Pushing Her Limits (Masters of Adrenaline 3)

“How?”

“Tell me one secret about you,” he said, his body covering hers and his mouth near her ear. His jeans were abrading the abused cheeks of her ass, and he had started to grind against her. Beating her must have turned him on. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

He went still over her, waiting for her answer. Simple enough. It wasn’t as though he knew much about her anyway. But she had the feeling—the distinct feeling—that he was waiting for her to come clean about being a cop.

He was innocent, right? If he was innocent, keeping the secret didn’t matter anymore, although he might be angry about being deceived even if there had been a good reason. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to tell him, but if he already knew maybe it wouldn’t matter.

But maybe he was waiting for her to disclose something else entirely.

Frankly, she was horny and didn’t want to deal with the drama of a big reveal. Maybe she’d come here to make sure, once and for all, that he wasn’t behind all of the car thefts, but she’d also been looking forward to having him finally guilt-free. One or two more days wouldn’t hurt, right?

If she was being honest, though, she was mostly afraid that if she told him, he’d refuse to see her again.

After a long pause, she said, “I—I’m terrified of clowns.”

“Clowns.”

She nodded, and peered back at him hopefully.

Looking annoyed, he grabbed the bottle of lube. “Do you think that information is worth even a little of this? I know you have much bigger secrets to offer me.”

Damn it. Was that what he was waiting for?

She had to think of something juicy to distract him. Something a guy would like to know. “Um . . . I slept with my ethics professor in college.”

He snorted. “So?”

“She was a pillow princess and I dumped her.” Damn. She’d never admitted this to anyone. “She flunked me. To this day my parents believe I forgot to hand in my assignments, but just for that class. If you ever meet them you have to swear not to tell them.”

His low, rumbling laugh made her squirm back against him impatiently.

“I can tell them about the kink, but not about your college exploits?”

“Not the kink either.”

He upended the lube and squirted it onto her straight from the bottle. It hit the top of the cleft of her ass and slid downward, cold and unpleasant. If he’d squirted it on her burning ass cheeks instead, she would have thanked him.

Rather than work it into her, or getting her ready, he rolled on the condom and slid his cock up and down the mess he’d made with the lube, then pushed into her ass faster than she expected. It hurt, and she crumpled the paper under her hand. His use was brief and jarring, and he clutched a handful of her ass cheek just to make things less pleasant. By the time he came and pulled out, her whole body smoldered with frustration.

He showed her where the staff bathroom was so she could clean up, but his whole demeanor was aloof and distant.

By the time she was done, he’d reopened the shop, and three customers wandered around the store.

He didn’t say anything when she took her purse and made for the door. He barely made eye contact.

“I guess I’ll talk to you later,” she ground out. She was angry and hurt at the brush-off, but why? That he was angry, mostly. She didn’t know why he was angry and was too afraid to ask. And now there wasn’t time—not with customers in the

store and his expression aloof.

Guilt about not telling him she was a police officer resurfaced. Before, when she’d assumed he was a criminal, the lie hadn’t seemed like such a big deal. Now it made her feel awful. He was going to be so pissed, and he had every right to be.

His expression thawed briefly as he approached, but not much. “Before you go far, you might want to take a look at your face,” he whispered. He kissed her cheek, and suddenly he felt like a stranger.

Her eyes burned, and she fled to her car, doing her best to walk rather than run. She slid into the driver’s seat, gritting her teeth when her butt met the car seat. She was sore in more ways than one.

Remembering what he’d said, she flipped down the rearview mirror. On her forehead, clear but faint, were two partial rows of “give Atlas blowjobs” in her own messy scrawl. Fucking classy.

She attacked the ink with hand sanitizer. Most of it came off immediately, but the humiliation stayed for a long time after she drove away.