4. Lily

4

Lily

When you do something enough , it becomes magnified in your mind until you know every detail. I know every swirl and loop of the stenciled paper on a passport just like you know every pothole on your commute to work.

Which is bad. Because, as I sat there at my desk, working away, it meant that my mind was free to think.

I squirmed inside when I remembered how I’d reacted to him. It was as if all the normal parts of my brain, the ones that let me escape New York and customize the bus and build a little forger empire here in Texas, all suddenly shut down. All I’d been left with was some primal, animal brain that I hadn’t even known was lurking underneath. And it, faced with Bull, had been reduced to a puddle of hormones. I’d stood there slack-jawed and helpless.

I’ve always been proud of my independence. When you’re on the run, being a woman on her own isn’t any kind of worthy feminist crusade, it’s simple survival fact. I didn’t need a man because I didn’t need anyone. And yet I’d just stayed there gaping up at him as that arrogant, cocky bastard had—somehow—talked me into a date. A date? I didn’t go on dates!

I couldn’t go on dates.

I’d made a decision, back in New York. A very simple decision which had kept people around me safe ever since. The decision had been that, live or die, I was on my own. No friends. No boyfriends. No connections of any kind.

No one my uncle could hurt.

And then, just because he was all—all— muscley and male, I’d somehow forgotten all that and turned into a weak-kneed idiot.

I’d looked him up on Facebook—it’s not hard to find a six foot-something rodeo rider nicknamed “Bull” in a small town. His last name was Rollins, but there was no mention of his real name—he always called himself Bull. Asshole. And when he wasn’t working with horses on a local ranch, he was a rodeo rider, getting paid to be thrown around by wild broncos. What kind of idiot would choose that for a career?

I was fairly sure he wanted to fuck me and that surprised me as much as it annoyed me. Surprise because—well, this is me , curvy and big, and with precious little in the way of feminine wiles even before I spent two years living as a hermit on a bus. And annoyed because his Facebook page was a non-stop stream of photos of him in bars—each time, with a different woman. It was a barely-disguised list of his conquests, the modern equivalent of notches on his bedpost. Me and Charlene, last night. Me and Kara, last night. If he slept with me, it would be me and Lily, last night, and then, just one mouse-scroll further down the page, would be the next one. Women, to him, seemed to be disposable playthings. He was just another cocky, irritating alpha male.

But the more I thought about it, the more the hot anger seemed to seep down through me and sort of...change.

Bastard. Arrogant bastard. I bet he wanted to fuck me right there, in the basement of the arena, with all those animals around. Down in the hay. Or on a table or something, pulling my jeans off and him shoving down his pants and grunting as he shoved his—

I was uncomfortably aware of how, the more annoyed I got, the more I found I was pressing my thighs together. I tried to focus on my work—I was cutting plastic with a craft knife, a precision job.

It’s just because it’s been a while. And by a while I meant over two years, since well before I’d left New York. I mean, I hadn’t been completely idle—I had my vibrator and my imagination, but—

But suddenly, that didn’t seem like any kind of replacement for a hard, muscled body, so heavy on top of mine, his knees spreading my thighs….

The blade of the craft knife snapped, the tip of it pinging across the room. I’d been pressing too hard.

This is ridiculous. I should have been concentrating on real things that mattered, like the passports for Luka, the Russian arms dealer, and the next batch for the Mexican cartel, and those couple for the weed farmers in Canada. You know, normal stuff.

Rules were rules. Of course I wouldn’t go on the stupid date. I’d avoid ever going back to the arena. I’d never see him again. In a few days, I’d have forgotten all about him and everything would go back to normal. Everything would just carry on, just the same as it always had.

I found myself staring at my single bed.

And I started to get ready to go out.