I locked my legs behind his back and tugged at his hair. “You’ll leave before the sun comes up and this never happened. Agreed?”

“Fine, Joanie. I’ll agree to your silly rules.” I got the feeling he was crossing his fingers. He walked us back towards the bed and flashed me a dark smile. “Are you sore?”

My mind instantly ran on one track and that track was whatever Chase wanted to do to me. “Yes, but it’s okay.”

He shook his head. “I might want to leave marks on you but I don’t want to hurt you.”

I tugged harder at his hair. “Yes, you do. You want to spank me and choke me with your dick and fuck me hard enough to put holes in my walls. You want to leave more than marks. So, do it. If we’re doing this, I don’t want you to hold back. Let’s scratch this itch so we can forget about it.”

He bared his teeth at me. “In that case, I’ll fuck your ass next. Or maybe you’d prefer to rethink what you just said to me.”

My pulse fluttered. The darkness in his gaze told me he wasn’t kidding. There was a roughness to him that went against everything people thought they knew about him. His perfect family and perfect image, for the most part, didn’t line up with the dirty talking man who definitely wanted to take my ass. It made me want to meet his every deviant desire. “Do it.”

“Joanie…”

I met his gaze and bared my teeth back at him. “One night, Chase. One night to forget everything outside of this room. Tomorrow morning, you can go back to being good-guy-Chase for everyone else in town and I’ll go back to cursing your name.”

“And tonight?” His face was serious. “Tonight, you want to be my doll to use? You want me to fuck and fill every hole you’ve got? Mark you and ruin you for any other man?”

I was insane for wanting everything he’d just said and more. “Yes, please.”

CHAPTER 8

Joanie

I sat next to Billie at the Doll’s meeting and cursed the way I could still feel my pulse beating between my thighs. Chase had played by the rules and left with the sunrise that morning, but I could still feel him all over me. I could still taste him in my mouth and I swore his scent had embedded itself in my nose. I shifted and tried not to wince when the seam of my jeans rubbed my sore body. After I’d given Chase the greenlight to wreck me, he’d done his best to kill me with orgasms. I hadn’t slept and no amount of showering seemed to get rid of the feeling of his come inside me. Even in pleasuring me, he’d cursed me.

Billie cleared her throat and leaned closer. “You okay?”

I flinched and nodded too quickly. “Yep. I’m great.”

Her wide-eyed brown gaze swept over me, taking in my thicker than normal makeup and clothing choice to cover myself completely, despite it being hot as hell outside. “Uh-huh.”

Margaret James was at the front of the room, ranting about Mayor Stevens. It was pretty typical, so tuning her out meant we didn’t miss much. She’d owned and operated Good, Clean Fun for so long that it’d become a staple in the Harmony Valley community. And more than Good, Clean Fun, she ran Doll’s. A speakeasy type room at the back of her soaps and candles storefront, Doll’s was a secret space for the severely outnumbered women of Harmony Valley. Women had been gathering at Doll’s for decades and it had to be the best kept secret around.

No men knew where the women went off to so often, but Doll’s was a meeting space and a safe space. Not just for ranting and venting about the men in our lives, which is what Margaret was doing, but it was also a place which introduced women to pleasure they might not have had access to before Doll’s. The walls were lined with sex toys of every kind and Margaret came up with new flavored lube so often that a woman could give a fruit basket without a single ounce of nutrition if she wanted to. Simply put, it was amazing.

For the past nine months, Margaret and Mayor Stevens had been battling and once he’d threatened her business license, she’d taken to all-out war. There was a battle of the sexes planned as soon as Mayor Stevens stopped putting it off and the winner would be the next town mayor. It was insane and I loved every bit of it. I’d been raised in an uptight upper society which acted like women didn’t use the bathroom or raise their voices. Decisions were made in board rooms by wealthy old men and mayors were chosen and run by backers with money and plans. I’d watched my own parents play the game a few times, throwing their money at a politician they liked and felt they could push into doing what they wanted. In Lilyfield, the largest little town in Harmony Valley, mayor was going to be decided by a battle of the sexes and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Only Margaret was ranting about Mayor Stevens in the same way she had the week before because nothing had changed and my attention was nonexistent, so I leaned closer to Billie. We’d become friends during one of my first Doll’s meetings, but we’d only gotten closer when the two of us and our other best friend, Violet, had gone out for drinks a while back. Billie had her own version of listening to Margaret rant the same rant over and over again. It was me ranting about Chase over and over again. She’d listened to me screaming about him for months.

“I did something bad last night.”

Billie’s eyes narrowed. “If you tell me you didn’t replenish the chocolate muffins, I’ll murder you. Those muffins are the only things getting me through these days.”

“The muffins are replenished. Relax about the muffins. Last week you threatened me when I didn’t have them ready first thing in the morning. The muffins are becoming a problem for you.” I shook my head. “I should cut you off.”

“Cut me off and I’ll cut you.” She smiled sweetly but it verged on crazy. “If I don’t eat one of those muffins before facing my bosses, I fantasize about driving a tractor over them, Joanie. I need the muffins.”

“Violet wasn’t even this nuts with her cherry pie craving.” I realized the meeting was over and saw that Margaret was heading our way. “Shit.”

I loved Margaret. You wouldn’t find a woman in Harmony Valley who didn’t. She was a meddler, though. She and her two best friends, Brenda and CoCo, might as well have been professional investigators. Margaret could smell a story and her nostrils might as well have been flaring as she closed in on me.

“Something’s different about you and I don’t just mean the amount of clothing you’re wearing. You came in here walking like you got ridden hard last night. You’ve got a wild look in your eyes, too, like you might consider running.” Her eyes narrowed. “Plus, CoCo was looking into those two new fellas next door to you and she saw Chase Daniels walking out of your house first thing this morning like a big, happy peacock.”

Billie gasped like she was watching a soap opera and slapped my thigh. “No, you didn’t!”

Margaret grinned. “She did. And judging by the amount of covering up she’s doing, so did Chase. I knew the two of you couldn’t last next to each other without exploding. It took you longer than I thought, though. I gave you two weeks when he first showed up here a year ago. Brenda gave you a week and CoCo had the most faith in you. She gave you a month.”