Chapter 7

SEVEN

The line of people just kept growing.

Colette had given me a head's up that people had started lining up since early this morning.

Early.

This.

Morning.

What ?

I hadn't understood at all until I logged into my TikTok and saw that my photo of the gazebo had been seen by over a thousand people. That wasn't impressive at all. There was absolutely no reason to have that many people show up. Then Colette mentioned she had a great response to her quick post with me—which, of course, was tagged. Add in her newsletter and…the BookTok network had lit on fire.

This was a nowhere town in the middle of New York.

That should not have lit it up.

But add in the other two signees and…insanity.

I knew the line wasn't all for me, but the crush of people had put me over the edge.

I rested my head against the door. "How does this keep happening to me?"

"What?" His voice came closer even if it sounded like it was behind a wall of clouds.

"How do you keep popping up?" I tried to drag in a breath, but it kept stalling in the middle of my chest.

"You okay?"

I shook my head. "Yes."

"You realize you just said no and yes at the same time?"

I tried to breathe in, but I felt the panting start. My eyes shut against the darkness of the room. That would make it worse.

"Hey."

He moved in front of me. I couldn't open my eyes. If I did, I'd just go into full-blown panic.

Not that I was afraid of him. I just didn't want him to see me like this. I liked being the mysterious and sexy girl.

Now I was the freak again. The one that no one wanted because I was too broken.

The panic didn't let me think clearly, but I couldn't stop the spiral.

"I'm going to touch you, okay?"

I stayed still as the panting increased.

Gently, he held my shoulders, then he smoothed his hands down my arms, then back up.

"Let's try a nice slow breath, okay?"

"I can't." I gasped as my eyes slitted open.

There he was.

So much darkness around him. It blended into his curls.

But that was from me, from my altered panic-induced vision

Because there were little dots around his face.

"Yes, you can." He moved one hand to just under my breasts. "Stop."

I stopped breathing and he pushed against my stomach lightly.

"In. Slowly."

I fought it. My body wanted to keep it shallow, but he pressed a little firmer until I had no choice.

My lungs filled and the roaring in my head slowly retreated.

"There we go. Again."

I blew out a slow breath and the tips of his fingers dug lightly into my dress as my diaphragm filled and my lungs did a happy dance at the increase of oxygen.

His dark eyes locked on mine. "You're doing great. Again."

I blew out slowly, my breath making his curls dance around his shoulders. "Please tell me there's no bad breath going on here."

He grinned. "Peppermints and chocolate. Did you sneak a York Peppermint Patty out of Colette's dish?"

I let out a little laugh. "Maybe."

"Don't distract me with that husky voice of yours that I was nearly begging for the other day."

My heart was still racing from the panic attack, but it was pounding fast for a different reason now.

"Breathe in and hold it this time. My therapist made me do this too. Box breathing is a thing, and we're gonna get you all settled."

He needed a therapist?

What for?

This time, I did take a long, slow breath without the jitters, and I got hit with whatever cologne he was wearing. Bonfires and fall mixed with something else. Something sweet and alluring.

"Hold it for a count of four-three-two-one. Now let it out."

Those stupidly long lashes that no man should be allowed to have lowered as his gaze dropped to my lips. Immediately, he bounced back to my eyes.

I wasn't aware that my hand lifted from the door to rest at his side. The brush of a fine cotton dented my fuzzy brain. My fingers twisted into the belt loop of his jeans as we did another few rounds of the box breathing.

Something I was well versed in, as well.

Mostly from panicked searching on the internet to find a way to calm my anxiety brain those first few months after Jenelle dusted our relationship.

Because I certainly hadn't had any input on the decision.

"You were fine. What's got your heart going again?"

"Nothing."

He narrowed his eyes. "I call bullshit."

"Nothing I want to discuss."

"That I can believe. But if it's twisting you up, maybe you need to talk about it."

"You gunning to be my therapist, Mystery Man?"

"Definitely not. A therapist wouldn't be able to kiss you—if they were ethical, anyway. And I'm not feeling at all ethical at the moment, so let's get you settled."

"Not sure I can settle with you touching me."

His eyebrow spiked. "Is that right?"

"Oddly enough I don't really want to be settled right now."

"You're just working on the endorphins," he said softly, but his gaze dropped to my mouth again and he drew his teeth over his full lower lip.

It was hidden in the beard.

The beard that looked so soft.

I lifted my other hand to touch his beard. Coarse and soft at the same time. I'd never kissed a man with a full beard. I usually went for clean cut and safe.

I'd had my time of wild.

When I'd first went off on my own, I'd headed down a bad path. Boys—men—who weren't good for me. Who put me in situations that could have turned out so very bad.

This woodsmoke and matches scent-drenched man reminded me of that. I slipped the tips of my nails through his beard and his chest rose in reaction.

"I don't even know your name."

"I know." I leaned forward and was very grateful for the four-inch heels Ember had convinced me to buy to go with this dress. And still I had to rise up onto the very tips of my toes to get to him.

His mouth was warm and the softness of his beard made me hum lightly. It was gentle at first. Searching lips as we both learned each other's shape.

His scent heady and overwhelming in the best way.

His hand slid from under my ribs to around my waist, tugging me away from the door to get closer.

Until there was nothing between us but breath and the soft sighs of a truly delicious kiss. The kind that should be under twinkle lights and soft breezes—not dust and cardboard and a nicked steel door.

But I had a very good imagination.

I lightly dipped my nails into the dense dark hair of his beard, the shape of his sharp jaw softened by the hair. When the tip of his tongue teased my lips, I could feel his jaw flexing under my touch.

I rerouted my touch to his curls. The wild chocolate mass of it that I was expecting to be crunchy with product. No one had perfect curls like that without it. But no, they were soft and urged my fingers deeper.

Teasing around my hand and wrist as I lost myself in his taste.

The perfect kind of kiss.

A dance of tongues and lips.

I dragged in a breath through my nose when my body gave the white flag for some oxygen. He chased the needs flaring between us until the kiss went from low burn to incendiary. Bolder, he demanded more participation as dark words of want slipped out along my lips between the kisses.

As if he imbued his tongue with everything I'd ever wanted and never experienced. Intimate in ways that left me feverishly incapable of stopping this.

I should be.

He was a stranger.

Hell, I was a stranger to him as well—but it didn't matter just then. Not when his hand firmed at the small of my back as if there was even a millimeter of space between us, then he slid his knee between my legs like a puzzle piece I never realized was missing. The skirt of my dress was loose and gave him plenty of room to move in.

I let him.

Dear God, did I let him.

My breasts tingled at the firmness of his chest. The cashmere of my dress created a delicious friction with the cotton of his dress shirt. My fingers twisted in his belt loop as I practically rubbed myself along him like a cat.

"God, you're killing me here." He tore his mouth away.

"Mutual murder," I said against his cheek. "Don't stop."

"What?" He pulled back, his eyes unfocused. "Don't stop?"

"No." I nipped at his lower lip. "Please don't stop."

He brought his hands up to cup my face—no, more like a cage. And I was fully on board with being trapped here, by him. He leaned in, his eyes still open as he kissed me with full on open mouth.

His eyes glittered in the dark—the irises seemed as big as his dark eyes in the dim light. Like the darkness was going to envelope me with him.

Fire and lust lived there.

Things I'd never witnessed when it came to me.

I'd done danger in the past, but it had been about the man. I'd just been a vessel.

This wasn't like that.

Not when his thumb swiped gently over my cheek as the kiss spun into a cotton candy bit of fluff. The twist from hot and heady to soft left me unbalanced.

I didn't want gentle.

It gave me too much time to think.

I was so tired of thinking.

I untwined my fingers from his belt and skimmed over to the exceptional bulge he had going on behind his zipper.

He dragged in a harsh breath as the tip of his tongue flicked over the dip in my top lip, but those dark eyes never wavered.

The lust dipped into stillness.

I wanted the fire back.

Enough that I fought with his belt, groaning when the pin finally released, and the buckle clinked against his button in the deep silence.

He kept his gaze on me even as the tips of his fingers tunneled into my hair to grip the back of my neck.

When I dipped into his jeans for him, he swallowed hard. "Are you sure?"

I grazed my nails along his thick length to find the base then wrapped my fingers around him tautly. "Don't you want me?"

"I think that is very apparent."

The corner of my mouth tipped up. "That's just biology."

"I'm not some teen boy who gets hard at a stiff breeze."

His nostrils flared as I stroked him. I let him go and slid my hand between our mouths to lick my palm before I tunneled back between us to where he was so very hard for me.

That fire lit in his dark eyes again.

He jerked as I fisted him tightly. I wasn't normally aggressive, but the control had been so squarely in his court for the last however many minutes we'd been trapped in here.

Distantly, I wondered why he was in the stock room, but I couldn't let reality intrude in this moment. The freedom to touch and be touched didn't need the stark realities of who we were.

"Just tell me one thing."

He tipped his head back a little and I couldn't help but focus on the Adam's apple bobbing on his long throat. "What?"

Still, he didn't break our gaze.

"Just tell me you're not married or something. No girlfriend."

"No. God, no. I would never if I was with someone."

Lies were easy.

I was well aware of that, but the searching element to his gaze told me at least here was truth.

I stroked up to the tip of him and groaned at the bit of precum there. I used it to slick down him again.

"You?"

I shook my head.

"Good." He fisted the hair at my nape and dragged me in for another syrupy kiss. His other hand fumbled between us to my breast, cupping me as roughly as I gripped his cock. "Let me touch you too," he murmured against my mouth.

I nodded, suddenly very happy at the scooped neckline of the burnt umber-colored dress.

He lowered his mouth to my neck, teasing the skin behind my ear, then tugging on one of the thick hoops I'd added to my gauges. The little bit of pressure arrowed straight to my nipples. They tightened under his palm, and he dragged his thumb across one again and again as he burrowed down into the neckline of my dress.

He released my hair, groaning as I fisted him again. I'd lost my senses for a moment, but I wanted to be an active participant in this madness. When he rocked into my hand, I was encouraged to give him more.

Mirroring the thumb action around the flared head of his shaft. I wanted a taste of him. To know this like his mouth.

I lifted my hand to my lips and licked the pad of my thumb.

He groaned and dragged down my dress and bra to release my breasts. "Goddamn." He dragged his beard across the tops of both before he lowered to close his mouth over one.

My head thunked against the door as he feasted on me. He cupped them both together to drag his lips and beard against the skin and impossibly hard tips of each nipple.

I couldn't help but restlessly rub against his thigh even as he rocked against my hand again and again.

His attention on my breasts were actually dragging me closer and closer to the edge. There was no way I'd go over.

Not possible.

My eyes widened as the clench inside of me matched my grip on his cock. I let out a shaky breath and he seemed to notice how close I was.

"Fuck, yes. Come. Come with just my mouth on these perfect breasts." He sucked harder on one nipple and tugged at the other until a sob bubbled up inside of me.

Just before the moan erupted, he covered my mouth and flicked each tip again and again until I shuddered and let him swallow my release.

"Let me inside. Let me inside. I want to feel all of that. Feel you tighten around my cock."

"You have something?"

He nodded against my neck. "Yes."

Could I do this with a stranger? It was one thing to pop off with an exceptional orgasm with a man I didn't know, but quite another to do this . Let him inside of me where no one had been in so very long.

"It's okay," he said against my ear. "It's okay if you don't want to."

"I do." The quake shivered out of me. "I do. I should not, but I do want it."

I slipped out of his jeans to the front pocket of his jeans and found the slim wallet, tugging it out.

"You don't?—"

I gripped his ass with my free hand and jerked his jeans down with other. "We've crossed all the lines, haven't we?"

"This is a new one for me. Please let me know your name." He nipped my lower lip. "When I come, I need to know who is going to be in my dreams for the next millennia."

I laughed. "Rita."

His gaze tripped to my mouth and up to my eyes again. "Rita."

The way he said it made everything clench inside me again. Low, and impossibly tight.

He stepped back from me and slipped the packet out of his wallet, handing it to me before he dropped his wallet to the floor. He bent and I thought he was just going to get it, but no.

No, he slipped under the flair of my skirt around my knees, dragging his fingertips over the outside of my thighs all the way up to find my panties.

He tugged them down to my ankles. "Step."

I lifted one foot, then the other as he took them off and slipped them into his pocket.

Again, I thunked my head against the door.

Why had he kept them?

Surely it was just so they wouldn't get—and then my brain went offline as he ducked his head under my dress. His hands slipped around to cup my ass as he closed his mouth over me and showed me that his deep kisses didn't stop at the traditional.

I grabbed the door handle as he quickly took the easy, gliding orgasm from before and doubled it into infinity. His fingers dug into my firm cheeks as he destroyed me.

I had to shove my fist into my mouth as the orgasm rolled through me like a thousand-year storm. The crash set me adrift, and I reached for him, but all I got was my own dress.

I'd been so off kilter I didn't remember to ask him his freaking name. It seemed imperative right then that I know it.

I gathered my skirt up, uncovering his head so I could pull at his curls.

He grinned up at me, his beard and lips glistening with me. "You taste like every dream I've ever had, Rita." Finally, he stood, but he kept his fingers under my skirt, lightly pulsing inside of me. "Want to taste what I mean?"

I nodded.

He licked his lips first, then he leaned in for a soft kiss. Exploring every inch of me with a new flavor additive. Mine .

"Name," I panted against his mouth.

"Penn."

The name dented some crazy corner of my brain for a moment then he turned his fingers to flick his thumb over my clit, and it just didn't matter.

"Still have that condom?" he said against my ear. "Now that I've tasted you and felt you come again, I need to know the rest."

I reached between us to find him again. His jeans dipped low on his waist until I slipped around to the bare cheeks of his very fine butt. Touching was even better than watching him walk away from me earlier that week.

He raised his arm to rest it over my head, caging me in against the door. "I could watch you come for hours—days."

"Hopefully, they'll find us before we resort to that."

"Sounds like a good way to spend the weekend to me." He slipped two fingers deep into me.

I tightened around his fingers, anxious to feel even fuller soon.

I tripped my middle finger up along the top of his ass and back to the front so I could use both to deal with the wrapper. Distracted, I fumbled the rip as he reached deep inside of me, curling his fingers in such a way that scrambled my brain.

"Need help?"

I could hear the laughter in his voice. I had a feeling he liked making me crazy.

I gripped him at the base. "No, think I got it."

He grunted and rocked into my hand. "You certainly do." He lowered his head to brush his nose against mine as he pulsed inside me. "This is tighter." He growled and those dark eyes glittered. "Let me in."

It had been a minute since I'd put a condom on a man—especially one that was more than generously endowed. There was little doubt that I'd feel tight. I didn't break that intense gaze we always seemed to have while I rolled the latex down his length. Then I cupped his balls for good measure, earning another low groan.

He slid his fingers out of me and flipped up my dress, dragging my knee up and around his hip in one fell swoop. "This is still what you want?"

"It's not what you want?"

"I'd happily die right after this, Rita. No joke."

"Stop. I don't need the charm. You're literally about to be inside of me."

"It's not charm. This isn't like a regular hookup. Even in my craziest days I never…" He rested his forehead to mine. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get heavy."

I lifted my hands to his shoulders. "It's just the lust."

"Right."

He didn't sound convinced, and I couldn't let it be anything else. I tipped my hips closer and he took the hint, slipping the head of his cock against my slit.

I closed my eyes against the new sensation. I'd just gotten used to his fingers, but this was so much more.

So much more.

I tensed and he lowered his mouth to mine. "Easy," he whispered. "It's just me."

Just him?

Just a near stranger.

"We don't have to."

It was all I needed to hear as I lifted my hips to take him inside.

He lifted his other arm to above my head for a moment, his whole body so very still. "Rita" His voice was this side of a prayer.

Too much.

I tried to pull him closer, but he gripped my hips, lifting me against the door as he drove into me. I nearly yelped, grabbing onto his shoulders to wrap my legs around him. The angle was so much more than I was expecting.

I'd never had someone strong enough to do something so wild.

He was insanely muscled under the shirt. I could feel each flex under my hands as he worked himself inside of me again and again.

The fullness left me more shattered than the orgasm before—I didn't think that was possible.

But then his eyes locked with mine. A bead of sweat slid down his temple to his beard.

"Stay with me, Rita. Where did you go?"

"I'm here." I tried to close my eyes, but he growled. I opened them again, and the intensity made me want to hide.

But there was no hiding.

This was raw and literally in my face.

I slipped my fingers up into his hair, grounding myself with the soft curls, the sweat, and the reality of this crazy moment. Melting around him, I let myself accept this was just where I needed to be right now.

We found what felt like an endless rhythm. Him and me, puzzle pieces in the darkness. Fitting together as if we'd been searching for each other forever.

I tipped my hips, and the friction pushed me out of the moment of hazy sweetness into sweat and slapping skin. Into the full drive for that end that so often escaped me when it came to sex.

This man who knew nothing about me found exactly what I needed.

He jostled me higher onto his hips, which drove him deeper as he used the steel door for purchase, working me until there was no air, no space, no atoms—just us. I trembled around him, lost to the pinnacle that yawned in front of me in his dark, disastrous gaze.

The disaster was mine—finding this with a stranger.

Then there was no thinking to override the physical, there was only Penn and his breath against my lips as we both crashed into the end. He pulsed inside of me, just as I fisted around him again and again. His moan as he finished poured into my mouth and I took him there too.

Greedily.

Finally, he sagged against the door, and I dropped an unsteady foot to the floor. If I wasn't still attached to his shoulders, I would have surely rolled my ankle. And when he slipped from me, it was like a loss.

One I hadn't been prepared for.

He eased my other foot to the floor and waited until I was steady.

Even if I felt anything but.

He pressed his face into my neck for a moment, drawing a deep breath from me. I did the same with his shoulder before I finally dropped my arms.

As he straightened, those midnight eyes shuttered this time.

Then the lock beeped beside us.