“John—” I forced out.
“That is not my name,” he clipped, his sudden fury blanketing the room. “You know that’s not my name, Cassidy.”
“Okay, Priest—” I tried again.
He leaned toward me threateningly.
“That’s not my fuckin’ name either and you know that too,” he bit out. “You know, woman. You fuckin’ know. So why the fuck do you rent a cabin to me?”
I didn’t reply because there was no answer to that. We both knew it. We both knew I had no business renting him a cabin.
We both knew it.
“Every time I show, I pray to God there’ll be another truck outside your house, a man in your bed. Every time I show, nothin’. You’re alone. No fuckin’ clue why. You the way you are. Goofy. Sweet. Hard-workin’. Happy to sit outside on a porch and sit quiet, doin’ nothin’ but bein’ and listenin’ to a river rush by. The way you look. No man?” I saw him shake his head in disbelief. “It makes no fuckin’ sense. Then you rent a cabin to me knowin’ you should show me the road and that makes even less sense.”
“You need somewhere to stay and I need the money,” I chanced pointing out.
“You needed the money, Cassidy,” he retorted swiftly. “That was your excuse in the beginning. You don’t need it anymore so we both know that’s bullshit.”
I lifted my hands, half-confused, half-pleading. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I wanna know why you have no man,” he returned immediately. “And since you don’t have a man, why you don’t have a dog. And a fuckin’ Taser. And a goddamned can of pepper spray.”
“I—”
“You walk up to a situation like that with a Maglite and a baseball bat?” he asked, throwing a long arm wide, indicating the cabins in an angry way that made me step back and hit counter. “You rent to a guy like me and walk into a situation like that, you’re fuckin’ whacked.”
“They were just kids. I knew that.”
“They were drunk, high, well-built high school boys with a hankerin’ for * and no fuckin’ scruples at all about how they got it.”
I sucked my lips between my teeth because he was right.
“You got a *, Cassidy?” he asked derisively.
I didn’t give him the answer to that question because he knew the answer.
Since he knew it, he kept at me
“Your beauty, five foot fuckin’ five, a slip of a woman with tits and ass, don’t matter you’re older than them, they’re in the mood, they’ll take that beauty, woman. Take it. Use it. Fuckin’ destroy it.”
“I—”
“You need a goddamned man,” he spat.
I decided at that juncture not to speak, mostly because he wasn’t letting me say anything, partly because he was scaring the crap out of me, and lastly because no one could rant forever. He’d eventually burn it out and take off.
He always took off.
He came.
He left.
And we never changed.
But that thought gave me a new fear, a fear bigger than any I’d had in my life.
That fear being whoever he was, whatever he did, what happened that night made it clear in a way he could no longer ignore that I meant something to him, and him being with me, even if he was never really with me, brought me danger.
So he’d never come again.
The danger he might bring did not scare me.
The idea of losing him, though…
I had no idea why, but that petrified me.
My body strung tight when his voice sounded again, this time so guttural, it was tortured.
“Why don’t you have a fuckin’ man?”
His obvious pain slicing through me, my lips moved, and when they did, they did it to whisper, “Honey.”
And then he wasn’t across the room.
He was right there, his arms locked around me, one hand in my hair tugging back and not gently, his mouth crashing down on mine.
I didn’t hesitate even a second.
I opened my lips.
He thrust his tongue inside on a feral growl that shot right through me, straight through, down deep, detonating between my legs.
And I was up, plastered to him but moving swiftly.
Then I was down, back to the kitchen table, Priest (or whoever he was) bent over me, his tongue taking, his big hands moving over me just like I knew they’d be.
Far from gentle.
Rough.
Greedy.
Demanding.
Amazing.
I was ready. His tongue in my mouth, his scent in my nostrils, his big body bent over me, those hands on me, I was ready.
And it had nothing to do with not having a lover for months.
It had everything to do with the man who called himself John Priest.
So I curled my fingers into his thermal and pulled up.
He broke his mouth from mine instantly, arching back. His hands going behind his neck, he tore it off and tossed it aside. Then he moved his arms back around me but his fingers yanked at my thermal. I instantly shot my arms in the air, he ripped it off, and threw it away.