Forbidden Crush

by Cole, Cassie

  I heard him snort. “I expected you to be an adult about it, Charlie. You’re letting your emotions get in the way of what makes financial sense.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “It’s all my fault. Scott, you maxed out my credit card with that purchase. I’m dead in the water until you cancel the magazine ad.”

  He made a humming sound. The sound he made when he was about to explain why something was a bad idea. “That would be a mistake.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a mistake. I didn’t agree to it.”

  “Charlie,” he said. Normally this tone of his was soothing, but now it sounded condescending. “You know it’s too late to cancel.”

  “No it’s not. Call the magazine and tell them you’ve changed your mind. The purchase was made last night—it’s not like they’ve done any work yet. Heck, if you’re too afraid to call them, I’ll do it for you.”

  “Going back on it would burn my connection at the magazine.” That same condescending tone. “Surely you understand how upsetting the largest food magazine in Savannah would be catastrophic for our food truck in the long-term. Listen, Charlie. I’m sorry you connected your personal card to the business PayPal. That was an honest mistake on your part. But the best thing for you to do now is get another personal credit card. Even if it’s just in the short-term, that will help us—”

  I hung up. I couldn’t listen to him gaslighting me like this anymore. Acting like it was my fault, while he was just trying to do what he thought was best.

  I sat on my bed and clenched my eyelids shut to squeeze the tears out. It was one of those things that I was blind to while we were together, but Scott was an incredibly manipulative person. He would do something he knew was wrong for selfish reasons, then find a way to convince you it was all your fault. When I watched him do it with some of our suppliers or businesses who wanted our food truck to make an appearance somewhere, I’d chalked it up to Scott being a smooth business negotiator.

  In reality, he was just an asshole.

  “Asshole,” I muttered to the bed sheets. It felt good saying it out loud. It gave me a little more strength than I had moments before. Speaking truth to words.

  I wished I had that six-pack right about now. Or a bottle of good whiskey. It was almost tempting to walk back into town and have a few drinks at Flop’s.

  Almost.

  I pulled out my phone to call Momma, then remembered she was still volunteering at the bingo hall. She wouldn’t be home for another two hours.

  Instead, I re-read the text from Hawk. It didn’t sting as much as it had the first four times I’d read it. My better judgement was telling me to brush my teeth and call it an early night, but the sinking pit in my stomach made my fingers fly across the screen keyboard.

  Hawk replied almost instantly.

  Me: Want to forget what you said earlier, and come screw my brains out until I feel better?

  Hawk: Haha

  Hawk: Sorry Peaches, but it’s too dangerous.

  I winced. It was an obvious response, yet I’d thought it was worth trying anyways. Now I just felt like the desperate slut who couldn’t handle rejection.

  I fell back on the bed and groaned. Tomorrow was going to be awkward. Maybe I could play it off as a joke with Hawk. Hopefully he still made an extra sandwich for lunch. Without any money, that might be my only meal tomorrow. Heck, the payment for the next week in the motel was due tomorrow, too. I might be living out of my car pretty soon. For $10 a day in parking fees, too.

  As if things couldn’t get any worse, a hard knock came on my door.

  33

  Charlotte

  I froze in bed, too scared to move. Moments later, the knock came again. I shifted to look out the window, but my curtains were drawn.

  Thrown into an uneasy situation, my brain automatically created a list of who could be at my door this late. On the harmless end of the spectrum was Billy coming to let me know that cold beer had magically arrived in the lobby. But that wasn’t as likely as the other, more dangerous end of the spectrum. It could be the sheriff coming to complain about my unpaid car parking fees, or snooping around to pin some new crime on me so I’d be stuck in this town even longer.

  Or it could be the Copperheads.

  A tingle went down my spine as that thought grew roots and buried itself in my psyche. The Copperheads had figured out what we’d done with Jesse. Or they’d figured out that Hawk and I slept together last night. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  The knock came again, harder and angrier this time.

  I could hide. Lock myself in the bathroom and pretend like I wasn’t home. But it was futile—I’d just gotten back to the motel minutes ago. They would have seen me come inside. They’d knock down the door and then they would be really angry. Upsetting them might change a bad situation to worse.

  I walked to the door, numb to my fate and hoping I could feign innocence.

  When I opened it, Hawk stood there.

  “Didn’t think you were gonna open up, Peaches.”

  The fingers gripping my heart relaxed. “Why didn’t you announce yourself!”

  “Kinda tryin’ to keep quiet. Didn’t want to go yelling and disturbing Billy at the front desk.”

  I frowned. “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”

  He fixed me with his cobalt gaze, curious and intense. He didn’t need to say a word.

  He’s here responding to my text message.

  “You said it was too dangerous,” I said.

  “It is,” he replied, stepping into the room until the door closed behind him. “But I don’t fucking care.”

  Just like in my dream, he backed me up until my legs hit the bed and I bounced down onto the edge. He fell between my legs and smothered my lips with a kiss that quenched the thirst within me, then igniting a deeper one. I reached for his belt as he tugged my jeans off, then my panties, until the cool air hit my wetness. His manhood swelled into view as his tight grey boxer-briefs came off, and as he sank back between my legs the warmth of his flesh filled me like a lantern, spreading through my body like a shot of good whiskey.

  I wrapped my thighs around him to hold him inside of me, savoring how completely he filled me.

  There was no slow passion tonight. Hawk’s need for me was urgent, and mine was just as desperate. He rocked his hips into me while sucking on my lower lip, and a whimper escaped my throat as he began making love to me the way I needed.

  Fucking me the way I needed, hard and fast.

  I moaned loudly, grateful that the rest of the motel rooms were deserted. Hawk’s cries were just as animalistic while he jackhammered into me, both of us reaching for something we’d needed all day. I teased my fingers over his body, across the tattoos and the bulging muscles underneath, touching the man my entire body ached for.

  He was the only good thing about this shitty little town, and he was mine.

  I tightened my core for him as he pumped. I wanted him to come so badly. I needed it, for his body to release inside of me and fill me with his warm seed. The need bloomed between my legs, melting like steel beneath a welder’s torch, the atoms breaking down and combining into something new. Something beautiful.

  Hawk roared as he came with every fiber of his being, and I held his head away from a kiss so I could witness it. I wanted to remember every second of the pleasure plastered on his rugged face. Memorize all the curves and lines at the edge of his eyes, and each hair of his beard.

  And as I did, his eyes looked back at me with more than just lust. With love.

  And I looked back at him with the same eyes.

  *

  We lay above the sheets, my body stretched across his, totally comfortable with our mutual nudity.

  “I suppose you have to leave?” I whispered into his meaty bicep, which was my pillow. The number 3 in his 3194 tattoo was just underneath my eye, stretching across my field of view.

  “Not yet, Peaches,” he rumbled in a voice a man only shared with a lover. “I can stay a bi
t.”

  Alarm pulsed just beneath the surface of my concern. “What if someone sees your truck?”

  His fingers caressed my arm. “I parked on the service road around the bend and walked here. Nobody’ll find it.”

  “Mmm,” I said as I cuddled against his body. The place between my legs ached with the wonderful feeling of vigorous, desperate sex.

  “So,” I said. “Your text. Were you telling the truth?”

  I felt him tense beneath me. Thousands of muscle fibers across his chiseled body all tightening at once. He added a sigh for good measure. “Nothing’s changed, Peaches. I just don’t… feel that way about you.”

  The words were another dagger to my gut. It sounded like it hurt him to say them, too. Or maybe I was just projecting my own pain.

  “Except you said we couldn’t do this again,” I pointed out, because it was easier than accepting what he’d said. “Yet here we are, doing this again.”

  I felt his shrug without seeing it. “You’re really good in bed. I was just afraid of leading you on if you thought it was more than that.”

  I closed my eyes and buried my cheek in his bicep. If I looked him in the eye, he’d known I was lying. “Nothing wrong with keeping it physical only. Just two acquaintances getting their rocks off while waiting to get out of this awful town. No dates or anything else mushy.”

  “Right.” He sounded skeptical, and I waited for him to call me out on it. Instead he asked, “What had you in a tizzy at the diner?”

  Grateful for the change of subject, I groaned into his warm skin. “It’s my ex. He’s making it very easy to get over our relationship.”

  “How so?”

  I rolled over and Hawk rolled with me, wrapping his body around mine so we could spoon. I ground my butt into his warm crotch and sighed.

  “We had a business together. We shared a food truck. Even though I’m gone, he’s still trying to make the truck’s problems my problems.”

  “What kind of food truck was it?” he asked.

  “It was called The Toasted Bun. We sold gourmet cheeseburgers.”

  “Huh,” Hawk grunted. “What makes a burger gourmet?”

  “The price tag,” I said, re-using an old joke Scott and I used to tell people. Hawk chuckled, and I went on, “We locally-sourced all of our food. Grass-fed beef and local dairy for the cheese. Other ingredients like applewood-smoked bacon, avocado slices, and a blue-cheese sauce.”

  “Shit, Peaches, you’re makin’ me hungry again.” He lightly kissed the back of my neck. “I grill a mean burger myself. There’s somethin’ soothing about standing in front of a grill watching meat char. I guess it appeals to my inner caveman.”

  “You’ll have to make a burger for me sometime,” I said, then winced. What I was suggesting was awfully close to a date.

  Hawk only scoffed. “You? Hell no! You’d turn your nose up at my boring-ass country burger.”

  “I would not!”

  “One patty, a single slice of American cheese, a little bit of ketchup and mustard. You telling me that would meet your approval?”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “No lettuce or tomatoes?”

  “Too fancy.”

  “I’d try it,” I said magnanimously. “I’m sure it would be very tasty.”

  Hawk’s grunt might have been agreement, and it might have been doubt. “So what did Scott do to piss you off? Buy cheap avocados? Skimp on the blue cheese?”

  “He decided to take out an expensive ad in a local food magazine,” I explained. “And he charged $2,500 of it to my personal credit card, maxing me out.”

  “Goddamn,” he breathed. “Peaches, that ain’t your standard annoying ex kind of shit. That’s fraud, or something. Identity theft.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “It was in our joint PayPal account though. So he had legit access to it. It’s not like he stole my card or hacked my account or anything.”

  “Still, though.”

  “You know what the worst part is?” I asked. “He tried to blame me. Like it was my fault he used that card.”

  He squeezed me extra tight. “That sucks. Your card should have a notification or something when you get close to your limit, or go over.”

  “I thought I did have those settings enabled.”

  “Then why didn’t you get them?”

  “Who knows,” I mumbled.

  But Hawk was frowning against my shoulder. “You sure he doesn’t have access to your account?”

  Getting out of bed took extra willpower, and Hawk leaned over and smacked my butt on the way to the laptop. I opened the lid and went to the account page for my credit card.

  “All my notifications are disabled…” I said with a frown. “And the phone… You have got to be kidding me.”

  Hawk slid out of bed, his nude body stepping up toward me. He smelled like smoke and sweat. “What is it?”

  “The primary phone number, where all alerts are sent to? It’s been changed.” I pointed. “That’s Scott’s number! Son of a bitch!”

  His hand was warm on my shoulder. “You’re getting quite the mouth, Peaches. Not that I blame you.”

  I switched over to the security page, then the list of recent logins. It showed the IP address (which meant nothing to me) and the city of origin. “Yep, look at all those Savannah logins. A dozen over the past week. He didn’t just login once to disable my notifications. He’s been watching my purchases!”

  “Holy fuck…”

  I let out a half-groan, half-shout. “I’m beginning to realize just how manipulative Scott is. He pretends like he hasn’t done anything wrong, like the $2,500 charge to my card was just some accident. Meanwhile, behind the scenes he was disabling my notification settings and monitoring my purchases. Unbelievable.”

  Hawk shook his head while reading the screen. “If I ever meet this guy, I’m gonna punch him in the face for you.”

  “If I ever see him again, I’ll do it myself.”

  He pointed. “Dispute that shit. Let the credit card company put the hammer down. If you need to, you can prove you were here in Eastland while the charge was made from an IP address in Savannah. Easy.”

  I hesitated, but only for an instant. I clicked the button to dispute the charge, then followed the prompts on the screen. No, I hadn’t made the purchase. Yes, I still had my physical credit card in my possession. When I was done I was sent to a screen informing me that the dispute would take three to five days to resolve, and then a new card would be mailed out to me once they verified my identity.

  I leaned back in the chair and smiled. “It actually feels really good to stick it to Scott.”

  “I’ll bet. Will it fuck up your food truck business?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Do you care?”

  I thought about the food truck. The physical truck itself, not the surrounding business and work involved. Scott and I had bought it from a junkyard and fixed it up together with our start-up money. It took over a week gutting the inside, cleaning it up, and then installing the cooking and refrigeration equipment. I remember feeling so free then. No more college term papers, or job hunting, or internships like my other friends. Just the bliss of self-employment.

  But that free feeling disappeared quickly. The truck was a lot of work. Even when business thrived, we bled money. We worked 16 hour days, the stress of which revealed the cracks in our flawed relationship. Over time the food truck felt less like an accomplishment and more like a burden. One which got heavier every day.

  “No,” I said with a smile. “I don’t care what happens to it.”

  Hawk fell back into bed, and I laid down next to him. His arm curled around me automatically. “I’ve got the motel to pay for tomorrow, not to mention food. Scott sure knows how to screw up an already awful situation.”

  “I’ll bankroll you, if need be,” Hawk suggested. “I’d let you crash at my place if I could. But the least I can do is make sure you don’t starve.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I
said. “I can borrow some money from my parents.”

  “Then I’ll float you until their money gets here. Or at least make twice as many extra sandwiches for lunch, so you have one to take home.”

  I leaned over and kissed his bearded cheek. “I always wanted to have a sugar daddy.”

  Hawk chuckled. “At least until Sid finally bashes my head in with that crowbar.”

  “Don’t say that,” I whispered.

  “It’s the truth. No use pussy-footing around it.”

  I rolled over until I was laying flat on his belly, my chin against his beard. “Then why don’t you leave, like I mentioned? I know you feel guilty about your sister, but that’s no reason to sit around waiting to get murdered. That’s a waste of a perfectly good beard.” I gave it a little tug.

  “I dunno,” he replied. “I’ll consider it. When my community service is up.”

  “Why wait?” I asked, even though I selfishly didn’t want him to suddenly depart tomorrow, leaving me alone in this town. “Skipping out on your community service is just a fine, remember?”

  “It’s just a fine to start,” Hawk said. He sounded like he’d thought about this already. “But I’m betting there’s enough wiggle room for the sheriff and judge to tack on a felony or two. Hell, if I skip out on my service it might piss them off enough to trump up some new charges against me. I won’t feel free if someone executes a warrant for my arrest three months from now.”

  The sheriff could do that even if he did finish his community service, but I didn’t want to crush his spirits by pointing that out.

  “I don’t want to risk it all for nothin’,” Hawk said finally. “If I’m gonna be free, it’s gonna be without anything hanging over my head.”

  I nodded as if that settled it. “Then here’s hoping we can finish the community service in time.”

  “Just six more days for you,” he said.

  “How many do you have?” I asked.

  He blinked. “Eight. But it’ll go by a lot faster with a fuck-buddy.” He reached around me and grabbed my butt with both hands, digging his fingers into my flesh. I wiggled my butt for him, and felt his manhood swell underneath me.