by Jayla Kane
DENY ME
DENY ME
By
Jayla Kane
Deny Me by Jayla Kane Published by Amazon Digital Services, LLC
© 2019 Jayla Kane
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact the author.
Note from the author: the following work is a product of fantasy. It is not meant to mimic real-life situations or people and should not be regarded as anything more than entertainment. All acts depicted in this work feature consenting adults and are fictional and should be treated as such; the viewer is responsible for the legal ramifications of engaging with the text in the place where they live. No laws were broken in the country of its origin (US).
Author’s Note
WARNING: This is a dark paranormal romance with mature sexual scenarios that include challenging power dynamics and behavior that only belong in the pages of a romance novel of its kind. It is a dark romance that operates as a vehicle of fantasy. Please do not read it if you find the idea of these things immediately unromantic—you will not enjoy it. There are many fantastic books available to you, and I sincerely hope you put this one down and find another.
Important for new readers: this book is part of a series; the first book is called DARE ME. This book is NOT a stand-alone; it will not make nearly as much sense without being read in order from the beginning. And to once again reiterate: the series is meant for adults, not younger audiences. Thematically, it would be rated Restricted in the US, even without the sexual content.
Take care, reader—
JK
Prelude
Hunter
Baby Keller is the most beautiful woman in the world.
I hate that fucking name: Baby. So goddamn harmless—such a misdirection. A lie. But I’m not sure what else I should’ve expected from a goddamn Keller.
The first time I saw her, I had no idea who she was; I had no idea how she found us, either, or why she was standing in my driveway. I just knew I was looking at the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. She was standing with one hand blocking the sun from her eyes, spinning in a slow circle, like she knew she’d made a wrong turn somewhere. Not that there are any other turns—our driveway was it. If you came down Blacktree looking for a gravel drive, we were the only one you would ever find; people still called this area the old Black farm, but the barn wasn’t filled with anything but rusting car parts these days. So she must have come for a reason, and when I saw the wisp of smoke leaking out from under the hood of her car, I gathered that must be it.
I opened the screen door to the trailer and let it slam to give her some warning about my arrival; I knew I’d scare her if I didn’t. I’m big. I’ve always been big—fat and tall when I was little, slowly getting even taller and for a while fatter, too, and then it all kind of disappeared in middle school and I was left with a lot of… Bigness. I wasn’t wearing a shirt, of course, ‘cause I’d just finished working on the Warner’s van and went inside for a minute to drink some water; it was hot as hell. Second to last day of school, junior year, and I had four other beaters to fix up. Dad was passed out in the trailer, thank god, and Molly was at the library two towns over, working on a school project for her chemistry class. I’d checked in with her only a minute before. So it was just me, the wind full of dust, my hair smeared with old grease and my body covered in sweat so that I smelled like a goddamn farm animal, and the most beautiful girl in the world, standing in my driveway.
She jumped when she heard the door slam, just as I intended, but it gave her a minute to collect herself when she saw me slowly walking down the stairs. Baby Keller is… Unreal. She looked like a goddamn mirage, like the heat and sunlight created her out of my mind’s most desperate desires: long, black hair that shimmered with caramel highlights where it hung around her angel’s face, a body that belonged in a music video, her shirt unbuttoned just enough to let you see how deep her cleavage was, skirt so short I could count the freckles on her thighs. I waited for a second to give her a chance to say the hell with it and turn around, but instead she did the damndest thing; she smiled at me.
“Are you Roddy Black?”
“No, miss,” I said, and even the way I spoke didn’t belong in the same frame as her—blunt and rough at the same time, like something that got dragged down a gravel road for a while. I swallowed, trying to clear my head of the fog that smile filled it with, and stopped coming towards her. Most women would’ve cleared the hell out as soon as they saw me walking down the steps from the trailer, but here she was, and I’ll be goddamned if her eyes didn’t trail all over me, as if she were actually enjoying what she saw.
“Well then who are you?”
“I’m his son, miss. Hunter.”
“Ah,” she said softly, and I should’ve paid attention to the way her mouth curved up, just on one side, in that moment. But I didn’t. Instead, I was distracted by the way she raised one of her eyebrows, her eyes sparkling like amber, and tilted her head as she came closer. I was so surprised I didn’t move an inch when she slowly sauntered up to me, stood in my shadow, and reached out with one red taloned nail to tap my chest. “The Hunter Black.”
“Yes, miss,” I said again. I have never been so grateful for the fact that I learned how to keep every possible inflection out of my voice ages ago—I don’t really do emotion, the way other people do, to begin with. But I learned to bury all those little tells we have—the way your mouth might open in protest even when you stay silent, the uptick of your brow in surprise, the tremor in your voice when you want something you shouldn’t. I don’t have tells. I don’t show anything, because there usually isn’t anything to show—that’s the big secret. I don’t care. I can’t. I bled all that out, years ago. But Baby Keller made it harder to keep the well empty; she stirred something in me, down in the dark, down deep.
I had the good sense to back away from that sultry little hand. She responded by taking another step closer, and this time I knew if I moved again she’d take it as an invitation to chase me.
Which it wasn’t. “What do you want?”
“My mom said Roddy is the best mechanic in the county,” Baby said, blinking up at me. She’d positioned herself in my shadow, the sun lowering inch by inch past the horizon, the dense trees surrounding the barren patch where our trailers were set up creating an early sunset. She was still perfectly visible, every line of her exquisite face, every eyelash, every teasing movement of her tongue behind her teeth. She raised her eyebrow at me again, then licked her lips and shifted her position, hitting me with a view down her blouse. I managed to keep my eyes on her face—wasn’t that hard, really. Kind of a toss up, to be honest, which image was sexier, but she clearly thought she had some ammo in her shirt she could use on a guy who looked like me. “I was really hoping for some help with my car—well, our car?”
“What’s wrong?”
“No idea,” she said, and stuck out her bottom lip in a perfect pout. Probably looked great on Instagram. She noticed immediately that my body language hadn’t changed when she tipped her tits towards me and changed tactics, so I was beginning to get a little nervous about what she’d do next. She looked underage. Women came on to me sometimes when they wanted their car fixed; sometimes I fixed more than their car. But they were women. This girl was still mostly a girl.
Mostly.
“Smoke under the hood?”
“Obviously.”
“Any lights on inside?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know,” she said, impatient, and I was glad my blank responses were knocking her off balance a bit. As beautiful as she was—and she definitely was—even without knowing her name I knew she and I didn’t need to do anything more than talk—very fucking briefly—in my driveway.
“Bring it to the shop,” I said, turning around to head back up to the trailer. “My dad’ll take a look tomorrow.”
“I can’t.” I didn’t turn around. “I said I can’t!” I was just about to go inside and lock the door when I heard her on the bottom stair, moving fast. “I said—”
“I heard you,” I told her, turning to face her again; the look on hers almost made me laugh out loud. She for damn sure wasn’t used to having anybody walk away from her, let alone some big lug she expected to drag around by her tits. But the part that stopped me was how fearless she was. No one followed me; no one barked at me or pointed at me or even got mad at me. No one with any sense. But Baby Keller looked ready to grab me by my beltloops and drag me back down into the driveway. “Bring it to the shop—”
“I can’t,” she snapped, standing there on the bottom step and glaring up at me; all pretense of flirtation was gone, and what was left was actually even prettier to look at, if that were possible. Her eyes sparked with irritation. “I’m not supposed to drive it. And we only have one car—I share it with everybody. I can’t bring it back broken,” she said, getting more and more frustrated with each passing second. “My mom said Roddy was the best, and I can’t take it to the shop without her seeing it. Please? I bet it’s something small.”
“You don’t know that it is.”
“No, but you will if you look.” Baby shook off the last vestiges of her bimbo act and gazed up at me, her eyes locked on mine. “Please.”
I weighed my options.
I could go inside and see if she left; she might, or she might wander around back and wake up Dad… That thought made me shudder. She might stand there until midnight, which wouldn’t be so bad; I’d get to look at her a little longer… But Dad would wake up on his own in another couple hours, and I sure as hell didn’t want him seeing her. Not here, in the middle of nowhere. Especially when I had to go pick Molly up in two hours anyway. She might make up some bullshit about me, too, out of revenge. She might do any old thing.
And there was an excellent chance it was all nothing to begin with. A couple drops of motor oil burning off, probably. If her mom usually took the car to Dad, there was a good chance his shaky old drunkard’s hands spilled it during an oil change. I sighed and turned around once more.
Baby Keller smiled up at me, and I felt it again—that stirring, that weird movement down in my guts. I thumped down the stairs and she moved over to let me pass, then babbled excitedly at me as we walked over to the car, and it occurred to me again that I couldn’t remember the last time someone was so goddamn unintimidated by me. Men knew right away to leave me alone. They smelled it in the air, the threat of violence I wore like fucking cologne. Women were drawn to that sometimes if the circumstances were right, but they didn’t act like this. They didn’t bounce around on their high heels in my dirt driveway, clapping excitedly when I said it looked like it might be this, and I happened to have the part over here; they didn’t beam up at me like I was a goddamn knight in shining armor. I’m not. Only an idiot would think so.
But Baby wasn’t an idiot—not at all, not even close—and she did.
And it felt good.
I sighed and got to work on the car, pulling out the toolbox, going over to some shitpile Chevy that was up on bricks and working the plug out, going back and tinkering with her car. It was fine; it wasn’t an oil spill, but it was fine. “You’ll need to bring this in to the shop soon,” I told her, wiping my hands off. It didn’t do much good; that black grease got into every crevice, every knuckle, under every nail. Normally I didn’t mind.
“What do you mean?” She worried that full bottom lip, a lip that would not be out of place on any number of lipstick ads, and frowned up at me. Sincerely, this time. “It’s not fixed?”
“It’s alright, but you’ll need to come down and get it looked at for real,” I said, shrugging. This was good enough for a one off. It would get her around safely for a week, at least. And it was free labor and parts—what more did she want? “This’ll hold for a bit.”
“Can you fix it at the shop?” Her face was breathtaking in the long, low shadows of the late afternoon; twilight kissed the edge of the sky, and her eyes shimmered, otherworldly in their beauty. “Can you do it now?”
“Just get your mom to—”
“I can’t, I told you,” she said, and I hated how the anxiety in her voice made my heart clench like a fist. It wasn’t because she was beautiful, I realized; it was because she reminded me of Molly, in that moment. Afraid. Anxious. Undeserving of the shit life sent her way. “They don’t know I drove it. I can’t—” She cut herself off and blew out a long breath, then raked her hands through her hair.
“I can do it if we leave right now,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. And then she didn’t remind me of Molly, not at all, or any other woman I’d ever seen, when she spun around and stared up at me with that smile on her face. That smile was a curse for any man that saw it. It was the end of the line, I was sure; I was a goner. I tugged a t-shirt on over my head and followed her car out of the driveway in my truck, hoping I could find the right lubricant to finish the job down at the shop in time to make it to the library by six. I thought I could; I’d ordered more the day before yesterday. I chewed on a peppermint flavored toothpick and mulled over other possible solutions—it was such a small problem, it was really no big deal—and had a couple more ideas to help her by the time we got to the garage. When we pulled in, the sun was setting, and Ashwood was already dead asleep. The last train left for the day an hour before, and the Institute was already out for the summer.
Our garage wasn’t really a business, not in the proper way, not any more. We just serviced the same people who’d come to Dad for twenty years or longer, people that grew up with him and didn’t have enough money to go buy new cars, or kept their old beaters around for farmwork and their kids. I still kept papers, paid taxes, all that; I even paid Dad, which was downright funny sometimes. But it wasn’t a real business, these days. It was just an old storefront, the empty gas station out front making it look even more abandoned. We drove around back and I cranked up the metal door, careful to hitch the chain twice around as Baby drove her car inside.
I was right; I’d ordered everything I needed, and the job only took fifteen minutes. I had five to spare before I needed to get on the highway. Baby bounced on her heels again, the sky darkening around the edge of the world, her eyes sparkling. “Alright,” she said, clapping once and then spinning towards me. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” she said, laughing out loud. She propped her hands on her hips and stared up at me when I didn’t crack a smile. “No fucking way. Seriously?”
“Sure. Had the part already. And everything else. Only took half an hour of work.”
“Exactly. Don’t you want to be paid for that half hour?”
“Not particularly.” I took a step back from her, because I felt something I hadn’t in many years: shy. Her gaze was penetrative, even brutal. She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head.
“Do you want something else?”
This wasn’t her playing coy like before, like a girl pretending to be older than she was so she could tease a man into giving her what she wanted before she flounced away. That, I could’ve shrugged off.
No. This wasn’t girlish. This was a woman, a beautiful woman who’d stopped pretending to be a girl. Who didn’t tease; she tasted. She was dangerous.
Baby Keller dropped her arms and took a small step towards me again, and this time I knew I was being hunted. “No, miss,” I said, and my voice still managed to sound calm even though my heart was
about to explode. “It’s alright. No charge.”
“I want to pay,” she said softly, and for the life of me I couldn’t seem to leave when she came closer still, so close, the soft edge of her breasts brushing against my hard stomach as she wrapped her fingers through those goddamn beltloops. I’d been warned; I knew she might. And now she was staring up at me with those golden eyes and I couldn’t—I just couldn’t—back away. “Let’s go talk. In your truck.” And sure enough, she tugged me over there, slowly, staring up at me the whole time, and I couldn’t break free.
I just couldn’t find the will to pull away from her. Not even with every bit of my mind screaming loud and clear that there was a warning signal flashing somewhere.
Not even then.
I opened her door for her wordlessly when she let me loose and watched as she climbed up onto the seat, then walked around to the other side and took a second to catch my breath. I don’t get ruffled; I also don’t get seduced. And I’ll be honest… It felt good. I hated how much I liked it.
A woman might want me for about an hour, but in my experience that was all she wanted—the women who were intrigued by me couldn’t handle my silence, couldn’t handle that I didn’t scream with gratitude when they rode me, couldn’t stand themselves for shivering as they came. It wasn’t often an even exchange; I didn’t expect it to be. After they realized what they were doing, it changed things, no matter how much they liked my dick; the white trash rodeo was only in town for a minute, turns out. They woke up in the middle of it, freaked out by their own desires, and that ruined things. I was tired of being an idea. An escape.
But I didn’t think I was for Baby. She was something else altogether.
“Miss, I don’t—”
“Touch me,” she purred, and that was that.
Baby didn’t even wait until I was seated in the truck to straddle me; she’d untucked her shirt and her skirt was up around her hips, her bright red panties hiding nothing as she slid her smooth body over my lap. I started to say something—I’m not even sure what—and was silenced when I felt her little hands on mine, when I settled into the driver’s seat and she rolled her hips, just once, and I was hard as a goddamn rock. I could’ve fucked her through my jeans. She felt it immediately and did it again, and this time I didn’t bother to speak; those little hands were guiding mine, tugging them like they’d tugged my beltloops, until one was planted on her ass and one was cupping her breast.
