Page 1 of Promise

PROLOGUE

[Trinity]

Twenty-four years old

“Dart Rivers, you are ridiculous.” I laugh at the man handcuffed to my bed.

A man who apparently handcuffed himself to the metal headboard.

“Told you I’d chain myself to this bed until you agreed to marry me.”

As I’d said, the man is ridiculous.

And ridiculously good-looking with whiskey eyes and a seductive smirk. Bristly scruff on a jaw as structured as the ridges of the mountains around this small West Virginia town. His laugh compares to the river that flows through it, roguish, rugged, and rushing at high speed. Like the flutter of my pulse when he looks at me like he is.

Like he wants to devour me. Like he’s truly happy. With me.

His best friend’s younger sister.

He claims he’s pined for me for years.

But we both know this is only sex. Incredible, mind-blowing, toe-curling sex.

An internal sigh floats through my sated body. My limbs are stretched from the positions this man has put me in. My heart is soaring. This feeling cannot be trusted.

We were only lust, right? Temporary and unfettered. Fleeting and fun.

Yet we’ve been hooking up for weeks.

“I don’t recall you asking me a question to be answered,” I tease, sauntering toward the bed. I’d been in the ensuite bathroom, cleaning up after round number I’ve-lost-count because this man is insatiable.

Of course, I felt the same way.

I mean, look at him. Upper body leaning slack against my pink, ruffle-edged pillow. Head tipped back against the white wrought iron headboard. His bare chest on display, showing off the sleek lines of his abs and long length of his torso. One arm outstretched, wrist clamped in a fur-lined handcuff. The other cuff secured around the top of the frame. His free hand is flat on his belly, low, teasing, just above where the fold of the sheet drapes over his angled hips, exposing that tempting trail leading south and pointing at something distinctly hard. A giant arrow suggesting all roads lead here.

To Dart Rivers and his ridiculousness.

“What question do you need asked, baby?”

He purrs like a king cat, a lion giving a gentle rumble, while I climb up over his body, my gaze focused on the flat disks of his taut nipples. The dusky skin surrounded by summer-sun-kissed flesh.

Fuck, he is so beautiful. Almost as blinding as a sun himself. My insides warm just looking at him. My lower belly flutters, pulse racing, and another part of me clenches, reminding me of all he’d already done to me.

I settle on his lap, wearing the T-shirt he’d tossed to my floor last night when we tumbled into my room. My inner thighs hug the outside of his, resting just below that tempting stiffness beneath the sheet. The hand on his belly comes to my hip, electricity ripples over my skin, crackling like lightning in a summer electrical storm. Something vibrant and neon and invigorating.

I’d pinch myself to wake from the dream of having sex with this man, if my body wasn’t already sore in delicious ways, telling me I am not imagining things.

Dart Rivers and I have been having sex for weeks. Repeatedly.

“Trinity?” His lazy, mountain twang draws my attention. “What worries you, baby?”

His own vulnerability seeps into the question. A reminder of how many times he’s said he isn’t good enough for me. His past weighs heavily on him. He says he doesn’t have anything to offer me, other than a promise.

He’ll love me forever.

Actually, his exact words were, I’m going to love you so hard, Forever.

Forever with a capital letter, like a proper name, a nickname he’d given me.