by Pam Godwin
He chases. “What’s your name?”
“Not interested.”
“Give me a chance.” He races past me and steps into my path. “Let’s go out tonight.”
“Let’s not and stick with that story.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be like that.”
Blatant verbal disinterest apparently doesn’t work with this guy.
“I have a confession.” I arrange my face into pained embarrassment. “I have a raging yeast infection going on. With all the itchiness and discharge, I just can’t tonight.”
“Tomorrow night then.” He searches my eyes, not a flinch in his expression. “Seven o’clock. Where should I pick you up?”
I got to hand it to him. He’s smart enough to see through the lie and persistent to boot.
“Look, you seem like a nice guy…” I glance at his Walmart name tag. “Max. I’m sure you’ll go far in life”—and I really hope he stays there—”so you should probably run along and get going on that.”
I’m really not judging him for working at Walmart. At least he has a job. Can’t say the same for myself.
But he’s earning major creeper points every second he stands here, eying me up and down.
His perusal freezes on something over my shoulder. Given his backward shuffle and paling complexion, it doesn’t take a brainiac to know Trace is standing behind me.
“I’ll…uh…” Max continues his retreat out of the aisle. “Catch you next time.”
I wait until he vanishes around the corner before turning toward Trace.
My breath hitches. Damn, he looks murderous. Sharp blade-like eyes, deep-set scowl, shoulders back, and hands behind him, he stands a few feet away, glaring like a giant with a gym-honed physique. It’s no wonder he’s so confident. His towering stature allows him to stare down anyone who crosses his path. Including me.
“Stop scowling at me.” I breeze past him. “I had that under control.”
“Sounds like we should swing by the medicine aisle.” With long-legged strides, he easily catches up. “Pick up something for your itchy problem.”
“How on earth did you hear that?” I reach the cart, where he left it sitting in the main walkway, and lean on the handle. “Were you eavesdropping one aisle over? Or did you bug me?”
“I’m aware of my surroundings. This way.” He crooks a finger and leads me toward the back of the store.
“I thought we were finished?”
“I won the bet.”
“Nobody likes a gloater. And it was hardly fair with that don’t-talk-to-me scowl you wear.”
“Nobody likes a poor loser. Leave the cart there.” He gestures toward a corridor in the rear of the store.
I park the cart. “What are you—?”
He grabs my arm and walks me forcibly down the hall toward the bathrooms.
“Wait.” I yank on his grip and lower my voice to a whisper. “We are not getting dirty in a Walmart bathroom.”
Pulling me to a stop, he glares at an employee who skitters by. The poor woman casts her gaze to the floor and hurries out of the corridor.
“I don’t want a scene,” he says at my ear, “but I’ll carry you if I have to.”
“You can keep your threats to yourself.” I relax in his hold. “I don’t need them.”
With a hand on my bicep, he guides me to the bathrooms at the end of the hall. The door to the women’s room is locked, so he pulls me into the men’s single-stall bathroom and locks us inside. Then his crystal blue eyes knife in my direction.
His demeanor shifts from intense to ravenously intense as he stalks toward me. I back up, heart fluttering and stomach swarming with nerves.
“I know you won the bet, but I need to understand the rules.” I circle him as he circles me, and we move together in a vibrating dance of sexual tension. “Are you going to fuck me? Is that allowed?” I’m desperate for it, clenching and trembling from the inside out. But… “I’m not going to sneak behind Cole’s back.”
“I’ll honor the guidelines Cole and I set.” He prowls around me, drifting closer with each step. “You’re more than welcome to tell him all about it when we get back.”
My chest collapses. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
He pauses behind me and runs his fingers through my hair, sending a shiver down my spine. “Cole understands the principles of love.”
I’m not sure I understand. “What are the principles of love?”
“Pain.” He squeezes his hand in my hair, yanking on the roots. “Risk. Self-destruction.”
“Ow.” I clasp his wrist, stumbling in my attempt to loosen his grip. “What about effort? Sacrifice? Trust? Kindness?”
“Do you want kindness right now, darling?”
I laugh at the endearment. “I wouldn’t mind keeping some of my hair.”
He releases me. “Turn around. Hands on the wall.”
And there it is, the brutally beautiful command of a man whom I love to the ends of self-destruction. His dominance repeatedly draws me back to him, the strength of our love fused into two bodies that ache to align the way we’re supposed to.
But my heart is divided.
If this is a war, Trace and Cole aren’t the enemies.
I am.
I’m the betrayer who loves them both. The persecutor who will rip us apart. The executioner who will snuff the light that burns so brightly between us.
Sex isn’t the solution, but it’s too late to have a conscience. I’m already committed, flattening my palms against the wall.
I don’t want to control this. I need Trace to do it, whatever it is.
Punish me. Wreck me.
Tear down my ruins.
Excavate me from my sins.
Hurt me. Spank me. Set me on fire.
Make me burn.
A storm rampages inside me as I hold my hands against the wall in the Walmart bathroom. Desire battles guilt, one as poisonous as the other, robbing the strength from my legs and scorching my lungs.
But at the center of the turmoil is a calming presence. Trace stands behind me, silent, steady, compelling me to relax simply by placing a hand on my lower back.
“Are you still sore from yesterday?” His deep timbre curls around me, low and hypnotic.
My glutes are tender to the touch, but I’m a dancer. Sore muscles are a way of life.
“Answer me.” He slams a hand against my backside, prickling sharp pain beneath my leggings.
I swallow a yelp. “Yes. I’m sore.”
“Whatever’s going on in your head stops now.” He spanks me again, softer this time, but the impact still lifts me on my toes.
“You can’t order me to stop thinking.”
“No, but I can redden your ass until you stop feeling guilty about wanting this.”
How does he do that? It’s like he sees inside my head and interprets my thoughts better than I can.
“Now…” He molds his hands to my hips. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to burn.”
He presses against my back, letting me feel the steel of his chest.
“Do you want to burn here?” He grips my backside with both hands. “Or here?” His hand slides around my waist and cups me between the legs.
“Whichever pleases you.”
“Goddamn, you’re perfect.” He tightens his fingers against my pussy before stepping back and removing his touch completely.
His breaths grow louder, sharper, as he crouches behind me. I can’t see him, but I don’t dare peek. God help me, I love being at his mercy.
Lifting the hem of my sweater, he tucks it under my bra strap to hold it in place. The anticipation is too much. My fingers curl against the tiled wall, and my pulse roars in my ears.
With teasing fingers, he traces my spine and shifts closer to brush his lips against my tailbone. Then he yanks down my leggings and panties and bites the flesh of my butt the instant it’s exposed.
I whimper and lock my knees, attempting to st
ay upright against the sharp sting. The leggings around my boots limit the movement of my feet, but the strong hand on my hip supports me as he pulls my exposed backside closer to his face. Pressing a palm on my back, he forces me to bend at the waist.
My hands slip down the wall as I lower my head, my breasts shifting in the cups of my bra, dragging my nipples against the itchy lace.
His labored breathing echoes through the small space, but the glide of his fingers is oh-so controlled. His hands are everywhere, methodically positioning my hips where he wants them, slowly caressing up and down my legs, and petting between my thighs.
Taste me, Trace. Fuck me with your wicked tongue.
He hears my unspoken plea and falls upon my pussy, burying his face, groaning, and licking with vigor. My mouth drops open on a gasp, and I snap it shut, stifling the cry in my throat.
I don’t know if the bathroom door is thin or if there’s a line waiting outside. I don’t care. His lips feel too good pressed against me, kissing and sucking, warm and wet. I push against the wall, rocking against his tongue, seeking pressure, friction, desperate to come.
He licks me from bottom to top and plunges deep. Then his fingers are there, circling my opening and sinking inside. He thrusts in and out, grunting, panting, fucking me with his touch, his tongue, and the force of his need.
I gasp and tremble as the pleasure crests inside me, but he teases me, gives me just enough to hold me at the edge. Lips sliding, tongue curling, and fingers strumming, he plays my body like an instrument. My heart dances to the crescendo of his breaths. Electricity shoots through my veins, hot and wet and charged with emotion. The sensations are incredible, dizzying, overpowering. I think I might die.
I drop my chin to my chest, my head too heavy to hold up. Stretching the restraint of the leggings around my ankles, I shift my feet wider and roll my hips, grinding against his mouth, needing him, wanting this, silently begging him to keep going.
He clamps an arm around my waist, rubs a finger around my clit, and closes those sinful lips over my pussy, sucking viciously. My muscles spasm. My mind shatters, and my body detonates. His guttural groan reverberates through me, crashing waves of pleasure from my core to my limbs. Holyfuckholyfuck. I arch my back, and my mouth hangs open in a silent scream.
As the peak of orgasm tapers off and shudders into breathy repletion, he nibbles his way up my spine, panting and hungry. I shift to straighten from the wall, but the hand on my back holds me in the bent position.
“Don’t move,” he rasps, his voice whiskey and smoke.
The sound of his zipper shivers the air, followed by the whisper of rustling clothes. I peer over my shoulder just as he releases his hard, swollen cock and slides a hand over the length, once, twice… He kicks his hips, driving faster, harder, thrusting into the grip of his fist.
I want to turn around, but he clutches my hip, fingers shaking, mouth parted, gorgeously lost in an urgent race to completion.
“You make me so fucking hard.” He doesn’t ram inside me, yet he can’t seem to slow down. “Nothing is more tempting than the sight of your ass perched in the air.”
Intensely focused on my nude backside, he chases his release, stroking himself, grunting, tensing…
“Danni, fuck. I’m fucking coming.” His head falls back, and he groans to the ceiling as a warm spray of wetness covers my back and trickles into the crack of my butt.
My God, he’s beautiful when he lets go. His entire expression softens. His pupils dilate. His shoulders loosen, and his eyes glow with swirling blue wonder. He’s looks younger, happier, and fuck if that doesn’t put a teary smile on my face.
He tucks himself away as he catches his breath. Then he turns his attention to my back. Instead of wiping off the come, he rubs it in, spreading it like lotion across every exposed inch.
“You kinky bastard.” I laugh as a finger digs into a ticklish spot on my ribs. “I’m going to smell like sex.”
“No.” He moves to the sink and washes his hands. “You’re going to smell like me.”
Marking his territory. With a blissful sigh, I pull my clothes back in place.
“Now that we got that out of the way…” He dries his hands and prowls toward me.
Holy shit, now what? He has that look—the scowling, smoldering, intense glare that suggests our liaison in the Walmart bathroom isn’t over. I feel like I know this man down to the pith of his bones, yet there are moments like this when I’m utterly stupefied by the beauty of his mysterious frown. He holds me hostage with a glance, owns me with a crook of his finger, and intimidates me with his uncanny ability to keep me guessing.
Three paces away…two paces…he crowds me with his soaring frame, buries a hand in my hair, and crashes his mouth against mine. His kiss is strong and demanding, skipping the slide of lips and diving straight to teeth and tongue. I taste myself on him. It’s dirty and intimate and makes me so damn hot.
A knock sounds on the door, and Trace tears his mouth away.
“Get lost!” He returns to my lips, the hand in my hair wrenching my head back as his other cups my breast with firm pressure.
He walks me backward until I bump against the wall. Clutching the backs of my thighs, he lifts me until we’re eye-level.
With an arm around my waist and his fingers tangled in my hair, he forces my mouth back to his. Teeth grazing, tongues rubbing, the kiss is frenzied, humming with the sounds of our moans and shallow panting.
I wrap my arms and legs around him, rocking on instinct. He’s hard between my thighs and positioned perfectly to slide right in.
Except we’re both wearing clothes.
I pull at his shirt, deliriously needy.
“Slow down.” He laughs against my mouth and pries my fingers from his collar.
“When do I get to taste your cock again?”
“When I decide.” He kisses across my jaw and nips at my neck. “I intend to tease you for a long time.”
“Sadist.”
He bites the skin on my throat, hard enough to leave a mark. Then his mouth returns to mine, softer this time. Our lips glide together in a gentle motion, tongues meeting, releasing, repeating. Shared breaths, eyes closed, we kiss with the same love and hold each other with the same reluctance to pull away.
“There isn’t a word in the English language,” he says against my mouth, “that accurately describes what you mean to me.”
“We don’t need words, Trace.” I frame his face in my hands and rest my gaze in the sanctuary of his. “This is all we need.”
In the span of a wistful moment, it’s just Trace and me and the unified beat of our hearts.
Until another knock rattles the door.
“Time’s up,” I whisper.
His face falls drastically, and his fingers dig into my back. Does he think I meant time’s up forever?
“Trace, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” He grabs my hand, gives my sweater and leggings a quick once-over, and opens the door.
Of all the people to find standing in the hallway, there’s Max, the employee who doesn’t understand the word no. He steps back, eyes wide, as Trace leads me out of the men’s bathroom.
“Are the walls sound-proof?” I grin over my shoulder at Max, walking quickly to match Trace’s long gait.
“Um…not really.” Max rubs the back of his head.
“Oh good. See you around.”
Trace grabs our cart of groceries, and we make our way to the front of the store. He’s quiet to the checkout line, quiet on the drive home, and quiet still when he parks in the garage and stares straight ahead.
“What’s wrong?” I unlatch the seatbelt and lean toward him.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been giving me one-word answers since we left the store.”
He unbuckles his seatbelt and drops a quick kiss on my lips. “I’m just mentally preparing myself.”
“For what?”
The door to the kitchen opens, and Cole step
s into the garage. Trace glares at him through the windshield.
That’s what Trace was preparing for—Cole, this arrangement, and the inevitability of watching another man make my heart race. My chest constricts.
“There will come a day when…” He grips my chin and growls against my lips. “I’ll show no restraint.”
As the last of the groceries are put away, Trace gets a call and strolls toward the rear of the house, arguing with whomever is on the other line about regulations on new gaming machines. With the phone at his ear, he steps outside, leaving me alone in the kitchen with Cole.
“How was fishing this morning?” I dig around in the fridge, avoiding Cole’s eyes.
“Peaceful.”
I keep my back to him, as if the row of fruit-flavored yogurt requires my attention when all I’m really thinking about is Trace’s growled-out promise in the car.
If he showed restraint in the Walmart bathroom… Sweet lord. My skin tingles with his possessive marks, from the imprint of his teeth on my neck to his come rubbed into my back. He took me thoroughly and aggressively, and we didn’t even have sex. The memory alone makes my muscles clench low in my body. I ache to put my mouth on him, to hold the weight of his cock—”
“How far did he go?” Cole glares at me from his perch on the stool at the kitchen island.
“Excuse me?” My neck goes stiff, and my tongue feels thick in my mouth.
“I won’t repeat myself.” His hands rest on the counter, cupped around a beer bottle.
There’s no tension in his posture or expression, but something dark and restless churns in his brown eyes.
I close the fridge and stand on the opposite side of the island, facing him with lead in my stomach. The urge to glance at Trace’s silhouette beyond the windows claws at me, but I keep my gaze on Cole. “What are you talking about?”
He jerks forward, his eyes thrashing. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“How far did Trace go?” My hackles rise defensively. “Are we talking in terms of first base, second base…? Maybe we should put on pajamas and braid each other’s hair while I tell you all about it.”
“Do not fuck with me!” he roars, crashing a fist onto the counter. “Understood?”