by Alexa Riley
“You look fit to be tied.” I look up to see Butch and Paine waiting for me outside the bar.
“Don’t want to fucking talk about it.” My voice is firm but holds a little more emotion in it than I like, but they both just nod, getting it. That’s the great thing about having male friends. They don’t make you talk things to death. You say, “Conversation over,” and it wraps up pretty quickly.
Butch and I follow Paine in, and I can tell Paine is in just as much of a pissy mood as I am. The only one who looks like someone hasn’t kicked their puppy is Butch, but he’s always got a stupid easy smile on his face.
Without asking, Jake the bartender slides us our drinks, and I quickly grab my beer, thinking I’m going to need something stronger tonight.
“There’s a bachelorette party happening here tonight if you guys are looking for some action,” Jake says, making me roll my eyes as I take my seat next to Paine.
“Point me in the right direction, Jake. You know I’m always looking for some fresh trim in this town.” Butch straightens and gives the crowd a once-over as Jake points towards the dance floor.
Not being able to help myself, I follow Jake’s finger to see who Butch’s prey for the night will be.
Suddenly, Butch is laughing and looking back, and I see why when I catch the blonde hair of the woman who ran out of the shop today with Paine hot on her ass.
“Looks like that rich chick with the Porsche is the bride-to-be,” Butch says in a teasing tone, and I see Paine grip his beer bottle so tightly I’m shocked it doesn’t shatter in his hand.
I reach out and grab his bottle as his eyes meet mine. “I’ll hold it for you, boss,” I tell Paine because I know where he’s heading. Straight for the dance floor to get the girl Butch is following. I down my beer and order another, enjoying sitting at the bar by myself. I don’t feel like being social.
My phone buzzes across the bar top, and I check the message. I should turn it off because I know it can only be one person, but like a masochist, I click the message.
Law: Sweets, text me back. You got me worried.
He’s fucking worried? Is he worried while he’s got his dick in some other chick’s cunt? The thought knocks the air out of my lungs. I motion for another drink, and Jake drops it down in front of me moments later.
Paine sits down next to me, and I don’t comment on where the little blonde went. Hell, I even see Butch behind me in the mirror over the bar, hitting on some chick. Are all men alike? I can’t believe I let myself think I found something different.
My phone buzzes again.
Law: Damn it, Joey, answer me or I’m going to spank your pussy when I get my hands on you.
How can he fucking talk to me like that when he’s out with another woman!
Me: Why don’t you spank the pussy of the blonde you were having dinner with. You know, the one you introduced to your family.
With that, I power off my phone. I don’t want to read his excuses, or worse, see that he doesn’t respond at all. He probably knows he got busted, so I’m sure he’s done with me.
“Penelope,” Paine mumbles next to me for the tenth time since he sat down, taking another pull from his beer.
“If you say that word one more time, I’m going to knock you off that fucking stool,” I tell him. Can’t we both wallow in our misery in silence? I’m just thankful the bar finally turned the music down since the bachelorette party left.
“I fucked up,” Paine says, looking over at me while I fiddle with the paper on my beer bottle. I pull it off and stick it back on, annoyed at everything.
“Yeah, you did. You went after something you can’t have and you shouldn’t want,” I tell him as I meet his eyes. We both went after people who were out of our league and in a class we’d never understand. Law may just be a sheriff, but he comes from old money. Hell, his dad is the goddamn Mayor.
“Evening, Sheriff. What can I do for you tonight?” the bartender says. My eyes snap to the mirror behind the bar, and I seeing Law standing five feet back from Paine and me. My whole body locks up, and I grab my beer, wanting something to hold on to. Play it cool, I repeat over and over again in my head. I’ve given him enough of myself. I won’t give him anymore. He’s already seen parts of me no one else ever has. The girl who lies beneath my layers. One who is going back into hiding to lick her wounds.
“Just checking on things,” Law responds, and I can feel his eyes on me. I try to pretend he’s not there until he speaks right to me. “How you doing, Josephine?”
My heart clenches at the use of my name. It bugged me at first when he called me that, like he knew me, but over the past few weeks, I’ve grown to love it. Crave him saying it. When we’d make love and he’d call it out, it was like the sweetest thing I’ve never known. I still refuse to meet his eyes in the mirror and just go on ignoring him. I can’t believe he’s doing this in the middle of the bar for everyone to see. Before today I wouldn’t have thought it a big deal, but after seeing him out with the other woman, the pieces click into place. He didn’t want people to know we were together. How didn’t I see it before? I was too content to spend our time together just holed up in his home, in his bed.
Instead of answering him, I just give him the middle finger. Because that’s what he can do. Fuck off
“Josephine, sweets, don’t—”
“Sweets—” Paine tries to say interject, but I cut them both off.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Anderson? Pretty sure stalking is against the law.”
The bar has become eerily quiet now, and I know everyone is watching what’s happening.
“Jake, my sister around? I thought they came in here tonight,” Law says, pissing me off even more. He has a fucking sister? Law knows everything about me, and I didn’t even know he had a goddamn sister. Oh, I know why, there’s no point in introducing Joey because you’ll never meet her. You’re just the Sheriff’s dirty secret he fucks out in his cabin.
“She with that bachelorette party?”
“That would have been them. She’s the bachelorette.”
I almost want to laugh at the irony of Law’s words. Paine and I have been sitting at the bar, moping about a brother and sister who are way out of our range. But I have a feeling that won’t stop Paine. As for me, my ego can’t handle another round. I might shatter.
“They left here about two hours ago,” Jake says, pouring a glass of cheap whiskey.
“All right, I was just checking in before I head home for the night.”
I can’t help but snort at his words, not believing him. “Probably going to be fucking his date tonight since he won’t be fucking me,” I mumble to myself.
“Josephine, can I have a word with you outside?” I want to scream at him. Of course, so no one sees the sheriff is slumming it, but I can’t ignore him. He’s still the sheriff.
“Who’s asking?” I motion for Jake to pour me another shot. “The Sheriff or Law?”
“I’m asking, sweets.”
“Then the answer is no. Besides, you don’t like being seen with me in public.” I shrug my shoulders, trying to pretend I don’t give a shit and failing. I can feel the tension in my whole body; I’m practically vibrating.
“That’s not fucking true and you know it,” Law snarls, and I can feel him getting closer to me, something I don’t want. He can’t touch me. I won’t be able to hold back the tears if he does, and I won’t give him my tears. I slam back my shot, jumping off the barstool, and I wobble a little. Both Law and Paine jump to steady me.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Law growls at Paine, pulling me towards his body in a possessive hold. I feel the dam inside me start to shake, and it takes everything in me to get my words out without it cracking.
“You made your choice. Now live with it.” I try to push past him, but he grabs me by the arm and I turn, shooting all my anger at him. I’ve got to hold on to that anger until I get out of this bar.
“You’re too drunk to drive.”
>
I don’t even respond to his words. I just call out Butch’s name. “Butch has me,” I say, hoping that fucking digs into his gut. Law may not want everyone to know we’re together, but I know he doesn’t want to share me. Double standard much?
Law clenches his jaw again, but what can he really say? Everyone in the bar is staring at us.
“Pick up your phone,” he grits out at me, but I’m having no part of it.
“Fuck off.”
With that, I grab onto Butch’s arm, and he pulls me closer, probably because he sees the distress on my face.
“Get me home, please,” I whisper to him as the tears start to fall.
Chapter Four
Law
“You’re in over your head.” Paine says the words, but I don’t look at him. I keep staring out the door Josephine just walked through, taking a part of me with her. When she hadn’t returned my text messages I got a little worried, but when she sent that last text, it felt like the bottom of my world dropped out from under me.
I grit my teeth and clench my fists, trying to get my anger under control. I only have myself to be pissed at. I played this all wrong. The last year of my life has been miserable and fucking lonely, and the last two weeks were the best I’ve never known. I’m not letting it slip through my fingers so easily. One way or another, she’s going to listen to me. “As long as I’m somewhere with her, I’ll take it.” It’s the truth. I’ll take my girl any way I can get her. I may be in over my head with her, but that’s fine with me. I’ll drown in her, and it will be the sweetest death a man could ever ask for.
I walk out of the bar and make it in time to see her get into Butch’s car. I know they’re just friends, but fuck does it burn to see him taking care of her. She was hurting when I walked into the bar, and it isn’t Butch she should have been calling out for. No, it should’ve been me. But I fucked up. I want to be the man she runs to when she needs someone to lean on. I’d almost gotten all her trust, only to see it go up in smoke.
“Fuck!” I scream out to the empty parking lot before heading to my cruiser. I don’t give it a thought. I flip on the blue lights and the siren, chasing after them.
Butch pulls to the side of the road and I follow suit, turning off the siren but leaving the lights on. Butch goes to open his door, probably to argue with me, but I give him the same voice I used on thugs on the streets of Chicago when I worked patrol.
“Hands on the wheel and don’t so much as fucking move a finger.” It’s a dick move, using my power for my own ends, but I can’t bring myself to care. There isn’t anything I won’t do to have my sweet Josephine, even pissing a year-old case down the drain. I’ll find another way.
I go over to the passenger side, pulling the door open. Reaching in, I pop her seatbelt and pull her out of the car and sling her over my shoulder. She gives me a little bit of a fight, but she’s just so tiny it’s easy to get her under control.
Butch hops out of the car and I stop looking at him. I can tell from the indecisive look on his face that he’s debating what he wants to do. He may want to come at me, but I’m still the Sheriff.
“You made her cry. I’ve never seen her cry before, Law.”
His words are like stones dropping into water. The first impact is brutal, the aftermath rips through my body, reaching to my soul. I did the very thing I was trying to prevent, and now I’m going to lay my cards on the table.
“I’m going to fix it,” I tell him, letting all my emotion out in my words. I won’t get any points with Josephine if I knock her best friend out on the side of the highway because she’s not going with him. Over my fucking dead body.
“I’m not fucking with you, Law. Fix it or Paine and I will be so far up your ass…”
“Butch! What the fuck? You’re just going to let this lying cheating bastard take me?” She starts kicking her feet again, and I slap her ass. I’m trying to get her under control before she tries to buck off my shoulder and I land her ass on the hard blacktop.
“Call me in the morning, Joey.” Butch gets back in his car and takes off, but Josephine still yells until she realizes he’s gone.
I go to the passenger side of the cruiser and place her on her feet, caging her in. She bucks against me, trying to free herself. She’s hitting at my chest while tears stream down her face. Each verbal blow she lands is a direct hit to my heart.
“I fucking loved you! But I was just some dirty secret to you. Not good enough to take out in public. Not good enough to meet your parents.”
When the fight finally leaves her body, getting all of what she was holding in out, she sags against the car.
I drop to my knees in front of her, my hands engulfing her narrow hips, looking up as she looks down at me. The moon makes her big green eyes seem brighter than normal, and my heart aches twice as hard.
“You were right about my dirty secrets.” She starts to push my hands off her hips, but I just hold her tighter. “They are my secrets that I’ve been trying to hide from you. I didn’t want them touching you. I don’t want them anywhere near you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her words say one thing, but her eyes fill with hope. Her hands come to rest on my shoulders, and I’m thankful she isn’t trying to push me back with them.
“I hate my father and can‘t stand to be in the same room as my stepmother.” I don’t let her know it’s because the woman has been trying to get in my fucking pants for years, something that makes me want to throw up, but I don’t want to make my girl jealous. Jealousy eats me up when it comes to her. Fuck, last week I got jealous of the goddamn straw in her drink, and I don’t want her to have those feelings. I want her to have no questions about what she is to me, or that I’d ever give another woman the time of day because I wouldn’t. Hell, women haven’t even been on my radar for years. I poured everything into my job. Until her. She turned my world upside down.
“That may be true, Law, but I saw you with another woman. You were holding her hand.”
“She’s with the FBI.” Her fingers tighten on my shoulders waiting for me to continue. “I’ve been building a case against my father, and she’s part of it. About a year ago he asked me to come back here to Springfield and run for Sheriff. At first I told him no, but he kept pressing. Then the FBI reached out to me, told me that things around my dad didn’t smell too good. I didn’t like that one bit. I just wanted to wash my hands of him, but I’d heard him talk about my sister. About roping her into coming back here, and I knew then he had plans to get her under his thumb. We may have never been close, but I couldn’t let him do that.”
“I went on the date tonight as a decoy. Go out to dinner, then back to my dad’s for drinks. I’d distract good old Dad and my stepmom while Debra, my fake date,” I emphasize ‘fake’ so she gets the point, “went to snoop around a little. But that all went out the window when you wouldn’t respond to my text messages.” I tell her even though I don’t care that the plan went to hell. I’ll find another way. Josephine is my number one priority. Not the cons my dad has been doing to move himself up in life.
“I blew your case?”
“Fuck the case,” I growl, because that isn’t the issue here. “Josephine, my sweet Josephine. Think of all the ways I’ve worshiped your body. Made love to you every night. You’re it for me. Nothing else in this whole world matters if I don’t have you.”
“Law.” Her eyes fill with tears again, but I can tell I’m getting through to her. Her beautiful face has gone soft. It’s the same face she gives me when I tell her how utterly sweet she is, and she tells me there’s nothing sweet about her, which is utter bullshit. She’s pure sweetness. A sweetness that only I get.
“Did you mean it?” I ask her. Her words still rolling around and around in my head.
“What?”
“When you said you loved me. Did you mean that? Do you still love me?” Her words ripped through me when she threw them at me in anger. I want them back. Need them. We’ve never said them to each other
before, because I didn’t want to push. I’d pushed her so much already that I hadn’t wanted to add to it. And to be honest, I wanted them from her first. I had done so much to get her. Gone after her hard and just taking over. I wanted this to be something she gave me.
She drops down to her knees in front of me, but I scoop her up in my arms and stand. She wraps her legs around my waist, her hands around my neck, her fingers digging into my hair at the back of my head. “You don’t ever go to your knees.”
She ignores my words. “I’m sorry I overreacted. I just…you’re just…” She stumbles over her words, and I hold my breath, wondering if she’ll say it again. “Too perfect to be true. This is all so new to me. I’ve never done this before, but I should have known I feel it when you touch me, you love me and I love you.”
I take her in a deep kiss, pushing my tongue into her mouth, needing a taste of her more than I need to breathe right now. I was so fucking scared she’d never give me this again. Her body melts into mine, her sweetness seeping out. I press her up against the car, but I quickly pull back, remembering we’re still on the side of the road, and I don’t want anyone seeing her with all this passion on her face. It’s all mine, and I’m not sharing even a drop of it.
She tries to pull me back to her, and I can’t help but chuckle. Over the past few weeks she’s become more of the aggressor when it comes to the bedroom. It’s adorable as shit when she tries to boss me around in the bed and when she tries to attack my cock.
“Not here,” I tell her, trying to remind myself as much as her before my control starts to slip.
