Promise (Rogue River #1)

Prologue

[Trinity]

Twenty-four years old

“Dart Rivers, you are ridiculous.” I laugh at the man handcuffed to my bed.

A man who apparently handcuffed himself to the metal headboard.

“Told you I’d chain myself to this bed until you agreed to marry me.”

As I’d said, the man is ridiculous.

And ridiculously good-looking with whiskey eyes and a seductive smirk.

Bristly scruff on a jaw as structured as the ridges of the mountains around this small West Virginia town.

His laugh compares to the river that flows through it, roguish, rugged, and rushing at high speed.

Like the flutter of my pulse when he looks at me like he is.

Like he wants to devour me. Like he’s truly happy. With me.

His best friend’s younger sister.

He claims he’s pined for me for years.

But we both know this is only sex. Incredible, mind-blowing, toe-curling sex.

An internal sigh floats through my sated body. My limbs are stretched from the positions this man has put me in. My heart is soaring. This feeling cannot be trusted.

We were only lust, right? Temporary and unfettered. Fleeting and fun.

Yet we’ve been hooking up for weeks.

“I don’t recall you asking me a question to be answered,” I tease, sauntering toward the bed. I’d been in the ensuite bathroom, cleaning up after round number I’ve-lost-count because this man is insatiable.

Of course, I felt the same way.

I mean, look at him. Upper body leaning slack against my pink, ruffle-edged pillow.

Head tipped back against the white wrought iron headboard.

His bare chest on display, showing off the sleek lines of his abs and long length of his torso.

One arm outstretched, wrist clamped in a fur-lined handcuff.

The other cuff secured around the top of the frame.

His free hand is flat on his belly, low, teasing, just above where the fold of the sheet drapes over his angled hips, exposing that tempting trail leading south and pointing at something distinctly hard.

A giant arrow suggesting all roads lead here.

To Dart Rivers and his ridiculousness.

“What question do you need asked, baby?”

He purrs like a king cat, a lion giving a gentle rumble, while I climb up over his body, my gaze focused on the flat disks of his taut nipples. The dusky skin surrounded by summer-sun-kissed flesh.

Fuck, he is so beautiful. Almost as blinding as a sun himself. My insides warm just looking at him. My lower belly flutters, pulse racing, and another part of me clenches, reminding me of all he’d already done to me.

I settle on his lap, wearing the T-shirt he’d tossed to my floor last night when we tumbled into my room.

My inner thighs hug the outside of his, resting just below that tempting stiffness beneath the sheet.

The hand on his belly comes to my hip, electricity ripples over my skin, crackling like lightning in a summer electrical storm.

Something vibrant and neon and invigorating.

I’d pinch myself to wake from the dream of having sex with this man, if my body wasn’t already sore in delicious ways, telling me I am not imagining things.

Dart Rivers and I have been having sex for weeks. Repeatedly.

“Trinity?” His lazy, mountain twang draws my attention. “What worries you, baby?”

His own vulnerability seeps into the question. A reminder of how many times he’s said he isn’t good enough for me. His past weighs heavily on him. He says he doesn’t have anything to offer me, other than a promise.

He’ll love me forever.

Actually, his exact words were, I’m going to love you so hard, Forever.

Forever with a capital letter, like a proper name, a nickname he’d given me.

He whispered it during the quiet of us coupling and playfully teased it in public in front of others, ones questioning how he ended up with me. Something I still wonder as well. Knowing it’s going to hurt like hell when this ends.

Dart has a reputation for being a flirt. He’s easy on the eyes and easily swayed others into bed. It’s difficult to believe there is anything remarkable enough about me that he’d choose me for eternity.

“Marry me, Forever,” he says as I smooth my hands over the ripples on his abdomen.

“You’re just saying that, so I’ll find the key and unlock that handcuff.” I keep my tone light, coy even, while my pulse skitters.

He sets his hand over one of mine on his belly and nods toward the key on my white nightstand, implying I don’t need to search anywhere for the mechanism.

“You’re the key to me.”

Something in his voice has me tilting my head. Dart is always joking around, tossing out cheesy lines like swiping playing cards off a stacked deck.

My gaze pinches the slightest, questioning the vulnerability in his eyes.

“Come on, Trin. Put me out of my misery.”

He gently bucks his hips, and I lean deeper into his stomach with the motion.

“You want to have endless sex, with only me, for the rest of your life?” I tease because marriage is sacred to me. It means monogamy, faithfulness, and unending trust, like my parents have.

“I do.” His response is sharp and serious, like he’s making that vow at an altar before a priest.

I laugh, but Dart tightens his fingers around my hand. The chain attached to the cuff at his wrist clangs against the beam of the headboard, reminding him, in case he forgot, he’s handcuffed. He doesn’t look toward the clinking reminder but keeps his gaze focused on me.

“Dart?” I whisper, no longer certain if he’s toying with me or being heartfelt.

“I mean, I do want to have sex with you forever.” His mouth twists, the corner pops up. A teasing fishhook catching me unaware.

“See.” I smack his bare chest, the thwack snappy and loud, cracking through the momentary quiet that lingered after I’d exhaled his name. “I knew you couldn’t be serious.”

Still, my heart blooms. Petals unfurling from the mix of reality and fantasy.

“But I am.” His voice drops again, those eyes killing me with their sincerity. Their fear.

What could this man possibly be afraid of?

He races cars for fun. He was a philandering flirt, having countless women before me. He stood on rooftops and built houses.

“Say yes, Forever.” The emotion in his voice emphasizes the nickname. The infinity in it.

“Dart.” My throat thickens as I spread my fingers and coast them up his chest. His heart races beneath my palm.

“Trinity Haven, please be my wife. My life. My forever.”

With my knees on either side of his hips, my body stiffens from his genuine plea. As if something deep inside me hears the quiet truth.

I might still feel puzzled that he’d want me above anyone else.

Maybe, a little afraid of his restless, almost reckless, spirit.

But the love inside me is nearly suffocating.

Instantly, I imagine a life with this man, who I believe is good at his core and faithful to a fault, at least with friends.

With the few people he truly allows close to him, like me.

He really wants to marry me. No more fucking around. No more endless flirting.

Just me. Permanently.

“I won’t break you, Trinity.” He slides his large palm to my knee, skimming up my thigh, along my side, to pause over my heart.

A promise.

One said more like a reminder to himself to never be like his parents.

He’ll love me. He’ll never leave me.

Forever.

“Yes,” I whisper.

Shock registers in those amber eyes with rays of gold, and my heart wilts, thinking this might be another one of his jokes. A cruel one.

But suddenly, he’s jostling me, twisting at his hips as he stretches his other arm across his body, seeking the handcuff key just out of his reach.

“Unlock me, Trin,” he strains. “Get me out of this cuff so I can hold you properly.”

Laughing at the sudden movement and urgency in his voice, I slap my hand over the key and insert it in the lock. I continue to jiggle with laughter at how frantic he is to be released.

The second he’s free, he jackknifes upward, wraps an arm around my lower back, and flips our positions.

I laugh even harder, giddy and high, at the suddenness of him wedged between my legs, his arms banded around my back, uncomfortable as I lie on them.

“God, you’re quick.” I’m breathless as I clutch his firm biceps.

“Say it again, Trin.”

“God, you’re quick?” A schoolgirl giggle escapes, like I’m fifteen instead of twenty-five years old.

“The other word.”

“Yes.” The word clogs my throat, rough with emotion. Like more of that summer storm effect, one moving from crackling lightning to a refreshing downpour.

His brows slowly crease, eyes searching mine. Whatever he sees slowly smooths his forehead and deliciously curls his lips. A sunrise after a stormy night.

“Yes, I’ll be Mrs. Dart Rivers,” I repeat to reassure him. The name has a nice ring to it.

“No, baby. You’ll be my forever.”

And when he kisses me, like we have all the time in the world to spend locked together in this fuzzy shift from lust to love, I believe him.

Forever.