“Sounds good, and no, I can cook! I love it! See ya then, and have a great night.”
“Oh, I’ll try. The townies who get too drunk and a bit handsy showed up, so I might be calling it a night as well. See ya, girl!”
“Bye-bye.” I laugh at her comment, ending the call.
I really need to get a grip. This is not New York, and clearly whoever that was who always tried to get in my place isn’t here. We are thousands of miles away. Can’t start this new life if I’m constantly reliving the old one.
My head starts to pound. All the night’s events and constant battle in my head have collided and taken me down. I shut off all the lights, double checking first that the alarm is set, and then I get to the couch, my eyes shuttering within minutes. Tomorrow is a new day.
I wake to the dogs barking, and it’s still dark out. Looking at my phone, I see I’ve slept maybe an hour. What in the hell? Then it hits me.
Did they come find me?
Shooting up, I start to freak out again, and that’s when there’s a pounding on the door.
“Hanna! Open up. It’s Theo.”
“The actual hell?” I fume, standing and moving to the door in a rage, ready to rip him a new one. Swinging the door open, I see he looks angry, glancing around the house as if someone else is going to come popping out. “Um. Can I help you?”
His eyes land on me, and they travel up and down the length of me, his fists balled and clenching hard, making the veins in his arms pop. I’m ashamed to say the throb between my legs returns, and there’s now a damp spot in my panties. Holy hell, he looks lethal.
“My sister called and said someone showed up and spooked you.”
I curse Brenda in my head. I told her not to call him. He looks angrier than what this news should’ve spurred. Why does he seem like he wants to kill someone?
“Theo, I’m fine. You can go now, and take a chill pill while you’re at it. You look like you want to—”
He cuts me off then, slamming into me and gripping my throat violently. I go to speak, but I’m silenced when his lips collide with mine. He’s brutal with his kiss, taking my mouth like it’s something he doesn’t care if he breaks it. I hesitate at first, but then something happens.
My body takes over. Not my brain, because if it did, I would be pushing him away. But hell, this kiss. God. It feels so good. Incredible, and I don’t want it to stop.
I’ve never been kissed like this before. He’s brutal, demanding, skilled, and when his tongue hits mine, I moan. He tastes like a man. A real, feral man who wants to devour me with this one kiss. And I don’t want to tame the beast. What is happening?
Reaching up between us, he pinches my peaked nipple, and I gasp, dropping my head back and losing his mouth.
“You keep fighting me, believing I don’t want you. You’re such a bad girl, and I should take you upstairs, slap your pink pussy, and make you understand just what I want,” he growls, stepping back and peering down at me, hunger bleeding from him, and right before he’s about to lean back in, the dogs start barking again.
I shoot up from the couch with a gasp, my body covered in a hot sweat, my core aching with desire… and that’s when I realize it. It was all a dream. It was just a dream.
What is happening? What was that? Why did I have such an intensely sexual and crude fantasy about Theo? I stand and head to the kitchen, getting a cold bottle of water from the fridge and taking sips.
He’s not the guy who’s going to do those things with you. He is an enigma, Hanna. You can’t be feeding into that or fantasizing about it. Let it go, and act like it never happened, I scold myself, stunned that my subconscious did that. He’s hands-down the most attractive man I’ve ever known… and he’s unreachable.
Let it go.
I say it again and take my water back to the living room. The pups are no longer barking; I’m assuming I was making God knows what kinds of noises in my sleep. It must have startled them and had them waking me up. Thank the good Lord above they’re animals and can never repeat whatever noise I was making, or worse—the words I was saying.
I lie awake for another hour or so, my mind ruminating that dream repeatedly. That can never get out. No one can ever know I had this fantasy about Theo. Ever.
“Come on, Dorothy. Let’s go, Clyde,” I say to the pups, opening the front door with my bucket of gardening items needed to work on the white roses I want to plant along the front of the house. I have no idea what I’m doing, but the picture online was too stunning to not attempt it, and the how-to blog with was pretty clear. So, I’ll put all my faith in it. Worse thing that’ll happen is I’ll have to pull out dead bushes.