my thoughts. He dropped his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together beneath his chin.
"I've only been here about three months. I'm still learning my way around."
"Here with family?"
"My sister, Molly. What about you?"
I glanced over at his friends.
They were still laughing and conversing, but, every few seconds, one of them would look over at us.
"I have one brother and one sister. My parents don’t live around here,” he answered, seemingly pleased when my full attention went back to him. Picking my new drink up, I took a nice swig and tried to stop my face from screwing up.
"I've been staring at you since you walked in the door," he confessed with a sheepish grin.
"Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” I partially teased.
Our conversation flowed around nothing all that important. A few more drinks may have been added in somewhere. It felt natural to sit and talk with him. In fact, one could even say it felt like I knew him from somewhere.
That didn’t last long, though.
He leaned back, running his thumb over his bitable lips, looking at me in a studious way.
"What is it?" I asked, feeling the effects of the alcohol buzzing around in my head.
"You're a gorgeous woman, Rose. But you're sad. I feel it, and I can see it in those eyes of yours. Did something happen to you? Is that why you moved to Black Pine?"
Suddenly, I wasn't tipsy enough. I couldn’t be that obvious. Were my problems stamped on my forehead? Maybe they were written across my breasts—his eyes had gone to them more than once when he thought I was distracted.
I always pulled off happy-go-lucky. It's what I did. The world could be burning down around me and I'd have a cocktail in my hand with a smile on my face.
Never crack your façade.
Con had drilled that into my head.
The ways he used to hurt me became more and more creative when I became immune to something he was doing. Being read so easily made me uncomfortable. I almost started looking around, expecting Justin to appear. I felt like I was being tested, and that was never a good feeling.
"Well, Maxwell—"
"Max," he interjected.
"Well, Max. That's a bit presumptuous, don’t you think? I promise you, I'm fine."
At my bitterly spoken words, his whole demeanor seemed to change before my eyes.
"Careful. Some people make promises they don’t mean." His voice went low, the drawl a little deeper. I found it oddly seductive, which was completely inappropriate, given the context. Maybe the drinks were doing something, after all.
“I think it’s time for me to go.”
Looking away from him, I began digging through my purse for money, tossing enough down to cover my drinks and a tip.
“It was nice to meet you, Max,” I called over my shoulder on my way to the door, feeling his eyes on me as I stepped outside.
A few steps away from my car, I heard his voice from across the parking lot. I knew he would follow me. He was so predictable.
“What about your booty-call?”
Turning around, I faced him head-on, raising both my brows.
“I thought you wanted to be friends?”
“You don’t seem like you want that.”
He walked towards me slowly. The way he moved was almost predatory, and his dark eyes never left mine. He was throwing me off my game a little bit. I wasn’t sure if I particularly liked that or not.
I crossed my arms over my chest, watching him move in a little closer.
If I told him to throw me down and fuck me in the dirt, would he do it?
Sadly, he didn’t look the type.
Why was it so hard to find a guy that would boss me around? I had this insane fantasy of being dominated, pinned down helplessly as a man fucked and fought me.
I sank my teeth into my lower lip, picturing Max doing just that. I wasn’t a whore, but I would love for a man to treat me like one. Especially a man that looked like him—a stranger that looked like him.
“Do you want to fuck me, Max?” I cocked my head to the side and studied him.
“I want to do a lot of things to you,” he responded flippantly, coming close enough that I could reach out and barely touch him, but not any farther. We stood there, staring at one another, the sexual tension rising by the second. The attraction we so clearly had for one another was unexplainable.
Two people that didn’t know each other shouldn’t look at one other