Chapter 20
chapter
twenty
SHAY
Calder’s hand found my lower back again, firm, fingertips pressing into my flesh as he led us out of the restaurant.
I felt giddy. My blood fizzed like it had been replaced with champagne.
Calder had this uncanny ability to make me comfortable.
His smile. His silly questions. The pressure of the date slowly lessened until I felt lightweight.
He held the door open for me, hand still on my back. It had gotten colder as the night stretched. A small winter breeze made the air icy. I shivered, and Calder stepped in front of me, clutching my coat lapels.
For a second that felt like millennia, he raked his gaze down my body. Staring unashamed, jaw clenched.
Something in the air shifted. The sexual tension in the restaurant about to set fire.
His stare settled on my chest for one…two heartbeats, then he pulled the coat together. Tight.
“Did you drive?” he asked, voice rough.
I blinked. “Why?”
“So I can walk you to your car, Shay.”
His words vibrated like they were rattling a cage.
“I didn’t drive. But—” I broke off. The date was over? Wasn’t he going to fuck me? “Do you…do you not want to have sex?”
I chewed my bottom lip, hating the insecurity heating my skin.
He dragged me by my coat into an alley next to the restaurant and pushed me against the restaurant’s brick wall, his hands still gripping the fabric.
With one hand, he lifted my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You’re nervous.”
Our breaths collected between us in a hot, steamy fog. The breeze deadened by parallel walls.
Frustration and sexual tension made a tight, achy knot.
Calder slid one hand inside my coat, to my waist. My skin tingled with the weight, nerves bubbling.
“So?” I said, biting the word harder than I’d intended.
Of course I was nervous.
His blue eyes shimmered, like he was amused by my frustration. That only pissed me off. “Of course I’m nervous—” I broke off when his hand slid up my waist, over my breast. A billion thoughts competed for attention.
A man is touching me. A man who is not my fiancé.
Holy shit, am I finally going to sleep with someone else?
I love the way he says my name.
His eyes searched mine, like an archaeologist without the Rosetta stone, relying on bits and pieces to construct the truth.
“So,” he repeated, massaging my breast over the fabric. I bit my lip to keep from groaning, and his eyes dropped to that. “So maybe I’d planned to walk with you a little. Kiss the shit of you. Make your knees weak. Get you out of that fucking head. Before fucking you.”
He pulled one side of my dress down, my breast spilling over the fabric. He didn’t touch me, though, and he didn’t look down, his gaze stuck on my eyes.
“Should I stop?”
Cold winter wind pricked my bare skin and pebbled the flesh, but I was on fire.
Electric.
Achy.
I glanced out the alley, where occasionally someone would walk across the gap between buildings.
“Anyone could see,” I said, but it came out breathy.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “they could. This is what happens when you’re fucking impatient.”
My thighs clenched at the authority in his voice. He didn’t sound angry, but almost amused.
Hungry.
“Should I stop?” he repeated, pressing into me, my back biting on the cold brick wall. If I’d had any words in my head, they disappeared at the feel of his cock hard on my stomach.
My breath hitched. I shook my head.
Before I could register the feral smile splitting his lips, his hand was on me. Massaging my naked breast. Flesh against flesh.
I gasped.
The tension from the restaurant combusted between us. Igniting like a chain reaction of burning steel wool. Taking one path, then another, turning metal into hot molten fire and sparks.
“Fuck,” he said. “Your cheeks are all red again.”
He twisted my nipple, and I arched into it, pain quickly melting into pleasure as he massaged where he’d just tweaked. And yet his eyes stayed with mine.
“So good.” He pressed his lips to my neck, mouth moving hot on my flesh, words vibrating against my skin, praise settling like wine in my bloodstream as he kneaded my breast.
Fingers came to the hem of my dress, hiking it up past my legs. I grabbed his wrist as his hand slid to my bare ass, nerves seizing my body.
“Um.” I gasped. “I’ve never done this.”
He smiled against my neck. “Had sex with a stranger?”
I mean, almost, but…
“Had sex with anyone but my fiancé. So I might not, I might—I might not be good.”
I hated my insecurity. It was so the antithesis of who I wanted to be. I always groaned at heroines who lacked confidence, and now here I was, lacking confidence.
Calder pulled back and, after an unbearably long minute, said, “I see.”
Calder lightly brushed his thumb across my nipple as he stared at me. Almost absently, like he wasn’t aware he was doing it. I tried not to sink into that feeling. Into the thousands of tiny electric pinpricks.
“It’s over,” I said. “The relationship is over. I’m not cheating.”
Something inscrutable clouded his features. Then before I could think, his head dipped beneath my chin and his lips were on my breast. Still holding me with his palm, he worked the flesh in a rough, bruising grip that matched his kiss.
My phone vibrated.
I ignored it.
Oh my god.
My phone vibrated again, and I mentally cursed whatever asshole felt like now was the time to message me, just as his teeth closed around my skin and he bit down, tugging on the soft, fleshy part above my nipple.
My mind dissevered into a billion pieces of glitter.
This was what they meant in novels when the heroine’s legs were weak, when she couldn’t think, when her core ached. I ached. But it was a beautiful ache. A pain that shimmered.
“Please,” I said.
I wasn’t sure what I was asking for, just something.
I felt his smile on my breast as he laved his tongue over the bite, and his free hand came between my thighs. Sliding slowly—too fucking slowly. Goose bumps followed the wake of his touch.
I dug my nails into his coat, tugging him closer—
From my new angle, I could clearly see an oddly shaped birthmark on his neck. Like a horned goat.
No way.
No fucking way. It had to be a coincidence.
Calder’s touch came to my inner thigh, thumb sliding ever so slightly beneath the fabric on my panties. My gut caught on a breath as I tried to focus.
Calder was the same height and build. He had the same one-night-only rule. He was also leaving Utah. He took me to a vegetarian restaurant as if he’d already known.
I stared at the horned brown mark until my vision blurred.
Calder must have noticed the shift in me, because he lifted his head up. Lips wet. Eyes blue and sparkling. “Everything okay?”
My mouth opened, not sure what the fuck I was going to say, when he slid his thumb deeper into my panties, until he barely parted me.
The world blurred. Sound dissipated into the thrum of my heartbeat rushing in my ears. All I knew was his touch tugging my pussy open.
My thighs spread as if of their own volition.
Focus.
Fucking focus. This man is your stalker.
And I suddenly knew the exact right thing to say.
“W-wait,” I said, and instantly Calder—or my stalker?—pulled back. “There’s a spider on your neck.”
Calder yelped and leaped off me, hands flying to his neck. I tilted my head, watching him bounce around, studying him like a scientist.
Bingo.
“Did I get it?” He grasped frantically at his neck.
“Oh, my bad,” I said. “I think it was just a snowflake.”
He instantly stilled, hand still grasping at his neck. Then he exhaled, bending over his knees, breathing heavy like he’d just run a marathon.
“Thank fuck.”
After another round of heaving, he stood up.
“I don’t like spiders,” he said, voice low as he gently pushed the hair behind my ear.
Our stare throbbed and pulsated in the space between us. I searched his blue eyes, as if willing them to spill his secrets.
Why?
“I can tell,” was all I said. “I…I forgot my sister needs me tonight.”
“I’ll call you a car,” he said, then slammed his lips against mine. Forcing me against the wall. So I could feel how much he wanted me. Keeping me pinned with his hands. Grip on neck and cheek, so I just had to take it.
His hands slid into my hair, tangling. I fought to keep from growing cross-eyed.
They were so big, he could cradle my entire skull.
He peppered kisses from my cheek to my jaw to my neck. Then his teeth tugged on the thin skin.
A threadbare moan dropped from my lips at his bite. I wound my arms around his neck, into his hair, digging and scraping.
“Fuck.” He laughed against my neck. “Yeah. You really like that.”
Then Calder pulled away, his lips and teeth gone from me too quickly.
I stared at the fine dark threads of his suit, absently noting the wrinkles my grip had left.
What was I doing again?
Calder’s pointer finger slid beneath my chin, gently tugging my gaze to his. The air grew leaden, gravity heavier. The billion atoms between us connecting and colliding.
Without a word, he tugged my dress back over my breast. A different kind of heat settled inside my blood at the realization I’d still been half naked. That he’d taken care of me, before I’d asked.
Then Calder called me a car.