After this, she’d probably work even harder to avoid me. And she was right, she should. I was nothing but trouble. I was everything her father had ever warned her about and more. But after tonight, that trouble was coming for her.
§
A couple of days later I was standing outside of the hardware store downtown, if you could call one street with about 50 yards of sidewalk and a couple of dusty old stores a downtown. I’d come there to buy an axe and then one of those guys as old as the hills who liked to talk was doing just that, telling me a story about something that had happened way back when. I wasn’t in a rush so I stood there. Yes, I was generally an asshole, but I liked to think I picked my moments.
Who should I see strolling down the sidewalk toward me but Kara with her corn-fed quarterback boyfriend? Bryce, Brian, whatever the hell you wanted to call him, he was an idiot. They walked together, the douchebag with a goddamned backpack slung over one shoulder. Like he was practicing to be in college. He was such a tool. I could see him now on the main quad, pledging a fraternity, popping his collar at some preppy kegger. If he even knew how to kiss a girl right I’d eat my shirt.
Kara chattered away like a hummingbird, fresh and rosy. She wore a flippy pink skirt that ended mid-thigh. Did she have any idea what those kind of skirts did to a man? Sometimes I thought she did, other times I guessed she was as naïve as a newborn foal. How many guys had tried to get a peek up that skirt today? It made me pissed off just thinking about it.
If she were mine, I’d get her alone and have her wear just that skirt, no panties. Or something even shorter with the hemline barely kissing the bottom edge of her luscious ass. I’d make her strut around for me. In heels. I shifted my stance, my cock starting to press against the zipper of my jeans. She wasn’t mine, I reminded myself. Not mine, not now, not ever.
Kara looked up and saw me. She looked away real quick, like I embarrassed her. I knew I should look away but the sadist in me kept on watching. The man next to me kept on jawing away.
As they walked past, football boy glanced at me. I narrowed my eyes. So I could see, he pulled Kara in close and gave her a kiss, marking her. Like she was his.
My hand gripped the axe I was holding so hard my knuckles went white. It probably wasn’t such a good idea to be holding an axe right then. I’d never been a violent man. I’d seen too much of it growing up to have it make me anything but sick. I got my rush out of pussy, not cracking skulls. But if anything were to push me over the edge, it would be that assclown with his arm wrapped tight around Kara.
I nodded my good-bye to the old-timer. He kept right on talking. Someone else would come along soon and listen. I climbed in my truck and couldn’t help but sit there for a second, watching them head over to his ride. Of course he drove a clean, shiny new sedan and not a dusty old truck. A goddamned Lexus. Such a pussy.
But even I had to admit, she fit with him. Both young and blond and clean-cut. Harlan loved him. I could see why. A college man, the mayor’s son. Future pillar of the community and all that.
I was sure quarterback boy liked Kara for the same reason. She was a puzzle piece that fit into his picture, a blonde cheerleader to drape on his arm. But I bet he didn’t even know her. Not really. He didn’t see every day how good she took care of her father, how she always helped everyone out without ever being asked. I knew how she sang to herself when she got real happy busy in the kitchen with the windows wide open, and how every now and then she’d let herself sit out on the porch swing and gaze at the sunset. She’d grown up without a mom and still greeted every day like a blinding ray of sunshine.
The hulking corn-fed dumbass drove off with Kara in his car. I was no nuclear physicist, but still, I bet that kid couldn’t find Kara’s g-spot with a map and a compass. I hated that he got to try.
§
A few days later, it rained. It took me by surprise. I’d been working late, past seven o’clock mending a fence, and I almost got caught in it. I ducked into the barn just in time.
A few minutes later, Kara ducked in, too. She stood there in the dark, drenched to the bone, watching the storm out the window. All hell was breaking loose outside. I wondered if it was about to happen inside, too.
She didn’t realize I was there, standing in the shadows. I knew I could stay in the darkness and wait it out. A summer squall like that, no looming clouds or warning claps of thunder, it was bound to pass quick. But some chances were too good to pass up. I took a step toward her.
I didn’t go in for grand, romantic emotions, the kind you’d find on a box of chocolates or a card from the drug store. They struck me as corny at best, straight-out bullshit when you were honest about it. But seeing Kara standing there radiant, exhilarated from the storm, her eyes shining, her hair slicked back from the rain. She took my breath away.
I took another step forward into the dim light filtering through the window. “Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
She turned toward me with a gasp. She hadn’t known I was there. I should have left well enough alone, I knew that. But then she brought a hand up to her heaving chest and I realized that her shirt was plastered to her chest. Soaked through to the skin and completely see-through, her full, lush breasts were bared entirely to me.
“You’re all wet.” I drew closer. I could smell her there in the darkness, so sweet like fresh-picked strawberries, plus something more female, intimate, drawing me closer. She started to shiver.
“You cold?” I whispered, just us, alone, in the dark. She bit her lip and nodded yes.
A good excuse to touch her. I brought my hand to her shoulder, so soft like silk. Reverent and gentle, I worshipped the feel of her shivering, smooth skin under my rough heat. Her breathing started coming faster, shallow.
With one finger, just one, holding back with every ounce of strength I possessed, I traced a line across her shoulder up over to the strap of her tank top. It was a skimpy one, the kind of thing she typically pranced around in, driving me wild. Usually, I had to turn away and force myself not to look. Not now, though. Now, I could touch.
It felt so flimsy in my grasp. I knew I could tear it right off of her.
“What are you wearing?” I asked, my voice harsh and strained. She quivered slightly under my attentions, nervous and shy. So inexperienced. But I could tell she was aroused. Her nipples stood out, pebbled, firm, pushing against the soaking wet t-shirt.
“A tank top,” she whispered.
I made a sound low in my throat, almost like a growl, and in two steps I had her back up against the wooden barn wall. I pinned her there, one hand at her creamy shoulder, one at her hip, my gaze fixed on her chest, drenched from the rain, illuminated by the fading dusk light of the window.
Her breasts looked like luscious, tantalizing fruit. There she was in front of me, ripe and ready, but not mine for the taking. Frustration lashed through me.
“Fuck.” I couldn’t bite back my swear.
“Declan?” My name came out of her lips, half-question, half plea. Watching her shiver there, trapped under my hands, I licked my lips.
“You’re soaked.” Strangled with need, my voice came out choked. I stared at her heaving chest. She followed my gaze and realized what I saw, every inch of her revealed to me, the thin cotton of her top soaked through, the light gauzy lace of her bra offering no cover. Her breasts were completely on display, the fabric plastered to them, outlining, highlighting, and her nipples were hard as rocks. The swollen tips pushed out urgent, erotic, begging for me.
“Why’d you come in here, Kara?” I growled, not breaking my gaze, pressing her there. I kept my body tight, coiled, tension lacing through me, trying to hold myself back. She wasn’t mine. She couldn’t be.
“I… it started raining.” She squirmed under my stare. “I needed shelter.”
“You came in here to get shelter.” No shelter here, not at all. I couldn’t resist dipping my head down to her bare throat and scenting her like an animal. I drank her in, filling my lung
s as if I could sustain myself on that alone. She started to pant.
“You thought you’d found someplace safe.” My lips traveled the length of her throat, so close to her skin, but not touching. But Adam couldn’t resist Eve, and he had to have been a much better man than me.
So slowly, such a light whisper of a touch, I flicked out my tongue to taste. I pressed it against her skittering, racing pulse, licking her there. Marking her.
She gasped, tilting her chin back, baring her throat. Giving herself to me. The deep, primal urge to claim her flooded my senses as I licked her soft, warm skin. Her breasts heaved with her breathing, her nipples straining and aroused.
“Instead, you found me,” I said, gruff.
I wanted to make her wild. All at once, I brought my mouth down, hot and full, around her aching, needy breast.
“Ah!” she cried out, her eyes closing as my mouth claimed her, sucking, licking right through her thin, wet shirt. Finding her sensitive, aching nipple I sucked hard, bringing my teeth down lightly, right on the tip. She gasped, clutching my shoulder.
At her other breast, I sucked and licked, bringing my hands up to cup and massage, bringing her tip right into my mouth.
“Oh! Declan!” She cried out. She liked it. I started to tease her, licking, trailing my hot tongue in a circle around her nipple. She writhed under me as I tortured her, not touching her aching, swollen bud, not giving her what she needed.
“Declan!” she nearly screamed, until I closed my mouth directly over her nipple, pulling it between my teeth, harder than last time.
Shocked, she smacked her head back against the wall. I’d never seen anything more gorgeous than Kara swept away with lust, mouth open, eyes closed, her tits in my hands, in my mouth. I could tell she was eager and ready for anything I wanted to do to her. And I’d fantasized about doing so very many things, so many filthy, nasty, dirty things she’d beg me to do to her.
Only she wasn’t filthy, dirty and nasty. She was a sweet, naïve, innocent girl who had the shit luck to stumble into the den of a beast like me. And she wasn’t mine to take. She was my boss’s daughter, explicitly forbidden in every way.
I pulled away. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I battled myself off of her, away from her. Infuriated, impotent rage coursed through me. I turned away, desperate for what I couldn’t have.