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Not all of them good.
“Not looking to put a ring on your finger, love, but something’s happening here. You feel it. I feel it.” My heart beats faster. I close the distance, feeling the potential for something more to grow between us, even though neither of us is really ready to accept it. “I’m not looking to rush anything. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. If you want to pretend all we are is fuck-buddies, we can do that, but we both know that’s not what this is.”
Something deep inside of me shifts. This woman managed to work her way under my skin without even trying. When was the last time someone got to me like this?
Never.
It’s never happened before.
She is special—extraordinary even—and deserves more.
Which makes her dangerous.
Dangerous because the desire to crawl inside her head, and sift through her pain, overwhelms me.
My desire to ease that pain—wipe it out if I can—unleashes all my protective instincts. More than that, she stirs the dominant within me to step up and take control.
Which is why she’s so incredibly dangerous.
“P-please, just let me go.”
“You’re free to go, love, but make no mistake, you’re already mine.”
EIGHT
Barbi
I stumbleout of the bathroom, heart racing, skin tingling from the most intense sex of my life. My head spins with what Alec said.
There’s no doubt I’m a yellow-bellied coward.
I just ran away from a man I so recklessly let into my bed, into my life, and into my head.
Alec.
He promises me things I’m convinced I’m too scared to accept.
As for the letting him into my bed, we’ve yet to actually make it to a bed. Desire stirs intense need within me, wondering what it would feel like to spend an entire night with Alec. In his bed? Tied to his bed? Subject to his desires?
He said I could live out my filthiest fantasies, but there’s no way in hell I can allow myself to open up that much to another, especially a man, and especially Alec.
He’s dangerous.
More than dangerous.
He’s a hazard to my entire state of being.
He should come with a bright neon warning sign.
But I know me, and I know my track record with men. Every time something good comes my way, I’m too fucking cowardly, and too scared, to take a chance and see if something real could come out of it. It’s the same story every time—the same old pattern—the same hollow in my chest filling with aching emptiness.
I’m a broken record, skipping, slipping, tripping. A broken heart that never healed.
Am I going to be like this forever?
Running away from good men?
Hot prickly tears stab at the backs of my eyelids, threatening to stream down my face as I go round and round—and round and round—in my head.