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  There’s no more explanation required. I can see she knows what I’m telling her and I’m relieved when she doesn’t ask for details. She wants to. But instead, she simply breathes with me for a few moments, then says, “I’m so sorry.”

  Her eyes drop to Southpaw, before dragging back to my cell phone screen, her fingers scrolling and hovering—but not actually tapping on—the pictures. “Good for you, Will. Doing this for him.” Her scratchy voice seems to startle her. She clears it. “Most people don’t realize something like that until it’s too late. You didn’t even have to be visited in the middle of the night by three apparitions.”

  I take my offered phone back, the right corner of my mouth twitching. “Are you making fun of me for taking my dog on a vacation?”

  Her spine snaps straight, making her tits jiggle and my palms itch to steady them. “No. I’m the furthest thing from making fun of you. I’m envious.” Her mouth opens and shuts, right knee bouncing. “I’m, um…proud of you, too. Isn’t that ridiculous when we just met?”

  Something warm and unfamiliar sweeps through me as I stow my phone. High school, college, my career. All of it was done to make my absent father proud of me. To make myself worthy in his eyes, when he didn’t deserve that consideration. And that feeling of worthiness never came, either. Any pride I’d earned from him stopped having meaning, too, when shit hit the fan. So maybe my methods of reaching the top were effective, but I wasn’t at the top of the right place. I’ve never felt more right than I do with Teresa starting up at me—granted, looking a little shell-shocked—and telling me she’s proud. “Nothing about this is ridiculous.”

  I lean in and kiss her mouth, long and thorough enough to have her ass scooting closer to me on the seat, her pussy settling in against my junk, but I stop at the sound of her stomach growling. My laughter blends with hers, low and damp.

  “Whoops,” she breathes at my lips. “Guess I’m hungry.”

  “Guess we both are.” After signaling for menus, I bring our foreheads back together, drag my thumbs up the insides of her spread thighs. “Spend the night with me, woman. Let me feed you dinner. Then I’ll feed you that cock you can’t stop rubbing your pussy on.”

  Her head falls back on her shoulders, before she straightens, using my shoulders for balance. “Oh, Will.” She searches my face, her eyelids drooping with lust. “Not a fucking chance.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Teresa

  Not a fucking chance.

  If I was directing this scene, it would be followed by a record scratch. Maybe a sigh from Southpaw and some ohhhs from our neighbors at the bar.

  To Will’s ever-growing credit, though, he throws back his head and laughs. Not the kind of laugh a man makes to hide his humiliation or worse, transfer embarrassment to the woman. No, it’s pure enjoyment. It’s appreciation of me. And against my will, I’m absolutely transfixed. The deep, rolling thunder sound brings to mind musky cologne, flannel sheets and worn-in leather. I just turned down his proposition for sex and he’s not butt-hurt about it at all. God, that’s attractive.

  It’s making me wish I could just say yes. Maybe that’s his master plan?

  That theory doesn’t hold water, because he’s not the one with the plan. I am.

  I’m the wrench in his leisurely no plans vacation.

  Saying yes and spending the night with Will would be exactly what Silas wants, but even that isn’t enough to deter me anymore. Doing so would bungle my strategy, though. I’ll never lure Will back to New York if I sleep with him. If I’m going to use this attraction to maneuver Will halfway across the country, I need to dangle myself like a carrot. And in the meantime, try not to be tempted by his carrot. His very thick, flesh-colored carrot.

  Yes, I’m avoiding getting beneath Will because of a strategy. It has nothing to do with the fact that I…kind of like him. In a way that is exclusive to how he manipulates my lady regions. Don’t be an idiot, Teresa. There’s only one of two ways this ends. I disappear as soon as I fulfill my end of the bargain with Silas. Or Will figures out he’s been played somehow and hates me.

  I’ll take disappearing for $400, Alex.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, dragging me out of my clouded head. Will is occupied with the menu, but I’m still careful to keep the screen turned away as I open a text message from my brother—and find a picture of him and Silas. They’re standing side by side, a grinning Silas’s arm thrown around my brother’s shoulders.

  Nicky isn’t smiling. Was he forced to take this picture? Was he forced to send it?

  “Teresa?”

  I try to speak, but my heart is blocking the path. “Um. Yeah?” I finally manage.

  Concern draws Will’s brows together. “Do you know what you want yet?”

  “Oh. Yes.” Realizing the menu has been sitting on the bar to my left for long minutes, I barely glance at it before murmuring a burger order to the weary bartender. Will orders the same, while I command myself to pull it together. This is what bad men like Silas do. They apply pressure until good men, like my father, almost buckle under the strain. But I have a week. A whole week. I can’t let the picture unnerve me, like it was designed to do.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Uh huh. Totally fine,” I respond, smiling. “I want to know more about where you’ve stopped since leaving New York, though. Tell the truth, you and Southpaw are really a duo of bank robbers on the lam.”

  My joke succeeds in sidetracking Will—I think—as he tells me more about Southpaw as we eat. How the dog likes to sleep on the bathroom floor because of the cool tile—which leads to an affronted look when Will needs to handle his business in the middle of the night. How there’s a spot on Southpaw’s belly that—when scratched—turns his right, back paw into a lethal weapon. And how the dog howls through the opening riff of “Baba O’Riley” by The Who.

  While Will talks, Southpaw laps from his bowl of water, but mostly stares up at his owner with heart eyes. When the bartender comes back to take away our empty plates, I realize I haven’t tasted a single bite. Have I been looking at Will the same way as Southpaw, looped into every sincere word that comes out of his mouth? My heart pounds out a staccato rhythm in my chest, dread flooding me when I think how this could end.

  I need to regroup. To get my head back in the game. The beer definitely isn’t doing me any favors, either. Ever since I told him we wouldn’t be sleeping together, he’s stayed close but hasn’t touched me. A way of letting me know he heard me loud and clear. But every second I spend in this bar, wrapped with him in a dark cloud of intimacy, the more I want to loop my fingers in his belt buckle and tug him back into the V of my legs.

  Will jerks a thumb at the bartender. “You want another drink?”

  “No.” I push back the stool and stand, brushing imaginary crumbs off my skirt. “I think it’s a good idea if I head back.”

  I dig two twenties out of my skirt pocket and start to hand them over, but he stays my hand. “I got this, Teresa.” His thumb strums the pulse at my wrist. “Wait for me to pay and I’ll walk you back.”

  It’s only been thirty minutes since the last time he touched me, but my body reacts to that little brush of his thumb like a desert after a storm, soaking in the wild tingling sensation it sets off. “No expectations?”

  All cool and loose, he plucks the wallet from his front pocket and takes out a foursome of bills, tossing them on the bar without taking his eyes off me. “Can we agree on one kiss?”

  “Are you using your hedge fund negotiation skills on me?” I wet my lips, drawing his dark interest. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “This hard-on I’ve got for you isn’t fair.” He adjusts the tented denim at his lap. “I’m going to handle it like a man, but a fresh memory of your mouth will help get me finished faster.”

  I can’t stop a whimpering laugh from escaping. “Are you telling me you plan to jerk off when this date is over?”

  “Soon as I’m inside the door.” He steps closer,
wrapping me in earthiness and beer and man. “And I’ve got some news for you, baby. You’ve never been on a date that didn’t send the guy home to jerk off like a horny high school kid afterwards.”

  Those words, plus imagining Will’s flexed forearm and gritted teeth while he rubs one out, makes muscles I only discovered today squeeze between my thighs. Before he can press that advantage and pull me under the surface, I breeze past him toward the exit. Carrot. You’re a carrot. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Good. That’s how I meant it.”

  Will’s long strides mean he keeps up easily, reaching the door in time to hold it open for me. As we pass through—Southpaw’s silky hair grazing the outside of my knee—he lays a firm hand just below my waist, that warning look back in his eyes as we pass a group of men outside. Most of them sport cowboy hats, but one has a white baseball cap, the brim pulled low over his eyes as he nurses a cigar. The men smirk at Will but keep their interest in me to one, abbreviated glance…and it’s obvious they all think we’re going back to his room to have sex. Five minutes from now, they’ll assume I’m naked beneath Will, my nails leaving bloody, half-moon indents on his thrusting ass.

  With a rush of forbidden excitement, my go-to fantasy sneaks in and spikes my pulse. The men think he picked me up over in the bar. Because that’s what happens in places like this. Men go out searching for women to give them release. Sometimes they even…pay them. Do those men think he’s paying me? My three-beer buzz does me no favors, a low thrum of heat stealing through my middle.

  “Here we are.”

  My face heats over being caught even imagining such things. We’re at my door and I have no recollection of entering the motel. Come on, Teresa. Stop letting this guy get to you so bad. “Right.” I fish for the key card in my pocket, but cease all movement when Will brushes his fingertips down my arm, then trails them back up. Slow. And all the while, he invades my space, eliminating inches at such a leisurely pace that I’m panting by the time our mouths are a breath apart.

  “What are you going to do when I close this door behind you, Teresa?” He grazes my bottom lip with his teeth, making me gasp. “You going to get undressed in front of the air conditioner, thinking it might cool you down after teasing my cock for over an hour in the bar? It won’t. I give you five minutes before you’re face down in bed, riding your own fingers.”

  My knees threaten to buckle. “That’s my business.”

  “Make it mine.”

  Mayday. Mayday. “Will—”

  He stops my admonishment with a drugging kiss, his tongue stroking in and out of my mouth. His hands grip my elbows, lifting me up on my toes in desperate degrees, meshing our bodies, our lips, until I’m moaning, letting him have rough intercourse with my mouth. Just when I’m on the verge of giving in and begging him to take me up against the door, he steps back, eyes glittering, wiping away the moisture on his mouth with a wrist swipe. “I’ll be out on the balcony. If you’re going to finger yourself in my honor, I want to listen.”

  I stand there like a gaping fish as Will opens the door to my room and nudges me inside, closing it behind me. The In Case of a Fire map stares back at me so long, it starts to blur, need ravaging me from the inside out, making my skin feel like it’s going up in a blaze. This is safe, isn’t it? Going out on the balcony and getting rid of this ache to the sound of Will’s scratchy baritone? Technically, we wouldn’t be having sex. We wouldn’t even be touching each other, leaving all carrots untouched and continuing to dangle.

  Enough thinking. I kick off my sandals and move through the pitch-black motel room, not even stopping to turn on a light. When I slide my door open, an appreciative male growl greets me from the other side of the thin wall, which separates my balcony from Will’s. We’re on the same floor as the lobby, so there’s no drop. I could hop over the safety bar and land in the scrappy field running behind the motel without hurting myself. It also means either of us could join the other on their balcony, but some part of me knows Will won’t try it. I’m positive he won’t.

  This is safe. This won’t wreck my plan.

  Plan? How long has it been since I even remembered I had one?

  “Come over to the wall, Teresa.”

  The command sends a tremble running through me, and that tremble increases as I obey, reaching the barrier and resting my forehead against the coarse stucco. “I’m here,” I say. “Can anyone else hear us?”

  “Everyone in this place is out getting drunk. It’s just us.” I’m not a trusting person. Growing up I was taught to sleep with one eye open. Yet I believe Will when he says no one will hear us. That we’re alone on the backside of the motel in the dead fall of night. “You still wearing that skirt, baby?”

  My eyes close on their own. “Yes.”

  “You know it would only take me a second to shred that pretty thing in my hands, don’t you?” On the other side of the wall, I hear his zipper come down, a grating curse. “Were you aware of it all night, with your sweet ass balanced on the edge of that stool? I damn well was. One rip and you’d be in nothing but a tight, little thong, huh? One that wouldn’t need more than a yank to one side so I could lick that golden pussy.”

  Oh my God. Have I ever been spoken to like this? I mean, there’s dirty chatter. And then there’s Will’s Fantasyland of Fuck Talk.

  “Going to need you to focus and answer me, woman.”

  His guttural speech jolts my eyes open. “Are you…?”

  “Jacking my cock, thinking about your thighs wrapped around my goddamn head? Yeah.” His heavy breathing reaches me, and I bunch the hem of my skirt in my hands, dragging it up to my waist. What did he ask me again? Was I aware he could rip off my skirt on a whim? “I was aware. Your hands look…”

  “Look what, baby?”

  “Like they could do anything they want.”

  His answering groan makes me tremble. I’m shaking and sweating, skirt pulled up, on a balcony in Texas, and it’s like a tornado picked me up and dropped me here.

  “If you’re speaking in full sentences, your fingers aren’t inside your panties yet, Teresa. What are you waiting for?”

  That’s a really good question. I think I’m scared. Scared that Will talking me through a solo session is going to be better than any sex I’ve ever had and I’ll be ruined for life. Coward, whispers a voice in my head, and my spine straightens.

  Biting my bottom lip, I let my right hand release my skirt and massage my feminine flesh through the front of my thong, air bursting out of my mouth in halting starts and stops. “Mmm.” Needing more, I stuff my fingers inside my panties, leading with my middle one and hitting the jackpot with that sacred bundle of nerves. “Ohh.”

  “There’s a good girl.” I can hear the wet sounds of Will’s hand choking up and down the length of his erection. Swap, swap, swap. Judging from the amount of time each stroke takes, he’s long. So long and hard. Jesus. “Slide two fingers around your clit, stroke them up and back. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes,” I say, putting my middle and forefinger into a tight peace sign and rubbing the sensitive sides of my clit, setting of chain reaction of lust inside me, concentrated below my belly button. “God, oh God, so good. I-is this what you would do to me?”

  There’s no time to wish the unexpected question back, because he answers right away. “Damn right, but my tongue would be working the middle. I’d knuckle the sides of that little pink clit, while I suck the top nice and light.”

  Holy shit. Moving my fingers faster between my legs, I grind my forehead against the partition. “Nice and light doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Consider it an apology for how hard I’d be getting ready to fuck you.”

  I don’t recognize the moan that comes out of me. I’ve never, ever sounded so abandoned or desperate in my entire life. “How hard?”

  The squelching sounds coming from the other side of the wall grow louder, faster, along with his breathing. “How hard do you want it?”

&n
bsp; “So hard…” My voice trembles. “Like you can’t help it.”

  A vile curse interrupts his rumbling groan. “I get you now, woman. You want to get me so fucking turned on, I can’t control myself? That’s what you’re going to get.” There’s a loud crack above me, as if he’s just head-butted the wall. “I’ll spit on that pussy and raw dog it from behind. That what you like, baby?”

  Apparently. Every single nerve ending in my body converges at once, meeting in my middle. There’s only a hint of warning—some sparks behind my eyes—before I explode into fragments. I fall forward against the wall, stunned by the impact and magnitude of my climax, thighs spasming and clenching around my hand. “Will. Will. It’s…I’m…oh God.”

  He growls. “You coming?”

  Hello understatement. “Y-yes.”

  “This isn’t over. Keep moving your fingers until I’m done.”

  “Yes, Will.”

  Who is this woman obeying commands? I’ve never been her…outside of my very private thoughts. She feels so addictive, though. So right. The sound of his voice is like a warm, transcendent calling that beckons me a little closer every time I do as I’m asked. Welcoming me. “What would you do for me, Teresa? If you were on my side of the wall?”

  And I think this is why. Why I can allow myself to be commanded by Will. Because there’s a balance. There’s a respect and choices, even while he’s dominating me. My God, we’re not even touching and I’m on my knees, head tipped back like a sexual servant. Wait. When did I get on my knees? “I’d give you my mouth.”

  A rough intake of breath. “Christ. If you’re on your knees over there, I’m going to blow, baby. You like knowing how easy you manage that?”

  “Yes,” I whimper, palming my breast in one hand, rubbing my clit with the other. “I-I like hearing you moan.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you do. Bet you love making my cock ache.” Another bash against the wall. “Should have known you were a tease when you were walking around my room with your sexy tits jiggling around.”