My eyes flicked open.
Fuck.
I had slept over.
Worse, I had slept over in his arms.
This was bad.
The kind of bad that led to mind-blowing orgasms followed by a world of regret.
I looked at Cade. Christ, why did he have to look so hot first thing in the morning?
The way I saw it, I had two choices.
I could sneak out and pretend that having his body pressed up against me didn’t excite me.
Or I could stay and give into temptation.
The throb between my legs begged me to stay. Especially when I saw the hardness punching against Cade’s zipper.
I let my hand slide between my legs and felt the pulse flare into a relentless throb as it screamed at me to do something. Something with the six-foot-four wall of muscle lying next to me.
I hastily pulled my hand away.
Was I insane?
Regaining my senses, I carefully extracted myself from Cade’s embrace, but froze when he stirred and moaned my name. His lips parted with a sigh but his eyes remained closed. For a moment, I couldn’t move. I took in the image of him. The strong jaw with a hint of scruff. The dimples. The soft fan of dark lashes against his skin. The body that was nothing but muscle. He was beautiful. And sexy. Too sexy. A war ignited inside of me. Both my heart and clit pleaded with me to stay. To touch him. To wake him up with my tongue. To slide my thighs on either side of him and ride his hard cock until I was moaning his name. But my head yelled at me to leave the room and to keep running.
Before I could do anything I’d regret, I climbed off the bed and quickly left the room.
Memory lane was too tempting.
Get in and get out. No distractions. That was the plan.
“I see,” my mom said as I let myself inside the house via the patio door. She was standing at the kitchen sink drinking a cup of coffee.
“No, you don’t,” I said rushing past her. “Nothing happened.”
“That’s why you’re walking in here dressed in the clothes from yesterday.” She took a sip of coffee and winked at me over her cup. “I’m surprised you didn’t try slipping in through your bedroom window like you used to as a teenager.”
I stopped. “You knew about that?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, baby girl, please.”
“Just don’t read anything into it,” I said, walking over to the coffee pot and pouring myself a cup.
Mom raised her hands in innocence. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Thankfully, the doorbell interrupted us and I went to answer it before Mom could say anything more about my sleepover with Cade.
It was a man from the airline, and he had my missing suitcase. Somehow it had ended up in Anchorage. And then Colorado. Then back to Seattle. Now the damn case had been to more cities in the US than me.
I thanked the airline man, tipped him twenty, and then dragged my suitcase up to my room. Five minutes later it was open on my bed, and I was staring at the clothes I had packed four days earlier. I shook my head. It was like they belonged to a stranger. Designer labels. Sensible shoes. Respectable pants. Modest shirts. I held up a floral blouse. It was designer and incredibly high quality. Not to mention, expensive. But it was also boring as hell. So were the black slacks I had packed to wear with it. And the safe leather shoes. And the patent leather belt.
“Who are you?” I whispered to myself.
My mom walked in and stood next to me. She looked at the clothes and then back to me. “Time to go shopping?”
I closed the suitcase and smiled at her. “I’ll grab my purse.”
She grinned. “Welcome home, baby girl.”
INDY—Aged 15
Then
I sat on the steps leading to George Jones’s porch with my elbows on my knees and my fists pressed into my cheeks. Farther along the step, George Jones sat looking the other way, refusing to make eye contact with me while I shot bullets at him with my eyes. George Jones was two years older than me. He was a junior while I was a freshman. He thought he was God’s gift to girls. I didn’t. He thought that because he was a boy, and bigger than anyone else in our school, he could harass girls. He was wrong. And I just happened to be the one to tell him.
With my fist.
In front of us, his father, George Jones Sr., was talking with Sheriff Buckman.
It was Sunday and I was at George Jones’s birthday pool party. Behind us, hidden by a tall, wooden fence, George’s seventeenth birthday party was buzzing with the arrival of the police.
“I want the little troublemaker charged,” George Jones Sr. said with his hands on his hips.