Shaken, Not Stirred

by Sawyer Bennett

  Motherfucker.

  My hands clench tightly and I war with myself between the need to walk away and leave Casey and her fucked-up head behind, and the need to potentially rescue her from a life I know she's not destined to lead.

  "Tell me where the restaurant is," I say to Gabby, wondering if I'm about to make a mistake by going after her.

  Of course, Casey would be on a date at a restaurant that looks like you can't get out of it without at least a two-hundred dollar bill. It's a French restaurant in the downtown area of Nags Head and because it's apparently very popular, it takes me forever to find a parking spot. I finally give up and ease my bike into the back alley behind the restaurant, not keen to leave it here, but my anxiety in reaching Casey outweighs my concern for my Harley.

  When I walk into the restaurant, I'm immediately stopped at the door by a tuxedoed maitre'd who looks me up and down with distaste. "Can I help you, sir?"

  "I'm looking for someone," I say, leaning right around the man to look into the restaurant. It's all dark with candles on each table, romantic music in the background, and the smell of foie gras penetrating my nose.

  It doesn't take me two seconds to spot Casey's golden hair, and I'm flooded with desire over how beautiful she is and white-hot anger that she's sitting at a table having a romantic dinner with another man. Her hair is long and draped over her shoulders, but doesn't do a damn thing to conceal the deep cleavage from the low-cut black dress she's wearing.

  She's facing me with her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her clasped hands. It's the posture of someone that is paying rapt attention to whatever her dinner partner is saying. The posture of someone who is immensely enjoying the conversation.

  But upon closer inspection of just her face, I see something different and it heartens me.

  Absolute boredom.

  Complete indifference.

  Maybe even a bit of regret.

  This boosts my resolve over what I had originally planned to do... which was fucking drag her out of this restaurant.

  I step by the maitre'd, but he attempts to halt me with a hand on my forearm. "Sir... you can't go into the dining room without a coat and tie."

  I don't want to make a scene, so I dip my head down and speak in a low voice. "Get your hand off me before I fucking break it."

  The little tuxedoed man jumps backward as if I'd scalded him with boiling water. Just to alleviate his anxiety a bit, I add on, "I'll just be a minute and then I'm out of here."

  "Of course, sir," he says with a quavering voice.

  I spin on my heel and enter the dining room, winding my way through cozily placed tables and sidestepping some dude playing a violin. I come up behind Casey's date and watch as Casey finally lifts her eyes and sees me approaching.

  I wish I could put into adequate words the expressions that cross her face, but they all happen so briefly, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. Happiness, desire, joy, sadness, regret, and shame.

  Fuck... that's a lot of damn feeling for one woman to have.

  Walking up to her chair, I vaguely hear her date say something like, "And then, I quadrupled my portfolio and reinvested in Chinese agribusiness."

  Eesh. Fucking boring.

  Casey's eyes remain pinned on me. I reach out, take her gently by her upper arm, and pull her from the chair. "Come on. We're going."

  I don't spare a glance at her date... not at first, but then the dude makes the mistake of standing up and stepping into my path. "What's going on here?"

  "Casey's leaving... with me," I tell him simply.

  He looks past my shoulder to Casey and says, "Casey? Shall I have security escort this man out?"

  I lower my face to account for about the five-inch difference in our mutual heights and tell him quietly, "How about I escort you out of here and kick your ass up and down Main Street?"

  The man starts stuttering, but then he's forgotten. I turn to Casey and ask her, "Do you want to stay here?"

  Her eyes are wide, a tiny bit fearful, but also sparkling with a vague bit of relief. She shakes her head at me.

  "Then let's go," I say and start pulling her out of the restaurant.

  I'm immensely relieved and gratified she's leaving with me, but every step I take through the restaurant, my anger starts building again. Anger at her for even considering that douchebag sitting in there. Fury over the possibility that she may have already fucked him. Rage over the fact that she continues to seek out things that are not good for her.

  By the time I make it out onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, my strides are so long and fueled by my acidic thoughts that Casey is practically running in her heels to keep up with me. It doesn't slow me down though, and I steer her down the block and into the back alleyway where my bike is parked.

  It's dark and the air is humid, the alleyway lit by a single yellow bulb beside the back door to the restaurant. It casts a sulfurous tinge to the immediate vicinity, but the rest of the area is layered in heavy shadows.

  We walk past the door and just before we reach my bike, I spin Casey and back her up into the brick wall. I step in toward her, bringing my body up against hers and holding her captive against the wall with my pelvis. She lets out a startled gasp, and I can barely make out the blue in her eyes from the thick darkness blanketing us.

  Placing my fingers at her jaw, I grip her firmly and ask, "Did you fuck him?"

  She vehemently shakes her head. "No. It was our first date."

  "Have you fucked anyone else since you've been with me?" I ask her, my breath clogged in my lungs until I can hear the answer.

  "No," she whispers, and I hear the truth in her words. I have no clue what she was trying to accomplish tonight, but I know it didn't involve sex with another man.

  "Good," I tell her and then lean in to bite her lower lip. "Because I need to fuck you right now."

  I bury my face in Casey's neck and drop a hand down to pull the hemline up on the little black dress she's wearing. My fingers immediately snake their way under the wet lace between her legs, and I groan my approval over how slick she is already.

  I remove my hand and with jerky movements, pull her dress all the way up past her hips, and then dive into my back pocket for my wallet. My fingers fumble... grab onto the condom, and then drop the wallet to the pavement because it's forgotten.

  My button and zipper is opened in a flash, and I push my pants down my hips a bit until my cock is freed. I'm practically shaking with unbridled lust and a need to dominate Casey as I tear at the condom wrapper.

  "What are you doing?" Casey asks breathlessly.

  I glance up at her, and her eyes are pinned to my dick in fascination. "Getting ready to fuck you," I tell her simply as I roll the condom on.

  "Right now?" she asks in disbelief.

  My hands go around to her ass where I squeeze the tight flesh a moment and then lift her up. "Right now," I affirm. "Legs around me, baby."

  She wraps those long legs around my waist like a good girl even as she says, "But we're in public."

  "Don't care," I say as I support her under the ass with one arm and reach my other hand down to grab my cock.

  "We might be seen," she says, not a real ounce of worry in her voice.

  "Don't care," I tell her as I surge up into her body, and fuck... fuck that feels good.

  Casey lets out a long, strangled moan and her legs squeeze me tight. "Someone might call the cops," she breathes into my ear before she nips at it.

  I pull out and slam back into her, causing Casey to give the most unladylike grunt I've ever heard.

  "Oh, Tenn," she whimpers. "We really, really should not be fucking in a back alley."

  "Shut up, Casey," I mutter as I start thrusting into her frantically, pressing my cheek against hers. "I'm still mad at you."

  She's silent a moment... well, unless you count the moaning and heavy breathing on her part. As for my part, I surge over and over again into her tight, wet pussy, trying to pound away ever
y bit of anger and confusion this woman causes in me. Casey's fingers dig into my shoulders and her hips gyrate against me.

  She catches me totally off guard when she suddenly starts coming, and I know this by the way her muscles clamp down hard against my dick and she screams out into the night air. That fuels me on harder and I start thrusting faster into her, my entire body lurching upward in a vain attempt to catch up to her.

  Always feels like I'm trying to catch up to her.

  Casey's hands come to my face, and she pushes slightly at me so she can look me in the eye. My pace falls a bit, but I still aim as deep as possible.

  She leans in, gives me a light kiss on my lips as I press her body tight against the brick wall.

  "I'm mad at you too," she whispers and my body goes completely still, lodged deep inside of her. My heartbeat is pounding madly, my blood is still firing, and my chest clenches over the uncertainty I see in her eyes. Then she kills me when she says, "I'm mad at you because you make me feel things that scare the shit out of me, but I'm just really glad you came in there and got me, Tenn."

  Her words cause my pelvis to tilt and grind against her hard, and I immediately start coming inside of her. My head drops to her shoulder, and I see stars for a moment as I unload drop after hot drop.

  Fuck. Goddamn. Fuck.

  What this woman does to me.

  What this fucking woman does to me.

  Chapter 13

  Casey

  My insides are all twisted.

  The more I learn about Tenn, the more I like him.

  The more I like him, the more I have to start considering major changes in my life.

  The more I consider major changes in my life, the more I might have to admit to myself that I've wasted a good portion of it.

  All of this produces anxiety. All of this stresses me out. All of this makes me feel ashamed of my choices in life.

  And yet... the view before me does tend to alleviate some of that anxiety. It tends to make me forget about stresses and poor choices.

  Tenn Jennings.

  Naked on my bed, the early morning sunlight pouring through the windows and bathing his skin golden. He's sleeping on his stomach, tattooed arms in green, black, and red ink wrapped around a pillow with his face turned my way. One leg stretched out, so long his foot hangs off the end of my bed, the other bent at an angle that makes his ass look positively amazing.

  With his eyes closed, I can see just how long his lashes are. Dark like his hair and just as thick. So thick it looks like he's wearing eyeliner against those pale blue eyes. That goatee... I just want to lick at it, and I love the way it rubs against my skin when he's going down on me.

  He's perfection. Simple male perfection.

  Add on to that that he's kind, unpretentious, and wise, which I respect immensely. Add on to that he's also alpha and domineering, which strangely, I also like.

  He's the perfect blend of everything that could ever make me want to change my life and open up to a man. But I'm not about to go there. Not fully.

  After Tenn fucked me against the back wall of La Papillon, he immediately ordered me to get into my Jeep and follow him back to my house. I didn't think to argue... not with the way he was still looking like he wanted to wring my neck.

  I know it was stupid to go out with that guy. It was stupid, reckless, and I knew it would probably hurt Tenn's feelings if he found out about it. I certainly didn't want to go out with that prick. He certainly wasn't as self-absorbed as many men that I'd gone out with, but damn... he was so freakin' boring that I almost fell asleep while he was talking.

  No, I didn't want to go out with him, but I made myself do it.

  I made myself take an action that I knew would center me once again and would make me remember all the things about my dating lifestyle that were safe and secure. I did it not only because thinking about Jeff Parkhurst back in my home town conjured up some very bitter feelings, but I did it because I had to prove to myself that I was immune to men like Tenn.

  Which... apparently... I'm not.

  Reaching a finger out, I gently trace the edge of his lashes laying against the skin under his eye. The corner of Tenn's mouth curves up, making me want to nuzzle along his goatee. Instead, I trace my finger over his cheekbone, down his neck, and over his shoulder. I push up on my elbow to get me closer to his body, and gently stroke my finger down his back.

  "What are you doing?" Tenn mumbles sleepily.

  "Touching you," I say simply. "You can't lay like that... all sexy in my bed, and expect me to keep my hands to myself."

  Tenn chuckles and buries his face deeper into the pillow. Moving my finger lower, I watch the muscles on his back jump under my touch. I cruise right down the middle of his spine, lightly run my finger through his ass cheeks, and then right down in between his legs, where I flutter my fingers against his balls that I have easy access to with his leg cocked up.

  Tenn groans and presses his hips into the mattress. "Stop, Casey. You're giving me a hard-on."

  "That may have been my sinister intention," I murmur, and then tilt my hand to cup his balls so I can massage them.

  "Mmmmm," Tenn groans and his hips gyrate, humping the mattress.

  I expect... at any moment now, for Tenn to roll over, shoot me a lethally sexy smile, and command me to suck his dick. Which was my ultimate goal when I started touching him.

  Instead, he surges up from the bed, launches himself at me, and wraps his arms tightly around my waist. He rolls onto his back, taking my body with him until I'm laying completely flush against his muscled hardness, with another hardness pressed into my belly.

  "Christ woman," he grumbles before leaning up to give me a swift kiss. "What do you have against sleeping in?"

  "I can't help it," I whine dramatically as I push up into a sitting position to straddle him. "I'm horny."

  To prove my point, I tilt my hips, rubbing myself over his hard length. "See," I murmur huskily. "I'm wet for you."

  Tenn's eyes flare hot and his hands come to my hips, trying to push me down to grind on his cock. "Sleeping is totally overrated."

  "Yes it is," I agree, and then lean forward to run my lips along his neck.

  "Casey?" Tenn whispers.

  "Hmmmmm?" I move my lips from his neck, sliding up to the area behind his ear that I know drives him crazy. I learned that fortuitously last night.

  "Ever fucked bare?"

  I jerk in surprise over the question, but I also can feel wetness seeping out of me over the idea. Lifting my head, I look down at him. "No. Have you?"

  "Yup," he says with a knowing smile. "With my ex-wife."

  "Oh," I say, not prepared for the surge of jealousy that flows through me.

  "Of course," he says with a careless shrug of his shoulders, "she fucked around on me so I had to get tested, but I'm all clean and spiffy, and I've always wrapped up since then."

  "She cheated on you?" I asked with wonder. Because why, oh why, would a woman ever go looking for something else when she had a man like this in her bed?

  "She's a bit fruity," he says with a grin. "Still holds aspirations I'll come back to her one day."

  I wrinkle my nose at the prospect. "I don't think I like her. Granted... I don't know her, but I don't think I like her."

  "Well, that makes two of us," he says affably. "I tolerate her because she's Zoey's mother, but that's about all she gets from me."

  "Speaking of Zoey," I say, my thoughts of his hard cock between my legs momentarily forgotten, "how was your visit with her?"

  Tenn's face breaks out into a huge smile. He then proceeds to talk for ten minutes about everything they did for the few days he was in Raleigh and how he's going to bring her here next week. Of course, I went ahead and sat up straight so I could listen to him, and of course, since we were talking about his daughter, his hard-on waned, but that would be expected.

  "I'm going to bring her here next week when she gets back from riding camp," he says. "Let her spend a few we
eks here for summer vacation."

  "Don't you have plans to get back to work or something?" I ask hesitantly.

  "No immediate plans," he says. "I'm thinking about starting up a business with a buddy of mine I served in the Marine Corps with."

  "What kind of business?"

  "A custom bike shop. He does custom work right now but not on a large scale and only through word of mouth. Figured he could do the body work and I could do the engine work."

  "Where would you do that?"

  "Somewhere in North Carolina," he says, and I immediately experience a jolt of pleasure over the fact that Tenn will be living in the same state as me. "Somewhere close to Zoey so I can see her. And speaking of Zoey... think you can use your realty connections to find me a place to rent here for a few weeks? I don't want to have to get two hotel rooms when she comes, and given that she's a fourteen-year-old girl, I know she doesn't want to be bunking down with her dad."

  Shaking my head, I say, "It'll be hard. We're in high season now, but I'll look around for you this morning."

  "Cool," he says and then his hands come up to my thighs, where they stroke upward past my hips to my ribs, and from ribs to the front of my breasts. I arch my back, pressing into his touch, and feel him start to grow hard underneath me again.

  Then I'm struck with an insane idea. "But what if you two just stayed with me? I have two bedrooms."

  Tenn's hands stop moving, but they squeeze reflexively. "Here? With you?"

  "Well, yeah," I say hesitantly, now wondering if that was a completely stupid idea. "I mean... if that's a problem, I could always go stay with my parents and let you two have this place. That would solve your problem, and seeing as how you're unemployed right now, it will save you money."

  "Yeah, wasn't really worried about the money, baby," he says offhandedly, and then his eyes narrow. "I was more thinking about the fact that you're a bit skittish when it comes to men in your territory. This offer wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that you're just trying to keep my big, muscular body in your bed for a while, would it?"

  My eyes go wide, and I flutter my hand against my chest. In my best southern yet affronted voice, I say while batting my eyelashes, "What? Me? Want to take advantage of this big, beautiful body?"