THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE Read online

  She wasn’t expecting a kiss. He pressed his face to hers, using a hand to grab at her neck and position her head so her mouth was more easily accessible. And then he pressed the first, light kiss against her mouth, moving quickly into a harder embrace, his mouth straining against hers. She opened her mouth to say something in response, but that only deepened the kiss. She kissed back, her mouth instinctively opening more, their lips folding into the lines of each other’s.

  His hand found the hair at the back of her head. He balled it in one hand, pushing her as close to him as he could possibly push her without their chests heaving against each other’s. And then he pressed his tongue forward, dragging it across her front teeth as he moved to push it into her mouth.

  She shoved him away with both hands.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

  “A few things, apparently,” he dragged his hand across his lips, savoring the taste of her mouth there. “Are you saying you didn’t like it?”

  She shook her head, trying to clear it. Maybe he would take that as a “no, I didn’t like it, and I don’t appreciate random dudes forcing their mouths on mine.” Part of her did like it, though, and her skin tingled from where she imagined his body pressing up against hers.

  No. There was no way she could like this. This dude was exactly the type who ruined people’s lives, and not just romantically speaking. And of the men she had been romantically involved with, none had been as arrogant as this dude, but they’d still all managed to break her heart. Still, she couldn’t deny the electric feeling at the back of her neck where his hand had been, and the small sparks dancing across her lips from where his mouth had pressed to hers.

  “Just stay away from me.”

  “I can’t do that,” he argued.

  She made to get to the driver’s side of her car. She didn’t keep a purse on hand, and she didn’t keep a wallet on her either. Most of her personal items were kept in her right jean pocket, and she tried not to keep too much in there. Debit card, ID, car keys, pepper spray. Stuff like that. She fished her car keys out of her pocket. She remembered the pepper spray she had on her, but, if this guy tried anything she didn’t like, she could always just shank him with her keys.

  Part of her didn’t want to shank him. Douchey as he was, he was still incredibly attractive. And a human being, after all.

  She laughed to herself. Nah. She would stab this guy without issue if he kept bothering her. And even though she’d liked the kiss, hell, kissing someone without permission – especially after pissing them of – was pretty much just…sexual harassment. But at the same time, that wasn’t it at all.

  She glared at him, moving past him. But he moved too, and blocked her again.

  “What do you want now?”

  He shrugged, looking at her for a second before going through his pockets briefly. “Happen to have a pen on you?”

  “Uh…” She went through her pockets again. Deep in her right pocket, past all the stuff she usually kept in there, her fingers found the outline of a black pen. “Yeah. Here.”

  She passed it to him without question, not understanding why she did so. Maybe there was something about him that made her want to help him? No. That couldn’t be it. Maybe he just really, truly desperately needed a pen, and some deeper animal part of her realized that. That doesn’t even make any sense, Victoria, she scolded herself. She quit trying to justify it to herself and ignored the way it felt when his fingers brushed against hers.

  The arousal was impossible to ignore, however. It couldn’t be the way he treated her; she hated that, familiar as that act was with men. She just hadn’t had sex in a while, that was all. She felt the tingling between her thighs, telling her that Darren Saylor did, no matter how she tried to deny it, turn her on.

  God damn it.

  It was just because it was late. Or, early, rather. But late to her sensibilities. That was the excuse she was going to use, and she would stick with it; but that would never come up, because not he – or anyone else, for that matter – would ever have to know how she felt looking at the expanse of skin showing above the neckline of his shirt.

  She heard the sound of him scribbling on a piece of paper.

  “Here,” he said, after a few moments. When he wrote, he held the cap of the pen in his mouth. This struck Victoria as strangely adorable, but then she fought with herself on whether there could actually be anything adorable about a guy like this. Better not to think about it than to go down a path you can’t back down from, Victoria.

  “This is my number.”

  “I got that,” she said, eyeing the piece of paper suspiciously as he handed it to her.

  He raised an eyebrow, his hand still out in offering even as she pointedly ignored the paper he held. “Just take the number.”

  “No.”

  He leaned in closer to her. He wasn’t trying to intimidate her using his body, but it was just something that came so naturally to him. Unfortunately, it did nothing to impress Victoria. She just lifted her chin defiantly and stared dully back.

  “You hate me, right?”

  “You could say that.” It was difficult to hate someone you barely knew, but if any names were going under that column, Darren Saylor’s was definitely one of them.

  “Awesome.” It was clearly sarcastic, but neither of them missed that. “Take the number and I’ll leave.”

  “Promise?”

  “I don’t do promises.”

  “Alright, then no deal.” Victoria turned her back to him, her car keys out and ready. She hit the “unlock” button, setting her car to chirping, and then her hand went to the door handle.

  Darren grabbed her forearm before she could open it then, desperation tinging his voice in something uncharacteristic for him.

  “Promise,” he said.

  It was obvious to Victoria that that was what it was: desperation, being forced to – for once – not to be the one with the winning hand. The upper hand. The air between them was so tense.

  She disregarded the way he held onto her arm, even though it sent the skin there on fire. Her ignoring him drove him crazier, though, and both his hands moved to her waist. He didn’t have to hold her there, but he wanted to. Meanwhile, she wanted to tense up, but she didn’t. She held her entire body still, but relaxed, breathing as quietly as she could as he held her.

  His body pressed closer to hers from behind her, his hands rising from her waist to the swells of her breasts beneath her shirt. She could feel the outline of his cock through his jeans against her, and she bit her cheek, trying to desperately not to grind back on it. That would do her no good; she had gone into a violent rage against this very same man just a few hours ago!

  Why did she want to fuck him so badly?

  She stared in horror at her reflection in the car window. Her cheeks were getting that familiar aroused flush, and she could see him standing behind her as clearly as she could see her face through the glass. If she looked in the side mirror, the image would almost definitely be worse.

  But not as bad as how distracted she was getting by his touches all over her. His body was hard, but his touch was shockingly soft. She exhaled, the sound coming out too loudly in the morning air, wanting him to touch her more but not wanting to say it. She wondered what would happen. Was this what it was like? She couldn’t remember. The last time she had been with a man was…at least a year ago.

  She couldn’t be thinking about him like this. Darren wasn’t even remotely an option. Hell, after this – whatever this was – she was never going to talk to him again. If this could be considered talking, anyway. Correction: she was never going to talk to anyone about him again. Not that she had. Yet. And okay, yes, maybe she would touch herself when she got home, but that wasn’t about him. That was about the contours of his body. That was it.

  His hands kept going higher, so excruciatingly slowly, and he squeezed her breasts for a second before dropping them away completely. She could barely register the touch had hap
pened before his skin fell away from her fabric-covered chest, and she missed it as soon as it was gone. But then his hands went back to her arms, slipping around her waist again. His hands found the bones of her slight wrists, and he turned them up, opening her hands so that her palms faced the sky. Not clutched. Open, spread wide. Like –

  That visual was unnecessary.

  He pulled his arms away from her again, pressing the piece of paper into one of her hands and then forcing her hand closed around it. He kissed the back of her neck gently, and then every little space where his body had touched hers pulled away. She hated it; he left slowly, leaving her flesh nearly stinging from want.

  “Think about it,” he said, his voice almost back to what she was growing to associate with the Darren-normal. She saw him wink at her in the reflection of car mirror; her eyes were focused there now, not on the blush of her cheeks.

  Maybe that was just because of the cold morning, though. But could she convince herself that the way her body was flushing was because of the cold? No, especially not when the rest of her skin felt so heated. It took more than a few moments for Victoria to regain any kind of composure, but she kept her hand closed all the while she did it.

  The paper scratched against the skin of her hand as she held it. Not receipt paper. That stuff was more delicate than this, and tore easily; it wouldn’t scratch against any skin. Did he just happen to keep paper on him wherever he went? That was a little difficult to believe.

  She wanted to keep the number. She hated the guy’s personality, but his body had felt so right against hers. Maybe she could just use him for a one-night stand. Maybe, then, this man would be the one she fucked just to appreciate sex for sex, no emotionally complicated relationship attached.

  Yeah, right. She snorted.

  She wasn’t sure when her body had slumped against the door of her car. It must have happened when Darren snuck up behind her. She couldn’t let that happen again; that wasn’t safe. She was usually so careful about that, and now look at what had happened.

  It’s not like he had hurt her, though. Quite the opposite, in fact, so at least she had that going for her. And now, here she was, standing in a parking lot staring at her car like a moron. At least she looked only slightly as stupid when she stared at the piece of paper in her hand; it looked so ordinary, but there was something about it that was so…so freaking rude. The implication there was that he gave her his number because she seemed like she’d just be a booty call. The easy bartender. Was that what he thought of her? Probably. She thought much worse of him, though, so at least things were fair between the two of them.

  Making a fist out of her hand, she crumpled the paper inside it so that the piece of paper would never be able to have any type of life again. She crumpled it again and again, rolling the piece between her hands aggressively, not unlike a lover would roll a woman’s nipples between his forefinger and thumb. God! Why was she comparing it to that? Finally, when she was content that the offending note was well and truly destroyed, she tossed it on the ground.

  She tried to feel bad about littering, but couldn’t. The part of her that wanted to go back and put that piece of paper in her pocket was ignored. Why did she want to pick it up, anyway? Was it for the environment or was it for the lust coursing through her body? She focused on the world about her instead.

  This really wasn’t the best place to lose her concentration. Besides the building holding the bar and the empty few spaces besides it, this place was just a now mostly-empty lot looking back towards even more empty space. Behind the building was another lot, although that was held off by a fence; the fence didn’t look like it’d actually do much good at keeping people out, though, and Victoria decided that it was just for show. Graffiti littered the concrete within that lot, like a bunch of teenagers had broken into it and decided to mark up the ground as a show of defiance. They sure showed that fence.

  The sun was higher in the sky by now, peeking out behind some gray, wispy clouds now. It wasn’t as bad as it would be later in the winter, when the daylight was scarce and even more depressing.

  Starting next month, she’d have to be more careful about getting out during the early morning hours when it was still dark. Birds cawed and screeched overhead, flying about in a tizzy, headed one way or the other. Victoria, even though she knew it was crazy to feel this way, felt as if the birds were judging her for throwing that piece of paper.

  If Victoria was a bird, she’d be judging herself for wanting to keep it, probably.

  But then the wind started blowing more strongly, and it was now or never. Would she keep the paper? She wanted to. Half of her wanted to. More than half of her wanted to. She decided then; maybe she wouldn’t call the number on it – she most likely wouldn’t – but it was better to have the number than not to have it. It might even end up being useful, somehow.

  Okay. She had to. Yeah. She convinced herself that this was in her best interest, and not a move decided by the way her body tingled at the thought of Darren touching her again. He must want to touch her again; that was the only reason he’d given her this number, wasn’t it?

  She shook her head. Opening her car door, she threw the piece of paper onto the floor of the passenger’s seat. She wouldn’t be able to get it without putting in some kind of effort, so that assured that she wouldn’t just go calling him randomly. Yeah. Sure.

  She turned on the radio, not really believing herself over the hum of her car starting. And then, wiping sleep from her eyes, she rolled down the window a crack to get some cold wind in. She needed that to wake her up to keep her alert for the drive home, if nothing else. And the music blasting in from the radio might distract her from Darren.

  Chapter Four

  Victoria

  Victoria Parker would describe herself as a few specific things. Sexy, street smart, a little bit of an idiot sometimes, and constantly horny. At least, the last bit of that description would be because of how she woke up in the morning, a dull ache in between her legs that could only be soothed using a few fingers on her right hand.

  Other people didn’t know about that side of Victoria, though; anyone who picked her off of the street might describe her as a sluttier type of girl in her work attire. Aside from the outfits she wore to the bar, though, she looked about average, and no one would be able to pick her out as any kind of delinquent. Good. She had worked hard to get to where she was, even if that wasn’t very far, and she was happy to have her own apartment. While she wished she had a man to share it with – or even a man to bring it back to, the same one, time and time again – there wasn’t much she could do about that between her work hours, so she made do with some time by herself.

  There was one thing about her, though, that just about anyone could agree on, regardless of how well they did or did not know her: a word that could never be used to describe her was lucky.

  She smacked her alarm clock as hard as she could, trying to slam it into submission. That did nothing. The pesky thing just fell off of her nightstand, landing on the floor where it continued its incessant ringing. She knew logically that the clock had nothing against her, and was just reminding her of her shift, but it reminded her of what had happened last night and of what might happen again tonight and –

  Oh shit.

  Oh shit.

  Her shift.

  Her hand hastened to the nightstand, checking to make sure that she didn’t accidentally throw her phone off it when she attacked her alarm clock. The smartphone was still there, and she went through the lock screen quickly, checking to see if she had any missed calls or texts. None. That was good, right?

  Or not. Maybe people were just waiting to tell her in person that she was fired. Maybe Clarissa secretly had some vendetta against her, and this would be the manager’s time to tell her personally never to come back, to burn in hell, to –

  She needed to calm down.

  She stepped out of bed as quickly as she could, her limbs still exhausted from a full night of no s
leep. She hadn’t slept much the night before, either, and the stress it was putting her body through did her no favors. She didn’t have to look at the clock to determine what time it was, like she was constantly having to do on her shifts. Her body told her by the exhaustion coursing through it that she must have only slept four or five hours at the most.

  In truth, she’d probably gotten even less sleep. There came a point for Victoria – and probably for others, but she never asked because she, while she had no lover, also had no friends – where she would get so tired, she couldn’t even manage to sleep. How long was her shift tonight? She tried to remember. Of course she couldn’t, though; her shifts were usually tacked up on a board in the supply closet, and she hadn’t bothered checking the hours for today beyond noticing that she was supposed to come in. She guessed that she was about to throw twelve more hours into a pit of tiredness, and she didn’t know if she wanted to deal with it.