Thrill Seeker (Sinful in Seattle Book 1)

by Taryn Quinn

  “It is. No, I’m not telling you.” I rubbed my mittened hand over my stinging cheeks. “What happens between a girl and her priest is private.”

  “Wow. Some Thorn Birds shit? Kinky little thing, aren’t you?”

  Was that actually approval I saw in his midnight eyes? They’d definitely warmed. Speaking of kinky…

  “Hardly.” I sniffed, and not out of haughtiness.

  I had to sneeze, and I had to pee. I was also freezing and starving and desperately in need of a long, hot shower.

  Then again, did I dare get naked within the same four walls as this guy? Even if I wasn’t his type?

  Serial killers had types too. They also didn’t kill everyone they met. I couldn’t be sure this guy was safe, but if I wasn’t in his target victim group, he could be a homicidal lunatic and I wouldn’t necessarily be in danger. Plus, I knew some judo.

  Oh, the rationalizations a girl who urgently needs a bathroom will make.

  “Okay. I’ll go inside with you. Briefly. Until we can reach the towing company. Otherwise, I will have many people out looking for me, and they will descend on your place like a swarm of locusts if I’m not home in a matter of hours.”

  Much to my consternation most of the time. I was well and truly sick of being so overprotected by my family, though I loved them for their concern. It was just hard to have much of a life when you were watched like a rabid animal expected at any moment to go on a rampage through town.

  In truth, I just mostly studied and worked, along with spending time with my bestie and my boyf—

  Yep, not going there.

  “Not if I tie you up and make you call them to say you’re okay and not to look for you. Then I might throw your chair in the basement and leave you without food and water.”

  His voice was entirely too serious, which was how I guessed he was lying. It was a gamble, but I was going to bet that the usual serial killer didn’t advertise his intentions so brazenly. “You forgot to add that you’d have your way with me first.”

  “Hoping, Red?” Before I could stammer out a response, he grabbed my arm and towed me behind him. “Not my type, remember?”

  “I didn’t say yes,” I called.

  He promptly ignored me.

  After dragging me up a short snowy hill, we made our way up a scarcely shoveled path to a short set of rickety steps. He stopped to pick up some wood, then stomped up the steps and pressed his shoulder into the door. “Come on,” he shouted in my general direction before barreling into the dark house.

  Hell, I didn’t even know if it was truly his. He could be an illegal squatter there for all I knew.

  The fact of the matter was that I knew most of the people in Turnbull. This was on the outskirts, true, and the occasional person came or went without stirring my notice, but we lived in a small, self-contained area. We might be surrounded by trees and hills and blocked in by mountains of snow for almost half the year, due to our proximity to Lake Ontario, but we kept track of our own.

  Also, it was hard to make quick getaways when a snowpocalypse wasn’t a disaster so much as a way of life.

  Biting my lip, I cast a quick glance back toward the road. In the time it had taken us to walk up to the house—though calling it that seemed to be an overstatement—my poor car had become even more buried. The snow wasn’t coming down in flakes now. More like pellets.

  “Red,” he growled. “Forget the damn bread.”

  Something about his irritation made me laugh. I clapped a hand over my mouth, then bent at the waist when more laughter rolled out. I couldn’t catch my breath and what breaths I could take were laced with ice. Crappy time to be on the verge of hysteria.

  Guess my accident had shook me up more than I’d thought. Or else it was due to the man himself.

  So I stood up straight, threw back my shoulders, and strutted inside in my giant boots to my beheading.

  At least he’d turned on the lights. As I shut the door behind me and shifted to survey my surroundings, from down the hall came a string of curse words shot off in succession like gunfire.

  My eyes widened. If he was trying to ease me into feeling comfortable before he struck, he wasn’t too good at it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked carefully, darting glances right and left as I crept up the hallway to where his voice was coming from.

  And stopped dead at the mouth of the sparse, rustic kitchen.

  He was standing at the stove in nothing but a pair of silky black boxers with a spatula in his hand, poking at whatever congealed mess was in his dented pan. It was one like you’d see in a camping kit, meant to be used on nights under the stars and no other time, ever. But that was his home cookware.

  Fit him somehow, as did the intricate swirls and lines of dark ink that wrapped around his muscular shoulders and biceps. More ink covered his back and sides. He was a human canvas, tattooed and rippling with muscle.

  I didn’t find that arousing. That he was the exact opposite of my lanky, inkless ex was merely something I noted.

  “Fucking burner is fucking out.” He stabbed at the red mass in his pan. Without sparing me a glance, he continued. “Why are you still dressed like a damn polar bear? Get out of those wet clothes. You were standing in a snowbank for a good fifteen minutes or more.”

  “Polar bears don’t need clothing, as they have fur.”

  That he only growled made me laugh. And cautiously unwind my scarf.

  While he continued to fiddle with the non-working stove, I cleared my throat. “You have a microwave. Just heat up the soup.” Cautiously, I stepped closer and peered at the gross stuff he kept trying to stir. “That is soup, right?”

  “Yes. Tomato. I was going to make grilled cheese to go with it. Can’t now, because fucking burner is—”

  “Fucking out,” I finished, surprised by how liberating it felt to curse. There weren’t any tip jars here.

  No furnace either apparently, as it was nearly as cold inside as it had been out. Or else I’d caught a serious freaking chill.

  “Look at you. Your teeth are chattering.” He turned to me and yanked off my fuzzy hat, causing the long hair I’d tucked underneath to come tumbling out. He gazed at it as if he was surprised I had hair at all, then managed to shake off his shock and tugged off my earmuffs too.

  Sound rushed into my ears, including the uneven hiss of his breaths through his tightly clenched teeth.

  I raised my gaze to his. He was staring at me in a way I wasn’t used to from men. When a girl grew up in a small town with three strapping, overprotective brothers, you got used to guys being too afraid to take their shot. As such, I’d grown accustomed to dating the safe, parental-friendly boys. I liked them. They were predictable. No serial killers in the bunch.

  None of them made my blood heat the way this one was with merely a heavy-lidded look.

  He gripped my hat and earmuffs in his hands, crumpling them. This close to him, without even the buffer of his clothes, he seemed even more huge. Tall, muscled, dangerous.

  I didn’t know that kind of male. Had never wanted to.

  Until now.

  “Keep going,” I said softly, challenging myself as much as I was him. I gestured to the rest of my outerwear. “Lots more clothes to strip off me, Wolf.”

  Would you like to read more?

  Oh, and pssst. Rockstar Daddy is a Kindle Unlimited title.

  Buy or Borrow

  Do younger men turn your crank?

  DIRTY DISTRACTIONS

  As a mechanic, Brad’s good with his hands. And he wants to put them all over Sara.

  Sara might be a doctor who works with birds, but Brad’s the one who knows how to find all the right spots to make her purr. She wouldn’t mind that, if only she wasn’t ten years plus—mumble, mumble—older than him.

  And if he wasn’t her best friend’s brother. Her younger brother.

  Brad doesn’t care about their ages or the differences in the worlds they come from. They’re roommates, living together while
Sara’s apartment is being renovated.

  But they aren’t living alone. Brad’s big sister lives there too. And Sara’s pretty sure her bestie would prefer not to hear Sara having a screaming O with her brother.

  Or a few dozen of them.

  Then again, maybe rules are meant to be broken. And perhaps opposites attract—and age differences don’t matter nearly as much as other numbers.

  Like how many days it takes to fall in love.

  BUY or BORROW

  Read on for an excerpt…

  Chapter 1

  In the three months, fifteen days and handful of hours since she’d last had sex, Sara Carmichael had thought of little else. Maybe not every minute, but way more frequently than usual. And the co-star of those fantasies was the grinning, often grease-spattered man currently ogling her from a few feet away across her best friend’s backyard.

  Sara reclined in the chaise lounge by Kim’s pool and brought her cell phone close to her face, as if she were mesmerized by the scores of last night’s game. Instead she peered over the top of her phone, tracking the way Brad O’Halloran’s gaze tracked her as she idly ran her toes along her left calf.

  She always felt exposed around him, though her basic black swimsuit didn’t exactly promise carnal delights. It was a bikini, true, but at forty-two, she doubted the under-thirty set would be getting erections looking at her curves.

  Brad was under thirty. He also seemed tall enough to block out the sun as he rose and strode over to her, though she suspected her own modest five-foot-three height made it seem as if he were taller. As often covered in grease as he was in aftershave, Brad didn’t skimp on all those man pheromones that set a woman’s nose twitching.

  Or her nipples hardening, depending.

  As far as things went, Brad was a pretty good catch. A business owner, intelligent, pleasant to talk to. He was beyond hot. Sizzling. Scorching. And yet still really young.

  Dammit.

  “You’re going to go cross-eyed if you keep staring at that phone, Sara Smile.”

  Sara Smile again. The old eighties song had come on one day earlier that summer and Brad had immediately adopted the nickname for her, probably in the hopes of driving her nuts. It was working.

  She’d never had a nickname before. Sara was a utilitarian name, a proper moniker for a competent, professional woman whose life was normal in every way. Normal, familiar and predictable.

  Well, not that predictable. At least to outsiders she appeared to be having the time of her life. She loved her job. She dated, and most of the guys she met were nice enough. If she was a little restless sometimes, a bit unsatisfied, that was to be expected.

  “You’re standing in my light,” she protested, nudging him away with her elbow without looking where she was aiming. Her jab went a little high, glancing off his thigh perilously close to the bulge in his faded jeans.

  “Hey, hey. Watch it.”

  “Sorry.”

  She stared at her phone and hoped he’d leave. Didn’t a guy like him have women to chase on a hot Sunday afternoon? Since he was recently divorced—after a marriage that had lasted less time than a TV sweeps period—surely he needed to reassert his dominance on the dating scene.

  While she’d gotten to know a lot about Brad as a person, she didn’t know a lot about his love life, other than the occasional rumor that hinted he was a stranger to celibacy. She and Kim had become fast friends when Sara moved to Fairdale, Pennsylvania three years ago to work at the Fairdale Bird Sanctuary. Kim worked in the sanctuary’s gift shop and had helped Sara get used to a new home far from her family and friends back in Idaho.

  Due to the timing of their simultaneous singledom, Brad and Kim had made the decision to temporarily live together while they fixed up their mother’s old Victorian home to sell. Two months ago Sara had taken over the spare bedroom after she’d lost her own apartment to building renovations. Telly, her conure, couldn’t tolerate paint fumes, so she’d gratefully accepted Kim’s offer to stay with them for a while.

  Some nights the three of them would pop in a movie and share some popcorn and laugh their asses off about nothing. Kim and Brad were awesome roomies, and Sara wasn’t in any hurry to leave. She’d even told her landlord he could finish the renos at his own pace because she was so happy with her new arrangement. Being with them had offered her a respite from her solitary life, and she had no intention of ending the party early.

  But lately Brad had bumped up the amount of time he spent around her when Kim wasn’t around—especially the amount of time he spent staring at her. Seductively. Almost daring her to make a move.

  She hadn’t responded to his advances. And she wouldn’t, because of Kim, among other reasons. What friend wanted their much-younger brother to be cougar bait? Just because they were living like freewheeling college students didn’t alter her status as a respectable professional.

  Who happened to lust after a guy she should’ve seen as a brother.

  It was probably the low-slung towels he paraded around in after his showers. That had to be it. His damn ripped stomach would turn a virgin into a nympho. And she was no virgin.

  “Kiss for your thoughts.” Brad grinned and dropped down at the end of her chair, sitting very close to her legs. She hastily scooted over, but he only used the extra room to sprawl.

  Sara rolled her eyes. “I don’t kiss little boys.” Shit. She hadn’t meant to say something so mean—especially not with that note of challenge in her tone.

  Brad’s grin widened. “Little’s not a word that’s ever been used to describe me.”

  She didn’t blush or fidget at his reply. Years of schmoozing at fundraisers and events with the public had taught her well. She had a pretty good game face and knew he wouldn’t be able to decipher her reaction. But her pulse quickened, and the sudden dryness in her throat contrasted sharply with the surge of moisture between her thighs.

  “I wasn’t referring to height.”

  His grin deepened. So charming. So utterly cocky. “Me either.”

  Deciding she’d had enough of his attempts to flirt or whatever the hell he was doing, she lifted her brows. “I’m forty-two. I’ve seen a lot. A lot,” she emphasized, though it was only recently she’d seen much of anything. And most of what she’d seen she’d already forgotten.

  That was partially because she’d given up having men over when she’d moved in with Kim. It seemed awkward, and she didn’t relish meeting Brad over coffee the next morning while her sheets still smelled like another guy’s aftershave. It felt…weird. So she’d accepted her love life would consist of sleepovers at the guy’s place until she grew out of her need to live with her friends as if she were twenty all over again. She wasn’t seeing any man in particular right now anyway. None of them interested her enough.

  Did that make her fickle or impossible to please? She wasn’t sure. But she hadn’t given up looking for that guy who would make her pulse race faster.

  Kind of like Brad’s doing now?

  “And yet you’re single. So I’m thinking what you’ve seen hasn’t been worthy of making you stick around. Am I right?”

  “I almost got married before I moved here,” she said, surprised again at what came out of her mouth. Somehow she’d developed a disconnect between her brain and her vocal cords.

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “According to my ex, I ran away to play with endangered birds.”

  He laughed, tipping his head so his longish, dark blond hair tumbled into his eyes. They seemed caught between gray and blue, as if even his irises were incapable of making up their minds. Just like Brad, if rumors could be believed.

  “According to my ex, I left because I couldn’t be with just one woman.”

  He braced a hand next to her knee on the chair, his knuckles millimeters away from brushing her skin. The backs of his hands were lightly dusted with hair, much like the bare chest he insisted on flaunting whenever she was within view. Unlike the very straight hair on his head, hi
s chest hair was almost curly, the kind that would be perfect for a woman to tug on.

  If a woman were inclined to do such things.

  “Well, gotta admit, a three-week marriage does seem pretty bad.”

  “It was almost six weeks actually,” he said, his voice lacking any inflection. But his easy grin faded.

  “You still did better than me,” she said, making her own tone brighter in denial of the flatness of his. Funny, she’d used his quickie marriage and divorce to dismiss him, but the tense expression he wore while discussing his ex almost made her jealous.

  Maybe he wasn’t such a player after all.

  “I didn’t even make it to the altar,” she added, registering his silence.

  “Neither did Darla and me. We went to the JP. Justice of the Peace,” he said at her curious expression.

  “Oh. I thought you’d gone to Vegas.” She didn’t really think that, but she wanted him to smile again. He didn’t seem like Brad without the semi-permanent grin.

  “You have lots of thoughts about me, apparently. Most of them wrong.”

  “Maybe I’m a presumptuous bitch.” Again she scratched her calf with her toes. Except this time she knew exactly where his gaze would go, and the idea didn’t disturb her as much as it had a few minutes ago.

  Sunstroke maybe? It was awfully hot out here. Or could they have actually forged some sort of bond over broken relationships?

  Some sort of platonic bond. Because, seriously, she wasn’t going there. Not with Kim’s little…err, younger brother.

  Normally she didn’t have a problem with making a decision and sticking to it. But lately ping-pong matches had nothing on the wishy-washy flip-flopping she was doing in her own damn mind.

  “Or maybe you want me to think you are so I lose interest.”