Page 21 of Haunted Love

Aspen groans. “You mean with Austin?” she asks, glancing at me over her shoulder. I nod and she goes on, focusing her attention back on the view. “I don’t get his problem. Surely he’s not pissed because I went out to some club. He of all people should be down with it. Maybe he was too drunk to remember, but I was the one picking both of your stupid asses up when you could barely walk a straight line, and he knows I’m not nearly as irresponsible as you two were. Besides, it’s not like I’m some sixteen-year-old teenager sneaking out of my bedroom window. I’m an adult.”

I laugh to myself, wondering how the hell this got so off track. Forgetting all about the line I said I would never cross, I find myself stepping right into her back, so much closer than I was before.

What the fuck am I doing?

Aspen stiffens, her bare back pressed against my chest. My hand automatically comes to her waist as my other trails down her arm, leading down to the stamp at the base of her wrist. I hear her soft gasp, and that one sound throws me back into the private room at Vixen when I searched out the two wristbands on the woman’s arm. It was so eerily similar to this moment.

That’s twice she’s reminded me of her.

My hand tightens on her waist, and Aspen sucks in a breath as my fingers trail right down to her wrist, my thumb stroking over the gold moth. “You and I both know this isn’t an ordinary club stamp,” I murmur in her ear, her whole body trembling under my touch. Fuck, why the hell do I like it so much? Austin would murder me if he glanced out his bedroom window right now. This isn’t a risk I should be taking. “I know every fucking club in this town, and there’s only one with a stamp like that.”

My hand continues down, my fingers gripping her hand, and she closes her fingers around mine, clutching it like a lifeline, as if her basic instincts are to hold on to me and never let go. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, her voice shaky as she repeats the exact words I’d said to her only a minute ago. Only I was lying then, just as she’s lying now.

“Uh-huh,” I rumble. “What were you doing at Vixen, Aspen?”

“Nothing,” she finally says. “I was just checking it out. Becs scored an invite with a plus one and asked me to come along. Up until we walked down the stairs and some woman handed me a menu of . . .experiences,I thought we were going to some exclusive nightclub.”

“So, you were just checking it out?”

“What’s it to you?” she asks, her voice becoming breathy as her bun comes loose. Her long chestnut hair unravels, tumbling down between us, the tips plunging into the cool water. “How doyouknow about that club?”

“I make it my business to know about every club in the city.”

“And Austin? I suppose you’re going to try and tell me that you both know about this mysterious club and aren’t frequent flyers?” she asks, releasing my hand as her chest heaves with heavy breaths.

“What Austin does with his spare time is his business,” I say, releasing her waist as I take hold of her long hair to pull it out of the water, only I’m struck with another memory of the woman, of winding my hand into her thick hair—hair that was up in a long ponytail just like Aspen’s.

I scoop her hair over her shoulder, leaning forward just enough to be hit with the scent of her perfume, and I pause, recognizing that smell, only the last time I smelled it, it was mixed with the scent of arousal.

Her arousal?

“And you?” she goes on, not noticing the way my body stiffens with horror as all the fucking pieces begin to fall into place. Her hair. Her waist. Her wrist. Her perfume. There are too many similarities to be coincidental.

My heart lurches in my chest, horror gripping me in a chokehold.

Holy fuck. What have I done?

Aspen wasn’t just checking out the club last night. She was the woman in the dark room. She was the woman I spent the night sinking into. She’s the woman who had me falling apart, who had me coming harder than I ever had before.

No.

I take a hasty step back, my heart pounding so fucking hard in my chest, it threatens to destroy me.

Not only did I fuck Aspen Ryder,my best friend’s little sister,I took her virginity. I clutched onto the two wristbands—white and red—and shamelessly claimed them both.

How could I not know it was her?

I start retracing every second of last night, wondering how the fuck she ended up in my private room. Out of all the women who could have wandered in there last night, why did it have to be her? And why did being inside her have to be the best fucking feeling in the world?

The way she fit me, the way she took me.

Fuck.

We’ve crossed a line, one we can’t come back from. I thought viewing her through the security feed was going to destroy me, but actually knowing what itfeelslike to be inside her, how it feels when her tight little cunt shatters around me, how she tastes and sounds when she comes . . . FUCK!

Aspen turns, looking up at me with those trusting eyes, and it’s clear she has no fucking idea the man she was with last night was me. That change in her today, the reason she’s filled with newfound confidence and glowing like a fucking angel is because of me, because I took something from her—her purity. Her virginity. I took it without a second thought.

Stolen in the dead of night. I robbed her blind.

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