by Jayce Carter
“Beautiful,” he whispered into her ear, and pressed his thick fingers against her soaked entrance.
“The saleswoman could come back at any time.”
“So stop arguing and I’ll finish playing with you sooner.” He sunk two fingers deep into her snug pussy, the action enough for her to gasp loudly.
He brought his free hand, the one not buried to his knuckles inside her, to cover her mouth. “Quiet now, or you’ll get us caught, and I don’t think that’s what you want.”
Her breathing quickened with the feeling of being restrained, with all that power holding her still as he fucked her slowly with his long fingers. Meanwhile, he never stopped his hot, smooth whispers to her. “See how beautiful you look, all flushed and wet? My fingers slide into you so easily, like you were made for me. As soon as I saw you in this dress, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted you. I wasn’t inclined to wait around. What can I say? I’m impatient when it comes to what I want, and, Tara? I want you. Over and over again, under me, over me, bent over anything I can find. I want you every fucking way I can have you.”
Even though she wanted to close her eyes, to lose herself in the sensation without any of the conflict inside, she didn’t. She focused on the act, on the way his fingers disappeared into her cunt, the way light caught on her wetness that he’d drawn from her body, those things turning her on more. It wasn’t her, and she didn’t worry about the fact she wasn’t a size two, didn’t see the fat, didn’t see the stretch marks. Instead, she saw only the erotic sight of Chris’ fingers pleasuring the body in the mirror, the breathless way the woman’s chest rose and fell, the ecstasy on her face. When she stopped thinking about the woman as her, when she cast aside all the worries, she liked the image.
Chris’ obvious passion only made it better, with his hard and teasing cock rocking against her, tempting her.
“I suggest you stop holding out, sunshine, because if you wait too long, the saleswoman will come back.” His teeth closed around her lobe in a sting that made her arch against his hold. “I mean, I won’t stop, but you’ll have some explaining to do then.”
The idea of that saleswoman returning, of her knocking at the door while Chris drove Tara toward the orgasm he seemed determined to get from her, sent her over the edge.
Her release rushed through her, hard and quick and brutal. She closed her eyes against it, against the pleasure and the overwhelming snapping of the tension inside her. She arched back, relying on him to keep her on her feet, because she sure as hell wasn’t thinking about anything beyond the way her body went haywire and how he used his talented fingers to ease her through every second of it. She cried out against his palm, thankful he’d used it to muffle the sound.
When she collapsed, when the sensations abated and she was nothing but a panting mess held up by Chris’ strong arms, he pressed his lips against her cheek, tiny bits of sweet affection before he pulled his fingers from her still drenched, pulsing cunt.
“Get dressed, Tara, or you’ll have to start answering questions,” he said as he helped her sit on the bench. One gaze down at his front, at the way his erection made an obvious and obscene bulge against his jeans, and he chuckled. “If I’m not careful, I’ll face questions, too.”
He slid from the dressing room without another word, leaving Tara breathless and confused. What was she supposed to think about that? He’d delivered her yet another amazing orgasm, but even so, he hadn’t given her any sense that there was a future.
And why did she care? Why not use him and his perfect body for what she was clearly enjoying? She’d never thought she’d get something like that, so who cared if it was temporary? She could take her pleasure, lose herself in the madness for as long as she could.
“What did you think of the dress?” the saleswoman asked, her voice floating through the dressing room door from outside, clearly speaking to Chris. “I think your friend looked amazing in it.”
“Friend?” His huff was full of amusement, but he didn’t correct the woman. “The dress is perfect. We’ll take it.”
The fondness in his voice had her pressing her bottom lip between her teeth. The reason she couldn’t just accept what was going on was clear, wasn’t it?
I want more. I am such an idiot.
Chapter Seven
Chris leaned back in the chair beside Patrick with the sky spread out above them, the stars reaching out toward the mountain ranges on all sides.
He could get used to a sky like that again. Hell, he could get used to a lot of what he’d found.
Gena and Tara had headed out to grab more drinks when the barbecue had managed to drain all they had. It left Chris with his friend, two beers and the night sky.
And a lot of questions.
“It’s nice having you back,” Patrick said.
“Subtle.”
“Well, I’ve never been someone to beat around the bush. You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about settling down.”
“I have settled down. It’s just not here.”
Patrick waved him off. “I’ve seen your apartment, Chris. It’s so depressing that Gena stopped smiling, and she never stops smiling. You can’t really be happy there.”
“I have a life there.”
“You have an apartment and a job you can do from anywhere. You travel so much—does it really matter where you set down roots? Why not here?”
Chris sat back as he tried to come up with a good answer. Patrick wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t gained many friends, hadn’t done much in the way of laying down roots. The truth was, nowhere else had ever felt quite like home.
Still, that wasn’t any reason to pick it all up and move himself back there.
“You know there’s no good reason for me to do that.”
“None?” Patrick cocked up an eyebrow before he took a drink.
“Come out, just say it already.”
“Do you think I don’t see how you look at Tara?”
“Normally that statement from someone’s brother comes along with a punch to the jaw.”
“It still might, trust me.”
Silence filled the uncomfortable conversation, and Patrick, a master at using quiet to make a point, only waited.
Finally, Chris sighed. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? That had her walking around here like she was? I haven’t seen her smile like that in a long time, and don’t think I didn’t notice the way you watch her, the way you always had your hand on her. Don’t try to say it was just your little deal, because there’s no one here but us.”
Chris took a sip of his own beer while the words simmered. Yeah, he’d seen how Tara had moved around the barbecue. He’d been mesmerized by the sweetness of that girl, her humor, by the way she’d smiled and laughed. Happiness looked good on her, and he couldn’t deny that he wanted to see more of it, to be the one who drew it out of her.
She made him yearn to lean in and offer some little compliment, to see her flush and grin. Hell, he’d like to whisper something filthy to her and see her go red, see her eyes fill with lust.
That wasn’t the plan, though, and nothing with Tara had changed his plan.
“You know me. I’m not the type to settle down.”
“Neither was I until I met Gena.”
Chris sighed and set his drink on the table. “That’s you, and it’s always been you. I can’t give her the sort of future she wants, the one she deserves. She can have anything she wants, should have that, but the only thing I can say for sure is that it won’t be with me.”
“And why not?”
“Because I said from the start, I don’t want to get tied down. She’s fun, but she isn’t going to change my mind about that.”
“Yeah, well, I said the same thing and look what happened.”
“Trust me. Tara and I aren’t anything, and we won’t ever be.”
A sound behind him had Chris turning, dread settling in the pit of his stomach.
Sure enough, behind him sto
od Tara, and damn if the hurt on her face didn’t cut him deep.
Don’t react. Don’t cause a scene. Tara repeated the advice to herself even as the words Chris had said, the ones he hadn’t thought she’d hear, continued to take layers of skin off.
She didn’t need pity, and she already knew Gena would have a ton of it on her face, at least until she tried to unman Chris. What she needed was to get the hell out of that place and away from everyone. She needed to bury herself in a pint of ice cream so deep and high in calories she might go into a sugar coma. At least then she wouldn’t have to face the train wreck of the next five minutes, where Chris would try to explain and every word would only hurt more.
Chris stood, but he said nothing.
What was there to say?
“Thanks for the night, Pat,” she said. And look at that, your voice is steady. Way to go, girl.
“Don’t go,” Gena said, but Tara was already backing away.
“It’s fine. It’s late and I’ve been up too late recently, and I need a good night’s sleep, and it’s late.” Wait, you already said late, damn it.
Chris called her name as she picked up her purse from the bench beside the front door, struggling to get her things together and the hell out of there as fast as possible.
“Really, stay,” Gena said. “Don’t worry about him. Want me to kick him out?”
Tara smiled around the tears that she wouldn’t let fall. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Despite Gena’s attempts, Tara extracted herself into the hot night, the driveway barely lit by streetlights that ran the sidewalk. She’d parked at the end of the long driveway, since Patrick lost his mind if she ever parked on the street.
Any other day his over-protection would have drawn a smile, but instead, it only chafed. She didn’t need to be watched over. She didn’t need anyone taking care of her, didn’t need to feel like a burden to yet another person. She was an obligation to Patrick, to Gena, to Chris. Hell, she’d been an obligation to Harry, just the woman he’d taken because it was easy, not the one he wanted.
When she’d gone to the store with Gena, when she’d talked about Chris, when Gena had pressed her for information, there had been no hiding the smile on Tara’s lips. Sure, she knew he’d said they had nothing between them, but hearing him say it so surely, as if none of it mattered, had struck down the little fantasies that had started to grow in her head.
“Wait a minute there,” came the voice that had already done enough damage that night.
Tara stood in front of her car and fumbled for her keys, wanting to get in, to drive away and not hear from him anymore. In fact, maybe he’d stand behind the car and she could back right over him. When she fished out the keys, her fumbling hands dropped them to the pavement.
And there he was, picking them up, always the one on the spot, always perfect. “Just listen.”
“I’ve heard all I need to for one night, thanks. Give me my keys.”
His sigh was low and unhappy, and as much as she hated it, it made her think about how warm his breath had been against her bare skin. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t. I’m nothing to you.”
His cheek twitched, the only outward show that the words affected him at all. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Tara turned her gaze to a spot on the concrete driveway, to a tiny flower that had burst through a crack. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You running out of here says it matters. No matter what else is true, Tara, I don’t want you upset.”
The honesty in his voice was the worst part of it. She wished she could call him an asshole. She wanted to scream at him for being a douche who had hurt her, but that wasn’t even fair. She had no one to blame but herself. She’d known better than to get involved from the start, and yet what had she done? She’d buckled her stupid ass into that masochistic ride and taken the plunge.
“I said from the start this was a bad idea. Don’t come to the wedding.”
“Don’t be like that. We had a deal.”
A deal. Exactly. That was all she was to him.
“I held up my end, and I’m letting you out of yours.”
“I’m not asking to be let off the hook. Would you stop and just talk to me for a minute?”
“Why? What will that change?”
“It’ll help me understand.”
The leash she had on her tongue broke, and the words poured from her lips without even a breath. “I don’t want to be a damn deal to you! I’ve done this, I’ve been with someone who didn’t really want me, and I don’t want to do it again. You don’t want anything, I get it, I’m not even mad at you because you told me as much to start with. Then I had to go and fall in love with you.”
The moment the dreaded L-word left her, she snapped her mouth shut. She hadn’t meant to say that, and as soon as she had, she knew the worst part about it was that it was true.
It didn’t matter that it had been quick, that it made no sense, that she had no business falling for him—he’d made it impossible not to.
“You don’t mean that.”
She held out her hand, her gaze still down. “My keys.”
The weight of them settled in her hand, but then he wrapped his hand around her wrist. “I’ll come to the wedding, Tara. Even if we aren’t…even if we’re just friends, I want to come.”
Just friends.
The idea of standing beside him, of that pity on his face because he was there with the girl he didn’t give a damn about, was worse than the idea of going to the wedding alone.
She shook her head and pulled her wrist from his grip. “If you care about me at all, don’t come, please.”
He said nothing else as she slid into her car and pulled out of the driveway, making sure not to look at him, not to lift her face.
He didn’t need to see anything there, and she didn’t want to admit to the tears she couldn’t hold back anymore.
Chapter Eight
Tara used the straw to stir the pieces of raspberry in her lemonade, the swirling calming somehow.
“You look like someone ran over your dog,” Gena said.
“I told you I wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere. You don’t get to complain when you drag me out and I’m grumpy.”
“I don’t understand who can be grumpy here. There’s guacamole on the table. It’s impossible to be this unhappy with guacamole in front of you.”
“Yet here I am.” Tara cast a half-hearted glare at her friend who had refused to be ignored.
Despite Tara sending every call to voicemail, Gena had shown up, Patrick in tow, to check on her. Patrick had been there only to make sure she was still breathing, leaving any cheering-up to his wife, who had grabbed her and all but thrown her into a clean pair of leggings and a tank top.
Not her most glamorous outfit, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. She wasn’t trawling for men. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
Even the idea of flirting exhausted her and made her want to crawl right back into bed. Fuck men. Not literally, since only one had managed to do the job well enough to make taking off her bra worth it, so she wasn’t about to go there again.
Nope, she could restart life in a nunnery, getting old and telling stories of that one great lay she’d had before she’d screwed it all up. It sounded as good as any of her other options right about then.
“A broken heart doesn’t look good on you,” Gena said.
Did a broken heart look good on anyone? Probably those thin models in the magazines who never smile. They look pretty good miserable.
“Can we not talk about it, please?” She’d gone over it in her head nonstop for the two days since it had happened. She didn’t need another walk over the burning coals that were her terrible decisions to think she’d had a shot with him.
It reminded her of the time when she’d fostered a kitten she’d found, taking it in because she was going t
o give it a home just until she found it a new one. She’d told herself there was no way she’d keep the cat, that she didn’t want a cat, that she didn’t even like cats. Four years later, the cat had still lived with her.
Just like that time, Chris had wormed his way past all her good intentions and burrowed right into her heart like some sort of infection. It hadn’t hurt that much with the cat, because at least it had wanted to stay. Chris? Not so much.
“Fine,” Gena said on a heavy breath. “All I’m going to say is that I’m sorry, and again offer to knee him in the balls for you. Why don’t you come with Pat and me for the wedding?”
A pity third-wheel spot? After she’d already said she was bringing Chris? That would be even worse than showing up alone.
“No, thanks. Maybe I’m not going to go at all.”
“What? But you’ve been all ready to go show off, to show Harry he can’t get under your skin.”
“And look where that got me. It was a stupid idea, to think that I was somehow going to change everything. I thought I’d show up, and I’d be different. I’d be in some jaw-dropping dress, and I’d have a hot guy on my arm and Harry would look at me and realize he’d fucked up. He always looked at me like I was unimportant, like I wasn’t enough, and I thought I’d finally prove him wrong. Instead, I’m going to walk in as the same fat girl, on my own, and I’m going to prove to everyone I am exactly what they always thought I was.”
“Fuck that. You’ll walk in there looking amazing and knowing you don’t need some guy on your arm to stand tall.”
The idea seemed nice, but Tara only sighed and heard Gena’s phone go off again. “I’m going to stay here and finish my drink. Why don’t you go home?”
After a short argument, Gena seemed to give in and left Tara to nurse her own drink and give herself fully over to the pity party she wanted to have.
Gena’s words were nice, but they weren’t realistic. Woman like Gena could do that, could kick ass and look confident. That was for the ball-busters of the world, not for girls like Tara. The best Tara could manage was dark humor and snark.
