Page 91 of All The Happily Ever Afters

This dangerous man who could do whatever he wishes. He fucks me like I’ve always been his.

I’m not given a moment to answer, before he nods and raps his fingers on the old wood table. “The usual.”

With a nod, I turn my back to him, my fingers fiddling with themselves until I can grab a tumbler for a gin and tonic.

“You closing early tonight?” Jackson calls out loud enough for the bar to hear him.

With wide eyes, I stare back at him, still reeling from the comment:I’ve missed you.

I nod, without thinking twice, “thirty minutes or so,” I tell him. “Snow’s getting deep.”

The excuse raises Mr. Richard’s brow who glances over his shoulder at the devil himself. The man who brought that lie to my lips.

GRIM

The deep red hugs her curves and every inch of her soft skin I’ve been fantasizing about. It’s been over a month, the winter nights getting colder and lonelier without her warmth in my bed.

My cock aches, hard and straining against my zipper as she sways left and right, wiping down the bar.

It’s like this every time, she ignores me, just a patron in the corner, as she closes up.

I leave like the rest of them as if she’s not the only reason I come to this run down town every chance I get. As if she won’t be crying out my name with the strangled pleasure I’ll pull from her tonight.

There’s no such thing as coincidence. Two years ago I came in here, following a lead and needing a moment to cool down before I did something reckless and stupid.

There she was, staring back at me like I was going to hurt her, like she should fear me.

Smart girl wrapped in a delectable package.

I would have left her alone. Taking another deep gulp of gin, I remember how very much at war I was with myself at the sinful thoughts that plagued me that night.

There’s not an ounce of good in me and the things I’ve done would have her running from me if ever I confessed. But like I said, there’s no such thing as coincidence and that night, I craved her. I needed her like I needed the air to breathe.

I waited for her to close down the bar, I followed her, needing to know what the hell it was about her that drew me in.

I heard the footsteps before she did, the clink of the glass bottle being tossed into the trash before some dumb fuck and his buddy catcalled her. Their whistles were sickening.

I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, the fear was sobering as she stared at two men who made their way to her. Keys in her hand, she tried to play it off, waving back to tell them to have a good night before she picked up her pace.

All it took was one of them picking up their pace before I stepped out under the street light, calling out to her.

She stopped where she was, caught right there, my prey, not theirs.

My muscles coiled and I memorized their faces, every detail I needed to find them later, after I’d taken care of my poor little Scarlet.

Caught between the two of them and me, she was paralyzed. They took off when I opened my jacket, letting the light glint off my gun.

“Don’t hurt me.” The plea was spoken softly as the two pricks left us alone, at three am in the vacant parking lot. “Please,” she whispered.

Her hazel eyes shone with more than a prayer for safety.

“You think I want to hurt you?”

“I know you could if you wanted,” her response came back without any hesitation.

“That doesn’t answer my question.” The fear slipped away, quickly replaced with a simmering heat I’d felt from her allnight. There’s a thin line that separates desire from despair and it had played between us all night.

I lowered my lips to the shell of her ear, the tension crackling between us. “What if I wanted to do something else?”

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