Tainted Love: A Lovestruck Novella, Book 1 (11 page)

“Ah, yeah, and that was good for me, too,” she teases with a small smile.

“That was fucking incredible, like I told you it would be,” I say before moving on to the more pressing issue. “So, you’re gonna stay in town, right?”

Her smile slips. “Well, hopefully. But I don’t know where I’ll find work, so…”

“Stay here,” I tell her.

“Um, okay. I’ll try.”

“No, I need more than try,” I say in a rush. “Because this,” I motion between us, “is too damn good to end. You don’t want it to end do you?”

“Ah, no. I really like you,” she replies.

“Good,” I say, but that…worry is still gnawing on my insides. I need to give her more reasons to stick around, starting with my cock, and then working my way to everything else.

Desperate to have her again, with a need so strong it’s got me in a chokehold, and wanting to remind her just how damn good we are together, I sit back on my knees and flip her to her stomach.

“Oh, whoa, okay,” she mumbles into the mattress. “I’m game for round
twooooo
!”

Before the last word leaves her mouth, I drive my swollen to capacity cock inside her again and again, holding on to her hips so she can’t get away.

“Fuck, Josie,” I groan when she pushes back, silently begging for more instead. The sound of my balls slapping against her ass reminds me that my hand wanted to do that, so I swat at her right cheek, making her gasp.

“That was for leaving with that asshole earlier,” I tell her, followed by another
whap
. “That’s for fucking me so good I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.”
Whap
. “That was for…everything else because I just love slapping your ass.”

“Yes!” she screams, reminding me of when I saw her standing outside my garage and she repeated the word over and over again. The relief at that moment was staggering because I wasn’t sure if I would ever see her again. Thank fuck I did. I can’t imagine going the rest of my life never knowing how amazing it feels to be inside of her.

Certain I won’t last much longer, I reach down the front of her body, rubbing my fingertips over her clit as I keep pumping my cock inside her. Unlike the first time, now I’m fucking her like an animal, needing her harder, faster, deeper, unable to get enough of any of the above.

When her arms collapse, flattening her onto her stomach, I follow, my hand still underneath her. She cries out like she’s being murdered when she starts riding my hand, squeezing my cock within her silky walls. I bit my bottom lip bloody while I wait for her to finish coming. At the last of her shudders, I pull out, tear off the condom and take my pulsing cock in my fist to jerk off. Why? I don’t fucking know. To mark her or some shit? It sounded like a good plan in my crazy ass head.

“Fuck, Josie,
fuckkkk
,” I groan as I watch the cum spray her ass and run down her crease until there’s nothing left in me. Completely spent, I fall to the mattress next to the amazing woman I somehow finally got into my bed.

Josie

“Wow.”

That one word falls from my parted lips, as I try to get more oxygen into my seizing lungs. It’s the only word I’m capable of speaking at the moment, and it clearly doesn’t do justice to what Lawson and I just participated in together.

“As soon as my legs work again…I’ll go get a wash cloth…to clean you up with. Then we’ll eat,” Lawson says from where he’s stretched out beside me, both of us flat on our stomachs, looking like mowed down roadkill. Reaching over, he brushes the hair from my face sweetly, and I notice he’s wearing a peaceful, lazy smile that’s probably identical to mine.

My stomach growls, interrupting the moment, and I swear his answers it before we both laugh. “Let me clean you up so we can get some food into you,” Lawson says, my eyes tracking every inch of his incredible body as he stands up from the bed and leaves the room.

Sweet baby Jesús, I can’t believe that man and I…we…wow. There’s no other way to describe it. Never before have I had an orgasm during sex. I thought it was a myth from romance novels and movies, not something that was physically possible. But Lawson proved it to be true. Twice. With him it seemed effortless.

After Lawson returns, we eat our steak burritos in bed and wash it down with beer. I think I now have a new favorite way to eat every meal. Mexican food with a naked Lawson in bed is the best.

While he’s in the bathroom taking a shower, his cell phone starts dinging from the pocket of his jeans still on the floor. Oh no. The
Jeopardy
theme song starts to play in my indecisive head. Am I really considering snooping? I mean, I do trust him, and it’s probably just his brother saying he and his nephew made it home. So, by looking at the phone, I’ll confirm this for a fact and let go of any tiny, little doubts I may have.

Unable to resist, I climb off the mattress and kneel beside his jeans. Glancing over at the bedroom door, I still hear the shower running. So, very gently, I pull the device from his front pocket. I don’t even have to worry about needing a code to unlock the screen.

My heart stops when the two sentences practically jump off the phone and punch me in the gut. Jasmine Flores’s text message to Lawson says, “
I need you ASAP. How soon can you come over
?” 

What the fuck?

With shaking hands, I slip the phone back where I found it and scamper up on the bed. Flopping backwards on the pillow, I try to think this through. Okay, so maybe his ex wasn’t lying about him and other women, but surely he’s not seeing anyone else now, right? He told me he wouldn’t, and after the mind-blowing sex we just had, that doesn’t even seem possible. It’s probably just some delusional woman who still wants Lawson, but he’ll, of course, ignore her advances. Right? God, I hope so.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m beat,” Lawson says with his naked return to the bedroom, followed by a yawn and a stretch of his muscular arms over his head.

“Yeah, me too,” I reply, deciding to let go of the insecure bullshit trying to wreak havoc on my happiness. Lawson is not Bryan. Far from it, and I trust him. Mostly. We just met, so it’s gonna take some time to get to a hundred percent.

But then, another two rapid dings on his phone interrupts the silence in the room. With a heavy sigh, Lawson goes over and retrieves the device from his abandoned pile of jeans. He curses under his breath as his thumb starts to scroll, and then he’s typing out a response. “Josie, I’m really sorry, but something’s come up…”

No! No, no, no. He is
not
blowing me off to go fuck some…some
floozy
!

“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice only slightly shaky. It’s not like I can come right out and admit that I was snooping and saw the message on his phone from a woman asking him to come over. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” is his clipped response. “A friend has an emergency, so I’ve gotta go.”

An emergency? That’s his best excuse? Let me guess, her pussy needs saving? There’s an itch only his cock can reach? What an asshole!

“I’m sorry –”

“Oh my God!” I exclaim, interrupting him as I scramble off his sheet-less bed to find my dress. When I look over, Lawson is quickly pulling his jeans back up his legs with no underwear, making me scoff. “I can’t believe you right now!”

“Josie…calm down,” he says with his hands on his hips. “You can stay. I’ll be back in a few…”

“No! No way am I gonna sit around here, waiting for you to come back…
afterwards
! How stupid do you think I am? Do you think I’m so fucking desperate that I would put up with that shit from you?” I scream at him while I finish dressing hastily, slipping my heels on without bothering to fasten them around my ankle. “You know what, forget it and forget you!”

“Josie, wait!” he yells as I storm through the living room. Tears flood my eyes before I scoop my purse up from the floor in the entry way, and then it’s hard to see through the liquid blur to get the stupid locks turned on the door. When Lawson tugs on my elbow from behind, a sob escapes from my throat. “Don’t! Don’t touch me!” I shout as I pull my arm free.

Running down the flight of stairs, I nearly break my neck in my cream heels that are still unfastened around my ankles. I somehow make it to my car in one piece, cranking it and pulling away just as Lawson appears on the sidewalk. I refuse to glance back in my review mirror to see his gorgeous face one last time. As more tears race each other down my cheeks, I tell myself that I wish I had never met him. But the shitty part is I know that’s a lie.

And how fitting that, like a soundtrack to my life, the eighties radio station is playing “Tainted Love.” I don’t think I ever really understood the meaning of the song until now when I’m running away as fast as I can from what I thought could have been love. When everything was going so well, he ruined it.

How stupid was I? To think that falling in love could be so easy and effortless, or that I could ever trust a man again. Swiping the tears from my face, I curse the stupid psychic for making me believe in something as ridiculous as a love potion. The fraud. It’s wrong for her to take advantage of desperate women. Lonely women like me.

Dragging my ass into my sad, empty apartment minutes later and slumping against the closed door, I don’t know which is more depressing, being left for another woman minutes after having sex with a man for the very first time, or knowing that I have nine more years of loneliness ahead of me.
If
I actually believe the psychic.

I hear a buzzing sound from my phone vibrating in the leather purse gripped tightly in my fist. There’s no need for me to even look at the screen to know who it is. Snatching it out without bothering to see what it says, I launch it right across the room. The annoying contraption flies through the air on a high arc until it lands, clattering loudly to the linoleum floor in the kitchen. Uncaring if it’s broken beyond repair or not, I turn the deadbolt on the front door and shuffle my feet down the hall to my room. Reaching my sad destination, I change into my pajamas and dive headfirst into my bed and wish that when I wake up it will have all been just been a dream.

Except, even as I think that, I know for a fact that as much as I hate Lawson right now, he’ll probably keep staring in my fantasies, the beautiful, evil man that he is.

…

The next morning I wake to a big, warm palm slipping underneath the back of my pajama top, stroking up and down my spine and pressing against me to pull me closer…
What the fuck
!

I jump clear off the bed before my eyes even start working. Then, I’m blinking around me in the sunlit room, trying to find something to use as a weapon.

“Josie,” Lawson says, sitting up in the bed. When my eyes start to regain focus, I notice that he’s freshly showered, his face shaved smooth, wearing a pair of jeans and another
South Park
shirt. This one is black and also has Cartman on it, along with the words, “
You’re breaking my balls!
”

And, dammit, the stupid shirt provides comic relief that I don’t want or need right this moment because I’m trying to remind myself that this man is a slimeball, albeit a gorgeous one, with a great sense of humor, but a slimeball all the same. Wait, how the hell did he get into my room? Last night I distinctly remember locking my front door, the only door there is.

“Did you break in my apartment?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest to warm my cold, pointy nipples. They’ve obviously forgotten that we no longer like the god of thunder with his messy, golden hair and sad, grassy green eyes. Neither my nipples nor I miss his full, pouty lips that are currently frowning or any of his various sculpted muscles hiding underneath his offensive clothing. Nope, definitely not even one tiny, microscopic bit.

“Now, if I had just committed a B&E, do you really think I would be stupid enough to confess to it in front of the alleged victim?” he replies, getting to his feet, as if to move closer to me.

“S-stay away,” I warn him, grabbing my curing iron from the dresser behind me since it’s the best I can do for a weapon.

“Or what? You gonna curl my hair?” he asks with a smirk as he runs his fingers through his disheveled locks. His biceps bulge from underneath the short sleeves of his tee, and that’s all it takes to wake up the rest of my sleeping lady parts. Hell, who am I kidding? They were well awake before I was just because of his close proximity. “Josie, please just sit down and listen to me a second.”

“Why? Why should I listen to you when you’re just gonna run off to be with some other woman?” I yell at him, and his eyes follow the movements of my curling iron that’s flailing wildly between the two of us.

“The garage is a sinking ship,” he says on a heavy exhale, his shoulders slumping when he sits back down on the edge of the bed and hangs his head.

My heart aches for him, right before I realize that his grandfather’s business failing doesn’t excuse him from having sex with other women.
Jeez, woman. Get your shit together
! Before I can point all this out to him, though, he continues his explanation. “No one knows, not my employees or my family. But the only way I can make ends meet is by my side business –”

“You’re a prostitute!?!” I exclaim just before I beam myself in the forehead with my own flailing weapon. Damn curling iron. I sit it back on the dresser before I do any more damage to myself.

Lawson shakes his hanging head, and then finally looks up to flash me a small smile. “No, Josie. I have a side business on nights and weekends as a handyman, you know, like small home repairs. I also do on-call auto maintenance, and, ah, locksmithing. Most of my customers are divorced, single, or elderly women who don’t have any men around to fix those sorts of things for them.”

“Oh,” I mutter in partial understanding. Unless he’s lying. If he is, it’s very elaborate. “So, last night…”

“Last night, at the worst possible time, one of my regulars, Jasmine, a single mom with three young kids, needed an emergency fix. Her hot water heater started leaking into her basement, and it was a fucking mess,” he explains.

“Wow,” I say when I sit down on the bed beside him. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he accesses his camera roll and then shows me what looks like a recreation room with children’s toys floating in ankle deep water. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah,” he barks out a laugh. “I was there for five hours, fixing the leak and helping her clean up with a wet vac.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, covering my face with both hands in shame. “I’m a horrible person.”

“No, you’re not,” Lawson says, pulling me into a hug against his chest. “You just have trust issues, and I should’ve been honest with you. But I wasn’t ready to admit the garage’s failure,
my failure
, to anyone yet. And then, all night while I was cleaning, all I could think about was doing whatever I had to do to make things right with us.”

Reaching up to the back of his neck, I pull his lips down to mine and kiss him silly. He’s such a great guy, and I know now that I was absolutely wrong about him.
Again
. Jeez. I can’t help but think that he’s too good to be true, because he is. And, yes, I also can’t stop worrying that if I
did
find him after drinking from a magic potion that he might just up and,
poof
, disappear on me. I realize that’s probably something he needs to know, since he’s been so honest with me.

“I have a confession to make, too,” I tell him, when I pull back, licking my lips to keep tasting his cinnamon flavor on them.

“You do?” he asks.

“Well, I didn’t tell you the whole story about how my car lost the door,” I start, and Lawson bites down hard on his lip, I know to keep from laughing.

“Let’s hear it,” he says with a grin.

“Okay. So, my best friend Reagan and I were leaving this festival where we talked to a psychic –”

“A psychic?” he repeats with both golden eyebrows raised in disbelief.

“Yeah, who sold Reagan this, ah, supposed love potion....”

“Uh-huh,” he mutters.

“And I drank it going down the road, which made me sick, so I had to pull over. My car door was open, and that’s how it got knocked off.”