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ROGUE – Preview
I kick the tub as if it’s the tub’s fault, then yell,
“OUCH!”
Scowling, I walk into the bedroom, grab my sleep clothes,
pad outside to my living room/kitchen combo to grab some ice cream, slide on my
Princess Bride DVD and turn on the
TV. A couple of pounds of fat, here we go. I plop down and a vibration buzzes
across the couch. I scowl and feel around for my phone. I find it way in
between the two couch cushions, pull it out, and set it aside for a scoop of
ice cream. I almost choke on it when I see a text I hadn’t noticed before.
Be home tonight.
What? My stomach vaults. I read who the text is from and
suddenly I want to throw my phone into a WALL. Greyson. I scowl at it and throw it down to the couch and start
pacing. I’m not going to answer him. Why would I? He seemed in no hurry to talk
to me before, and now he orders me? Like an all mighty king? No thanks. I’ll pass on our second date, thank you.
But I check and notice the text was sent hours ago. I tell
myself I am not going to respond, I will wait a gazillion days like he did. I
set the phone aside and put a big spoonful of ice cream in my mouth, letting it
melt on my tongue, but my stomach is squirming and now I can’t watch the TV, I
can only stare at my phone and suck on the spoon. Then I bury the spoon in the
tub and grab my phone, squeeze my eyes shut and type.
I’m home but that doesn’t mean I’m staying home. Just
depends . . .
On? comes the reply, and quickly.
Whoa, was he waiting, with phone in hand, to answer? It
seems like he was.
I wait one full minute. Trembling. Type: On who’s visiting
I don’t mean that as an invite. I mean it as in: I’d
hightail it out of here if he set foot in my building. But his answer is
lightning fast and my heart starts pounding as it keeps staring back at me.
Me.
Crap! I have to leave. I have to leave; I can’t see him!
I can’t be this easy! A line must be drawn. He’s already shown what our night
together meant to him, and I won’t let myself be devalued by him or any other
moron again.
I should leave before he arrives, or when he does, yell
through the door, without opening it even an inch, and tell him that I’m NOT
INTERESTED! You stood me up, you didn’t
get in touch soon enough, I am not your booty call, have a good life!
Yeah. That sounds right.
Determined, I head over to close the living room blinds.
When I glance out the window and reach for the string I see a dark sports car
pull over and a man in black step out of the driver’s seat. He looks up toward
my window and all my systems stop when our eyes lock, hold, recognize. My insides go into chaos
mode. A strange excitement makes my knees knock.
Fuck me, it’s really him.
What is he doing here? What does he want?
He heads into the building and I turn to face my closed
door, panicking because I haven’t changed, I didn’t change. I’m in my pj’s, if hardly that.
Noticing the pint of ice cream still grasped in my hand,
I run to shove it back into the freezer, spoon and all. I start pacing around
in circles, trying to come up with a new plan, but unable to think for shit. I
consider telling my building guard not to let him in, but I hear the ring of the
elevator and realize the guard must have recognized the motherfucker from when
he brought me home last week.
Deciding not to delay the inevitable, I swing the door
open as he steps out of the elevator. He looks straight at me and his gaze
drills into me, making a hole straight in my thoughts. One of my neighbors and
her husband pass along the hall toward their door.
“Well, hello there, Melanie. A little chilly out.” She
gestures to the white silk shorts and near-transparent camisole I’m wearing in
complete disapproval and continues on.
Greyson follows behind her and fills up the space one foot
away from my threshold with muscle and beauty and testosterone and, I swear,
god, I swear, he’s as lethal as a nuclear bomb. My knees, oh, my knees. My
heart. My eyes. My body feels both light as a feather and heavy as a tank. How
can this be? He’s so stunning I can’t even move.
Or blink, or hardly stand; I’m leaning on the door frame.
I’m fully sober. Something I might regret. He’s no longer
blurred by the rain, by vodka, or by my stupid illusions of prince charming.
The man standing at my door is very real, very big, very
tan, and his smile is very, very charming. There is no word for the way he
stands there, his eyes dark and glimmering, his cheekbones hard and his jaw
smoothly shaven, his mouth so beautiful, tipped up mischievously at the
corners. His suit is perfect, playboy perfect, and his tousled hair run with
wayward streaks of copper that makes me want to rake my fingers straight
through. And he’s here, looking at me as if waiting for me to let him in. A
memory of the morning he brought me home flashes through me. Where I felt sore
because of the way he’d loved me all night. The little mark behind my ear that
I found the next morning.
Hanging on to my every instinct of self-preservation, I
hold the door only halfway open when he catches it in one big powerful hand.
“Invite me in,” he says softly, holding the door in his
firm grip.
“My car doesn’t need a tune-up,
it’s fine, but thanks for checking in on it,” I say, pushing it closed with
more effort.
He shoves the door open and
strides inside, and I’m frustrated over my inability to keep him out. Now he’s
inside and he shuts the door like he owns my place, then he studies it with a
sweep of narrowed eyes. “This building has a laundry chute?”
“That’s your line?”
He crosses the room and pulls the
rest of the blinds shut, then he performs an insanely quick check of my place
with a sweep of his gaze that makes my insides turn over.
It’s almost like he’s making sure
there is no other man here.
He can’t possibly be jealous, can
he?
And now . . . now that he seems
assured no one is here but me, he starts walking over to me and looking at my
mouth, and I’m walking away because every instinct of self-preservation in me
tells me to walk away.
“You’re here. Why are you here
all of a sudden? Some other date canceled on you last minute?” I demand.
“I have a date I’d like to
schedule with you.” His eyebrows pull low over those brilliant hawklike eyes.
“You’re not nearly as excited to see me as I’d hoped.”
“Maybe I thought you were a
drunken hallucination. Maybe I hoped
you were.”
I hit the back of my kitchen
island and he locks me in with his arms, his eyes almost desperate and hungry. Then
he cups my face and sets his mouth to mine, like he thinks—mistakenly—I belong
to him.
“I’m not,” he says, softly, then
he kisses me again, so deeply I lose my train of thought until he speaks
against my mouth again. “A hallucination. And if you need me to, I’ll spend all
night reminding you of what it feels like to have my tongue and my cock buried
deep in you and how much you liked it.”
He leans over as if to kiss me
again. My voice trembles as I turn my head. “Don’t, Greyson.”
“I don’t like that word,
‘don’t,’” he rasps against my cheek. “But I do like you saying Greyson.”
He tips my head around with the
tip of one finger and stares at me like he loves the look of me. I lift one of
his arms and he lets me, and I start easing away again, free of him, but not
free of his stare. The first night he just kept staring at my eyes like he
couldn’t tear his gaze free, but now, now he’s seeing all of me. I’m wearing
shorts and a camisole yet my body starts heating as his eyes rake me up and
down.
“I gave you a chance and you blew
it,” I breathe.
“I want another one.”
Katy Evans
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