Best of 2017

I wrapped my hands around his wrists. “No.”

He massaged his long fingers along my thigh while keeping my neck in his large palm. Control. He had every bit of it.

“I had an affair with the dean’s wife. But that wasn’t what led to my dismissal.” He smoothed his hand up my thigh and under the hem of my shorts. He leaned closer, his warm breath tickling my ear.

My grip on his wrists faltered; I couldn’t decide if I was afraid or turned on. Maybe a bit of both, and wasn’t that all kinds of fucked up? When his fingertips brushed my panties, I jolted.

“Are you wet, Red?” His lips brushed the shell of my ear, and I shivered.

“Don’t.” The quaver in my voice gave me away. I wanted him to touch me, wanted it more than I should have.

He laughed, low and sinister. He pushed my panties to the side and ran his fingers along my wet flesh. “You are.”

I whimpered and closed my eyes.

“Fuck.” He bit my ear, and I grabbed his shoulders.

Desire overwhelmed me and drowned out any logic. I wanted him, his wildness, and his veiled passion. If only for this single moment, maybe I could feel something other than loneliness and the burning need to know the truth.

When he pressed a finger inside me, I moaned. I tried to press my thighs together, but his palm kept enough room between them so he could ease farther inside me. God, it felt good.

“So wet and tight.” His voice was a growl as he fastened his lips right below my ear.

Heat seethed inside me, and when he squeezed my throat, I moaned.

“You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” His voice shook, anger coating the words as he added another finger and slowly stroked me. “Couldn’t leave me alone.”

I forced my breathy voice past his palm. “I just wanted to know—”

“Some things are better left in the dark, Red.”

“No.” I didn’t believe that. “It’s better to know.”

“You want to know why I was fired and ordered to stay off all campus property?” He nipped at my jaw.

Every nerve ending in my body focused on his touch, but I had to hear the truth. “Yes, tell me what happened.”

“Fucking the dean’s wife wouldn’t have been such a problem. But things didn’t go so well when he walked in on me raping her.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

RAPE? MY BLOOD TURNED to ice, and I struggled to escape Garrett’s harsh grip. He was bigger, stronger, and I was still weak from the boar attack.

“Let me go.” I dug my nails into his wrists.

He kept his grip on my neck, but pulled his fingers from between my legs. Licking them clean, he kept his eyes locked on mine as my heart banged against my ribs. He groaned as his tongue snaked along his fingers, and I fought down the heat his erotic show created inside me. He’d said rape. I couldn’t trust him. Had to get away.

“You’re a rapist.” I wrapped both my hands around his forearm, but he still kept a solid grip on my throat.

“No. I’ve never taken a woman against her will.”

My mind spun. “But you just said—”

“I know what I said.” He finally released me, but didn’t rise, just sat and held my gaze.

I swallowed, my skin missing the heat from his palm.

“This.” He glanced to my throat. “Is just a sample, Red. My appetites would disgust you. Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Sometimes they disgust me, but I can’t escape them.”

I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “Like what?”

“Haven’t you seen enough to know you should leave me alone?” He clasped his hands in his lap. “And get out of here as soon as you can?”

“I need an explanation.” I’d never been able to let anything go. My career and the burning need to know what happened to my father weren’t choices. They were part of my makeup. Mysteries were meant to be solved, truths brought to light. “Did you rape the dean’s wife?”

He shook his head. “No, but it certainly looked that way.” His expression soured. “And she preferred me leaving under a cloud of suspicion to giving up her position as the dean’s wife.”

“What happened?”

He stared at me, worry wrinkling the skin around his eyes, then rose and walked to the door. “I’ve fucked up enough people. You don’t deserve it.”

For reasons I didn’t understand, I ached for him. He seemed so lonely, lost. Maybe even lonelier than I was. “You can talk to me.”

“It would ruin you, and I don’t want that.”

“I’m not some virgin in an antebellum flick.” I cocked my head at him. “You can’t ruin me, Garrett.”

He growled with frustration and slammed his palm against the doorframe. “Don’t you get it? I’m the wolf. That day you showed up on my front porch in your red coat, if you’d known the thoughts I’d had, the things I’d wanted to do to you—you would never have come back here.” His muscles were drawn taut, as if he were straining to remain still.

I swallowed hard. “I’m a grown woman, not a child in a red cloak. You’re a grown man, not a wolf. I’m not afraid of you.” Was that true? “Why can’t you just talk to me?”

“Because if I did, then you would be afraid of me. And for once, I don’t want that. You being here is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt…” He sighed, as if the word he was searching for was floating just out of his reach. “Not so alone. I know you can’t stay. I won’t let you for a million different reasons. But what we have right now is the most I’ve had since—” He stopped himself and turned to face me again, his eyes sad. “Look, I just don’t want to ruin it.”

“How is you telling me about your past ruining it?” I absentmindedly ran my fingertips along my ear where his lips had been, the sparks gone but the memory still singeing my skin.

His tone was almost pleading. “Don’t push me, because if you do”—His expressive eyes pinned me with a look so hot I tensed—“I’ll take you somewhere you’ve never been, and I doubt you’ll enjoy it. Not a girl like you.”

“Garrett, please…”

He closed his eyes at my words, as if my begging was a delicious treat. “I said no. Don’t bring this up again.”

Before I could resume my entreaty, he stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him. His steps retreated down the hall, and I heard another door slam.

I sat in shell-shocked silence and tried to digest everything he’d said, every emotion that had flitted across my mind. Something twisted lurked beneath his dark exterior. I should have been scared. Instead, I found myself more worried over the fact that every harsh word he uttered seemed to speak to a secret part of myself. One that wanted to revel in his darkness and sample every bitter promise in his words.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Garrett only visited to drop off my meals. No small talk or flirtation, just a quick hello and a heavenly meal from Bonnie or a hellish one he’d made. Two weeks after the boar attack, he sat at the end of my bed and removed my stitches with painstaking precision. My left leg sat in his lap, my right behind his back. I tried to ignore the buzz his hands on my legs created.

Instead of imagining his hands roving higher, I focused on my new plan to survey his property. If he still wouldn’t give me permission, I’d decided I was going to do it anyway. He could call the sheriff on me all he wanted. I had a feeling, based on Sheriff Crow’s dislike of bad publicity, that all I’d get was a slap on the wrist for my trespassing ways.

“Ow!” I tried to keep still.

“Sorry. That one was probably the worst.” He pulled the thin wire from my skin and discarded it in a shallow dish on the bed. “I only have a few more to go.”

I fisted the blanket as he snipped another one and then another. By the time he was done, I’d left ugly wrinkles in the flowery quilt.

“All done.” He smoothed his hand over my calf. “Almost as good as new.”

I stretched my leg slowly and smiled when I realized the tight pulling sensa

tion was gone. “Feels so much better.”

“I guess you’ll be taking off soon, then.” He rested his hand on my knee.

“Yes. Lots of surveying to do.” And finding my father.

He arched a brow at me. “On Blackwood property?”

“Well, I do have a signed permission form and all.” I smiled.

“I thought you might say that.” He sighed. “What happens when you run into another wild boar?”

“I’ll shoot it.”

“With what gun? I’ve been through your pack.”

“Shit.” Sheriff Crow hadn’t gotten back to me about my car, which happened to have a gun in the glove box, and Garrett had a point. I frowned. “Don’t go through my stuff.”

“I figured it was only fair since you did that walkabout downstairs.” He gripped my knee tighter and pegged me with a knowing look. “And I know you’ve been trying to get into my room while I’m working in the library.”

How did he know? “I was just, um…”

“Right.” He placed my foot flat on the bed and stood. “So I think I’m entitled to check your pack. You need more water, obviously, and a weapon.” The top few buttons of his shirt were open, the dark hair showing through.

“I had a knife.”