16. Quinn
16
QUINN
I have book club tonight.
It’s a romance so dark it’s almost black.
The heroine is new in town, and he’s a serial killer who stalks his victims for kicks, first.
And then, she gets hit by a runaway truck that skids on ice, and their world changes.
She gets amnesia and manages to forget every goddamn thing about the man she was scared of.
And he gets the thrill of terrorizing her all over again.
Except, because he’s spent so much time in her orbit, he sees how hard she’s working to overcome the amnesia, and how friends and family are treating her differently to change their relationship with her, not always for the better.
I almost gave up during the first chapter because I thought there was no possible way to redeem the hero.
But somehow, the author pulled off a miracle, and I found myself rooting for his stalkery serial-killing ass.
And the memory loss changes the heroine, not just in terms of who she is, but what she wants.
From that moment forward, they find a way to fall in love in their own way.
It’s beautiful.
And so spicy.
What I wouldn’t give to have every memory I carry erased, because that would certainly be easier than living my life so caught up in them, I sometimes feel like I’m choking on nothing but air.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, to realize that while your family meant everything to you, you didn’t mean everything to your family.
I wish I had no memories of a mother who shared my love of reading and a father who would take me to the library on Saturday mornings to find new books.
Melody used to read with me.
She’d share what she’d call contraband books with me.
Books that were technically too old for me, but I had a burning desire to read anyway.
There’s a meme that goes around periodically that asks where your romance lore started.
For me, it was Flowers in the Attic and early Nora Roberts books.
A mix of the dark and nonconsensual with true love.
I love reading scenes that expose and humiliate and dominate and bring silence to the mind.
A place I can never find on my own.
But all I’ve ever found in real life is vanilla, and men who think shouting come now makes them a sex god.
And, honestly, I wonder what percent of the population can actually do that.
After our talk, I continued my shift at the bakery, and Smoke, well…
he fixed things. The broken light in the freezer now illuminates immediately when we open the freezer door, the tap in the small bathroom that only flowed with cold water now provides piping-hot water too, and all the bakery carts we push into the oven have had their wheels tightened and generally serviced.
I wish I hadn’t seen him with his shirt off, but I guess it also means his burns aren’t hurting as much anymore.
Which, combined with the work he did around the bakery today, reinforces how he doesn’t really need me at his home.
As I drive home and he follows me, I think about the time I looked up the meaning of the word home .
Every dictionary definition included bricks and mortar.
An address where one lives permanently.
Yet, in romance books, usually one of the main characters has an epiphany that home is where the person you love most is.
It’s a quandary, because I want to build both.
Preferably together.
The gravel crunches beneath my feet as I step out of my car.
Like the protector he’s becoming, Smoke pulls his large truck up next to me, before he steps out too.
His strong forearm flexes as he spins the keys on his index finger, and it’s all I can do to not stare at the deep veins than run along it.
“Remember, you don’t need to move out today,” Smoke says suddenly as we approach the porch.
“I should, though. I’m going to have to get used to being on my own again at some point. But I did forget I had book club tonight.”
I could cancel.
Probably should, but I can’t let the girls down.
It’s happening at Ember’s place, even though she barely likes the books we read.
Raven will already have her copy highlighted and filled with little flags.
Dawn will have gotten all of the marking for her high school kids complete so there’s nothing to stop her from attending.
And I’m sure Sam’s probably pumped breast milk to make sure her husband is set to look after their baby so she can have a much-needed night out.
“Then stay tonight, at least. So you don’t need to rush.”
Bones charges at the two of us, and I bend down to accept his wet doggo kisses.
“Hey, buddy.”
“I’ll let him out back for a run,” Smoke says.
“Thank you.” I head to my room to get ready to go out, but I take one last look at Smoke’s face before I do.
It’s like an ever-changing painting.
Stoic one minute, passionate the next.
Always conflicted.
When I get to my room, I flop down on the bed and think about the conversation in the bakery kitchen.
I believe him.
It doesn’t change anything about her disappearance, but I believe him.
I can imagine a young twenty-one-year-old man deciding to save his pride and reduce suspicion.
And I believe him that he doesn’t know anything.
It’s impossible to put a finger on the exact reason why I do.
But I felt there was an honest intimacy between us.
Even though he doesn’t remember the conversation we had last night in his room.
When he told me he feels like he keeps letting everyone down.
When he felt comfortable enough to cry in front of me, to show me exactly how he was feeling.
When I held him and listened to the sobs that racked his chest.
A piece of me caught fire and burned to ash on the mountain.
Don’t think I’m ever gonna get it back, Quinn.
My heart hurts for him.
And I don’t know how we move forward without me telling him exactly what he revealed.
Because I remember how it felt when he told me that he’d tried to drown himself in alcohol and some of the club girls because it might stop him from drowning in me.
And how, when I asked him if it had worked, he confided that it hadn’t and had just made everything worse.
I wonder if the fact that my sister broke up with him makes any difference to our situation.
It certainly makes things feel a little less…
weird? Strange?
For the first time, I let myself think about Smoke as a man, my man, without feelings of guilt or shame layering over it.
I close my eyes and think about what it would feel like for his feelings for me to overwhelm him again.
For him to rush at me and be so consumed with the idea of me that nothing will stop him.
Mentally, I picture the two of us in the clubhouse bar when he lifts me and sits me on the edge of the pool table.
I’m sure there’s a part of my upbringing that predisposes me to be the good girl, to want to pass judgment on my actions.
But, I can’t.
Because in the moment, the only man I can see is Smoke.
Not the other men who linger around.
Watching.
He places his hand between my breasts, then pushes gently until I’m lying back on the green baize, my legs dangling off the edge.
Smoke slides his palms up my thighs, the callouses scratching against my skin, until he reveals my panties.
“Wet for me already?” he asks, his voice gruff.
“Always.”
He slides his fingers ever so slightly beneath the elastic of my panties and rubs them back and forth, but not close enough to where I need him.
It’s teasing, and he smiles at me.
“Eyes on me, sugar.”
My hips lift of their own volition.
Here on the bed, my clit aches, and I lift the hem of my dress and slide my fingers beneath the waistband of my panties, rubbing over my firm but tender clit, then dipping between my lips.
I’m as wet in real life as I am in the image of the two of us.
My breath stutters when I exhale.
In the daydream, Smoke removes my panties, then slides his palms beneath my ass to tug me a little closer to the edge of the pool table.
When he has me where he wants me, he drops to his knees, places my legs over his shoulders, uses his thumbs to peel my lips apart a little, like an intimate book, and then licks me.
A swift swipe from opening to clit with a wide flat tongue.
I lift on my elbows so I can watch.
“No other pussy tastes as good as yours,” he says, before licking his lips.
He kisses along my thigh, occasionally nipping me with his teeth or sucking hard enough to give me a hickey.
It’s agonizingly slow.
In reality, I slide my finger inside myself and bite down on my lip to avoid making any sound to alert Smoke.
I wish I had my vibrator, or even better, Smoke.
But it’s more than enough to provide accompaniment to the daydream.
Dragging wetness to my clit, circling it, squeezing it, pressing hard.
Grinding against my fingers, my palm.
God, it feels so good.
Dream Smoke adds his thick finger too, deliciously stretching me.
I imagine it’s his finger working me over, his saliva making me wet.
There’s a knock at the door, and it bursts open before I can stop.
“I just wanted to say I’m—fuck!”
I snatch my hand from between my legs, but there is no way he didn’t see, and I’m sure the scent of masturbation hangs heavy in the air.
I try to sit up to close my legs.
“Don’t move,” Smoke says in a tone so deep and intense, I can’t move, even though embarrassed heat floods my cheeks.
His eyes move between meeting mine and looking at what is surely the mother of all wet patches on my panties.
Smoke rubs his fingers over his lips, but there is no indecision in his eyes.
“Put your hand back, Quinn. Show me what you were doing.”
I need to find my voice, or at least the will to move, because surely this is?—
“Now, Quinn. I’m not a patient man.”
My eyes don’t leave his, and his don’t leave mine, as I do what he says.
“Good girl. Now, stroke yourself, but don’t you dare dip those fingers back into that pussy yet.”
My lips throb as my finger glides over them without entry.
My hips rise to meet them, desperate for penetration.
But it’s impossible to not follow his orders.
I drag my finger over my clit, then circle it before allowing the slide again.
Smoke lowers his hand and rearranges his dick in his denim.
But he doesn’t play with it.
Doesn’t get his obviously engorged length out and stroke it.
“You have any idea how hard this is making me?”
I nod and run my tongue over my lower lip before biting down on it.
“Yeah? You understand that your dirty actions are driving me wild?”
I nod again.
God, this is what I wanted.
For it all to feel too much, too embarrassing, too humiliating.
So, I break the rules.
I dip my finger between my lips, inserting it all the way to the knuckle.
“Oh,” I gasp as the heel of my hand falls to the right place to grind against it.
“Quinn,” Smoke snaps.
“Did I say you could do that?”
I slide my finger out.
“You didn’t.”
His eyes are so dark, I can barely see his irises.
“Say, ‘Sorry, Smoke, for fucking myself without your permission.’”
More heat floods my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Smoke, for…fucking myself”—I take a deep breath—“without your permission.”
He nods, then screws up his face and winces.
It’s like he remembered who I am and who he is.
“Fuck,” he curses. “Take your fingers out of your panties and get into the shower. Next time you want an orgasm in this house, you come see me and ask.”
My body cries out in need.
“Smoke, please will you give me an orgasm?”
He shakes his head.
“No. Your punishment for the rest of the night for not getting permission is to remember how close you got.”
With that, the door slams.