“Yes.”
“Then tell me you don’t think about it.”
“What?”I say, thinking about “it”.
“About that night.”
The words hit like a match in dry tinder.I back into the brick wall, breath clouding between us.“You think I don’t feel sick about it?You think I’m proud of it?”
“No,” he says.“I think you’re still dreamin’ about it.Same as me.”
He’s too close now, leather and heat, his shadow swallowing mine.
“Stop,” I whisper, staring up at his beard and cold gray eyes.I remember them both from that night with a shiver.
He braces one hand beside my head.“Can’t stop, Peppermint.”
The world narrows to the space between us, to the way his breath ghosts over my mouth.I tell myself to move, to push him away, to do anything but want.
Then I kiss him.Or he kisses me.It’s both, and it’s wild, angry, hungry, wrong.Not to mention Blake could come looking for me any second.
The biker tastes like smoke and the bourbon I poured him.And like everything I’ve been pretending not to need.My hands fist in his jacket before I remember myself and break the kiss, gasping.
“This is insane,” I say.“Blake’s out front freezing, waiting for me.He’s going to take me out, spend the night.”
“Yeah,” he answers, biting his lip.“But he doesn’t have what you want.”
Without warning, his hand slips down my pants, into my panties.I melt against him as he strokes me just right.His rough fingers and this breath, hot at my ear almost undo me.“You want my cock inside you again.Don’t you, Peppermint?”
The outline of it presses against my thigh.My whole body trembles into his as he slips the tip of his finger inside me.
“You want me to fuck you again.”
“Don’t say that.No one can know what we did.”
“That you fucked me?”
“Please,” I whine.“Stop.”
And with that one word, just as quick as it appeared, his hand is gone.The biker steps back, touches my cheek once, that rough thumb, and his too soft look, breaking me.
“Then go home to your good boy,” he says.“Pretend you never f… sleighed me.”
That deserves a laugh, and I give a small one.“And you?”
He smiles without joy.“I told you I don’t forget the women who sleigh me… I’ll be the man you hum about.”Biker walks away, boots fading into the snow, leaving me against the wall, breathless and burning.
Chapter 10
Carol
Every lie starts small.One skipped truth, one “I’m fine” said too fast.I tell myself that’s all it is.One harmless lie.
But lies grow legs.They follow you home.
Blake thinks I can’t sleep with him because I’m still healing from the robbery.He makes that assumption himself, wraps it up like a gift so I don’t have to say it.I let him.It’s easier than the truth.
He cooks dinner, pasta, wine, plays soft jazz of the carols he knows I like, and tries to make the apartment feel normal again.I watch him move around the kitchen like a man following a script, waiting for applause that never comes.
