CHAPTER 4
Jorie
I can tell the moment something changes between me and this man who just ruined me for life. After giving me the best sex of my entire life… after freeing me from myself… he turns inward and closes off.
I know he came. Maybe even twice.
But his eyes right now are blazing with fury, and I don’t want to see it.
I don’t want to know what I did wrong, or how bad I was, so I close my eyes against it.
His hand comes to my jaw, gripping it hard enough to get my attention. My eyelids spring open. It’s not lost on me that he’s still moving slowly within me, yet he looks at me like I’m repulsive.
“Let me down,” I mutter as my hands push against his chest.
He complies immediately, pulling out of me and setting me down so fast my legs buckle and I fall to my knees. Taking two steps back from me, he pulls the condom off and tosses it near a garbage can against the adjacent wall. It falls short and hits the concrete as I push back up.
“Cover yourself up,” he snaps as he tucks himself back into his jeans, zipping them up.
I pull my dress down over my bare ass, feeling wetness between my legs that’s evidence of my own arousal and not his semen. It shames me greatly, and then I’m quickly covering my breasts with the material.
Before I know what’s happening, he’s got his huge hand clamped around my upper arm and pulling me to the door. He pauses just long enough to bend over and swipe my panties off the ground, shoving them in his front pocket.
I struggle to keep up with his long legs, which is difficult given the four-inch heels Elena talked me into wearing. My legs are weak, and I’m so confused over the fact I can feel little tremors of pleasure still pulsing between my legs.
It’s in vain when I try to jerk my arm free, and fear fills me when he drags me out of the glassed room, out of The Silo, down another hall that says Private, and into a locker room I suspect is for employees.
“Goddamn it, Jorie,” the man says as he turns me to face him while still gripping me tightly.
“Ow, you asshole,” I grit out as I successfully jerk my arm away from him and rub it. “What the hell?”
He just stares at me with hard, flat eyes.
“Wait,” I say as a shiver runs up my spine that has nothing to do with a residual orgasm and everything to do with apprehension. “Did you just call me Jorie?”
His shoulders drop almost in defeat and his head sags so he’s looking at the floor. Almost wearily, he loosens a tie at the back and pulls the mask over his head. When he looks back at me, my legs go numb.
I stumble back two feet, my ass coming up hard against a locker that rattles. “No.”
Walsh Brooks stares at me without an ounce of contrition for what he just did to me, but he’s clearly distressed if the darkness in his eyes is any indication.
“What in the fuck are you doing here?” he growls, and his voice is different from what I’d heard in that glass room. It hits me all at once that the voice I’d heard in there was Walsh Brooks amped up on kink and lust, which was why his words came out all gravely and loaded with desire, changing it so much I hadn’t heard anything that resembled the man I knew.
I haven’t seen him in almost ten years, and so much has changed about him. Gone is the shaven, clean-cut executive. Before me stands a man who looks like a rock god. But he’s not that either. He’s very much a businessman who owns a casino here in Vegas. He’s a millionaire probably a million times over.
But his hair is just down to his shoulders, dark as sin and slightly wavy as it falls back from a middle part. His fawn-brown eyes are the same, straight nose and cut cheekbones, but he’s wearing a trimmed beard that runs just along his jawline and it’s so damn sexy.
Then again… Walsh was always the sexiest man I’d ever seen regardless of how he wore his hair. I’d crushed on him hard in my teens, and even after I turned eighteen and headed to Los Angeles, I tended to compare men I’d dated and slept with to him.
Except when I married Vince. When I did that, Vince was it for me, and I didn’t think about Walsh in any fashion other than being a family friend.
A dear, devoted friend with whom I have no business doing what I just did.
I just stare into his hard eyes, trying to reconcile that I just had sex with Walsh Brooks, best friend to my brother Micah, and my onetime hero when I needed one the most.
No, not just sex. Fabulous, dirty, kinky, unrestrained, mind-blowing—
“Answer me, damn it.”
I jump in fright over the edge in his voice. “I don’t know,” I say lamely.
This seems to piss Walsh off as in two strides, he’s hulking over me, his bulky frame so intimidating I find myself shrinking away from him.
“Don’t act scared of me, Jorie,” he snaps as he places his palms on the locker beside my head. “I was just balls deep inside of you, and you’ve known me your entire life. But I want to know… why the fuck was I just balls deep inside of you?”
I’m going to hell. The vivid reminder of what we just did causes a surge of wetness between my legs. It’s not quite a moan that escapes my mouth, but it must sound like it because I swear flames leap in Walsh’s eyes.
“You want it again, don’t you?” he murmurs as he studies me closely.
I shake my head in a bald-faced lie.
“Micah’s baby sister, all grown up, and I’m betting drenched for it again,” he mutters.
Shit… I can feel something warm running down the inside of my leg, so I press them together.
“You’re squirming, Jorie,” he taunts.
“I’m not,” I lie again.
Walsh is pissed this happened, but that anger is waning. Instead, the more he talks, the more his eyes become heated. His voice is sensual, not condemning.
“Will it help if I admit that I want you again?” he asks, but rather than wait for my answer, he’s dragging my hand to his crotch where I feel his hard thickness pressing against his jeans.
I swallow hard, and even though I should pull my hand away, I curl my fingers around him and squeeze. Walsh’s eyes flutter closed and his forehead wrinkles with what appears to be pained distress.
“Except I can’t fucking have you because you’re Micah’s little sister,” he snarls as he tears away from me. He paces back and forth, scrubbing his fingers through his long hair to pull it away from his face before letting it go again as he turns to me.
He stares at me thoughtfully for a moment and then asks, “Where’s your friend?”
“That was Elena,” I say quietly.
“That was Elena?” he asks through gritted teeth. He knows Elena as well since she’s been my best friend my entire life.
I nod. “She said she’d meet me in the Social Room.”
Walsh nods curtly. “Alright… let’s go.”
“Where?” I ask as I push off the locker.
“I’ll escort you back to her, then you two are getting the hell out of here and never coming back,” he mutters as he holds a hand out to me.
I’ll admit, I’ve been more than a bit rattled since Walsh revealed himself to me. But I’ve taken about all his domineering ways that I can handle for today.
“Go to hell, Walsh.” I put my hands on my hips and narrow my eyes. “You aren’t my keeper. I don’t do what you say.”
Wrong words, apparently, because he’s on me in a nanosecond, backing me right into the lockers again. “You don’t do what I say? You fucking impaled that sweet pussy on a dildo because I told you to, Jorie. You were so hot for it, you would have done anything I told you to.”
I know Walsh is only trying to get me out of here, but his words are incredibly shaming to me. He has no clue what it took for me to come here and give into this challenge for myself personally.
For my fucking self-esteem.
“Fuck you,” I snarl, pushing past him and starting for the locker room door.
“Jorie, wait,” he calls, an apology in his voice. That just pisses me off even more, and I walk faster. My hand hits the handle to swing open the door, but his palm is there, holding it shut. “Just… wait a minute, okay?”
I don’t turn to face him, feeling the heat from his body against my back. “Let me out,” I murmur.
“Why did you come here?” he asks again, this time almost pleading. “And please tell me I didn’t scar you for life with that… that…”
I whip around to face him, and he takes a cautious step back. “With that impaling of my sweet pussy?” I ask with derision.
He ignores my taunt and, to my surprise, lifts his hands to my face. His fingers run along the feathers from my temple across my forehead, and then he finds what he wants. He carefully peels the cap off my head, releasing my hair, which I’m sure looks horrid after being stuck under there. I give it an unconscious shake, and the flat crop of bangs that are cut severely over my forehead falls forward.
“You cut your hair,” he says as his eyes roam over me. I had indeed cut my long, almost black hair to just below my jawline in an angular bob. Vince had been all about the long hair, but it clearly wasn’t enough to get his dick up, so I had Elena lop it off a few weeks ago.
I lift a nervous hand, tucking the hair back on one side, but I don’t respond.
“Why were you here?” he asks for a third time, dropping his hands to his side.
“It’s personal,” I return, my gaze dropping to the floor.
“Come on, Jorie.” He pushes my face back up with his fingers under my chin. “It’s me.”
“It’s you,” I agree. “But I don’t know you anymore. Haven’t seen you for ten years. You didn’t even come to my wedding.”
A muscle in his jaw starts to tick, but he remains committed to finding the truth. “I take it you’re not married anymore?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Because the Jorie Pearce I know wouldn’t step out on her husband,” he says simply.
“We’re separated,” is all I’m willing to give.
“And you’re what… here to break the single life back in?”
“Something like that,” I mutter.
“Bullshit,” he says harshly. “Now quit screwing around and just tell me why I had the hottest, dirtiest sex imaginable with the one person I should have never done that with?”
“Because I don’t think I’m any good at it,” I yell, then immediately cringe with embarrassment. My voice drops about ten decibels to a mere whisper. “I’m here to find out if that’s true or not.”
Walsh’s head jerks in surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“Vince told me that when he kicked me out of our house,” I mutter as I turn my face to the side to stare at the lockers.
“I’ll fucking kill that bastard,” Walsh growls, and my eyes snap back to him.
His face is awash with fury. I know from very personal experience that Walsh may not kill Vince, but he’d beat him so bad he’d wish he were dead. Walsh has done it before to a man on my behalf.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say upon a long, tired sigh. I drop my gaze once again, suddenly feeling a million years old and wanting nothing more than to climb into bed.
To my surprise, Walsh steps back from me and gestures toward the door. “You should get going.”
My eyes slide up and lock with his for a moment. Then I nod and turn for the door.
“Jorie.” My name comes out on a sigh, and I turn to look over my shoulder. “You were magnificent. Best sex of my life.”
I give him a small smile. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that is the Walsh I know. He would be the one who would do whatever he could to take away my pain.
I also know that from personal experience.
“Thanks,” I say before I walk out the door.