The cold truth was that he had gone too long without a woman.
He had turned down other women since he got out. Working at Roscoe’s, he’d had plenty of opportunities. At the end of a work week, everyone was looking to blow off some steam with a quick, meaningless fuck. But no one had tempted him. No one felt right. After living in a drought for almost a decade, he didn’t want to feast on a crummy P&B sandwich. He wanted steak.
And Briar Davis was that. She’d filled his thoughts since the first time he saw her. This unattainable gem, too bright, too expensive, too good for the likes of him. Even when he got out of prison he had thought about her. He still fucked his hand like he was stuck in that concrete hole with visions of her running through his head.
Turning the corner and seeing her in that convenience store aisle had been like entering the seventh circle of hell. Seeing her. Confronting the one thing he had convinced himself he couldn’t have. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Even though he was a free man, he wasn’t free enough to have her. He’d never be that free.
She bit her bottom lip and something exploded in his gut. A deep, visceral reaction that made him want to leap across the distance and take that lip with his own teeth. Take her. He steeled himself with a hard breath, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.
“Would you like to come over for some?” She held out that damned ice cream again and nodded in direction of the town house complex he had passed before stopping for gas.
He nodded once. Before she changed her mind. Before he changed his. Good girls like her didn’t invite felons over for ice cream. Apparently she missed that memo.
“Great,” she said all breathy and with forced brightness. “Um. Just follow me.”
He watched her for a moment as she got into her car and reached for her seat buckle. Then he turned and made his way to his pickup, climbed inside and started the engine. It almost felt like a weird out--of--body experience. Like he was watching someone else follow this nice clean girl back to her apartment. Killers like him didn’t get invited over for ice cream.
But she knew what he was. A smart girl like her, she had to know. She knew his hands were dirty, his thoughts dirtier. Even if she only guessed at a fraction of his thoughts when it came to her, that was enough to send her running in the opposite direction.
But she was still inviting him over.
He flexed his hands on the steering wheel and waited a moment before shifting into drive. He followed her onto the road and turned left, then waited as an electric gate slid open for them. She must have a remote opener in her car. They passed through a brick entrance and around several buildings until she parked in front of a rock fence. This late, most of the parking spots directly in front of the town houses were occupied. -People were snug on their couches, watching reruns. He had to park several spots down from her car. She waited on the sidewalk for him, holding her small pint of ice cream that had to be softening in the warm night.
She still wore that smile. The sweet one that looked strained and uncertain. It almost made him turn around and leave. Almost. If he wasn’t such a selfish bastard.
She led him up a set of stairs and his gaze fixed on the shape of her legs in her skintight yoga pants. Her loose T--shirt and cardigan drifted up enough that he could see the bottom of her ass and the upside down V of her inner thighs meeting her crotch.
His mouth dried and he bit back a groan when she reached the top of the stairs, taking the sight away. Her baggy scrubs had always covered her up. Except that day those fuckers tried to rape her, ripping off her pants, and he had seen all that peaches and cream skin . . . including those little panties and the shadow of hair beneath the pale pink cotton that hid her sex.
He shoved the memory away. It felt wrong to remember her like that, in that moment. That knowledge of her, the sight of all that skin and the soft texture of her thighs under his rough hands, was a stolen thing. He didn’t have a right to that. It was tainted.
He hated having seen her like that, but he couldn’t unsee it. He couldn’t fully chase it away or keep the memory from bursting in on him like a flash of light in the darkness, an unwanted intruder as he stroked himself off in the shower or his bed at night.
She let him inside her home, gesturing at the cozy space with a wave. She’d left the television on and a show he didn’t know played on the flat screen.
“Have a seat.” She nodded to the couch. Slipping out of her cardigan, her hands shook a little as she dropped it on the back of the sofa. “I’ll make us some bowls.”