bears around this area, but I can see how a raccoon might have spooked you if you weren’t expecting it.”
“This whole living-in-the-woods thing is still new to me. I’ve been here a while, but I’d never seen a raccoon. I knew they were getting into my trash, but … I think I panicked. Especially after the whole confronting-a-lumberjack-stalker-in-the-dark-woods incident.”
I gave one of her braids a little tug to try and lighten the mood. “Hey, I’m not a stalker, remember? Just your friendly new neighbor. Let’s get you a drink.”
A green blanket lay over the back of the couch, and I pulled it around her shoulders. It wasn’t that cold, but I wanted her to relax, especially now that I realized how frightened she’d been earlier when she confronted me.
Leaving her on the couch, I walked to the kitchen and started talking as I opened the fridge and freezer to see what she had to drink.
“Raccoons are pretty annoying, but I always have to remind myself that we’re the ones actually annoying them. I mean, here we are in the middle of nowhere. There’s total darkness except for these two random cabins, just plunked out here, with no one else around for miles and miles.”
Jackpot. Vodka.
I yanked the bottle out of the freezer and found two glasses. Pouring generous shots for both of us, I walked back to her, shutting the front door on the way. I made a note to deal with the bag of trash she’d dropped on the porch.
“You can’t really blame them. We’re the only two people out here, no sign of civili—”
“Are you trying to make this worse?” She glared at me, tears pooling in her eyes again.
“What? No, I’m just—”
“Trying to describe the scene of a horror story where the single woman gets mutilated by a deranged escaped psychotic murderer. Job well done. You can stop now. I can totally visualize the setup.” Wiping her eyes with the corner of the blanket, she sniffed and held out her hand for the drink.
I thought back to what I’d said and mentally kicked myself.
You sound like a lunatic. You’re the lunatic psycho she’s talking about.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll just stop now.”
Handing her the drink, I sat down next to her and threw back the vodka in one go. She did the same and put her glass on the wooden coffee table. Leaning back, she exhaled slowly.
“That’s better.”
I should have gotten up then. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to make sure she was all right. I wanted to sit here next to her, feel the heat from her thigh so close to mine. If I moved just an inch, I’d be touching her. I wanted to undo her braids and see how that light hair fell around her breasts. I wanted her to say my name again, like she had before.
I pictured her all breathless and panting. But this time it wouldn’t be from fear. It would be from heat. My fingers twitched with the urge to plunge them into that hair and make her beg for my mouth.
I started as she sat up, leaned close to me, and ran her fingers through my hair.
“I thought it would be longer.”
I’d taken my hair out of the bun when I got home. And thank fuck I had because now she was touching me. The woman was touching me and I couldn’t take it. Turning to face her, I wrapped a hand around the back of her neck to hold her in place and pressed my mouth against hers.
The softness of her lips, with a hint of strawberries that didn’t seem like strawberries at all and more like sex and something else, hit me. The desire to find out what else she tasted like elsewhere fueled my lust and channeled straight to my cock. Without giving her a chance to even respond, I licked her lips and delved in as she opened her mouth, just a small gap, but enough for me to slip my tongue into. And we groaned in unison.
Leaning against her more, I lowered her to the couch. Propped on one elbow, I grabbed her breast with my free hand. Warm and heavy against my palm, the hint of soft flesh I could suck and nibble spurred me on. Her nipple hardened and she let out a gasp when I released her mouth.
But only for a second.
I couldn’t stop.
The taste of her, the wet heat of her tongue against mine, drove me crazy. As cliché as it felt to admit, even to myself, Katy provoked a need in a me I’d never felt with any other woman.
I was never going to stop.
One of her hands remained grabbing my hair. She rested the other on my shoulder. I shifted our bodies and pushed between her thighs, grinding against her core. Her body. Her heat. Soft noises escaped her mouth as I touched her.
It all felt so damn good.
I moved my mouth to the side of her neck, inhaling the scent of her skin, the vanilla shampoo she used tickling my nose. I was about to move lower when she whispered my name.
“Sam.”
It was barely a whisper, a breath, a hint of my name. But it was there. And I couldn’t ignore it.
I sat up and looked at what I’d done to her.
Jesus, I’d mauled her.
Her mouth was swollen and red from my rough kiss, her shirt disheveled where I’d manhandled her tit. Her thighs were spread, evidence of the dry-humping I’d fully intended to turn legitimate had she not said my name. I wanted her to look like a woman who needed me, full of a burning lust she needed me to fuck out of her.
Instead, she looked traumatized.
“Lock your door when I leave.” I stood and turned and stomped out, slamming the door behind me.
Chapter Five
Katy
I knew he was home so I knocked again. Louder. The noise sounded so intrusive, echoing into the quiet woods. But his car was outside and unless he’d gone for a walk, he had to be home. He was avoiding me. Probably because he thought I was crazy.
Because I was crazy.
I mean, what kind of woman went from screaming at him for being a stalker, then confusing a raccoon for a damn bear, all before grinding up against him on the couch like a cat in heat, when he was just trying to take care of me?
I was too embarrassed to even tell Charlie about what had happened last night. But she knew something was up, because I’d agreed to let her do her ridiculous makeover on me later tonight.
Knocking again, I counted to ten before walking along the porch and peering in through the window.
Nothing.
Empty.
A beer can sat on an old crate next to a ratty loveseat, which incidentally was the only piece of furniture in the main living area, if you didn’t include the box on its side, trying to pass as a side table. There wasn’t even a dining table or chair in sight. Wow, my cabin looked luxurious compared to Sam’s. Hopefully our landlord wasn’t charging him the same as me. At least I had somewhere to eat.
Finally, I glimpsed movement as a door swung open and he entered the living room. He had ear buds firmly in place, loose shorts, and a naked torso covered in sweat. I stared through the window as I watched him walk toward the sink and pour himself a glass of water. His back glistened and the muscles rippled as he lifted his arm to drink. My breath hitched as I watched him put the glass down and stretch his neck muscles.
It was as if I’d never seen a naked man before and in a way, I realized I hadn’t. I’d had high school boyfriends, then Daniel. They weren’t men. They were boys. Boys who played at being grownups, who played at knowing what to do with their bodies. Boys who worked out at gyms with vanity mirrors installed and top ten hits pumping through speakers. Whatever the hell type of workout Sam had been doing in his bedroom was the type of thing real men did.
There was no other way to get a back like that, to get that t
apered waist, that definition, without knowing how to use your body. In every way. I touched my lips, suddenly acutely aware of how long it had been since I’d had sex. And even then, it wasn’t even that good. God, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had good sex. That’s how long it had been.
I reached out and touched the window frame when I realized he was looking at me. I’d been so busy drooling over his beautiful back I hadn’t even realized his head had turned and he was staring at me over his shoulder. Staring at me because I was staring at him. Through his window, like some loony, horny Peeping Tom.
I spun around and bounded down the porch steps, not even thinking to look behind. There were things I needed to do, places I needed to be. And none of them involved standing on my neighbor’s porch, getting my own personal peep show.
Opening my front door, I reached down to where I’d dropped my bag, swung it over my shoulder, and turned back around to head to my car. There was no reason to look up and check to see if he’d followed me, no reason at all. Getting in my car, I forced myself to slow down and reverse at a normal speed. This situation didn’t need to be aggravated by having an accident. That would just be the perfect trifecta of crazy lady behavior I needed to completely convince Sam I was indeed two shakes short of joining the circus and eating my own hair.
A half-hour later, I found myself sitting on Charlie’s bed, a small glass of wine in one hand, a bottle of neon-yellow nail polish in another, listening to my best friend complain about how hard it was to straighten my long hair.
“You really need to sort this mess out. I mean, I know you’re all back-to-the-earth and all that crap, but this is crazy.”
“Actually, I’m not. I just like my style. I’ve never donated to Greenpeace, and it was Daniel who was into the whole hippie thing and that was just an excuse to get high. You said you wanted to give me a makeover, not a character assassination,” I snipped back.
“Wow, you’re feisty tonight.”
I bit my lip and tried not to audibly wince as she yanked on my hair. There was no reason to tell Charlie about Sam.
Except there was.
Charlie was good with men. Well, more accurately Charlie was good at getting men. She was a total failure when it came to dealing with the aftermath, but Charlie could have a man wrapped around her finger, throwing his number at her and begging her to let him take her out before she’d even finished steaming his cappuccino. She could help me figure out how to not act like a crazy horny weirdo.
But I knew what Charlie’s response would be—jump his bones, screw his brains out, lick his lollipop. That was her response to most male interaction. Act on instinct was her motto. Unfortunately, her overriding instinct to most men was physical attraction, and no matter how mild it might be, Charlie acted on it.
And then got her heart broken. The only man she had yet to apply her rule to was Mr. Gross, which didn’t make sense because he was cute and appealing. He was pretty quiet though, and clearly infatuated with Charlie.
“I’m not feisty. I just like my hair. It’s awesome. Just do your thing.” Trusting Charlie with my hair and makeup was probably one of my dumber ideas, but she’d been dying to get her hands on me for a while just to have fun. Tonight I needed the distraction. For the past four point nine seconds I hadn’t thought about how Sam’s sweat would taste if I licked it off his neck. “Give me an update on the jerk.”
I watched her reflection in the mirror. She wrinkled her nose up before answering.
“Over it. Over him. Moving on.” The way she pursed her lips and the lack of confidence in her voice meant there was a longer tale to tell. The fact that she wasn’t offering it up was sign enough that she’d been humiliated in some way.
“How about Mr. Gross?”
“Ford?” She raised her eyebrows and looked at me in the mirror.
“You call him Ford?” It was my turn to scrunch up my nose. “If anything, you should call him Stan. Or Stanford.”
“What about it?”
“Do I need to spell it out for you?”
“First of all, just because I have a fairly relaxed approach to sex doesn’t mean I’m going to start banging my boss. That’s just asking for trouble. I don’t ask for trouble. It just finds me. Second of all, Ford and I have a good working relationship, which I really need. The amount of times he could have fired me and hasn’t means something to me. He trusts me. I think he thinks I have potential. And it’s nice to have someone think that. Just because I’m a barista in a coffee shop doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the job seriously. And sleeping with the boss does not say serious.”
“But you don’t take the job seriously!”
“Well, I’m going to. As of tomorrow. That’s why I can’t get involved with Ford. Anyway, he doesn’t see me like that. He’s takes his job too seriously.”
There it was. The massive blind spot she had with him. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine. Charlie usually acted like the world was just waiting for her to arrive so the fun could start. To most people, she seemed pretty simple. She looked like a girl who liked to have fun and never took anything too seriously.
But as I’d gotten to know her, I realized that was just a small part of her. The rest she kept deeply hidden away. She harbored secrets that occasionally came to the surface before quickly sinking back down. I’d managed to piece together a few things over the past year. Wayward parents, no opportunity to go to college but she sometimes took online classes, although in what she never let me know. I still didn’t know how she even ended up living here, but she didn’t have any plans to leave and seemed happy to stay in her cramped studio apartment just a few blocks from the coffee shop.
I knew when to stop pushing. “All right, Charlie. You’ve got less than two hours to use it and finish whatever the hell is happening to my hair, so hustle.”
When Charlie wanted something done, she could follow through. Less than two hours later, I stared at my reflection and frowned.
“I like it! You look hot.”
“I look like I should be on spring break, taking body shots in a beach bar. What’s going on with my nose?”
“My God, you are so naïve. Contouring, woman! You should try it sometime. Look at your cheekbones.”
My hair had been straightened and then pulled up into a high ponytail, the ends curled so they bounced every time I moved my head. She’d gone for a heavy dark palette for my eyes. She hadn’t held back on the fake lashes, and my lips were a glossy orange.
“You do realize I’m going to wash this off as soon as I get home, right?” There was no offending Charlie, one of the things I loved about her.
“Oh, I know. But you have no idea how much fun this has been for me. Just tell me you’ll think about buying some bronzer.”
“I will think about thinking about buying some bronzer. That’s the best I can do.”
She shrugged her shoulders before wrapping her arms around me and resting her chin on my shoulders.
“I want you to get out there. I want you to get out of here. I want you to go to Paris.” Her voice was hushed, and I knew she worried about me, just like I worried about her.
“Charlie, I’m not ready.” Shaking my head, I squeezed her forearm. “I’m getting there. I’m just not ready. What if it’s the wrong choice? I can’t mess up again.”
“Yes, you can. You’re young, beautiful, and smart. Your life is going to be full of mistakes. I mean, look at yourself in the mirror. Agreeing to this damn makeover was a mistake. But fun. You need to have fun, have sex, have something other than a vague dream of Paris.”
“I do those—” There was no way to finish that sentence. I didn’t have sex, and I avoided fun. Fun was synonymous with adventure, and adventure was synonymous with bad life choices.
Like Daniel.
Using up savings because I thought I loved a man.
Because I wanted to have fun.
I’d ended up living in a tent with a loser.
“I’m going to g
o. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Just like me, Charlie knew when to stop pushing.
It was ten by the time I got home, and Charlie’s accusation of lack of fun was stuck in my head. All I wanted to do now was wash off the caked-on makeup and dried hairspray and climb into bed with a good book. Yup, my Friday night was pretty wild.
Through the woods, I could make out the lights from Sam’s cabin. This afternoon on his porch had pretty much ruined any plans I had to invite him to dinner.
Shutting my door and turning on a standing lamp, I startled when there was a knock on the door.
“Katy, it’s me, Sam. Your neighbor.”
I opened the door reluctantly. There was no way I could avoid what had happened earlier.
“Sam, hi, I should apologize—”
“What happened to your face?” He stepped forward, forcing me to step backward into the cabin. He shut the door with his foot, his gaze continually roaming from my face to my hair. “And your hair.”
“Yeah, Charlie did a makeover.” I sheepishly smiled and self-consciously reached up to touch my hair. “It’s not really me, but you know...”
Firm fingers wrapped around my wrist and he pulled me toward the kitchen counter.
“I don’t like it,” he said with a growl. He torn off a paper towel from the roll on the counter and dampened it under the faucet.
“Well, excuse me. I didn’t do it for you. And it’s pretty—”
He pressed the wet towel against my mouth and wiped off the lipstick. Shocked into silence, I stared at him as he continued to get rid of the orange color that so clearly offended him. After a minute, he seemed satisfied and moved on to my hair. With a gentleness I never expected from him, he pulled out the hair tie and ran his fingers through my hair until it hung around my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I finally breathed out.
“What did you want today, when you came to my house and then ran away?”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I was going to invite you to dinner tomorrow night.”
The Woodsman (Lust in the Woods Book 1) Page 3