Prologue:

I’m Not This Kind of Girl

My mother always used to say that I snap under pressure. Stack a ballet recital on top of a math test, and I’d pee my pants. So, what happens when your whole life is in boxes, traveling from Ohio to Texas, and then your Volvo’s heater pops–in January?

You take it to the shop, naturally.

I hadn’t done anything mind-numbingly reckless yet. But I was about to.

My eyes tracked the mechanic from behind my box-framed glasses. I sat cross-legged in the waiting room, an open magazine on my lap, but there was this broad window peering directly into the garage. And the mechanic was dangling some metallic coil into the engine of my shabby wagon. It must have been heavy. His abdomen flattened and hardened from the strain. A band of muscle running from his back to his hips stood out beneath his skin.

I knew because he was shirtless.

In January.

With the bay doors wide open, like a maniac.

The mechanic shoved at my fender with his hips, forcing the hood down with a thrust.

The sound of Stone Temple Pilots’ “Half the Man” seeped through the window.

His mid-length hair was the color of pepper and void of any rhyme or reason. No comb, no product. It stayed wherever it landed. He moved around the garage as if the entire place was an extension of his body. Juicy biceps—

“You aren’t wearing sunglasses, you know.” The teenaged receptionist interrupted my moment with a joyless grin.

I tore my attention from the glass and cleared my suddenly tightened throat. “I was—looking at my reflection.”

“Yeah, a lot of women do,” the girl replied with a smirk, returning to the task of texting someone.

I focused on my dim reflection in the glass, critiquing the sloppy bun at the nape of my neck, overflowing with thick, dark hair. I’d been forced to wear clothes I wouldn’t normally wear: a white blouse a few touches too tight, a black pencil skirt with a small rip along the hem, wool stockings, a green plaid parka, and Converse sneakers. Boxes still lined the halls of my new place, and it was hard to find my good panties, much less a matching pair of heels.

My first day as a public defender for Pelham County Court loomed over me. This heater was going to run me an extra $200 when my budget was already spread as thin as the frost on my damn windshield. And this teenager thought I was drooling over her boss? Please! I have much bigger—

“Blown heater?” a gravelly baritone called with a thick twang.

I adjusted my glasses and forced myself to a stand. He swaggered across the waiting room, flipping a black t-shirt over his forearm as he joined the teenager at the desk. Even though I was making eye contact with his nipples, I was the one who felt naked. I can’t believe I’m in here wearing sneakers. What would my mother say?

As I crossed the room, I could see the details I’d missed. His shrewd gray eyes were dappled with hints of green, and his jaw was almost imperceptibly wider than his forehead and overgrown with stubble, giving him a near barbaric countenance. This wasn’t tempered by the fact that he couldn’t seem to summon a smile for me, even when our eyes met. I swallowed as I reached the counter, wondering if he might yell at me for mistreating the engine or something.

“I’m the blown heater,” I announced meekly. Maybe he’d tear open my blouse and my bra and say, “I’m gonna teach you a lesson about cranking that coil too hard—”

“You’re all set.” He gave me a perfunctory nod, clapped his secretary on the back, and retreated into the smaller, windowless office behind the front desk.

I talked my nipples back down. “Yeah, a lot of women do,” the receptionist’s bored voice echoed in my head.

She collected my bill from a DOS-era printer and passed it for my review.

My eyes ogled the final number, tallying the itemized expenses, certain that labor couldn’t possibly be that expensive.

This was almost nine hundred dollars, and I hadn’t even gotten my first paycheck yet.

I swallowed the ball in my throat. “This was only supposed to be a couple hundred dollars,” I assured her with a little shake to my voice. “I made sure before I came here. I Googled it.”

That teenybopper receptionist actually scoffed at me. “You should have requested an estimate,” she reminded me, like I was an idiot.

I am an idiot. I should have requested the estimate. I thought it had been the blower, but it was the damn coil... Fuck. I was fucked.

I pressed my palm to my forehead and gazed down at the floor, trying to do the mental math on survival. Technically, I had 918 dollars in my checking account. And that was about it. First month’s rent had already been paid, but there were no groceries in the fridge or anything. Fuck!

“It’s nine—”

“I heard you!” I snapped at the girl, even though she was about ten years younger than I and this wasn’t her fault. This was my fault. I frazzled and frayed under the pressure. I pursed my lips, and my eyes stung. I was not going to cry in front of this kid. I was not going to cry in front of this kid. It would be okay. I’d figure it—

“Everything all right out there?” the mechanic called through his closed office door.

“The lady’s got a problem,” the receptionist yelled back to him. “She doesn’t have nine hundred dollars.”

The office door opened, and he leaned on its frame. I pulled my face out of my hands and willed myself to stop almost-crying. He wore a black t-shirt and an expression of stifled sympathy on his face. “Hey, come on in,” he invited, nodding toward the chair across from his desk. A dimple sank into one of his cheeks and his eyes sang as they touched on me. “This happens more often than you think.”

I followed his command and entered the office, but I couldn’t settle in that chair like some beggar. I shook out the nervous energy in my hands and twisted, and he thrusted a handshake into my space.

“I’m Ace.” His body heat radiated into mine and his scent tickled beneath my nose, a scent of sweat and metal and dirt, all things that should have been repulsive to me. But on him, that salty scent made my lips hot, made me feel bee stung and a little dizzy. Our palms slid together and the crisp winter air melted right off my fingertips. My throat pulsed. My pussy twinged sweetly between my legs, and my eyelashes softly fluttered.

“I’m Miss—” I swallowed the lump in my throat and corrected myself. “I’m Michelle.”

“Pleasure, Miss Michelle,” he said, retracting his hand and leaning his ass on the desk. Was it all in my mind that something had happened right then? “You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

“No,” I answered vehemently.

“Just wanted to be sure,” Ace assured me, putting his palms up in the sign of surrender.

A surprising welt of resentment formed on my heart. I was not fucking homeless. I was not a drug addict or a prostitute. This was just a hard year for me; I didn’t need his goddamn pity.

If only Mommy and Daddy could see me now... begging for a payment plan from a total stranger. I could hear my mother in my head, scoffing, “A tradesman!”

I stood there and seethed wordlessly, trying to figure out how to say that I didn’t need help and I really needed help at the same time.

“We could always put together some sort of a payment plan.” Ace lightly plucked the bill from my hand and examined it. “Could you do three hundred dollars for the next three months? That sound fair?”

I bent my lower lip between my teeth and bit it gently. I couldn’t bear to confess that it was still three hundred dollars over budget. Three hundred dollars could feed me all month.

“Um,” I whispered. What could I do? “I... I might be able to do...” I had to give him something. “Fifty?”

His eyes darkened with something unknown and his nostrils flared. “Hm. What about this?” Ace crumpled the bill into a ball in his hand and nodded at me. “Welcome to Pelham County, Michelle.”

My eyes ticked from the ruined bill to his eyes and back again, unable to compute such a gesture in this day and age. I wanted to tell him no, but my heart was already singing with gratitude. “Wh—really?” I squeaked.

Ace flicked the ball of paper over his shoulder, where it landed and skittered away somewhere behind his desk. He grinned sheepishly, privately proud of himself in this moment.

“Oh, my god!” I gasped, bouncing toward him and throwing my arms around his neck. I continued to jump up and down without thinking about how my breasts were pressed up against his chest, grinding with my every bounce. All I could think about was how my heat coil had been replaced for free, how I would be able to afford groceries all winter now. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Ace said, lifting his hands to grip my forearms and pry them from around his neck. He forced my embrace off him, but my breasts were still against him. My head spun until I recognized the sensation of an erection slowly blooming against my thigh. Then I took a step back and returned to my senses. In spite of the softness in his face, his brow was hard. “You’re welcome,” Ace croaked.

“You don’t know how much this means to me,” I went on. “There’s got to be some way I can repay you.” Yes, in the context of the erection, that sounded bad. But I really meant it. I wanted to repay him.

A smile cracked the corner of Ace’s lip, but he wouldn’t look directly at me. “I know exactly how much this means to you,” he reminded me. “Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

I closed the space between us and wrapped my arms around his neck one more time, no longer wild and mindless. Controlled and purposeful. “Thank you,” I said again, a soulful whisper against his neck. I could still feel his hard length pulsing on my thigh. The irrational urge to roll my tongue along his skin occurred to me, but I pulled my mouth away before I did something crazy.

“You’re welcome,” Ace said again. He swallowed and I stood on the tips of my toes to drop a light, innocent kiss onto his cheek.

He exhaled with a shudder as we separated. “Don’t do that again,” he advised somberly. I barely registered that his hands had come up to encircle my upper arms when I kissed him.

“You’re right,” I said, eyelashes fluttering open again. Had I just sexually assaulted him? “I just—”

His rough palms suddenly went gentle as they traveled up my arms to crest my shoulders. He tucked his thumbs into my parka, smoothing it off my shoulders. His gray-green eyes glued to me, reading all the signs, searching for one that said stop. I stared back at him like I was on drugs. My nipples pulled taut and blood crept up into my cheeks. My heart pounded in my fingertips and in my lips. “Tell me to stop,” his voice grated against my earlobe, half-pleading. But I couldn’t do it. I let out a soft moan instead.

My jacket hit the floor and one of my hands snaked into his hair with a mind of its own. My breasts and my pussy felt like they were shimmering to life. His mouth crashed over mine and all the gentility of the moment shattered and fell. I whimpered as he pawed at my ass, hauled me into the air, and twisted to slam me down on his desk. I shook with the certainty of what would happen next, but I still couldn’t say no. He gripped my blouse and tore it open, sending buttons everywhere, exposing my fleshy breasts restrained in a satin bra.

“Michelle,” Ace breathed in a low growl. He blinked slowly, like I’d drugged him, too. “Get out of here.”

“But I don’t have a shirt now,” I said.

Ace sidled closer and scooped his hands inside each velvet cup, his thumbs grating over my nipples. I spilled out into his hands, and he closed his eyes and breathed, “You can borrow mine.”

His hard-on threatened to split the gray overalls sagged around his hips, and I bit down on my lower lip as I stretched my fingers to him, blinking up at him hopefully from behind my glasses. Ace’s eyes opened just in time to see my fingers drifting tentatively toward his manhood.

“Don’t—” Too late. I rubbed over the fabric of his pants, entranced by how detailed he was, even still fully clothed. He rumbled, “Fuck,” and reached behind my head, gripping my messy bun and yanking its elastic free. All the waves fell down around my shoulders as Ace called out, “Go home, Amy!” His eyes never left me. They traced over my body like I was a centerfold in a dirty magazine, and he dropped to his knees, splitting my thighs apart.

I stiffened like I was going to tell him to stop but I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t.

Ace’s hard hands slid up into my skirt, bending around my wool stockings and stripping them off. My sneakers thudded to the floor next.

In this quiet moment, I felt the urge to defend myself. “I’m not this kind of girl,” I assured him.

“I’m not this kind of guy,” Ace said as he buried himself in my skirt. I felt a hot mouth against my panties, felt teeth ensnare the crotch and tug it away. My heart hammered and the room spun. Was this really happening? Was I really about to do this? With some guy named Ace, of all—

But then his tongue slathered over my clitoris and every thought in my head spun out of reach. My skirt shoved inch by inch up to my hips and I fell back onto the desk, my head lolling over its ledge. I closed my eyes and let him tongue me as hard as he could. I trembled with the certainty that a complete stranger was going to feel me come all over his face. I’m really not this kind of girl. I just... You... You...

His tongue vanished and the sensation against my clit changed into something hard and soft at the same time, thick and piping hot. My eyelashes flew apart, and I lifted my head to look down. The bare flesh of his gorgeous cock pressed to my clitoris, toying over it, up and down, up and down, up and down, like he was desperate to win some video game and all he had to do was hammer the right button.

Orgasm boiled over inside me. I loved just seeing his cock, as long and hard and round as a fucking scepter. I couldn’t believe that I was doing this and I didn’t have the integrity to stop. I wasn’t so clean. Maybe I was this kind of girl all along.

Ace’s prick slid down a crucial inch and found my hole soaking wet and primed for him. It would be a challenge to not slide instantly inside me, and I couldn’t stop him. I didn’t have the moral strength or the situational wherewithal. I shuddered and moaned and he filled me completely, blasting me into another dimension. My back arched, my neck craned, and my mouth opened wide in ecstasy. His skin singed mine where we touched, and he became so fevered inside me.

“Oh, fuck,” Ace breathed, slamming into me with animal abandon. I clung to him and came explosively, pussy walls shuddering and squeezing on his member, twisting around him like the grip of a python. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he grumbled, thrusting faster. My back arched off the desktop, and I failed to absorb the sound of my skirt ripping higher. “I’m going to come,” he warned me, breathless. “Tell me to stop...”

But I couldn’t do it.

My mother always said I snap under pressure.