Chapter Five
WILL
Eighteen months ago
I didn’t spend much time in suits and ties. I lived in combat gear and camo, and I’d been trapped in this get-up for too long. I wasn’t one for the long arm of the government, but there needed to be a law prohibiting suit coats and ties after the I Dos. I ditched the jacket, rolled up my sleeves, and loosened my tie during the cocktail hour, but I was still irritable.
My only distraction was Shannon Walsh and the faint mark on the backside of her shoulder that was most definitely a product of my teeth.
And now, after hours spent playing nice with every random person my mother insisted I meet at this wedding, I wanted to play dirty with Shortcake. Yeah, I knew she hated that nickname, but there was nothing better than seeing her fired up. I was sticking with it until I found something that pissed her off even more.
Her eyes darted back and forth over the reception area, and then she hit me with a condescending glare that could melt steel. “How’s what going to go?”
This woman did strange things to me. I wanted to argue with her, taunt her, hit every one of her triggers, and then I wanted to fuck her so hard I forgot a time when I wasn’t inside her.
It wasn’t affection or anything like that. Fuck no. Just another round of this goddamn post-deployment horny, and I needed to get it out of my system. Sweat it out like a fucking fever.
“Don’t weddings make chicks crazy horny?”
She rolled her eyes at the champagne bottle as she filled her glass. “Yeah, there’s nothing cliché about that,” she said. She turned a sympathetic smile toward me, her eyes crinkling. “Look at me, rambling on about wedding clichés. I’m sorry, honey. All this love and forever bullshit must make you realize you’re old and hopelessly alone. Have you thought about a companion cactus? Your gun collection can’t be keeping you very warm at night.”
Oh yeah. This bitch had balls.
“I don’t recall discussing firearms with you last night,” I said.
“You’re telling me you don’t have a gun collection, Mr. Semper Fi?”
“That’s the Marines, ma’am.” I gave her a tight nod, waiting for her to make the next move. I wanted to get her alone, but I didn’t want to look like a clingy bitch in the process.
“It bears noting that the point has been neither discredited nor refuted,” she murmured, gesturing to her imaginary judge and jury. Lo had mentioned she was an attorney—yes, I asked my sister about Shannon before the ceremony and I’m a big, squishy pussy who can’t have a one night stand without making it complicated—and it looked good on her. Even when the lawyering came at my expense. “Permission to treat the witness as unresponsive.”
“Your room or mine,” I said.
“How about you go to your room, and if I have any interest in seeing you again, I’ll find you.” She bent and grabbed two new champagne bottles. “Bye now.”
“Excuse me, beer wench?”
Shannon’s head snapped up, and that pop of contempt in her eyes was everything I needed. I didn’t see any reason to analyze my newfound fascination with insulting her and winding her up. “Where do you get off—”
“Your mouth would be my preference, but I’ll settle for your tits. Or your ass. Whichever.” I rubbed my chin, thinking. I really missed that beard. “No. Wait. Mouth. For sure.”
“You’re a disgusting”—she slammed one champagne bottle on the stone bartop—“misogynist”—and then the other—“meathead.”
“We’ve been over that one, Shortcake, and you already know I pray at the altar of pussy.” I smirked as her face heated, her anger rising by the second, and it was game fucking on. “But don’t worry: I won’t tell anyone how much you like being manhandled. You should know I’m good at keeping secrets.”
She folded her arms on the bar and gestured for me to lean forward. “Unfortunately for you,” she said, her index finger circling toward the tent, “I’ve already told everyone about your very small”—she glanced toward my crotch—“situation. You spend a lot of time in cold water, you know, being a commando and all. Shrinkage. It was bound to catch up with you.”
Shannon pressed her index finger to her innocently evil smile, and I was not capable of waiting much longer for those lips to cover my cock.
“Darlin’, you woke up everyone within a five-mile radius with your screaming and begging. Every living soul, and the whales and sharks, too. They know all about my situation and they know how good that situation was for you.”
“You’re sweet,” she cooed, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hickey on the upper curve of her breast. Add another one to my column. “But, darlin’, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to bullshit with the best of them. I knew your ego was fragile. I couldn’t risk damaging it.”
“Keep going,” I said with a shrug. “Yeah, this is great. All your bitching is giving me time to think about whether I want you tied down while I slap your ass.”
“Keep dreaming, commando,” she said. She plucked the champagne bottles from the bar, tucked them in the crook of her arm, and started down the path toward her cottage. She paused, surveying the empty reception area, and tossed a hot smile over her shoulder that I interpreted as ‘if you want me, come and claim me.’
Yeah, that wasn’t a difficult decision, and following meant I got to watch her hips swaying in the moonlight. It was just the crash of waves not more than fifty yards away, the hum of crickets, and the click of her heels, and even if I never touched her again after this night, I’d always remember the foggy glow that surrounded her, as if clouds knew better than to get in Shannon Walsh’s way. I was no romantic, but that was a gorgeous sight.
I let her get within a few yards of her cottage—the one filled with busted furniture—before catching her around the waist and hauling her toward the door.
“It’s open,” she murmured against my neck.
Her fingers were busy with my tie and I already had a hand in her panties, but those two words were a bucket of ice water on my balls. What the fuck was she doing leaving her door unlocked?
“Don’t do that,” I said, scanning the perimeter before turning the handle. “I don’t care how nice this place is, shit happens when you aren’t careful. Especially to little things like you.”
I put Shannon down—ignoring her antagonistic scowl as she uncorked one of the bottles and sucked the fizz from the rim—and motioned for her to stay put while I swept the cottage. She wasn’t even one hundred pounds soaking wet, and for as scrappy as she was, she was no match for someone who wanted to harm her. Fuck, an excited beagle could take her down.
When it was secure, I grabbed her elbow and towed her inside. “This is exactly why you need someone looking after you. You shouldn’t be leaving this place wide open,” I said, closing the door behind her. “And I won’t fuck you until you stop pouting about it.”
“The only people at this resort are wedding guests.” Shannon tipped back the champagne as she leaned against the wall. “I have two bottles of Dom Perignon all to myself. This place has HBO and Showtime. I don’t need you, or your mansplainy dick.”
I locked the door then grabbed the champagne from her hand and sipped, and a long, weird silence simmered between us. She was too busy wanting to be right to acknowledge that she was dead wrong. Eventually Shannon slipped out of her shoes and walked into the bedroom, and maybe I was the beagle who was going to take her down because I couldn’t help but follow.
She was reaching for the zipper at her lower back, and I pushed her hands away to draw it down myself. “You’re still here?” she said, a laugh in her voice. “Don’t you have beachfront crimes to prevent? Maybe chase off some deer? Some rifles to polish?”
“Shut up, Shortcake,” I said.
The dress fell to the ground, pooling around her bare feet, and she was left in nothing more than a tiny pair of purple panties. No bra was my favorite kind of bra. I shifted her hair over one shoulder, letting my fingers coast through the soft strands while I breathed her in. There was nothing like this in my world, nothing so pure and stunning and, for right now, mine. I pressed my mouth to her neck, licking and scraping and inhaling her while she melted into me.
I didn’t do any of this last night. I fucked her plenty, but I didn’t savor her. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew the desire to do just that had nothing to do with post-deployment horny.
With her hair loosely fisted in my hand, I brushed my lips over her ear and whispered, “Kneel.”
Shannon met my eyes over her shoulder and smiled. “Ask nicely.”
“Kneel now.”
She pivoted, and her face was the most perfect mix of sweet and defiant that I’d ever seen. Right then, one thing was abundantly clear: I loved this game of beast and shrew, or whatever the fuck it was, and so did she.
Shannon anchored her hands on my waist and dropped to her knees, and that simple act of surrender nearly had me coming before she parted her lips. I didn’t have a complex philosophy on women submitting to me; I just really fucking wanted it from her. I chalked it up to finally conquering some of her insufferable brattiness. Alternative explanations need not apply.
She was busy shoving my trousers and boxers past my knees and dragging her nails down my inner thighs, and my dick couldn’t have been happier when her tongue curled around me. For a brief moment, she was hesitant, her tongue teasing over my shaft and hand pumping, but then a hot, hungry gasp echoed between us and she arched her neck to look up at me.
A victorious gleam lit Shannon’s eyes, and I realized that gasp came from me.
“If you don’t stop staring at me like that, I’m going to come all over your face.”
She laughed. She actually laughed while on her knees with her little fingers wrapped around my dick, and I liked it. “And what’s the problem with that?”
Shannon lifted an eyebrow while her tongue flicked over the head of my cock, and I was embarrassingly close to blowing it all right now. I took a calming breath and raked my hand through her hair, wrapping it around my fist again. It was a measure of control, for sure, and I needed every inch I could get. “Start sucking, Shortcake.”
I thought this would be fast and aggressive, just like every minute of last night, but it wasn’t, and maybe that was what I was supposed to figure out about Shannon. This was no beautiful or delicate blowjob, but it was so fucking attentive I forgot there was a world beyond my cock and her mouth.
Most people didn’t understand the value of a thorough blowjob. Kids today—yeah, I said it—they saw it as less intimate than sex, less meaningful, and they were wrong. Oral sex was a generous gift, a form of worship, and when it was good…it was deliverance, too.
The finer points of Shannon’s technique were lost to me, but I knew this was so much better than my fantasies from the long, lonely nights on the other side of the globe. The best part was her hair. At times, those fiery strands were woven through my fingers, gliding against my skin like silk, and at others, I pulled hard, telling her exactly what I needed. And then there were moments when she nuzzled closer to me, her hair brushing my hip, and too many sensations were careening together at once.
I cupped her chin up, watching her take all of me because I couldn’t feel this much without looking in her eyes, and that was the end. Those eyes, that hair, the light press of her teeth…I came like a motherfucking C-4 detonation. “Oh fucking…oh fuck fuck fuck fuck,” I roared, my fingers tangled in her hair and rubbing her scalp. “You’re such a good little cocksucker.”
I kept babbling incoherent praise and obscenities but none of it was enough to communicate the soul-squeezing affection I was feeling for this woman. There was a wild spasm in my belly that I couldn’t even begin to explain and everything inside me demanded that I wrap myself around her immediately. Hold her and kiss her and fall asleep with her, even if it was only for this strange, unexpected weekend. I wanted it more than I could remember wanting anything else.
Her fingernails cruised over the backs of my thighs, stroking just enough to bring me back down to earth. With my chest heaving like I’d just finished a marathon in full combat gear, I traced her swollen lips with my thumb. “Oh, baby—”
“I’m not your baby,” she interrupted. “Let go of my hair.”
What the fuck just happened here?
I opened my fist and the strands fell free, and that quickly, the moment was lost. We were back to being the people who only enjoyed arguing with each other, and those people didn’t snuggle after emotionally exhausting blowjobs.
Shannon popped to her feet and darted into the bathroom. I flopped on the bed, too fried from that orgasm to do more than exist, and listened while she brushed her teeth. Swallowing was a bonus I hadn’t expected—again, my preconceived notions about Shannon pointed to her squealing in horror at all bodily fluids—but I couldn’t decide how I felt about her erasing the evidence of it now.
I wouldn’t be able to kiss her and taste myself on her tongue, and I wanted that.
Shit. I needed to stop going on three-year deployments if I wanted to keep what was left of my sanity. Pet names? Cuddling? Post-head kissing? What the fuck was wrong with me?
“How do you not recognize the cues to leave?”
I leaned up on an elbow and found Shannon in a short blue bathrobe, one that was too thin and silky to hide the outline of her nipples. The makeup was scrubbed from her face and her eyes seemed impossibly large and bright against a riot of freckles. Her hair was up in a messy bun and her arms crossed over her chest, and my cock was more than a little interested in getting under that robe.
“Why can’t you chill the fuck out?” I asked, patting the mattress beside me. How could she not understand that I needed to touch her right now? How could she do that to me and then think I’d be able to leave? “Stop bitching about everything. Get over here and let me eat your cunt.”
Her eyes snapped shut and she jolted backward as if I’d slapped her. “Do not use that word.”
“You’re okay with ‘good little cocksucker’ but you draw the line at ‘cunt’?” I scratched my head, frowning, and gestured to the bed again. I was ready to beg for her skin against mine. “What if I do really nice things to your cunt?”
Shannon unfolded one arm and pointed to the door, and when she spoke, her voice was more precise and final than some orders of execution I’d heard from terrorist kingpins over the years. “Get the fuck out.”
The answer to the original question was yes. Yes, we were drawing the line at cunt.
“Hey, shh, it’s okay,” I said. I lumbered off the bed and dropped my hands on her shoulders. “Calm down. Shh. No reason to lose your shit, Irish Spring. It’s all good. Now get on the bed with me.”
She finally glanced up, and God, there was an entire fucking universe in her eyes. All the defiance I’d come to expect from her plus pain and fear, staring back at me. There was so much there, so much more than what she stowed just beneath the surface.
“What’s the point? You’ve already destroyed it,” she said, a laugh softening the edge of her voice.
“The point is I want to be inside you again,” I said. My inclination was to push her buttons, but instinct told me to do whatever the fuck this girl wanted, and do it now. “And while I can fuck you against the wall, I’d like to take advantage of beds while they’re available to me.”
Shannon hesitated, and I seized that opportunity to scoop her up and throw her on the mattress. She hated being manhandled in the sense that she hated liking it, and it had the side benefit of breaking the tension building between us.
“You are such an arrogant ass—”
“Yep. I know, Shortcake.” I crawled between her legs and lifted one knee to rest on my shoulder. “No more talking unless it’s to say ‘Will, you’re so amazing’ or ‘Will, your tongue deserves the Nobel Peace Prize’ or ‘Will, the only thing better than your tongue is your big, fat cock.’ Got it?”
I tugged the bathrobe loose and leaned my head against her thigh. A sigh slipped from her lips but that didn’t erase the sharp gaze she aimed at me. “I’m concerned there won’t be enough space in this room for both your ego and oxygen.”
My hand coasted over her mound and up her torso, resting between her breasts. “Relax. You can’t enjoy this when you’re all wound up.”
Shannon blinked, and I didn’t give her the chance to object. Instead, I rubbed my chin scruff against her inner thigh until she giggled and shrieked and tried rolling away from me. When my tongue finally connected with her clit, those sounds morphed into moans and purrs that traveled down my spine and lodged in the base of my cock like a hot vise.
She was soft and sweet, and again I was confronted with her tiny shape when my splayed hand fully covered the space between her hipbones. Right here, with my arm wrapped around her leg and my mouth on her cunt—nope, nope, I totally meant pussy—there was nothing else in the world.
Except a faint noise coming from the other room, and that was really fucking strange considering I locked the door myself.
I moved my hand from Shannon’s chest to her lips, shifting to pinpoint the rustling sound that seemed to get closer with each breath. “Did you hear something?” I mouthed.
She shook her head, swatted my hand away from her mouth, and whispered, “Maybe you should focus on the task at hand”—she glanced between her legs—“and not interpret every gust of wind as a guerilla attack.”
And maybe you need to be a whole helluva lot more careful, peanut.
“I like you better with my cock in your mouth.” I listened for a few more beats while she rolled her eyes. I wanted to spank her, I wanted to fuck her, and most of all, I wanted to wipe that frustrated frown from her beautiful mouth and see her come apart in my hands. “I’ll take care of you in a minute. I’m gonna look around first.”
Shannon yanked her robe closed while I tugged on my boxers, and when I focused in, I could hear someone in the other room. I flattened myself against the wall to get a feel for the location of the breathing, and I sensed footsteps moving toward my position.
I gestured for Shannon to stay on the bed, and she responded with another eye roll.
Then a crash sounded from the hall and I rounded the corner, my fist immediately connecting with bone and soft tissue. He crumpled to the ground, howling in pain, and I secured his hands against his lower back with the not-so-gentle pressure of my knee.
Shannon flipped on the light—so much for staying on the goddamn bed—and she cried, “Riley!”
“Riley?” I rolled him over and sure enough, Shannon’s little brother and his busted nose were bleeding all over the slate floor. She stomped into the bathroom and emerged with a damp towel for him.
“Son of a bitch,” he groaned, clutching the towel to his face.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I couldn’t remember which room was mine and Patrick kicked me out, but I had your key from when I was bringing in the gift baskets last night. I was just going to sleep in your bathtub but then I heard…well, I was going to trying to leave quietly but I tripped on your shoes, Shan.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
He eyed me up and down, not missing the fact I was in his sister’s room wearing only my underwear. An uncomfortable scowl was obvious beneath the growing rush of bruises that would dominate his nose and eyes tomorrow. “Long enough.”
Shannon fussed over him until the bleeding stopped, but that didn’t prevent her from casting several irritated glances over her shoulder. For my part, I stood with my arms crossed over my chest, trying to figure out why a grown-ass man was creeping into his sister’s room at three in the morning and letting her wipe his fucking nose. It wasn’t unlike the scene I observed at the reception tonight, where she kicked everyone’s asses into gear and didn’t sit down once. She did everything short of busing the tables after dinner service.
I couldn’t explain why, but it didn’t sit well with me. I knew I didn’t like it.
“Go snuggle up on the couch,” she instructed, gesturing past Riley to the small living room. “I think I have some ibuprofen, and I’ll get you some ice.”
You have to be fucking kidding me.
“What?” I snapped.
“What do you mean, ‘what’? Look at what you did to him.” She glared at me, nodding toward the bloodied towel as if I’d ripped off the guy’s arm and not simply knocked his nose off-kilter.
“And I’d do it again,” I said. “When it’s the middle of the night and something isn’t right, I shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Yeah, that’s brilliant,” she said. “You and your itchy trigger finger can go now. You’ve done enough.”
“No, no, I’m good,” Riley said, wobbling to his feet. “I’ll crash with Sam.”
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night,” I murmured.
Shannon’s little fist shot out, landing square on my bicep. “It’s rude to be an asshole after breaking someone’s nose.”
“It’s also rude to creep into someone’s cottage in the middle of the night,” I said. “I think we’re even now.”
“Not exactly how I’d define even,” Riley murmured, wiping his nose again and grimacing at the trail of blood on his hand. “Anyone want to point me in the direction of Sam’s room? Wouldn’t want another beat down tonight.”
“He’s three cottages down,” she said, patting Riley’s shoulder.
“Great. Thanks.” He moved toward the sliding glass door near the beachside patio. “And I didn’t see anything. I never do,” he muttered. He shot me another glance, but between the bruising and swelling, I couldn’t discern much from it.
Shannon followed and I trailed close behind her, my hand resting on her hip when Riley stepped out onto the patio. He turned toward Sam’s cottage but soon stopped, groaning. “Why do I always walk in on this shit?”
Shannon joined him, pulling her robe tight to her body as the damp air surrounded her. I stepped beside her, and surveyed the beach plum shrubs and sandy dunes connecting the string of cottages to the shoreline. Only a few feet away, I spied the doctor kicked back on a lounge chair.
With Shannon’s sister on his lap.
And his hands under her dress.
“Could you not wait until you got inside?” Riley yelled. “This fucking night…I’m tellin’ you. I just want to go to sleep but no, I get punched in the goddamn face and swallow a pint of my own fucking blood, and I don’t even get to stay on the couch!” He glared back at Shannon and me, shaking his head. He shifted to face Nick and Erin, and now that he wasn’t crying about his busted nose, I realized that Riley was built like a pile of bricks. If he wanted to knock me on my ass, he had a decent shot at it. “You really want Matt to blow a gasket on his wedding night? Really? Because that’s what would happen if he saw this. I can’t even go there with you two. Can’t. Even.”
“There’s no reason to tell Matt,” Erin said.
“Don’t tell Matt?” Riley shouted. “Are fuckin’ kidding me, E? You’re here one day and you’re starting shit like this? No, no. No one is telling Matt a fucking thing about any of this.” He gestured to both his sisters, and this time, I didn’t miss the fire in his eyes. “We’re all pretending none of this happened. We’re pretending there’s no attention-whoring or hate-fucking going on right now.”
“I think you might be exaggerating the situation, buddy,” Nick said. “Really, we’re just having some drinks and hanging out.”
Somewhere between the blowjob that made me hear colors and laying Riley out, we must have fallen into an alternate, cock-blocking reality. It was like every one of these assholes knew I was half-desperate to be inside Shannon again, and they were inventing obstacles in my path.
“You might be a smart guy, Nick,” Riley said, “but right now, you have no idea what you’re talking about. And you—” He pointed at Erin. “If you don’t want shit storms everywhere you go, don’t stir them up.”
I watched Riley’s fingers curling into fists, unclenching, and repeating the motion. I had no idea who he wanted to pummel more—me, the doctor, or his sisters—but I wasn’t letting that shit go down tonight. I stepped in front of Shannon, forcing some distance between her and whatever the hell was going on with these people.
Alternate. Fucking. Reality.
“Riley,” Erin said, and his gaze snapped to her. “I got this.”
“You fucking owe me,” Riley called as he walked past Nick and Erin, his head shaking and his hands fisted at his sides. “All of you fucking owe me.”
Riley disappeared into the night, and that seemed like the perfect opportunity to stop watching the doctor and the quiet sister get it on. Shannon didn’t object when I led her back inside, and she didn’t even roll her eyes when I checked all the locks. She just stood in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around her, gazing into the darkness.
She was thinking hard, if the frantic fingers tapping against her elbow were any indication. The doctor—the one who had his arm around Shannon only a matter of hours ago—had something to do with this, but the sister was most of it. Erin might be the quiet one, but she was the troublemaker.
I pointed to the robe. “Off.”
She continued staring for a moment, her fingers never quite stilling, then shrugged out of the fabric that I was torn between loving and hating.
The robe dropped to the floor but she didn’t meet my eyes. I gestured to the mattress. “Bed.”
She slipped between the sheets at my command, rolling to her side and curling her arms around the pillow. Her body was tight, coiled, and I saw it all vibrating through her. At once, she was tired and tense, and those merged into a vulnerability I couldn’t ignore. Shannon was so much—loud and nosy, spoiled and bossy—but she was so much more, too. If I watched her all night and through the rest of this weekend, I wouldn’t be able to categorize it all.
Instead, I spanked her until she begged for my cock.
*
“Doesn’t Kaisall have a house in the Hamptons now?”
I glanced over at Wes from where I was marooned on the shore. The North Atlantic in May wasn’t toasty warm, and after years away from salt water, I was reminded how hard it was to swim against ocean currents.
Oh, and I’d spent the past two nights fucking and fighting with Shannon.
“He does,” I said. “Why?”
“Let’s catch a ferry over to Montauk,” he said. “There’s good surfing out there, and I want to hear about the firm he’s running these days.”
Jordan Kaisall was a good SEAL but a better businessman. He pulled one deployment, during which he took a bullet through the kneecap when a mission went tits-up, and went on to open a private security firm. He was a good friend and he never stopped recruiting me to help run the tactical side of his operation. His protection details ranged from Washington insiders and CEOs to the occasional heiress or celebrity.
“Yeah, I’ll give him a call,” I said, feeling my heart rate gradually edging into normal territory.
Getting the fuck away from Cape Cod and mouthy redheads with delicious thighs was probably for the best. That, and the mouthy redhead in question was leaving for Boston this afternoon.
She’d yanked the blankets off sometime before dawn, and tossed my trousers at me. “You’re leaving now,” she announced.
Her hair was wild, her lips kiss-swollen, and her expression told me there was only a slim chance that she’d let my cock change her mind.
“Here I thought check out wasn’t until noon,” I said.
“And I thought you’d be a grower, not a shower,” she said. “Guess we were both wrong.”
“Hmm,” I murmured, scratching my chin while I stared at her. “You need me to tie you to the headboard again, don’t you? Maybe a good, hard fuck to start the day? We can bend that bratty attitude of yours into shape.”
Shannon murmured to herself, a small smile lifting her lips, and she narrowed her eyes in my direction. “That’s a charming offer,” she said, “but I don’t think your dick can reach my attitude, let alone bend it. I’m also leaving for Boston soon, and I’d like you to get the fuck out of my cottage.”
I kept my eyes on Shannon while stepping into my wrinkled clothes. “Have you ever met anyone with bigger balls?”
She tilted her head and offered a smile intended to eat my soul. “Hate to break it to you, but I’ve seen bigger blueberries than the set you’re rocking.”
“I meant you,” I said, pulling her against my chest. “Have you ever met anyone with bigger balls than you?”
She requested that I fuck off, and slammed the door behind me.
I stood and stretched out my hamstrings. “Where’d you find yourself last night? You weren’t with the little sister long.”
Wes laughed and leaned back in the sand on his elbows. “That crew knows how to have a good time. They give each other a ton of shit, and they could drink with any Team guy,” he said. “It pains me to say this, but I like them.”
With that thought, I dove into the waves and swam to the sandbar and back. I didn’t want to think about the Walshes, and I really didn’t want to think about my burning abs and quads either. I didn’t want to think about Shannon anymore. I lost my fucking mind with her, and the problem was, I wanted to lose it again.
When I emerged from the water and plunked my ass on the sand, Wes threw a peculiar look at me. “Did you take some shrapnel?”
“What? No,” I said. He nodded at my back, and I glanced over my shoulder to find half-moon punctures and long, shallow abrasions. “It’s nothing. Just a few scratches.”
Shortcake. Another reason to keep her tied up next time.
Yeah. Next time. She might have kicked me out of her bed before sunrise, but that didn’t mean this was over. It was fucked up beyond belief considering we got off on taunting each other, but it wasn’t over.
He eyed me while a slow smile twisted across his lips. “That’s one way to taste the local flavor,” he said, laughing.
I tried telling myself this was a one-time thing—sure, technically it was more like multiple times but all in the course of one weekend—and she annoyed the shit out of me. But there was no reason to pretend I wasn’t coming back for more of Shannon Walsh.
I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t nearly finished with that peanut.