Page 1 of Love In The Shadows

CHAPTER ONE

Bennett

Blonde hair, soft skin pressed against me, and the lingering scent of sex and perfume clinging to the sheets.

Mmm…it was my favorite way to wake up.

Beside me, Harlowe something-or-other was clinging to me like she knew, even in her sleep, that I was on my way out. It wasn’t personal. We had a fun time. A nice outlet for the pent-up energy I’d been carting around the past few days. But if I played my cards right, big things were happening later tonight, and I wouldn’t want to drag her into a shit storm.

My mama raised me better than that.

I breathed deeply, marinating for another minute in her faint floral scent and the memory of how she tasted last night when my face was planted between those gorgeous, mile-long legs of hers before I began a careful extraction process from her death grip around my waist. It was a move I’d practiced over the years.

If she woke up and found me leaving, it would make her upset. And I didn’t want to do that. My goal was to fuck her hard—which I did—and then get out quick.

I slid my hand down her thigh, flexing my jaw at the soft skin and the heat it led to but forced myself to lift her leg up from my hips and gently push it back to her side of the bed. Everything was going fine until her baby blues fluttered open, and her rosy pout turned into a heart-stopper of a smile.

Harlowe apparently woke up with one thing on her mind.

Her hand started making a run south of the border, and her smile turned up, wicked and hot as sin. “Hey, handsome.”

I moaned as her fingers curled around my dick. Damn! I knew this sleepover shit would end in disaster. Fuck!

“Morning, baby, but I’m gonna have to take a rain check on this.” I stilled her hand. She whined and tried to get free of my grip and go in for the kill. I looped my finger and thumb around her wrist and held her steady. “Sorry, baby, but it’s back to the grind.”

I released her and slipped to the edge of the bed, ready to make a break for it. She tugged me back, her nails biting into my arm.

“If it’s a grind you want…you should stay right here. I’ll give you a really good grind,” she purred, her voice thick and seductive. She wrapped her thigh back over my hips and rocked against me. My cock was more than willing to take her up on the offer. But luckily, my brain overrode that plan—just in time.

I chuckled and lifted her thigh from my hips for the second time. “What if I take you up on that offer later tonight?”

Harlowe laid back against the pillows, her blonde hair messy, the impression from her pillow still showing on her cheek. She tucked the sheet against her tits that had been bouncing freely just seconds before and scowled up at me, her full lips pursed into a pout. “You’re really leaving me like this?”

“Like what?”

“Horny. Wet.”

I chuckled. “Sorry, babe. Duty calls.”

She sighed. “No red-blooded man turns down morning sex. So this only means one thing.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re not coming back.”

Who said blondes were dumb? She’d managed to put the pieces together quite nicely. Now, to find a way out of her apartment without taking a toaster or hairdryer to the side of my head.

I got up from the bed. “I’m turning down morning sex ‘cause I have to get to work.”

“Right. You’re obviously the type of guy with an early morning office gig.” She shook her head, a little throaty noise of disgust following it. “And here I actually believed you when we met at the bar, and you said you weren’t that guy.”

I winced. Had I really said that? Damn, I must have really been hard up. Of course, I was that guy. Every guy was. I located my boxer briefs and stepped into them. I wasn’t going to have this argument bare-ass naked. No thanks. I found my t-shirt and pulled that on, too.

“Baby, I gotta work. How else will I buy you a nice steak dinner tonight?”

She lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t eat red meat.”

“Chicken? Seafood? Whatever the hell you wanna eat. It all costs money, doesn’t it?”

---