Authors: Patricia Rosemoor

Dangerous (27 page)

The tricky thing about being dead is that as much as I'd like to believe myself wholly and completely numb, that wasn't exactly true. Every time I took off my bra, what happened was still there. Every time I saw a family, I couldn't help but wonder if my parents had even tried looking for me after I'd gone. The emerald-eyed guy had unwittingly dredged up everything. He'd served as the temperature conversion on my own personal black lake. Turning me over inside, bringing all the torment I'd so carefully shoved down bubbling to the surface. Only now, swimming through a lovely, ever-rising cheap vodka fog, with at least the presentable portion of my tits on display, my makeup fierce and hair properly teased and sprayed, I looked no different than any of the rest of the costume-wearing crowd.

For this one night, I was no longer the scared woman-child Blaine had wanted me to be, but the empowered woman I strove to one day become.

Wolf whistles trailed us into the smoky bar.

A cover band blared Warrant's “Cherry Pie.”

A biker type smacked my ass. It seemed only natural for me to spin on my borrowed heels to scold, “You can look, but don't
ever
touch.”

He raised his hands in surrender, then blew me a kiss. “I like a spicy bitch.”

Willow tugged me by my right arm, “
Eeww
. Come on. The hotter guys are always back in the grunge room.”

BJ's had once been a grocery store, but had since been converted into three adjoining bars, each recognizable by different music. Eighties hair bands took up the former checkout, bakery and deli sections. Then came a wall, punctuated with three sets of swinging doors. In the area that had once housed rows of canned goods, pet food, sugary kid cereal and tampons was where the honky-tonk crowd hung. Willow hustled me out of there. In the former stockroom was where we usually played on the few rare occasions Willow talked me into going out. The music ranged from Alice in Chains to Nirvana to Tool, and Willow was rightâthe guys were hotter. Not that I usually looked.

I hadn't come here for anything other than liquor-induced escape.

At least that's what I told myself.

I wasn't brave enough to look much deeper.

“Watch and learn.” Willow turned to me, adjusting her push-up bra. “I expect to have a free Crown and Coke in my hands in three, two, oneâ¦”

She left me to strut toward the bar. I should have been nervous on my own, but I honestly was too drunk to care.

The hazy air throbbed with vintage Pearl Jam and for the longest time, I stood stone still on the edge of the fray, just taking it all in. Couples dancing. Couples laughing. Couples leaning their heads together for deep-mouthed kisses so primal I felt voyeuristic watching. And then I felt hungry, angry and frustrated by having no outlet for my own sexual needs other than squeezing my thighs together, willing my racing pulse to slow, willing the old nemesis away.

Desire was no longer in my vocabulary.

Unfortunately, the vodka said horny was.

Needing more to drink, I found Willow. The target she'd found looked like an off-duty mechanic. He wore jeans and a dark blue shirt with a patch that read
Tim
.

We exchanged pleasantries that grew more pleasant when he bought me three double shots of Skyy.

Buckcherry wailed about a crazy bitch and the bass centered in my core. I became that bitch. Needed with every breath of my being to be her. Just for tonight. Tomorrow, I'd willingly return to my self-imposed coffin.

Not needing a dance floor, I closed my eyes, waving my arms Mata Hari style over my head, swaying my ass, my full, aching breasts, all the parts of me I struggled on a daily basis to forget. And then he was there, my emerald-eyed stranger, slipping his hands around my waist in a way so perfect I couldn't have dreamt it. A slow version of Nine Inch Nails' “Hurt” began to play. And I did hurt. Still hurt. Would
always
hurt. My eyes stung and my throat ached and when the stranger leaned in to kiss me, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

I didn't know him.

He didn't know me.

Yet in that moment, nothing mattered but the music. The heady sexual power coursing through every inch of me. My arms fell in a slow tumble, resting around his neck. I slid my splayed fingers into his hair, pressing him closer, deeper. I was in control and I pushed him into the nearest dark corner where, when our midsections brushed, there was no denying his attraction. I was wet and humming, flying in a netherworld of raw emotion. All of it turned topsy-turvy in my head and I couldn't stop kissing, kissing this stranger.

I raised my right leg, rubbing it up the length of him. He caught me by the backside of my thigh, clenching me hard, pulling me against his raging erection. My dress rose higher and higher until air kissed my pulsing core and my thong wedged deep, creating maddening pressure.

Not thinking, just doing, I reached for his waistband, tugging, struggling to find the button.

“Whoa,” he said. “Let's take this outside.”

I nodded.

We somehow found an emergency exit and stumbled through, crashing against the concrete block wall on the far side of a Dumpster. The cold didn't matter, because I was so hot. I wanted thisâ
him
âdesperately until nothing mattered but getting him inside me, pounding out the hurt, the pain, the confusion that never granted me peace. I wasn't dead. I was so very much alive, but screaming through a self-induced coma this stranger had somehow broken through.

Our kissing took on a fevered pitch, a mad, wanton sweeping of our tongues. He tasted of vodka and lime and hope.

He let me spring his cock free and when I knelt to blow him, his satisfied groan tore through me. “
Christ
â¦Just like that.
Don't ever stop
â¦”

Suck it good, baby! Oh yeah, that's the way your Blaine Daddy likes it!

Like a needle scratching a record, sanity returned.

I froze, letting his still hard cock pop from my mouth. What was I doing? This was insanityâb
eyond that, it was sick. I wasn't horny, but clearly needed psychiatric help.