“You shouldn’t say such things. You’ll only be proven wrong.”
“Your arrogance is breathtaking, but so far nothing else about you is. Do you ever actually follow through?”
“You want me to follow through?” It was a genuine question. She could see that he was waiting for an answer as he watched her, even through the growing desire.
“Oh yeah.”
She’d had sex with strangers before. All she’d ever had was sex with strangers. She didn’t normally have sex on a Saturday morning in the park, but there was no good reason not to.
She wanted this man—like he was a challenge that must be met, a battle to be won.
“We’ll see,” the man said, sounding faintly skeptical, as if he still didn’t believe she took sex as casually as he did.
“See how exactly?” She raised her eyebrows in a question, a call to action.
The man met the call, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the wooded area nearby. He snapped his fingers, and the dog stopped chewing his Frisbee and jumped to his feet to follow.
Kelly’s breath caught in her throat as they neared the trees. “The car might be more comfortable.”
“I’m not going for comfort here.” His grip was firm and strong and authoritative as he pulled her after him.
She has hit by a wave of panic as they entered the trees, not at one of the trails but in the thickly grown area closest to where they’d been standing.
The woods were dark, unknown, everything hidden—masking horrors she just couldn’t face.
When they’d gone a few feet in, she couldn’t make herself go any farther. She physically couldn’t do it, yanking her hand out of the man’s.
He turned around. “That’s what I thought.”
2
Kelly staredat the man’s resigned expression.That’s what I thought, he’d said.
He believed she’d given up. That he’d won.
But he wasn’t going to win this, her phobia about the woods be damned. She grabbed his shoulders and pushed him against a large tree. “What did you think? That we would go deep in the woods where you could safely hide, where no one could ever see what we were doing? This is far enough.”
There was more risk of being discovered, this close to the edge of the woods. They would be out of sight but not very far.
Kelly didn’t care. The fear of being caught was far milder than her fear of going deeper into the woods. Even now, a chill had broken out on her skin, almost distracting her from her arousal.
Almost.
The man smiled hotly and reached up to span her ribs with both hands, turning them around so her back was to the tree instead. “Here it is then.” One of his thumbs moved so it was brushing against her nipple.
Kelly felt like his thumb was branding her. She couldn’t feel anything else. She stared down at her body—at his strong, masculine hands curving around her ribs, at his thumb pushing against the soft swell of her breast over the white fabric of her tank top.
He looked down too. Noticed how she was watching the way he was touching her.
He smiled then. A predator. Moved his thumb until it was intentionally circling the hard peak of her nipple. “You like that, don’t you?”
Kelly sucked in a ragged breath, her body responding powerfully despite the distraction of the woods. As his thumb teased her nipple, she could feel corresponding tugs between her legs.
He was gazing down at his hand on her body, and he shifted it until he was cupping her breast. “Maybe the reason you’ve never thought about a man afterward is that the men you’ve fucked haven’t known how to handle your body.”
“And you think you can?” Part of her wished she could pull away from him, escape from the woods, from the strength of the challenge he posed to her. Instead, she arched against the tree as he flicked his thumb over her nipple. “Women who rely on the man to make things happen for them in bed always end up disappointed. I’ve never made that mistake.”
It was true. She came every time she had sex, but it was because she made sure it happened. Some men were good at sex. Some weren’t. Some tried to make sure the woman came. Some couldn’t care less. It didn’t make a difference. She had to be responsible for her own orgasm if she wanted to guarantee she reached it.