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He liked women who were as hard as he was. Though that came with its own issues. Especially back when he’d been on parole and the girls he’d hooked up with had kept stashes of coke and heroin around.
Ever since he’d come back to Mapleton, though, he’d been more of a hermit, finding something new and interesting in the solitude.
Of course seeing her had made him very aware that he’d had the sort of solitude that left him hard and aching for a woman.
He hadn’t been celibate in a long time, mostly because he’d had five years of enforced celibacy and he was deeply uninterested in continuing on in that vein. So he prioritized sex. And food he liked. Because he knew what it was like to not be able to choose to have those things. And he knew what it was like to not be able to choose your own clothes, and your own TV shows.
He’d lived that for five long years.
So now he chose it all, and he reveled in it, and he didn’t feel guilty about a damned thing.
He’d also spent these years learning a trade. He’d gotten into construction, and then he’d gotten into being a contractor, and during that time he’d learned a lot about real estate and what sold and for how much. From there he’d begun investing in property, and he’d seen the inheritance of the Fox land on his father’s death—in prison of course—as a chance to reclaim his whole sordid childhood.
But then of course he’d decided to build it all himself, and it had turned into a penance of a strange kind that he hadn’t anticipated.
Or maybe it was more of an exorcism. But his reaction to the preacher’s girl proved to him he had a lot more demons than he liked to admit.
He bent down and picked up her backpack. And was hit by the scent of soap and wildflowers. Damn.
He kept it held tightly in his hand as he walked back toward the cabin. If she came back for it, she could have it.
But he had a feeling he’d effectively scared her off, and he wouldn’t be seeing Little Red again.
Which was just fine by him.
Because he would be tempted to eat her up.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE DREAMED OF HIM.
And when she woke up, she was sweaty and throbbing.
She had always been outraged when people had scoffed at sexy books and acted like the women reading them couldn’t distinguish between fantasy and reality. And here she was, letting her fantasies bleed into reality.
He was dangerous. And yet she’d dreamed of him. Big and rough, and over her, kissing her, his lips hot and intense on her skin as he...
She put her hand over her mouth and sat there in bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, her heart pounding.
She should have sex dreams about Michael. Who was safe and anodyne and a known entity and not a source of gossip.
She shouldn’t have sex dreams at all, because she’d never even been kissed.
But that wasn’t how she was built.
Part of her...part of her had sort of hoped...thought that maybe fantasy was only fantasy, and someday she would go on a date with a man like Michael and she would be okay with...normal.
But Michael didn’t make her burn. Zane Fox did.
But she wasn’t an idiot. A dream was a dream. A book was a book. A fantasy was a fantasy.
He wasn’t a fantasy object. He wasn’t the hero in a romance novel. She had to remember that and not totally romanticize him.
Well.
That dream hadn’t been romantic.
She felt flushed all over again.
