1
Katy
His lips grazed the underside of my jaw. It took everything in me not to hum my approval. No. I’d been strong for so long. Now wasn’t the time to give in. I took a deep breath, allowing his musky aftershave to create one more blissful moment in my memory, and then pushed him away.
“No, I can’t get caught kissing you in a closet at a high school reunion.” Regardless of what Pearl thought of my generation, I had standards.
“Katy,” Pierce said my name with a sigh, something he’d been doing more frequently. “You’ve been avoiding me.” His eyebrow did that twitchy thing.
The small janitor’s closet we huddled together inside was dark, but the smell of bleach permeated the air and tickled my nose. “Yes, I have been avoiding you. You should avoid me. What will my date say if he sees us together?”
Riley Jefferson, my best male friend in the entire world, planned on coming with me to the high school reunion since most of my girlfriends were now shacked up with hot military types, but in the end, I accepted a date with Paul Manu. He would not be impressed if he found me in a dark closet with Pierce during what should be our inaugural date to a lifetime of wedded bliss.
Only the edges of Pierce’s face were visible, but his expression turned hard with my question. “Have you slept with him?” He gritted the words out between clenched teeth.
And that’s when it happened. The moment he ticked me off, and I lost my cool. It didn’t matter what we talked about or where we were. His bossy behavior turned me on, and it irritated the shit out of me that my body found it sexy. Eventually Pierce said something to remind me who he was, and we’d start fighting. It happened every time.
Every.
Single.
Time.
I pushed my hands hard against his chest, forcing him to take a step back. I needed the space, so I didn’t hit him. “No. Did you sleep with her?” I hissed out the question.
We both knew who I referred. Pierce’s fiancée—a gorgeous would-be supermodel woman he flaunted through town less than a month ago declaring they were getting married. Then in the middle of the night she just disappeared… along with Pierce’s cousin. The gossip flew so hard and fast it left bigger divots in the city park than the time the Women’s Auxiliary tried to host a putt-putt fundraiser.
Talk finally settled and for whatever reasons most opinions in town landed in Pro-Pierce territory. People felt sorry for the poor rich boy whose fiancée left him for his cousin.
They didn’t know the truth.
I did not trust a single word of Pierce’s story. Where was Mari? Shoved in a closet somewhere? More than likely she left him because she saw us kissing in the hallway of the title company the afternoon he bought the bed-and-breakfast. Yeah, not my finest moment. I know, but I didn’t trust Pierce, his family, or any word out of his mouth.
So lost in my anger, I didn’t notice until his lips were right next to my earlobe, his breath causing my hair to tickle my ear. “Would it piss you off if I slept with her every night?”
“No,” I said, with straight-backed shoulders and my eyes closed. He couldn’t see much of me in the dark.
The tiny space in the closet grew even smaller when he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me tightly, the stubble on his jaw rubbing against my neck and making me want to relax into his arms. Even though he was an asshole. I’d never been able to control my body’s responses around Pierce, and even with the fiancée, it hadn’t gotten better.
“It wouldn’t make you jealous to learn my hands traveled over her legs. My fingertips starting at her knees and trailing lines to her thighs. The way I unclasped her bra and took one of her nipples in my mouth. Don’t you want to know if she moans the same high kitten whine I draw out of you when you come?”
Ugh. Why did I visualize his hands doing those things to me? Pierce Kensington had pissed me off for the last time. I jerked away from his grasp and put space between us, my back hitting the shelf behind me. The contents wiggled and for a moment the smell of bleach increased, but I was happy for it because I could no longer smell his cologne. “No. I don’t care what you do with anyone, anywhere.”
Pierce chuckled but didn’t make a move to come closer or gather me in his arms again. I couldn’t immediately decide if I was pleased or saddened by the loss of his warmth. Later I went with pleased.
Everything felt so right with Pierce, yet always ended up wrong. My stupid heart beat faster whenever he was in the room, but then as soon as my brain registered who it was, I wanted nothing more than to throw something at his face and leave.
It did not matter because more often than not, he absolutely infuriated me. I couldn’t fall for his temptations because my family and friends would never understand. We’d spent years at each other’s throats. It didn’t matter what happened behind closed doors on one or two super-secret occasions. It didn’t matter that the emotions were getting harder to keep hidden, and the anger was harder to find when I saw his smug face.
Well, it had been getting harder to find fury at his actions… until his fiancée, Mari. Now whenever I thought of Pierce, I visualized red flames engulfing his body.
Pierce could do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted because I wanted nothing to do with him.
“You and I both know you care more than you let on, Katy.”
He was wrong. I positioned my body to the side so I wouldn’t have to look at the space he took up in the closet. It made the words easier to say. “Pierce, I can’t. We can’t. Look at what we’re doing to each other.”
One of us had to be sensible. I hated that it became my job, but if we carried on this way, we’d combust.
