As if to prove his point, he adjusts me slightly on his lap, positioning me so I'm more fully seated against him. The hard length of him presses against the seam of my skirt, right where that traitorous heat is gathering.
"Oh!" The sound escapes before I can stop it.
"Yeah," he says, satisfaction evident in his tone. "Oh is right. Feel what you do to me? Three days of torture, watching you flutter around this store, smelling like flowers and innocence."
His other hand moves to my hair, gathering it gently at the nape of my neck. The slight tug sends tingles down my spine.
"So pretty," he murmurs, his lips close to my ear. "My pretty little bookworm. So sweet. So good for daddy."
Daddy.The word hits me like an electric shock. I should be repulsed—he's twenty years my senior, gruff and scarred and nothing like the men I thought I'd be attracted to. Instead, I feel myself leaning back into him, seeking more contact.
"That's it," he encourages, his grip tightening on my waist. "Let go. Trust me."
Trust him? I barely know him. And yet, something in me responds to his command, muscles relaxing despite the tension coiling low in my belly.
"I could fill you up so good," he continues, his voice hypnotic in its intensity. "Make you take every inch. Stretch you around me until you're sobbing, begging for more. Would you like that, Julia? Having me so deep inside you that you feel me for days afterward?"
My breath comes in short gasps now. No one has ever spoken to me like this—crude and explicit and utterly consuming. In my limited experience, sex was something politely alluded to, not described in raw detail.
"You…you shouldn't say these things," I manage weakly.
"Why not? Because they're making you wet?" His words are a dark caress. "Because they're making you imagine what it would be like to have me inside you, filling you up, breeding you full?"
Breeding.The word should repulse me. Should remind me of biology textbooks and clinical processes. Instead, it sends a molten wave of heat straight between my legs.
"I don't even know you," I whisper, a last feeble protest.
"You know enough." His teeth graze my earlobe, sending shivers down my spine. "You know I'd protect you with my life. You know I want you more than I've ever wanted anyone. And you know—" his hand tightens in my hair, tilting my head back further, "—that no other man will ever make you feel like this."
The worst part is, I believe him. In all my twenty-two years, no one has ever made me feel this constellation of emotions—fear, excitement, desire, all swirling together until I can't separate one from the other.
"I'm scared," I admit, the confession torn from somewhere deep and honest.
His expression softens, just a fraction. "Of me?"
I shake my head. “No. Of this. Of how…how much I want things I shouldn't."
For a moment, genuine tenderness crosses his face. "Such a good girl. So honest." His thumb brushes my cheek. "What things do you want, sweetheart?"
I can't say the words. Can't admit that part of me wants him to stop talking and just take, to make good on all his filthy promises.
Instead, I shake my head, tears pricking at my eyes from emotions I don't understand.
"Shh, it's okay." He releases my hair, arms encircling me fully now, holding me against his chest. "We've got all night. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but wait out the storm."
Outside, the rain continues to pound against the windows, echoing the turbulence inside me. I'm caught in a different kind of storm—one made of desire and fear and confusion. And Butch Hale is both the shelter and the tempest.
"Rest now," he murmurs, his voice gentler than I've heard it before. "Daddy's got you."
I should object to the term—should remind him he's not my father, not my anything—yet. But the word wraps around me like a warm blanket, making me feel protected in a way I never have before. So instead of protesting, I let my head rest against his broad chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart beneath my ear.
The storm rages on, both outside and within me. But for now, wrapped in Butch's arms, I feel strangely, paradoxically safe—even as I sense that nothing in my carefully ordered life will ever be the same again.
five
. . .
Butch
