Muffin Top

Fuck.

Sometimes life really did suck rotten cop balls.

He shook out his hands and relaxed his shoulders. Shannon released a deep breath and gave him a thank-you nod.

“Hope she’s as wild in bed,” the jerk said with a knowing wink aimed at Frankie. “You know what they say about fat chicks—they’re demons in the sheets because they have to really work it to keep a guy’s attention. But hey, if you want to keep her a secret and not let your family out there in the beer garden know, I totally understand. Sometimes a man just needs to get his dick wet, even if the landing spot isn’t what they really want.”

Fury snapped, crackled, and exploded like someone had pumped a tanker truck full of oxygen into an enclosed blaze. “What I’m doing with Lucy is none of you or anyone else’s fucking business,” he said, practically nose to nose with the cop. The words flew out of his mouth loud enough for most if not all of the people in the bar to swing their heads around to see what the hell was going on at the bar.

Frankie could imagine what they were seeing, but he didn’t give a fuck. All he could do was concentrate 99 percent of his effort on not killing the man too stupid to know when to shut his piehole.

“Frankie.” Shannon’s voice penetrated the red-tinged fog blocking out everything else, snagging his attention.

But when he looked at the bartender, she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking behind him. He glanced back, and his gut collapsed in on itself.

Lucy stood at the end of the bar, her face white with fury. It wasn’t aimed at the two asshole cops, though. She was looking right at him as if she was about to pick up a flamethrower and charbroil his ass into ashes.

…

Lucy couldn’t breathe. Her lungs stopped functioning. Her brain went on the fritz. Her whole body was hot and cold at the same time, and the only sound she could hear was the rush of blood in her ears.

Certain words screamed louder than others in her head.

Sex.

Wild.

And she’d thought she wouldn’t have to deal with that whole fat-chicks-are-crazier-in-bed bullshit with Frankie. But maybe he’d just been better at hiding it than some of the others. God knew he’d been good enough at hiding her. When had they ever gone out in public since they’d gotten back? Even here at the party, he’d made sure no one could see them when he kissed her. She’d been waiting for it to all go to shit without realizing that it already had.

Forget pity fuck. She was his secret fuck.

Frankie turned to her. “Lucy—”

She glanced around, her stomach twisting into knots at the idea that the whole bar was hanging on their every word, watching the fat chick get humiliated. It was bad enough this was happening to her at her friend’s engagement party. To be the butt of an entire bar’s joke would be too much.

“Which part was so wild that made it worth it even though it was me?” she asked, so pissed at herself for that nugget of hope that had somehow grown into a mountain that she was shaking. So she fell back into her most familiar defensive posture. She attacked. “Sex under the stars on the floating deck? Maybe the road head? Or there was the time at the hotel that ended with us getting calls of bravo from the room next door? Which one of those so-called crazy sexcapades made it into your big-girls-will-let-you-do-anything category? Or is it that all of the many, many women you fucked before me were just that boring in bed?”

The color went out of his face. “It’s not about that.”

He reached for her, but she took a step back to avoid his touch. If he made contact, she’d break down completely, and she’d be damned if she did that. Not here. Not in front of everyone. Instead, she’d battle and fight to prove they hadn’t gotten to her. They never would.

“Really, then what is it about?” she asked, her voice starting to shake a little as emotion bled through. “How you were so hard up during your sex break that even someone like me started looking good?”

Frankie froze. Then a flush of angry red rushed up from his shirt collar. “What the hell, Lucy. You know that’s not the case.”

“And that’s why we always met at my apartment then, right? That’s why we never left it?”

“I didn’t want to scare you off. I wanted to prove to you that I was different.” He took a step forward, reaching for her.

She waved his attempt off. “Oh yeah, the no-sex pledge. How did that go for you? How long did you make it? Almost a week? Wow. You really are different now.”

“That’s a really shitty thing to say.” His voice was carefully neutral, as if he was trying to hold onto whatever sense of control he still had of his temper. “You know it was about more than that.”