Page 41 of Untamed Sinner

Which is exactly why I should fuck Hendricks.

Get it over with. Get him out of my system. I already know I’ll be disappointed. Reality rarely lives up to five weeks of sexual frustration, and at this point, I’ve built the man up into some kind of orgasmic urban legend.

Fine. Whatever. I need my brain back.

We have a girl to find, Ashford breathing down my neck, and a clock running out. I can’t keep losing IQ points every time Hendricks looks at me like he’s imagining me naked.

I nod. “So I’ll fuck him.”

Scratch the itch. Kill the curiosity. Get back to work.

Simple.

Problem solved.

Which is what I’m telling myself as I sit in the dark long after he leaves, my heart hammering against my ribs.

That was supposed to be enough. The power play. The control. The knowledge that I could push him to the edge and watch him refuse to fall. I should feel victorious.

Instead, I feel hollow.

Because now I know what his voice sounds like when he's barely holding himself together. I know the look on his face when he’s dying to cross the room but chooses not to.

No one’s ever stopped for me before. Not when I said no. Not when I was too scared to say anything at all.

Hendricks did, and somehow that’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced. I want to hand myself over to him and see what he can do.

I don’t know what scares me more: if Hendricks makes me lose control, or if he can’t either.

40

HENDRICKS

Every time I closed my eyes I saw her in that chair, legs spread, hand moving between her thighs while she watched me watch her. God knows what time I finally fell asleep.

No surprise what I dreamed about.

It’s 0732 when I wake up. The first thing I register is the scent of coffee.

She’s up.

A feeling that’s as foreign to me as peace loosens something in my chest. I get out of bed, wash up, and head downstairs—in jeans and nothing else. I’m not beyond fucking with her a little too.

Mandy’s in my kitchen. She stands at the stove wearing one of my shirts—a gray button-down I left on the hook in my bathroom. It hangs to mid-thigh on her, sleeves rolled to her elbows. The black widow tattoo looks especially menacing in this light. She's humming something low and off-key while she tends to something in a pan.

I stop in the doorway.

She doesn't turn around, but I know she knows I'm here. She’s always aware.

"Morning, sunshine," she says, like we didn’t cross all sorts of lines last night.

"You're cooking,” I greet her inanely.

"Observant." She glances over her shoulder, and the movement makes the shirt shift. I catch a glimpse of bare thigh, the curve of her ass. "You had eggs in the fridge. I figured you like them, so I’m making an omelet."

My brain latches on the eggs because it’s safer than acknowledging the woman wearing my shirt.

No one wears my shirt.