44 Chapters About 4 Men - BB Easton Page 0,51

keep my emotional distance from him all these months because I knew there was simply no way this man could ever see me the way I saw him, love me the way I feared I loved him, or be faithful to me for the rest of our lives.

And now that I was vulnerable and exposed (literally), I could barely look him in the eye out of fear of what I might find there. Would I be just another lovesick fangirl to him now that he knew he had me? Would the chase be over?

I had already begun to mourn the impending death of my relationship when Hans tilted my chin back toward him, forcing me to return his gaze.

“There you are,” he said with that signature sideways smile. “Thought I’d lost you for a minute.”

Mmm…

Looking into that dreamy face was like mainlining Xanax. The familiar fog of calm and contentment I usually felt whenever I was around Hans clouded the car until I couldn’t even remember what I’d been so worried about. Just then, I heard the sound of a car door slam shut, and I remembered pretty quickly what I should be worried about.

The fucking cops!

I fished my dress out of the pile of clothes in Hans’s lap—whose smoky eyes were now glued to my side view mirror—and shimmied it on over my head. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite tie the halter top from my fetal position under the steering wheel, but at least my bottom half was covered. Of course, the oh-so coordinated Hans managed to slip his pants back on without ever taking his eyes off the show unfolding behind us.

Curious to see what had Hans looking so serious, I climbed out of my hidey-hole and leaned across the center console to get a look at his mirror. On my way, I was momentarily distracted by the bare tattooed chest of a long, lean bass player slumped down in my passenger seat. His skin was damp and hot and smelled like chlorine, bringing to my attention the fact that I was also still topless.

Damn. If I could just tilt that seat all the way back real quick…

Where was I? Oh, yes.

I shook off my hormones and rested my cheek on Hans’s chest so that I could see what was going on in his mirror without sitting up and blowing our cover. The cruiser still had its headlights on, and one police officer was at the ready behind the wheel.

Shit.

The cop who’d been riding shotgun was now standing in the doorway of the McMansion, talking to a middle-aged man wearing a bathrobe. I couldn’t make out much from that distance, but I distinctly saw the homeowner raise an angry-looking finger and point directly at my car.

“GO!” Hans yelled, prompting me to mechanically stomp on the clutch, crank the engine, and peel out of there, all without ever turning on my lights.

Shit, shit, shit!

Luckily, I’d driven through that neighborhood looking for free parking enough times to know an alternate way out. The sirens screamed to life the instant I pulled away.

Oh my fucking God.

My body operated that machine on muscle memory alone as my consciousness completely abandoned ship and spiraled in a million different terrible directions.

Let’s see. Where to begin? Evading the police, indecent exposure, trespassing, being in possession of false identification, underage drinking, engaging in a public sex act, disturbing the peace, speeding…

What I thought was going to go down in history as the most glorious sexual experience of my life would now be forever remembered as The Night I Got Raped in Jail. Although I’ve never heard of lady-on-lady rape, I was an underweight teenager who’d been raised by hippie pacifists. I had no self-defense skills (other than clumsily swinging my ten-ton steel-toed boots in the general direction of other people), and my only undergarment that night was a sopping wet red thong. If there had ever been a prime candidate for lady rape, it was me.

I turned right onto the first street I came to, stomping on the accelerator halfway through the turn to build up speed as quickly as possible.

I’d learned how to drive fast back when I was dating Harley. There had been an abandoned housing development down the street from his mom’s house where people used to race. Everybody called it The Track because the streets had all been paved, but not a single house had been completed before the builder went belly up. And because it wasn’t technically private or public property, we