Chapter 6
Six
I t was a quarter after. She’d stood him up. In his whole life, that had never happened. Not even once. It wasn’t a feeling he cared for at all, not one bit.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Clicking the button on the remote, he turned the television off. He had no interest in the game, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around all night moping over the fact that she wasn’t there.
Crossing the wide plank floors to his bedroom, he opened the closet door and retrieved a clean shirt. He’d go to the bar, have a few beers, and he wouldn’t give that pint-sized pain in the ass a second thought.
The knock on the door stopped him cold. Shirt on, unbuttoned and hanging loose, he glanced at the clock beside the bed. She was almost half an hour late.
Pissed, he walked back into the living room and jerked the door open. She stood there wearing a sweatshirt that looked like it could have housed her three times over and the oldest, rattiest pair of jeans he’d ever seen. She still looked hot. Certainly hot enough to take the wind out of his sails.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” he said.
She shrugged. “I was having a few doubts myself.”
Carter stepped back and allowed her inside. Somehow, he didn’t think the evening was going to end the way he’d imagined. It felt shockingly like one of those we-need-to-talk moments that he always avoided.
“Well, I know it isn’t because you didn’t enjoy yourself last night. You did…several times, as a matter of fact.”
“Can we skip the play-by-play?” she asked as she moved toward the couch. She sat down on the arm, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked utterly miserable.
Yes. It was definitely not going to go well. “Why don’t you tell me whatever it is that’s got you looking like a whipped pup? Guessing with women only ever causes trouble.”
“My mom stopped by after work. Apparently, Doris called her this afternoon with her suspicions about your real reasons for stopping in the library.”
Fuck. It had been an impulse. He didn’t exactly regret his actions, but he did hate that they’d made problems for her. “I take it Mommy doesn’t approve?”
“She has concerns…well-founded ones. I can’t do this with you, Carter, if you don’t take me seriously.”
He shook his head. “I do take you seriously!”
“Then listen to me! When I tell you we can’t be open about this thing between us…
It’s not just me that it affects. My parents, the church, my job at the library.
Carter, I’m hanging by a thread there! Doris is looking for whatever reason she can find to get rid of me…
and if she does, you know what happens? I have to move back into my parents’ house!
I can’t do that, Carter. I can’t give up the little bit of freedom I’ve managed to carve out for myself! ”
She was shouting by the time she finished. Overwrought, as his grandmother would have said.
“I was just having a little fun today, Josie. I didn’t mean for it to go so wrong for you. You can’t keep living your life for other people.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I wouldn’t have a life at all if it weren’t for these people. I won’t embarrass them by dragging my name, the name they gave me, through the mud.”
He didn’t want to let her go. Eventually, yes. When he’d managed to get her out of his system, when the intense craving for her had passed, and he could think again. But not yet. Not now.
“What do you want from me, Josie? Just tell me.”
A shrug and then a bitter laugh was her response. Finally, after a long pause, she spoke. “We both know we’re not going anywhere with this. You’re not the kind of guy who settles down. But I’m so tired of being the good girl for everybody…of not having anything for myself.”
“Then don’t be,” he replied evenly. “Be whatever and whoever you want to be.”
“I can’t. I couldn’t stand it if I disappointed them that way!”
It pissed him off that he would be the instrument of disappointment, that her being with him was in some way a failure.
“So you’re just going to live a lonely, miserable, and disappointing life for yourself, then? ’Cause that makes perfect fucking sense!”
“Dammit, Carter. I didn’t come here to fight with you!”
“Then what did you come here for?” he demanded.
“To feel the way I did last night.”
“I guess that means I’m your dirty little secret.” He uttered the words without heat, without any inflection at all, even though they stung his pride like being sliced by a thousand razors.
“If you don’t want me on these terms, I can go,” she replied. Her tone was equally devoid of inflection. It wasn’t what either one of them wanted.
“Just so you know,” he said, “I hate this fucking town and what it does to people. The expectations. The gossip. The miserable fucking people who sit back in their tidy little houses and judge everyone else…I hate it.”
She’d never voiced those thoughts. Like so many things that ran through her mind, it just created feelings of guilt and shame. Her life could be so much worse. But no one would ever let her forget that.
“So do I. But I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Admitting it made her feel weak and breathless, as fearful as if an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob was outside the door. “I don’t want this to end yet. I know it will eventually, but not yet, Carter. Can’t we just enjoy it for now?”
“You want a hot, steamy, secret affair? I’ll give you one,” he vowed.
Carter didn’t waste another second. He moved toward her, grabbing her ponytail and tugging her head back. He kissed the side of her neck, his teeth scraping over her skin with just enough force, just enough of a bite to make her moan and shiver. His mouth roamed over her. Lips, teeth, tongue.
He didn’t mark her skin, but the urge to do so was there.
A part of him wanted to mark her, to show the world that she was his.
Instead, he grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt and jerked it upward and over her head, tossing it aside until he could close one hand on the soft mound of her breast. Through her bra, he could feel the hard peak of her nipple.
Josie’s head fell back against him, and a soft cry escaped her. Lips parted, eyes closed, her cheeks flushed with passion. That was how he wanted her. He tugged her head back just a bit further, his hand fisted in her hair. She was in charge of some things, he thought, but not everything.
“Carter,” she gasped, clutching at his hand.
“You want this to be a secret…how quiet can you be, Josie?” he whispered against her ear. “When I’m touching you this way, tasting you…or when I’m inside you?”
“Carter, please,” she murmured, her hand covering his, pressing his palm against her breast. “I can’t think when you’re doing that.”
“Then don’t, baby. Just feel. Feel all the ways I can make you burn.”
He was relentless. His hands roamed over her freely, touching her everywhere as he continued to kiss her neck, her shoulders. Nipping at her earlobes with his teeth, he savored the startled cry that escaped her and the shiver that followed.
Carter let go of her hair, but her head stayed back, resting against his shoulder, arching of her own accord to give him free access.
His hand skimmed along the indentation of her spine, down to the waistband of her jeans, sliding beneath them.
His fingers traced the lacy pattern of her thong, brushing lightly over her skin as she clung to him.
“Tell me you want me, Josie,” he commanded.
“I do. Oh god, I do,” she sobbed. “You’re killing me, Carter.”
Carter pulled back and hauled her up from the arm of the couch until she was perched on the back of it.
With one hand, he unsnapped and unzipped her jeans.
Within seconds, he had them tugged down her legs, pulling them and her sneakers off in one swift movement.
She wore only a lacy bra and an equally lacy thong.
“Why do I always wind up naked first?” she asked.
“’Cause you’re little and easier to strip,” Carter replied. He wasn’t taking her to his bed. She wanted hot and steamy, and he was going to give it to her. She wanted it to feel like a tawdry affair? Well, he would provide all that she asked for and more.
He grasped the elastic band of her thong, but rather than sliding it over her hips, he twisted it around his fingers, tugging, until the whole thing simply snapped.
Tossing the scrap of fabric aside, he pressed her back, her body balanced on the cushions of the sofa, her head tilted back, and her legs locked around his waist. He unzipped his own pants, dug a condom from his wallet, and rolled it on quickly.
Sinking into her, feeling the heat of her closing around him, he gripped her hips tighter. His fingers dug into the soft flesh there as she closed around him like a fist. He bit back a groan as he surged into her. Christ almighty, nothing had ever felt that good.
Pumping his hips, thrusting into her again and again as she sobbed beneath him, Carter knew he wasn’t going to let her go. Not for a good long time.
He felt her thighs tense, the muscles drawing so taut they quivered. Her breathing changed, and a flush crept over her pale skin. She was hovering right there on the edge, ready to come for him.
“You’re mine, Josie. For as long as I want you,” he vowed.
He felt the shudder ripple through her as her body clenched around him.
The low, keening cry as she shivered beneath him was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.
Carter stopped holding back, stopped trying to keep his own need in check.
He drove into her again—deeper, harder—drawing out her pleasure even as he gave into his own.