I knew they were different kisses, but I also knew they’d both sunk deep inside of me. After I’d run out of the clinic like a crazy woman, I’d spent the whole freaking night tossing and turning, my mind playing out both kisses over and over again. Because even if Caleb’s was a joke kiss, it’d seared into me the same way Landon’s had.

Good God, I kissed two men last night.

I blushed as I stepped into the dark lobby of the clinic. I knew it was almost comical that it was the freaking kisses that were sticking out to me as “wild” and not the whole “don’t involve the cops while you extract a bullet” thing. I knew it should have been the second one keeping me up that night. But it was the memory of those lips that had my heart racing long past midnight. It was the memory of those hands holding me, touching me, pulling me closer.

Both of them.

I shivered as I turned on the lights, glancing around.

“Hello?”

The place was silent, and I frowned as I pushed open the door to the hallway that led back to the exam rooms and the big open operating room.

“Landon?”

I ducked my head into my office, and then the storage room, then bathroom, my brow arching as I realized the place was totally empty. Finally, I pushed open the double doors to the main back room where I’d pulled the bullet out of Caleb and stopped short as I realized it was also totally empty. Empty and spotless, I might add. All the tools I’d left out were clean and drying on the rack by the sanitizing station. The blood was gone from the floor and the table. It was like the night before hadn’t even happened.

Oh, but I knew it had. My lips still had the memory to prove it.

I took a shaky breath as I headed back to my office, turning on my Keurig coffee machine and sinking into my chair. Simon yowled from my feet, purring as I reached down to ruffle his ears.

Okay, last night had definitely happened. I’d definitely kissed, or at least been kissed by both of the hot, dangerous, illicitly tempting men who ran the tattoo parlor up the street. And yes, I knew that was basically entering fantasy-land territory for pretty much any straight woman ever. But then, something knotted inside of me—something that made me pause, and swallow thickly, and tap my fingers against the desk nervously as the night kept replaying through my head.

Because Landon and Caleb weren’t just gorgeous and tattooed and rough in that sexy romance-book way. They had a past, and while I didn’t outright know it, I could put two and two together, especially after last night. The tattoos, the rough glint in their eyes, the fact that they knew Ryker—the former president of a pretty serious motorcycle club—from their old lives.

No, Landon and Caleb, however fantasy-inducing, had a past. And I knew that past was trouble.

…And I’d learned my lesson the hard way about involving myself with men with rough, troubled pasts. Nick had come from a “rough” upbringing, and he’d just used it as a weapon to excuse away his shitty behavior. Him hitting me wasn’t his fault, not when he had a “bad time” growing up. Him stealing my prescription pads or pain meds to sell or use himself and put my entire veterinary license at risk wasn’t because he was a junkie and prick, it was because of his “rough” time in life. At least, that’s what he kept saying, through every abuse and every breach of trust.

And look, I knew Landon and Caleb weren’t Nick. But I’d barely made it away from him, and after a year and change living my new and abuse-free life, I knew I had one rule: no “bad boys.”

No tattoos, no dark pasts, no motorcycles, no dark, gorgeous eyes with promises of bad decisions you’d love to regret later. Nope, no thanks.

The Keurig machine dinged with my finished cup of coffee, and I felt my cheeks redden as I rolled my eyes at myself.

Right, like it’d been “rules” that’d kept me single and totally celibate since I’d left Nick. It wasn’t at all the fact that I’d run off to a remote mountain town with my sister and spent most of the last year throwing myself into my work and slowly becoming more and more and more of a “forever single” cat lady.

Simon prodded my leg, as if driving this point home.

“Hey, no bad boys, Simon,” I muttered, wagging a finger at him. “I know all about that dark past of yours, mister. Don’t even try and play that smooth card with me.”

Simon stared at me, licking his lips once before he pushed against my leg and strolled off.

Tags: Madison Faye Erotic
Source: readsnovelonline.net