Page 12 of Cupid's Arrow

My nails dig into his thick muscles, and I tremble against him once I reach his base. His arms cage me in, palms against the wall. Our eyes lock for an instant—there’s lust swirling in those dark orbs, and all I want to do is sink into them. I want to lose myself in him.

Then he starts moving, and I’m lost. There’s nothing to do but hold on while he drives himself into me again and again, gasping in time with his strokes. “So good,” I whisper into his mouth before he plunges his tongue inside mine and cuts off everything but my moans.

It’s all happening so fast. My body starts tensing, the ache in my pussy worse with every grind of his base against my clit. “Arrow!” I gasp when I pull my mouth free. “I’m going to come…!”

“Come for me,” he grunts in a voice that doesn’t sound like him. Like the darkness he carries inside him is working its way to the surface while he works himself inside me. “Come around my cock. I want to feel it.”

“Oh, god!” I sob.

“That’s right. That’s how you make me feel.”

My body clenches tight in the heartbeat before everything comes crashing down. Bliss erupts deep inside me and radiates outward, rippling through my arms and legs. I cry out his name again and again over his grunts as he delivers a few more frenzied thrusts before falling apart the way I did.

We’re still locked together when the haze passes and our breathing calms. The water is starting to go cool after running so long, but I would gladly stay like this under an icy shower.

“I guess it’s a waste of time to say this should never happen again,” he murmurs against the shell of my ear.

I pull my head back, solemnly staring into his eyes. “I guess it is.”

Because this is inevitable. We are inevitable.

And I’ll never go without him again.

8

ARROW

“Damn it.” I ball up the paper containing what was supposed to be a new design and toss it in the trash where it belongs. I’ve been coming into the shop for three days—not to work on clients but to get my room set up and the creative juices flowing. Instead, I’m sketching garbage, my thoughts elsewhere, no matter how I try to contain them.

There’s no keeping myself from thinking of her. Corinne’s smile, Corinne’s laugh, her sweetness, and loving ways.

How she’s too good for me.

How I need to end what should never have started to begin with.

It doesn’t help that she’s no more than thirty feet from where I’m sitting. She’s working the front desk again, doing everything she can to make sure the shop is a success. Here she is, with a job of her own at the bar, but she still puts time in to help her brother and me.

On top of that, there’s the work she does around the house. It’s only been a few days, but I figured out she takes care of Ben just as much as he takes care of her, if not more. If it wasn’t for her, he might have starved to death in a filthy hellhole by now.

The more I think about her, the more perfect she seems.

And much too good for me.

I’m a weak bastard, unable to cut her loose for her own sake because I need her too badly. She is the one good, pure thing in my life. She can never share all of me because it would mean sharing the truth she can never know.

I couldn’t hurt her that way. I would never forgive myself. Instead, the secret I’m keeping will wedge itself between us and get bigger all the time until she’d end up getting hurt anyway. There’s no way out of this where she escapes uninjured.

Every minute I spend with her is a risk I’m not willing to take. It would be cruel to lead her on when I know there can’t be a future.

Frustration makes me pull out a clean sheet of paper. Maybe I can get her out of my system this way.

My hand moves on its own, quickly sketching out the basics: the shape of her face, her wide eyes, and full mouth. It’s soothing to stare at an image that slowly begins to look more and more like Corinne.

I apply every memory. The way her eyes sparkle, the faint dimples in her cheeks when she smiles. The soft line of her jaw, her slim neck, and her shining hair.

Time seems to stand still. It’s always like this when I’m deep in my work. This is the first real inspiration I’ve experienced in more than six months, and I welcome the sense of losing myself to it.

The way I already lost myself to her years ago.

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