Page 96 of Dirty Rival

“You have a problem with that?” he challenges.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think I do. Are you going to be an asshole and change my mind between now and then?”

“Let’s make a bet. If it’s no more than three times, I get to cuff you next weekend.”

“And if it’s more than three times, I just don’t come with you next weekend?” I challenge.

“In which case, I’ll have to cuff you to my bed and make you come so many times that you can’t help but forgive me.”

Heat pools low in my belly at the many ways he could do just that, but I stay focused on the conversation at hand. “You’re obsessed with cuffing me and I think I know why.”

“Do you want to tell me why?” he asks, leaning closer, his hand sliding up my leg under the tablecloth.

I catch his hand. “You don’t like me one-upping you. It feels unbalanced.”

“More like I owe you.”

“You want to taunt me like I did you?”

“No, I want to finish you like you didn’t me, but that doesn’t mean be finished you. No, Carrie. I’m not going to ever be finished with you. I told you. It's you who will walk away." He releases my leg and leans back.

We’re back to planning for me to hate him again and it’s getting to me in a big way. I’m suddenly angry and attacked by emotions I can’t name and don’t want to feel. Not after what he just said. I toss down my napkin and stand up. “I’m going to the bathroom.” I don’t look at him or wait for a reply.

I start walking and enter the restaurant with its beach-style low ceiling, and boat-like structure, a waiter directs me to a hallway behind the wooden bar. I can’t get there quick enough. The tiny walkway, the seclusion of it, is relief that is ironic considering I feel as if I’m suffocating in all that is Reid Maxwell. I pass a turn down another hallway when suddenly, Reid is with me, pulling me into it, pressing me against the wall. His big body crowds mine, legs caging my legs.

“What just happened?” he demands, his hands coming down on the wall next to mine.

“You just had asshole moment number one,” I bite out, all the emotions I can’t name, or won’t name, spewing right from my mouth. “You said we were done with the doom and gloom. And yet, what do you do? You say things like you did just now at the table that infer that it’s inevitable that I hate you. I can’t keep doing whatever this is if that’s where you are driving us.”

“That’s not—”

“I can’t feel whatever it is that I’m feeling when you keep pushing us there.”

His fingers tangle in my hair. “What do you feel, Carrie?”

“Too much, you’re too much, if we’re spiraling into hate. Just fuck me and let me go.”

“No,” he says. “No, I’m not letting you go. It’s not too much. It’s not enough. No more of those statements. They’re irrelevant because if you try and walk away, I will just cuff you to the bed like I said, and make you orgasm until you don’t want to leave.”

“I already don’t want to leave, and with you that scares me, Reid.”

“The idea that might change is what scares me, Carrie.”

“Why? Why would I hate you?”

“I told you that I’d let you figure that out on your own, remember?”

“Then let me. Stop pushing me into the quicksand.”

“If you’re in quicksand, baby, I’m right there with you so let’s make a deal. No more fear. We’re in this all the way, good and bad. Say it.”

“I don’t have a choice but to agree. I’m in. You already made that happen.”

“No running,” he adds, and then he’s kissing me, a deep stroke of the tongue that I feel everywhere. It drugs me into momentary submission and then there are voices, headed in our direction. Reid pulls his mouth from mine, his thumb stroking the dampness from my bottom lip, before he says, “Let’s go pay the bill and get out of here.” He takes my hand and we start walking, but his words are in my head: No running.

He really does think that I’m going to run and suddenly I’m not angry at him anymore. I realize at that moment, with his hand firmly around mine, that he’s allowed himself to be vulnerable with me when Reid Maxwell, the king of assholes, is vulnerable to no one, proven by him admitting fear. He’s invited me inside the walls of his private life, to meet his family even.

He’s torn down walls and trusted me not to hate him, even when he believes he deserves the hate. That’s his walls coming down, and that means I have to meet him halfway, and let mine down, too, but some part of me knows he’s going to hurt me.

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