Page 25 of Guilty as Sin
She could swear her heartbeat must be visible to anyone looking. Was he here already? Had he come in during the storm? Was he standing over her now?
She got her answer. The squeak of the front door opening, the slam of it closing. A heavy tread on the stairs.
Oh. God. I’m crazy. I’m going to die.
She felt the vibration of his footsteps coming closer even over the wind, the rain, the scrape of branches against the window glass. She knew when he stopped. She could hear his breath.
And when he grabbed hold of her wrists and yanked them over her head—she felt that, too.
“Relax,” he said, his voice low, amused. Unidentifiable. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to fuck you.”
Jace hit the down arrow. Blank. He hit it again, and found text. Not a story this time, though.
I’m not sure you liked my first idea. It makes me sad. Is it so hard to change? Change is good for you. You shaved, though, didn’t you? You’re giving me such mixed messages. I wonder if you even know what you want. So I thought I’d offer up an alternative scenario, one that you’re more comfortable with. We can ease into things. We’ll start out this way, and then, sometime, after you’ve fallen asleep, when you think you’re safe… you’ll find out how it feels to switch.
More blank space, and a tantalizing line of black text showing at the bottom of the screen. Jace hit the down arrow impatiently. His breakfast was getting cold at his elbow, but he had to finish this first.
Do I have your attention? You’re so lonely. So tired of not having the kind of company you need. The kind that’ll make all your fantasies come true, even the ones that are so dirty, you don’t even want to admit them to yourself. Here’s all you have to do to get it. Put the envelope in the bed of your truck when you’re at the gym today. Just the envelope, nothing else. Go there in the late afternoon, and park in the parking lot this time. I’ll get your message.
You can keep the thumb drive. You can even share the pictures. I don’t mind you sharing me. Tell your friends that you have a new girl, one who’ll do anything, including things you’ve never dared to ask for.
You can keep the thong and blindfold, too. I have another set. I’ll let you decide what to do about them.
Love,
Natalia
“Bloody hell,” Jace said under his breath. “You’ve got a few roos loose in the top paddock, darling.” Hisfriends?Yeah, his friends would be impressed by that. If they were fifteen. And she didn’t know much about men if she thought they had a problem admitting their fantasies to themselves. You could say that was a man’s hobby.
He thought about those possible viruses, then copied the text, pasted it into an email message, addressed that to Rafe, too, and typed, “New level here. Mad as a cut snake in a sack, and she looks local. Think I’d rather have somebody shooting at me.”
He hitSend,ejected the thumb drive and shut the computer down, started to eat his now-cold breakfast, and stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth.
Curvy body. Blonde. A personality he couldn’t get a read on, and that constant sense that he was looking in a mirror, seeing things the wrong way round.
Lingerie.
Well, bugger.
Paige was doing much better with the goats this morning. Bribery, that was the ticket. Brett Hunter’s approach. Not jumping straight in with the bribe, either. Holding it just out of reach. She had to admit, she wondered what his “parcel” looked like. He knew how to tantalize, and it was effective.
Careless. Relaxed. Amused. No anxiety, and no stress. That was why she started in on her barnyard duties half an hour before she could expect Jace to appear, too—so she wouldn’t be subconsciously waiting for him. And possibly because she wanted to see him, and that was exactly why she needed to remove the opportunity for temptation.
This week wasn’t about her. It was about Lily. About protecting her sister, not causing more problems for her. That was her job. It had always been her job.
Her mother had told her, enough times that the story had grown old, that when the doctor had gone in to deliver the twins, he’d had to unwrap Paige’s arms from around her sister first. “You were hanging on,” her mom had always said, “like you were saying, ‘You want to mess with her, you’ll have to get through me first.’ That’s why I never worried about her being shy, because you were tough enough for both of you. You went through every door first like you were ready to take on whatever was on the other side. You did the stairs first so she could see how. I didn’t even worry when I put you two on the school bus the first time. You were that good.”
You could have called Paige’s approach “direct,” it was true. For all the years she could remember, and apparently for all the years she couldn’t as well. Now, though, she tried Hunter’s technique instead. She opened the gate, ignored the coyly scampering goats, went into the shed, opened the grain bin, and poured a handful into the stainless-steel bowl on the milking shelf with the maximum of rattling sounds.
Sure enough, she got a couple heads, the black one and the white one with its pirate’s eye patch, poking around the door of the shed. She ignored them, rattled a little more grain into the bowl, and saw, from the corner of her eye, Edelweiss making a break for it, out-scampering Tinkerbelle to the shelf, jumping on, and going straight for the grain.
“Ha,” Paige said, tying the goat’s collar to a rope hanging from the stanchion the way she should have done yesterday, the way shewouldhave done if she’d assessed the situation first instead of allowing herself to first be overconfident, and then to be rattled by the goats and the Milker. “Yeah. This is how we do it. Who’s in charge? I’m in charge.”
She wiped the udder clean, then perched on the stool, took a cleansing breath in and out, and started practicing the milking technique she’d studied on YouTube. More a squeeze than a pull, starting as high up on the udder as she could reach. Which made perfect sense if you thought about it. That was where the milk was. And fortunately, she had strong hands. Who knew that milking a goat would be so much like holding a gun? She was clumsy, but she was getting it done.
Edelweiss apparently still found fault with her technique, because she shifted, then kicked out with a leg way too close to Paige’s head, as if Paige would flinch. Instead, Paige grabbed the leg, shoved it back down, got her forearm against the goat’s flank in case Edelweiss tried it again, and said, “Too bad for you that I know what it looks like when you start going for your weapon. You’re in custody, sister.”
It was silly, but the goatsweresilly. She’d call them “ridiculous,” in fact. Pint-sized drama queens. Right now, Tinkerbelle was chewing on some hay, looking at the milking shelf resentfully, and bleating in a complaining way, like she wanted her turn and it was no fair that Edelweiss got to go first. Like a goat who thought Paige might forget that she’d pretended getting milked was the most hideous fate known to Goatdom the morning before.
