16
MELANIE
Twenty-seven hours have passed since Jared Rush brought me over the edge of a shocking climax with his kisses and his wicked touch. Twenty-seven hours since that bone-melting moment abruptly ended when he exploded like a grenade over a broken whisky bottle and practically shoved me out of his beach house studio.
One full day and I’m just as blindsided and confused as I was when it happened.
After furiously cleaning up the shattered glass, he’d called for an Uber to take me all the way back to my house in Queens. The pleasant middle-aged woman behind the wheel filled the silence of the two-hour drive from Sagaponack with chatter about her kids and grandchildren, a welcome distraction, but one I’d barely registered.
While I had nodded and smiled when expected, my thoughts had stayed fixated on Jared, my emotions running the gamut from outrage to concern and everything in between. Not the least of them being the banked, but still burning, desire that kept its grip on me for the duration of the ride home.
I’m still not sure what triggered the change in him from the man I was only starting to get to know as I explored his studio and the growling beast who stormed out a moment later for another drink. Where he’d seemed open to talking about other aspects of his past, it was clear I’d ventured too far when I asked him about growing up in Kentucky. The loss of his family’s farm, and his father’s evident role in it, obviously carved a deep wound in Jared that still wasn’t fully healed.
Yet there was something more, something else that flipped the switch on his fury. When I caught up to him in the kitchen, his hands were visibly shaking with the force of his rage. And somehow, my noticing that seemed to set him off even more.
Why?
By the time the driver dropped me at my house I’d finally managed to convince myself that whatever Jared Rush’s problems are, whatever trauma may lurk in his past, for my own sanity—for my own self-preservation—I need to keep my distance from him.
I’d like to say I’m long over the effects of his kiss and his strong hands on my body, but my reaction to the carnal side of him has proven the hardest one to shake. His total domination of my senses was like getting swept into a hurricane. Powerful. Dangerous. Electric.
I can’t remember the last time I’d been kissed like that.
Never.That’s why I can’t remember it. Because the answer is never.
Jared kissed me as if he’d been wanting to do it forever and couldn’t get enough. He claimed my mouth as if I belonged to him, and nothing else mattered. Foolishly, I tumbled right under his spell. I would have fallen much further if reality hadn’t brought me crashing back to my wits.
I frown into my plate of grilled seafood, idly chasing a bite of mahi mahi around with my fork. When I glance up, I find my two best friends still gaping at me across our table for lunch at GC.
Evelyn’s pale green eyes are lit with shock against the buttery mocha glow of her beautiful face. “Let me get this straight. You posed nude for Jared Rush and this is the first we’re hearing about it?”
“Twice, technically,” Paige Johansson adds in a mock disgruntled tone. “Our girl Mel’s gotten nekkid for Hottie McDark-and-Deviant two times, Eve, and this is the first we’re hearing about it.”
A former model, like Evelyn, Paige is gorgeous, too. Now, she’s perpetually auditioning for film roles and commercials, so it’s no surprise to see her short black hair is growing out since I last saw her. The messy crown of choppy layers now falls around her impish face in inky waves as she reaches for a third slice of her flatbread pizza.
“You think he’s deviant?” The question leaps off my tongue, despite that I’m sure I don’t really want to know the answer. And if anyone would know these things, it’s Paige.
She munches on a bite of pizza, giving me a look that says I’m an idiot just for asking. “I’ve heard he hosts private orgies at his mansion on the regular. And in case you didn’t notice when the three of us went to his club, Muse, a couple of weeks ago, there were people having actual sex behind all those walls of one-way smoked glass overlooking the dance floor.”
Oh, God.I’d wondered if all those bodies moving in erotic positions behind the brief flashes of strobe lights and semi-opaque glass had only been an illusion, some titillating effect meant as a play on the fantasy-themed name of the club. Part of me knew it was real, but hearing Paige confirm it sends a note of shock into my veins.
Was Jared Rush one of those unclothed, undulating bodies that night? As for the rumored orgies at his house, it takes more effort than I care to admit to avoid picturing him being pawed at and pleasured by a den full of eager women. How many has he seduced with his dangerous, yet magnetic sensuality?
Dozens, I imagine. Hundreds? I wouldn’t doubt it.
I stop myself from trying to guess, because it doesn’t matter. All I know is I’m not going to be one of them. What happened at his beach house couldn’t have driven that point home with any sharper clarity.
And that goes double for the fact that I refuse to be around another man with a drinking problem. Growing up with my father and his brutal binges was terror enough to last me a lifetime. I’ve got the scars to prove it, both inside and out.
Paige reaches for her glass of beer. “Tell us again how you ended up with Jared Rush’s tongue down your throat and his hand up your skirt yesterday.”
“Paige,” Evelyn gasps. “You’re kind of missing the point here, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Am I?” she asks, one brow arched as she eyes me over the rim of the glass.
Where Evelyn is measured and elegant, with a natural poise instilled in her from her modeling days, free-spirited Paige flouts conversational and societal guardrails wherever possible. Next to these two creative, successful women and their colorful lives, I’m the wallflower of our trio. I’ve long been the practical, quiet one who spends all her time either studying or working.
That is when I’m not doffing my clothes for an arrogant and tormented, possibly alcoholic artist to bail out my closet-gambling boyfriend. Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget, letting him thrust his tongue down my throat and his hand up my skirt.
