Page 8 of A Shot in the Dark (Fated Mates Collection | Triple Threat #1)

I ’m bending over the bed, stretching towards the belt when he sweeps the string of my thong aside and rests the head of his cock at my entrance, making my breath hitch.

I freeze at the feeling of gloved hands sliding along my sides, undoing my bra and skimming across my already aching nipples.

He gives them both a firm pinch and desire spikes through me as I buck up with a moan, taking only his tip inside me.

Not enough… The buttons on his vest press into the small of my back, his breath pushing the hair away from my ear as he growls, “The lady wanted traction,” and his fingers dig into my hips.

He plunges all the way into me with neither pretext nor pretense, fast, hard, and utterly unrelenting, and pulls halfway out just as fast. Again and again.

And again. I grab the bed for support, then brace myself against it, thrusting up against him, hungry.

He drives into me faster and deeper—no curves along this trip, it’s all straightaway at a blinding pace—as he does exactly what he promised—precisely what I need—pushing me to a fierce crescendo with a speed and intensity that vaults me out of my body and minutes later leaves me shuddering, swollen, and sore in all the best possible ways, and—for a moment—completely unable to form words as I lie on top of the bedspread.

Sated.

Peeling my eyes open, I watch Boots drop his used condom into the trash.

“I didn’t scream,” I murmur.

His head snaps up. “What was that?”

I lift myself on quivering arms, tip my chin up and declare, “I didn’t scream. You said I’d scream. I didn’t scream. And,” I say arrogantly as I lift one trembling leg and look meaningfully at the high heel shoe dangling from my toes, “you didn’t ‘fuck me right out of those fancy shoes of mine.’”

He goes impossibly still except for the twitch of his jaw.

I roll my foot lazily, watching the shoe dance in mid-air.

The room grows thick with tension and I freeze, remembering I don’t know this bull I’m teasing with a red cape.

“Did you think that was all of it?” he asks with deceptive tenderness. “You’re right. You didn’t scream. But you also didn’t manage to do what I told you to, did you?”

My brow puckers. “I didn’t?”

“Let’s try it again,” he orders, and I hear the sound of a condom wrapper opening. “Now grab the belt.”

Two hours later there is nothing left of me but swollen flesh, sweat, trembling legs, and a sense of deep, beautifully aching satisfaction.

“What a good girl you are,” Boots purrs as he pulls out of me slowly, giving me one last, back-arching shudder of pleasure.

He leans over me, stretching above my head, his cock between my breasts, the smell of the condom and our mingling sweat thick.

The belt binding my wrists comes undone and he rolls off of me, dragging the supple black leather teasingly along the length of my body.

My bracelets lay scattered across the bed.

My shoes? One lies all the way across the room, beside the door, and the other is somehow standing straight up on the nightstand beside the alarm clock.

The sigh that rushes out of me pours from the tips of my curled toes to the top of my head.

As the world reassembles itself around me, I hear the distant sound of a zipper. Boots threads his belt back through every belt loop flawlessly, only looking my direction long enough to say, “We leave at six.” Then he’s out the door and gone.

The fuck .

He’s right: Boots does not lack imagination.

In my dreams I am no longer “little Sylva Waters” lost and alone, a teen girl wandering the woods of Greenbriar after learning of the accident that stole away her parents—her safety net—but something fierce and fluid moving as one with the forest’s drifting leaves, and owning every inch of my power as I stalk through the night, my eyes casting moonbeams that slice past the here, the now, piercing into previously unseen worlds.

I pause beside a lake, mesmerized by the stars caught just below its rippling surface, and parched, I move forward, bowing low to slake my thirst with the cool water—to quench the fire rising within me again.

I startle, seeing a face I do not recognize reflected back at me and yet… I recognize her.

She is wild, indomitable—wolf but woman—and I am all at once monstrous and beautiful in my startling totality.

Need thrumming through me with an undaunted intensity wakes me in the early hours of morning, and sore as I am, I get out of bed with thoughts of finding Boots in mind.

I stretch and let loose a delighted groan.

How long can this roadtrip possibly last?

He’s a fast driver—will this be our only night in a motel?

A moment of dizziness overtakes me at the thought of tumbling to the bed with him again.

Something hums inside me, a strange sensation making me soften at the thought of those hands all over me…

The sensation grows—I like it. I don’t like Boots, but I am absolutely aware that I don’t have to like him to keep fucking him.

The sensation humming through me picks up a vibrato that makes me press my thighs together and straighten.

I am warm, as if a fire is being built within me.

A fire Boots can quench. It’s only when I get to the door that I realize I don’t even know what room he’s in.

Frustration moans out of me as I press against the cold metal door.

I rub my breasts against the chilly metal, my nipples hardening.

Shit . Why am I so excited? So warm?What is wrong with me?

I have never been this horny in my entire life.

Did Boots slip me something? Before he slipped me his cock?

I run back through the day… No. He never had the opportunity.

He was honest. He didn’t do anything to me—well nothing I didn’t ask him for…

And yet I hunger for more.

I am suddenly and unequivocally ravenous, as if something inside of me has awakened from too long a slumber and must feed.

Maybe I can find him—go to the front desk and ask whoever’s there to tell me where he is.

Maybe whoever’s at the front desk is in need of a little distraction…

The girl who’s always had certain standards is really not that picky…

Not right now.

I am nothing but a bundle of raw nerve endings craving stimulation—a lonely guitar string in need of a good, firm plucking.

The scent of cigarette smoke seeps through the ill-fitting door and I wonder who’s standing on the walkway right outside my door. I stretch up to peer through the peep hole but only see a few twisting threads of smoke. I undo the chain and slide the bolt back, turning the knob, ever so slowly…

Before I can fully open the door, Boots has stormed into my room, cigarette smoke trailing him as he secures the door—bolt and chain—one gloved hand wrapping just below my jawline and forcing my head back as he moves me back towards the bed.

I am the hapless gazelle and he is the lion primed to tear me apart.

“Going somewhere, princess?”

A pulse of sensation spirals through me, tightening the very core of me as the breath catches in my throat immediately beneath the press of his hand. Fuck me .

“Mnoo,” I wheeze.

“That’s not what it looked like. Looked like you were headed out the door for something.” His nostrils flare and I get a hint of eyebrows. “Maybe a quick fuck?”

I manage “...looking for you…”

His grip lessens the smallest bit and it’s more like he’s cradling my skull than readying to crush it. Even so, his breath scalds my neck when he grits out, “Your affiliation?”

Tears burn at the corners of my eyes and he suddenly relents, yanking his hand away with the same alarming speed he first applied it. I paw at my throat, gasping, “I don’t have any! Don’t you fucking get it? I have no one! Fuck me or kill me— no one will care.”

He turns his head away from me, his expression dark and unreadable. When he faces me again, the predatory lines of his face have only sharpened. “You were headed out for a fuck, right, princess?”

My eyes dart around the room, panic building in me along the heat of my need. Shit . This is the room where I’m going to die and the decor is probably best described as a mix of the forgotten 1960s meets “Jackson Pollock by blacklight.”

Shit .

And still I admit, “Yes.” I do not lie, I do not try to convince him otherwise. For some reason, I simply can’t. I have never wanted anyone—any thing —this much… Everything about me feels warm and wet and infinitely pliable.

“Then there’s only one thing to be done for that…” Boots growls, replacing his hand on my throat, almost gently now, like he’s savoring the moment.

Closing my eyes, I tremble, waiting for the end to come.

His breath hot in my ear, he reminds me, “Your safe word is Mercedes,” and everything about me loosens, relaxes. “Repeat after me: My safe word is Mercedes.” My legs quiver but the aching need inside me only grows.

“My safe word is Mercedes.” I lean into him, my knees threatening to buckle. He smells so…dangerous, so male.

“Are you awake enough to consent?”

I am awake enough for anything involving Boots. “Yes.”

He inhales deeply, his chin lifting. “Do you know what’s happening to you?”

“What?”

He drops his hand from my throat and, brushing a gloved thumb across my forehead, he sighs like he’s confirming some suspicion. Then the cold but sensual smile I’m coming to equally loathe and revere slides across his lips and I stretch up on my tiptoes to nip at his jaw.

I don’t even recognize my voice when I snarl, “I hate what you’re doing to me.”

The smile blooms, becoming a hungry grin. “I’m not doing anything to you unless you want me to.”

I’ve never wanted anything more and he knows it.

“Do you want to use your safe word?”

“No,” I vow, presenting my wrists for his belt. He lashes them together with a speed that does not fail to impress.

“Good grrrl,” he snarls, his nearly animal growl rumbling through me and softening something low in my belly. “Remember your choices?”

I think back to what I found in his pockets earlier and pick my poison, my body heating in anticipation.

And then Boots knocks my feet out from under me, and I drop to the bed like a rock with him on top of me, a flurry of red flags filling my mind’s eye as I realize that the girl I don’t fully recognize letting a strange man do things to her?

She’s definitely me.

I just don’t understand why .