those phone calls between us were a promise, like the storm rolling in over the valley. And I was flush with the potential to make good on that promise.
My head was trying to make a case for getting the hell out of here.
You are alone in an isolated cabin with a man you don’t really know.
I knew enough though, didn’t I? Enough to know that if I stayed, something amazing would happen. He would touch me. Kiss me. Make me come. And not by myself. Not alone in a shitty trailer on the edge of a swamp.
The need for connection—for what we had on the phone to be made real. Physical. It was all that mattered.
I was Annie McKay, and I could go back to my strange, hollow, friendless existence later. I could go back to hiding and waiting later.
I did not think about Hoyt. My husband.
Marriage, I decided, was not the word for what I had.
Another time I would figure out what word fit. Another day.
But right now…Dylan.
In the end it wasn’t a decision. Dylan was an instinct. An urge, like a tide in my blood.
I would do this. I would have this.
And then I’d forget it.
I went back into the kitchen to find him standing in front of the windows, watching the storm. The rain and the clouds. The flash and crackle of lightning, spanning the distance between heaven and earth. A link—electric and momentary—between the two.
“Everyone okay?” he asked without turning around.
“Yes. They’re fine. Apparently, Max left without doing anything.”
He made a low assenting noise in his throat.
I set the phone down on the table and clutched my shaking fingers together. “Now what?”
Lead me, I thought. Lead me like you’ve always led me.
He turned, his face, that nose, those lips, the edges of the scar there on his neck.
Dylan.
“Now, take off your clothes.”
DYLAN
Truthfully, Dylan expected her to comply. Dylan expected her to do everything he asked. She was twenty-four and she was so innocent. The kind of innocent that never went away. She could watch a dozen strippers give blow jobs and she’d still be innocent.
Pure, that’s what Annie was. She was pure.
Pure, but curious…it was a killer combination.
That purity, it was a part of her. It was in her eyes as she watched him from across the room. It was in her voice. Fuck, it was in the ramrod straightness of her spine, like she knew she shouldn’t be here. Like she knew she was better than this place, and what was going to happen here.
Dylan wondered again where she was from, what kind of life she’d had that kept her insulated from the world. What she was so damn scared of. But then he shoved the thought aside, because she’d made it clear it wasn’t his business.
He’d never been innocent. He’d been ruined since the moment of his birth.
And he was going to smear her with all the filth on his hands. He was going to get it all over her.
The devil in Dylan Daniels was in charge now. And the devil couldn’t wait.
ANNIE
Take off your clothes.
The words ignited inside of me, burning away what was left of my reservations.
“No,” I said, the courage coming from I had no idea where.
He lifted his eyebrow, flares of color showing up on his cheeks, because he wasn’t expecting me to say that. And he liked it.
Dylan always liked it when I said no.
More fire. More courage. I did not recognize myself in this moment.
“No?”
Instead of answering, I sat down on the leather chair facing him. It was big, that chair, and it practically swallowed me whole. His eyes burned into me and I leaned back, spreading my legs. Slowly, making sure he saw everything. That his eye tracked every twitch of my fingers. I lifted my hand from beside my hip to touch my stomach and then the top edge of my shorts.
I could feel the heat of my pussy on the tips of my fingers.
With one hand Dylan swept all the stuff off the ottoman, magazines and a book. The television remote. It all clattered to the floor, but I didn’t jump. His eyes held me pinned to the chair. He sat down on the ottoman, facing me, so close our knees touched. So close I could smell him.
“Show me what you’ve been doing,” he said. “Show me what you’ve been doing all alone in your trailer.”
My fingers slipped down over the fabric between my legs. My fingers curled and I scraped my short, blunt nails