The Harder You Fall

Well. His affirmation wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it sure was disappointing. He would take her here and now, then return to his date, acting as if nothing had happened. Because it hadn’t—not really. Not for him. Jessie Kay meant nothing to him. A moment of pleasure, easily forgotten.

I’m an appetizer, she’s a meal.

I’m the drive-through, she’s the five-star restaurant.

I’m the slut a man can bang, never the girl he’ll take home to momma.

The knowledge hurt Jessie Kay deep inside, pouring salt on old wounds that festered. West hadn’t asked her to be his date—and he never would.

“Do you have many of those?” she asked, trying to control her temper. “One-night stands, I mean.”

“No.” The grip he had on the hem of her dress tightened, pulling the material down, revealing the upper edge of her bra. “You would be the first.”

The firmness of his tone said she would also be the last. “Why make an exception for me? Because I’m special?”

He frowned at her sneering tone. “Because we’ll be good together. Because I can’t stop thinking about you.” Pretty words, but not really an answer. “I’ll take care of you, Jessie Kay.”

Oh, he would, she had no doubt about that. But he would only take care of her until he finished with her and zipped up his pants. “Then what? We pretend it never happened?”

His eyes narrowed, flashes of fire under his lids. “Yes,” he hissed. “We pretend. We become the friends we were meant to be.”

Something inside her snapped, and she pounded her fists into his shoulders. “You think I’m easy to get and easy to walk away from. Well, I think you’re a bastard. How about that?”

“I think you’re a woman with needs. I know I’m a man with needs, and I know we can help each other out.”

Help each other out. The phrase echoed inside her mind, again and again, more insulting each time. “I don’t need your help, West. I take care of myself very well.”

“But you’ll have more fun with me.”

“Don’t be so sure. You haven’t seen the things these fingers can do.”

His fury switched direction, now projecting a take-off-your-panties heat that singed her to the bone.

“I’m not looking for a one-night stand, or even a two-month affair,” she said. Not that he’d offered the latter. She swatted his shoulders again, just for good measure, and this time, he stepped back, putting distance between them. “I’m especially not interested in becoming your side slice.”

“You wouldn’t be a side slice.” His lids lowered, looking heavy, and his lips softened. “You’d be the full meal.”

Dang him! She shivered. “Your girlfriend is waiting outside this room. You plan to screw me and return to her. You’ll sleep with her tonight.”

“Monica isn’t yet my girlfriend.”

Jessie Kay had begun to melt—the brunette isn’t his girlfriend; there’s a chance I can win him—only to stiffen. Isn’t yet, he’d said. Yet. He intended to move forward with the girl. More than that, he hadn’t disputed the rest of Jessie Kay’s claims. He would return to Monica. He would sleep with her tonight.

Scratch an itch with me now, return to regular programming later. Maybe, like Jase and Beck, he’d even decide to marry the girl who came after Jessie Kay.

Dark emotion flooded her, choking her until she almost couldn’t breathe past the gloom. “The next man I’m with will value me. I will mean something to him.”

A flare of his nostrils. “You mean something to me.”

“Don’t kid yourself. If I meant anything at all, you never would have put me in this position.”

He ran his hand down his face and backed away another step.

“Do you have any idea how bad it hurt when your friends discarded me, as if I’d dared to overstay my welcome? No,” she said with a shake of her head. “You don’t, because you don’t know me. You can’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to do the same thing.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, glaring down at his feet. “You’re wrong,” he said, and for once, there was no emotion in his voice. “I do know what it’s like to be discarded. But it doesn’t stop the ache I have for you, the constant hunger nothing else has been able to satisfy.”

She couldn’t allow herself to focus on those words. Doesn’t stop the ache I have for you... She’d cave—could already feel her resistance melting again. “You’re telling me a woman actually cut you loose?”

“Many women, but not the way you think.” He met her gaze dead-on, his features more ravaged by the second. “Not romantically.”