Breaking the Bully

Moore falls toward me a step, clutching the center of his chest. “Allie—”

“So I won’t tell you to leave. But please, please, get yourself out of my head. One night together. Okay, Moore? So I can get on with my life knowing the fantasy was better than reality. That I built up some unrealistic idea of what we’d be like together that we can’t possibly live up to.” My throat constricts. “Get me on the road to forgetting you. Please.”

Lightning flares above his head, revealing the marble planes of his face. The mixture of devastation and flickering hope in his eyes. “And what if the reality lives up to the fantasy?”

“It won’t,” I say quickly, with conviction. It couldn’t possibly.

And yet I suck in a nervous breath when he crosses the divide between us, every cell in my body switching to high alert. Fight or flight. In a matter of moments, he’s gone from wounded animal to determined predator, the rain causing his black hair to hang low over one eye, dripping, his hands ready at his sides. “Are you so sure, Allie?”

Damn my hesitation. “Yes,” I whisper. “You’ll prove me right in one night. I can move forward without feeling like I’m leaving something behind.”

“What if your fantasies come true tonight? Could we ever move forward as…as an us?”

I reel from what he’s suggesting. “There can never be an us, Moore. Not after everything that’s happened. I’ll never change my mind about that.” I shake my head. “How can you think I would?”

“Maybe I think if I will it hard enough, it’ll come true.”

“It won’t,” I whisper, starting to wonder if I’m making a mistake. Opening myself up for even more heartache and yearning for this man than I’ve already lived through. It feels like a lifetime’s worth. “One n-night.”

“No backing out from this point on?”

My heart raps urgently. “No backing out.”

He’s silent so long, I’m not sure he’s going to respond. And then all at once, he moves like a jungle cat, reaching me in two strides and scooping me up into his arms. I think he’s going to bring me into the cabin, but he turns down a starlit path instead, fragrant with rain and pine, his jaw in a hard flex. “I’ve made a study out of you, Allie James. I’ve been hanging on your every sigh, every expression and mood for years. Years. If you don’t think I’ve obsessed weeks of my life away over how you’d like to be fucked, baby, you’re sorely mistaken.”

We reach the lake in a matter of minutes and he doesn’t stop, he just keeps going, splashing right in up to his waist, sinking us both into the warm, late-spring water. The skies have opened up overhead, creating raindrop pings all over the glassy surface. Thunder hums a tune and it carries in the air, electrifying it.

And oh God, I have made a serious miscalculation.

Because this…this drama, the surrounding nature and wild whipping movement of the mountain wind…it’s so perfectly me. He’s showing me exactly what’s always been in my heart and mind when I thought of us together. It’s my fantasy come to life, the two of us wrapped in the arms of the weather. And as he turns me, urging my legs around his waist, his ravenous mouth bearing down on mine, a boom of thunder signals my doom.

Chapter Four

Moore

I can’t believe I’m here.

Can’t believe I’m holding Allie and this is happening.

For two years, I’ve been walking around with my heart hemorrhaging in my chest, but her mouth mends it in seconds and now it’s pumping so wildly, it’s going to dislocate one of my ribs. Jesus. Jesus. She tastes even better than I imagined. Soft lips, the flavor of fruit and mint and something singularly Allie.

Her tongue is hesitant at first to play with mine, making her surrender all the more satisfying. Causing me to stumble backward in the waist-deep water when her thighs tighten around me and she allows me in, letting me fuck her perfect little mouth with hot strokes of my tongue, my hands aching over the softness of her hair, her cheeks, absorbing her unique textures with my palms.

Get yourself out of my system.

My heart, so recently awakened again, lurches painfully and I make a pitiful sound into the kiss. Ah God. The best night of my life could be the night Allie cuts me off for good and I don’t know how to stop it from happening. This is the bed I’ve made and now I have to lie in it. She’s attracted to me, but I’ve hurt her too badly to contemplate a future. A man with more self control, maybe an older one, might stop this now. Demand to talk, to reason. But I’m a dry desert ground and she’s the storm of the century. I can do nothing but soak up every inch, take as much as I can before she wants me gone.