I think about the envelope under the floor mat in my car. About the secrets we’re hiding from each other. About the trust we’ve built on lies.
I know what we’re doing isn’t healthy. I know it’s only a matter of time before everything unravels.
I also know that I’ve fallen deeply, madly, insanely in love with him.
With my track record, it would be easy to accuse myself of falling for every man who shows me attention. I’ve tried to compare this love to what I felt for the others, but I can’t. This is too different. Too fresh. Too forbidden. What I feel for Jarret is twisted so intricately in wrong and right I can’t make logical sense of it.
Since when is love logical anyway?
It doesn’t matter. Neither of us have uttered the words. We don’t talk about the future or the past. We cling to the present as tightly and desperately as possible, because we know what awaits outside our happy bubble.
As close as we’ve grown and as strong as we stand together, it’s not enough. The truth is going to rip us apart.
So I ignore that envelope in my car for another night. I exit the shower and close the door on our secrets for just a little while longer.
Wrapped in a towel, I step into the bedroom and forget how to breathe.
Jarret sits on the edge of the bed, wearing black briefs and nothing else. In the background, Hurricane by Luke Combs thrums through hidden speakers.
He loves to play this song for me. He says it reminds him of the night we came together in a storm of electricity and blinding light.
His dark brown hair slicks away from his stern brow. His hands rest on his spread thighs. Back straight, chin tilted down, he fixes those striking eyes on mine.
Over the past three months, I’ve explored and memorized every inch of his gorgeous body. The hardness of his chest, the thickness of his biceps, the tight buds of his nipples when I run my tongue over them. I’ve never craved a man the way I crave him. Never been so obsessed with the carnal pleasures of flesh and sin.
But as much as I love his body, that isn’t what holds me captive. It’s the thunderous energy that vibrates from within him.
Like now.
“Remove the towel.” The command in his voice is my weakness and my lifeline.
A shivery clench of unadulterated desire hits my core.
I slam my hands on my hips and give him the response that makes him harder than a rock. “No.”
His eyes heat as he slowly rises from the bed.
He gets off on the illusion, just like I do. The feel of me struggling beneath him, the rapid pulse in my throat against his hand, the sense of forcing me against my will, all the while knowing he turns me on in a way no one else ever has.
I put up a good fight as he chases me through the room, bumping into walls, knocking over lamps, kicking, biting, and scratching skin. It ends with me bent over his lap, my face pressed against the mattress, and the towel long gone.
“Every night,” he says, caressing a hand over my soon-to-be red bottom, “you come out of the bathroom with renewed tension. You try to shed it before you emerge, but it’s still there.”
How the hell does he pick up on that? His intuition is freaky, and it really scares me sometimes.
“I’m spanking you tonight as a reminder.” He continues to stroke my bare butt, twisting me up with anticipation.
I writhe against his hand, earning a deliciously hard smack.
“Nothing matters,” he says slowly, calmly, making me hang on every rumbling syllable, forcing me to focus only on him as I float in suspense for the pleasure he’ll deliver, “except you, me, and the sound of my voice.”
He lets his hand fly, and each time his palm meets my flesh, the burn erases anxieties about secrets and lies, missing persons and unfinished business. He reduces me to a physical creature existing only in the here and now, feeling the pain and pleasure, until all that exists is him and me and this sacred thing between us.
When my bottom becomes numb to the strikes and my body drifts on a cloud of endorphins, he rolls me onto the bed and stands, removing his briefs.
His erection juts from defined thighs, his gaze smoldering under the V of dark brows. The cords in his neck strain against his skin, his jaw locked down tight.
He doesn’t always fuck me like he’s fighting a war, but he needs that tonight. It’s been a long day of herding, and he has his own tension to work out.
I flip to my stomach and scramble across the bed, yelping as his hand captures my ankle. He climbs over me, and my heart races.