Page 78 of Hounded
“What changed your mind?” he asked. “About this? About me?”
“I told you I liked you the day after we met.”
“Then you said we were friends,” Indy countered.
“Aren’t we?” I paused, holding onto his hip and half-wishing he would grind on me. My erection swelled, begging for friction.
I wondered if he felt it, and if that was what promptedhis gaze to cut away and his blush to deepen. “Is it normal to wanna fuck your friends?” he asked.
I chuckled. “Maybe not all of them.”
Indy’s head dipped in a nod. “No,” he replied. “Just you.”
His fingers dragged across my chest, then up, tracing my jaw, then my cheek, and ending on my lips. “I’ve dreamed about this.” He spoke slowly, touched gently. “I’ve dreamed about you, Loren. I think about you all the time.”
I smoothed my hand through his curls, torn between wanting to ravish him and wanting to linger in this moment. It was tentative bliss, and I couldn’t bear the thought of ruining it.
Indy cupped his hand atop mine where it rested on his shoulder.
“Do you think about me?” he asked, his voice soft. “When you’re alone?”
Not only when I was alone. I thought of him every moment. All the time.
“Yes,” I said.
His smile brightened the dark trailer; it lit my whole world. I would give, and had given, everything for his happiness. It was the only way I felt joy: when his reflected onto me.
He dotted my throat with kisses while his breath ghosted over my skin.
I remembered this like I remembered everything. I knew how to make him sigh and shudder. I had mapped every tender spot on his body, and I dove into him, visiting those places with my fingertips and mouth.
Indy arched as my hand splayed on his back, trusting my grip to steady him. He gave me access to every part of him, making needy sounds that caught me up.
I remembered so much that I almost forgot. I was so willing to pretend that I would have put aside all the hurt and betrayal, just for tonight. But, when I pulled back to give Indy a moment to breathe, he grabbed the links of my collar and yanked.
Everything stopped.
The heat that had warmed my skin vanished, leaving me as cold as if I’d been doused in ice water. I gasped, and my eyes stretched wide. The sensation—the strangling feeling—threw me out of the moment and into Moira’s bedroom. Onto her floor because she liked me best beneath her, too busy fighting for air to fight against her.
Indy used the choke chain as a tether to pull me to him. He might have kissed me again, but my stiff muscles and stricken expression stalled him.
I wanted to shove him onto the floor, to break his hold on me and bolt becausemyIndy would never treat me that way. He wasn’t like the demons who saw me as an animal to be caged, corralled, and collared. I wasn’t less than human in his eyes. He didn’t jerk me around to get me to behave. He didn’t use me.
“Loren?” Indy asked.
He let go of my collar, and I grabbed his waist to move him swiftly aside. I stood unsteadily, and he followed. My move toward the door was unannounced and unexplained until Indy caught my shoulder and spun me around.
His golden eyes were pinched, pleading. “Was that too rough?” he asked. “I thought… the lifestyle thing…”
“I said I wasn’t into it.” My voice pitched low.
“Then why…?” He trailed off.
Forced to face him and feeling trapped in a place where I should have been safe, I acknowledged the truth I had wanted to deny. I thought of him, yes. Every moment, all the time, but those thoughts were of ghosts. Past versions of him haunted me because I refused to let them go.
I shrugged off his grip and hurried out of the trailer without bothering to close the door.
This Indy wasn’t my Indy. I was beginning to fear he never would be.
