Page 93 of Wild Side
I am stagnant. I haven’t dated anyone because this situationship with Lightning is so damn good that I don’t want to be with anyone else. I don’t want to jeopardize my nights with him, and that is so not healthy.
A knock on my front door causes my spine to straighten. Nobody should be here. Walking over to the door, I look through the peephole. My breath hitches at the sight in front of me. I didn’t expect him to come here.
“I can hear you breathing. And your car is still outside, loaded down with shit. I know you’re there, babe.”
I am here.
Reaching for the handle of the door, I tug it open. Lighting moves past me and into my apartment for the first time. Closing the door behind me, I spin around to see him standing there, in my little living room. He’s so big that he takes up the whole space around him, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
“You think you can just call me and tell me you’re leaving in an hour and I won’t want one more taste?” he asks, his smooth voice filling the air around me.
God.
I want that.
Before I can say a word, he closes the distance between us, and his mouth is on mine. He does exactly what he says, but he doesn’t just taste me, he takes me too. It’s perfection. I don’t want it to end, which means it needs to do just that. I need to leave, or I’ll stay forever.
CHAPTER ONE
BRIANA
THREE MONTHS LATER
Well, the fact that I thought moving locations would make my life easier is laughable. I was able to snag a fully furnished apartment when I landed in Cleveland, Ohio, for under fifteen hundred bucks a month. It was a boon for me, being within budget and also completely and totally furnished with a view of Lake Erie.
It’s stunning.
I love it, but being here hasn’t fixed me.
In fact, I think I might be worse off than I was when I left Thunder Rock. Chewing on the corner of my bottom lip, I flick my gaze down to the man standing across the street. His focus is on me, his head tipped back, unabashedly, unashamed—he’s watching me.
When I moved here, the first thing I did was probably the worst thing I could have done. I joined the apps. I’m almost fortyyears old, and I don’t know what I was thinking. No, that’s a lie, I know exactly what I was thinking.
I was hoping to get over one man by getting under another.
It didn’t work. Not even a little bit.
And now I’ve got a stalker. I’m not sure what this guy thinks he’s going to gain from watching me, but I’m less than exciting. And he is unabashedly watching me, which means he doesn’t care that I know he’s there. He also knows that even if I call the cops, there’s probably nothing they’ll do.
Closing my curtains, I step backward and turn toward my bedroom. This is a one-bedroom apartment, and that’s using the term bedroom loosely because it’s more like a studio than anything.
Climbing into bed, I tug the sheet up to my chin and lift my hand, turning the television on. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I have a feeling it’s time for me to move again. I also have a feeling that coming here was one gigantic self-misguided mistake.
LIGHTNING
Sinking my teeth into the corner of my bottom lip, I watch as the girl walks around the front desk of the motel. I haven’t been here lately, haven’t had a need to fuck her, but here I am. She narrows her eyes at me, lifting her hand as she places her palm against the center of my chest and tilts her head to look up at me.
Arching a brow, I wait for whatever she’s going to say. “Thought you were done with me,” she states.
She doesn’t say it nastily, but I can hear a bite to her tone, likely one of hurt. But I am not going to waste my time analyzingher words. I was done with her—until I wasn’t. But that’s more because of me than it is her.
None of which I actually voice.
Instead of responding to her, I reach behind her, tangling my fingers in her hair before I spin her around. She places her palms on the counter and bends over slightly. She’s wearing a skirt, no panties, almost like she was expecting me.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I look down at her ass peeking out from beneath her skirt, and as much as I try not to, I fail, because I imagine it’s Briana. I don’t even have to try either.
That’s the fucker of it all.
