Chapter 2

2

Jolie

Christopher leads me to an empty picnic table on the outskirts of the crowd, leaving briefly to get me the same non-alcoholic beer he’s drinking. When he sits down across from me, it feels a lot like a date and a flutter of panic takes wing in my throat, but his affable smile puts me at ease. “You’re in luck, Jolie,” he drawls, tapping the neck of his bottle to mine.

“Why is that?”

“Because in my short time living on this block I’ve picked up a lot of neighborhood gossip. And I’m about to fill you in.”

“Oh my gosh.” I press my palms to my cheeks, surprising by the pressing need to giggle. “I shouldn’t be so excited. Gossiping is mean.”

“Only if we get caught,” he says, winking at me.

I gasp with mock outrage. “You’re bad. You must do something evil for a living.” I narrow my eyes. “Lawyer?”

He leans forward on his elbows, grinning broadly. “Nope.”

“A magician?”

A laugh barks out of him. “Magicians are evil?”

“It’s common knowledge. They operate in the dark arts. Sawing women in half all willy-nilly.” I shrug, take a sip of my beer. “And just being generally cringey.”

“I can’t argue with that. You get one more guess.”

“Hmmm.” This is flirting. I’m actually flirting. And I can’t believe it. Except there is something about Christopher that makes it so easy. Makes me feel completely safe. At ease. There’s attraction, yes. But there’s no pressure. No anxiety. It also helps that he’s seated me in the exact right spot where I can see my front door. Did he do that on purpose? “Russian spy?”

He laughs into a sip of his drink. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’m just a normal, boring, run-of-the-mill insurance salesman.”

“Normal isn’t a bad thing,” I say honestly. “In fact, I think normal is the best thing.”

“Do you?”

I nod slowly.

We simply look at each other, the day passing in flurry of color around us, but our bodies remaining perfectly unmoving. “So…” I whisper. “About this gossip.”

“Right,” he growls, though it quickly turns to a cough. He must have had something stuck in his throat. “Let’s start with the man operating the barbeque. He’s obsessed with his lawn. I once caught him in the middle of the night on his belly, trimming it with scissors.”

My mouth falls open. “No, you didn’t.”

“I did. And it’s all because the man who lives across the street is his high school football rival. You didn’t realize we were living in a sitcom, did you?”

“I had no idea. Competing lawn care fanatics. Now that’s a show I would watch.”

“Me too.” He glances back over his shoulder and I take a moment to appreciate his physique. For a man who sells insurance, he is obscenely fit. Like cut triceps and flexing shoulders and hands that look like they do a lot more than tap at a keyboard. He must do CrossFit after working hours. Otherwise he’s very naturally gifted.

This is healthy, right?

Noticing men and their attributes?

I’m already excited to talk to my therapist about it.

“Okay, next up is the older woman holding court by the snack table. You see her? Fire engine red hair. Hard to miss.”

This time, I can’t stop my giggle. “I see her.”

My laugh seems to distract him, but he swallows and keeps going. “She dyes her poodle’s hair pink and posts pictures of it in costumes on the town’s online bulletin board.”

“Oh, please say she dressed it like an old timey sheriff.”

“A sheriff, a mermaid, a milkman, a flapper…”

I almost choke on a sip of my drink. “No insurance salesman? What a terrible oversight.”

“Right?” He shakes his head sadly. “We get no love.”

“Are you…” Don’t ask. Even if there’s an odd sense of connection here, you could be imagining it after such an upheaval and departure from regular society. And it’s too fast. Too soon. “Are you…looking for love?”

A light of awareness comes on in his blue eyes. Until his finger traces the small of my wrist, I don’t realize his hand is close enough to touch me. “I’m looking at you, Jolie.”

It’s suddenly hard to breathe.

That rough fingertip of his travels into my palm, moving in a circle and there’s an answering wetness between my legs. From such a simple touch.

My nipples ache in my bra.

I’ve never been this drawn to someone. Not in my entire life. Never knew it was possible. But I find myself allowing Christopher to weave our fingers together, holding my hand across the table. Like we’re a couple. Like we didn’t just meet minutes earlier.

And I’m shocked at how right it feels.

Maybe the newspaper headline was a sign.

At the reminder of my trauma, the sounds of a hysterical male voice filter into my thoughts, along with the sounds of me begging, sobbing, wood splintering.

I suck in a breath and take my hand back, standing abruptly and knocking a hip into the table. Christopher shoots to his feet as well, shoving long fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m…please. That was too much.”

“No, it’s me. It’s…” I look around, my cheeks turning numb when I realize the sun has almost completely gone down. How long was I sitting at this table, looking into this man’s eyes? Did I leave the house later than I thought? It’s possible. I spent a long time trying to psyche myself up to go outdoors. And now. And now…I’ll be walking into my house after dark.

My worst fear.

“Jolie,” Christopher says in a calm, resonant voice. “What is it?”

I turn in a circle, alarmed to find that most of the neighbors are heading back inside, the music has stopped and the barbeque is no longer smoking. “I just, um…” I wipe my perspiring palms down my dress. “I don’t like coming home after dark.”

“Why?”

“You really don’t know?”

His brows pull together. Slowly, he shakes his head.

I lower my voice. “I was taken from my home. Kidnapped. After work one night. He’d been hiding in my bedroom for days. The…the man was an older co-worker of mine. He’d formed some kind of…infatuation with me and imagined this whole relationship between us. There was nothing, um…sexual. It was almost like he was courting me.” I stop for a breath. “I played along until he let his guard down. Until I could call the police. It…it was in the news.”

I wish I didn’t have to talk about this out loud. Not to this normal, good-looking man who has every right to avoid a girl with baggage like mine. Not when he made it possible for me to feel light for a while. To be the kind of girl who flirts and has drinks with cute, easy-going insurance salesmen.

Christopher has been very still while I related the story. Now, he says, simply, “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t glance away uncomfortably or try and relate my experience to another horrifying story. He just says the right thing and leaves it at that. Right where I need it for now.

“Thank you,” I murmur, stepping away from the table. “And thanks for the drink. But I think I’ll head home now.”

Putting his hands in his pockets, he nods gravely. “Good night.”

But when I reach my front door, I can’t seem to get a foot over the threshold.

The lights are blazing inside. I’ve turned them on with my phone. There’s no reason not to walk through the door, but I can’t. I can’t—

“I could go in with you.” Christopher’s voice carries from the sidewalk behind me. “I could check the rooms and make sure it’s safe. Then I’ll leave.”

I nod without turning around and he appears to my right, tall and strong and reassuring. My immediate neighbor. A man everyone saw me with. Surely letting him inside briefly is safe.

I want him to come inside, too, I realize.

There is something about him that puts me at ease. It’s the manner in which he speaks to me, as if he’s well aware of the invisible boundaries.

Without another word, Christopher steps inside and I follow him. We move room to room. He checks even the ridiculous places, like inside my kitchen cabinets. Behind the vacuum. Everywhere. He goes down to the basement and does a thorough sweep, his manner efficient. Powerful, even. So able and masculine, I once again become aware of my damp underwear and the coil in my loins. My sensitive skin.

Logically, I know I can take care of myself.

But I…like this man being protective. I like his care. His attentiveness to detail.

The way he doesn’t judge.

“There’s no one here,” he says, looking me in the eye, letting his assurance sink in. “Everything is locked. You’re safe.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Any time. I mean that. Any time.”

He hesitates, his chest expanding, then starts to leave. Makes it all the way to the door.

“Wait.”

His back muscles tense, his hand pausing on the doorknob. “Yes?”

This is crazy. I can’t really be considering asking this near-stranger to stay the night. We just met. I’m not mentally healthy enough to do casual or serious. But I’m already walking toward him as if in a trance, already sliding my palms up the range of muscles on his back, absorbing his shudder. How can this feel so inevitable? Almost…foretold? “Stay.”

He braces a palm on the door, and once again, I marvel at the size and capability of his hands. The way one of his knuckles is crooked and scarred. But I’m distracted from my thoughts when he says, “Stay and have coffee? Or stay and take you to bed, Jolie?”

“I don’t know,” I say to his back. “I just know it makes me feel safer to have you here.”

“There’s irony for you,” he mutters.

I frown. “What do you mean?”

His fingers curl into a fist on the door. “Nothing.”

Long moments pass and all I can hear is the sound of his breathing, my racing pulse.

“I’ve never spent the night with a man before. Am I doing this all wrong?”

“God, no, honey.” He drops his hand from the door and turns, expression sincere and strained all at once. “You are fucking perfect.”

The look in his blue eyes knocks me back a step. He’s…aroused. Very much so. The crotch of his jeans protrudes at an angle, his jaw slackening while he looks me over, head to toe, a low sound coming from his throat. He’s so huge. The muscles of his forearms are in tight ropes, his pupils expanding to encompass the blue. Starved. For me.

When my back meets the wall, I realize I’ve been putting distance between us.

“I’m already scaring you,” Christopher says raggedly.

Is he?

I’m wet. Growing so damp, so rapidly, my thighs are trembling. My skin is crying out to experience those large hands. Have them rake my flesh. I’m drawn to him like nothing else. And yes, the attraction is so immense it startles me, but I think I’ll collapse if he leaves.

Christopher shakes his head, reaches for the doorknob again, signaling his exit. “This is moving too fast. It’s my fault. I—”

Quickly, I unbutton my cardigan, from my neck to my waist, shedding it.

The belt is undone next, dropped heavily with a metal sound to the tile below.

When there’s nothing left but my dress, I curl my fingers in the hem and wait only a moment before stripping it over my head. And then I’m standing in front of this magnetic man, my neighbor, in a matching bra and panties set. White with a red rose pattern. All of the lights are on. There’s nothing and nowhere to hide. It’s also the reason I see every emotion cross his face. Awe, hunger, surrender, lust. Lust like a battering ram.

He takes one step and flattens me against the wall of my entryway, his mouth coming down on mine with a groan. His fingers slide into my hair and cradle my nape, our hips meeting, thighs pressing. He kisses me with lips only, pulling at my top one, bottom one, slanting his mouth on top of mine until I mewl, arch my back, and he finally slips his tongue inside, stroking it against mine, his breath catching. I’ve felt nothing but fear for so long that I race toward my own need, flinging myself into it like a cliff diver into a blue lagoon. It feels so good to be alive, to have this man’s touch, and I’m suddenly greedy, desperate for more.

I scale his sturdy body, slinging my legs around his hips, the kiss taking hold. Going deeper. With more urgency. He slides a hand down the back of my panties and kneads my butt, pressing my upper half to the wall, his lips racing down to my neck, my throat.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he rasps in between kisses, those eyes intense, exploring. “I’ve needed you. I’ve needed you.”

“I’ve needed you, too.” My fingers work to unbutton his shirt. “Take me to bed.”

No sooner are those four words out of my mouth than I’m ripped off the wall, carried down the back hallway at a fast clip. He false starts toward the guest room, but I point to the right door and he changes directions, entering my bedroom. All the lights are on. Every single one. And I’m grateful for that when I finally get Christopher’s shirt open and it parts to reveal tattooed muscle. Weathered brawn. Slab upon slab of inked steel.

“You must sell a lot of insurance,” I breathe.

The corner of his mouth ticks up. “I had a wild youth.” He lays me down on the bed, shrugging off the shirt and tossing it away, flicking open the button of his jeans. Those blue eyes blaze over me, drinking in every inch. “I’m still a little wild, Jolie.” He hooks his fingers in my panties and shucks them down my legs, a shudder wracking him. “But all of the wild inside me is for you now,” he says thickly, tracing the seam of my womanhood with his thumb. “Do you understand?”

I’m having a hard time concentrating on anything when he’s touching me with such possession, but I capture his meaning. He’s going to make love to me with abandon—exactly what I want. What I need. I don’t want to think of my past or my trauma. I want to see and think about and feel only Christopher.

His thumb parts my folds and grazes my clit. “Do you understand, Jolie?”

“I understand,” I gasp.

“Good girl.”

Something about those two words set off fireworks in a secret, unknown part of me, sharpening my lust like the tip of a pencil. Good girl. They’re still echoing in my head when Christopher drops to his stomach and kisses my sex. Reverently. Breathing in and out against it, his hands coasting up and down my bare thighs.

“Knew you’d have a sweet, juicy, little pussy,” he rumbles, nudging me with his nose, groaning brokenly. “Savor this,” he says, his words muffled against my flesh. Is he talking to my womanhood? “Savor your last seconds of freedom. Because I’m never going to give you a moment’s peace again.”

As if my body already knows what he’s capable of, my fingers twist in the sheets, preparing—and he starts to eat me. With long, crude licks. Thank God I invested in a good home waxing kit, because it would be a travesty to miss a single stroke.

Oh lord, I’ve never done this. Never even come close. But instinctively I know there isn’t a man alive who could perform this task half as well. He’s obscene and cherishing. Nasty and worshipful. Those blue eyes bore into mine, lust clouding them, the wet of his tongue flashing in the light, dragging up through my sex and teasing my hotbed of nerves.

“Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” I whimper, tearing at the bedclothes.

I can’t breathe. The release that’s rolling in is a beautiful monster and it turns me into a creature I barely recognize. One who pulls a man’s hair and bucks against his mouth. One who rips off her own bra so she can clamp greedy fingers around her aching nipples. The monster snaps its teeth, digging into my lust and I go off, my body trembling wildly, pleasure spearing me deep, deep in the center of my body, making me rear up off the mattress.

“Christopher!”

My scream is still echoing in my bedroom when he lifts his head, moves up my body in a slow, purposeful crawl, his eyes black, chest heaving. “I could live off the perfect taste of you,” he says hoarsely, unzipping his jeans. “But we need to take advantage while you’re wet.”

I don’t understand. “What—”

He takes out his shaft and I suck in a breath, my legs closing instinctively.

Or I try to close them, but he blocks my progress with his hips, stroking that enormous appendage in a clenched fist. “No. Please don’t be scared of it.” He plants his free hand beside my head, leaning down to kiss me thoroughly, until I’m breathless, head spinning. “Once you’re used to this cock, it’s going to give you nothing but pleasure. You’re going to shake every time I walk into this fucking bedroom just knowing I’m about to put it in that tight-ass cunt.”

His words are rude. Disrespectful. They should outrage me.

Why am I nodding?

Why do I feel like this man has cast a spell over me?

I can’t tear my eyes away from the intensity of his stare, can’t do anything but open my thighs and welcome his domination. His nostrils flare with triumph at my compliance, his mouth capturing mine in a slow, wet kiss, his huge shaft pressing into me, not taking no for an answer from the resistance of my body. I cry out into his mouth, but he only advances further, deeper, growling into our kiss. “Tight baby girl,” he grits out, punching his hips forward slowly. “Aren’t you a snug little virgin? So fucking sweet around my dick. Shhhh. I promise it’s not going to hurt forever.”

I’m sobbing, but it’s more from emotion than pain.

I can feel myself being possessed by this man.

I don’t have an inch to breathe or worry or even think. There is just Christopher blocking out the world around me, filling the cracks in my soul and demanding more. More.

There are ripples of hurt in the vicinity of my womb, but they dull the more he kisses me, our lips growing hungrier, his hips beginning to flex, to push forward and back.

“Does it feel better now, Jolie?”

“Yes.”

Visibly relieved, his left hand drags down the center of my body, between my breasts and stomach, circling around to take hold of my bottom. Clutching it roughly as he rocks deep. So deep that both of us moan, my heels burying in the flesh of his ass. “You feel it, don’t you? That we’re one now. It was meant to be like this.”

I can’t deny it.

It’s the coming together of two beings. A collision.

“Yes,” I gasp, my nails raking their way down his back involuntarily. “We’re one.”

His eyes flash, revealing the wildness he spoke of before.

And my own untapped wildness answers.

Something inside me is in charge now. Is it my heart? My soul? My lust? I don’t know, but we’re suddenly grappling with each other, Christopher’s mouth burying in my neck, sucking bruises onto me, my hands gripping his thick buttocks and yanking him deeper, the bed slamming against the wall with the force of his thrusts. I’m being fucked. Filthy and raw. And he was right. That’s all I can think. He was right about that massive part between his legs giving me pleasure, because I quickly become its servant, whining and straining to take more.

He gives it.

He shoves my legs open and ruts into me with smacking pumps of his hips.

“Mine.” He looks me in the eye. “Mine.”

“Yours.”

His mouth sears me with a kiss. “I will be everything you need. This is where it begins, angel eyes. Listen to me. It begins here. If you ever feel lost, come right back here to the beginning and find me. I’ll always be right here.”

My orgasm is cresting and carrying his words away, but they make me glow on the inside all the same. His trunk of flesh saws wetly over my clit, again, again, the muscles in his broad shoulders flexing, tattoos rippling in the light. He winces in pain, his features screwing up tight. A man trying to hold on to his control—and that visible proof that I undo him causes the eruption of lust in my belly. It cascades down and snares my loins in a breathtaking seizure.

“Good girl.” He pants above me. “Come for your Daddy.”

I scream.

That word makes me scream.

Pleasure like I’ve never known wracks me. I bow up off the bed, but he pins me back down, bucking his flesh into my constricting heat, bellowing my name into my neck. “Jolie.” He grips the slamming headboard, powerful arm flexing. “Giving you my come. Ahhhh, honey. Got so much for you.”

True to his word, I’m filled to my limit with piping-hot spend, the excess rolling in beads down my buttocks and thighs, Christopher groaning loudly above me, his deep voice joined by the sound of slapping flesh. When he finally falls on top of me, his huge body depleted, not a single second passes before his arms wrap around me and I’m pulled into the warm cocoon of his embrace, his mouth moving in my hair, whispering my name in awe.

It’s the first night in a long time I don’t sleep with the lights on.

There’s no need.

I’m safe.