Page 18 of Caught With the Sheriff

Black. All I see is black as waves of pleasure wash over me, tides of desire and hunger and so much pleasure that it knocks me into a sea of bliss and I scream some incomprehensible word.

But he doesn’t stop. His mouth and teeth and tongue delve inside me and I fall again, screaming and writhing and begging for him to touch me, to taste me.

To stay and never leave me. I fall into a sea of black and shudder as everything disappears.

CHAPTER 7

Jasper

The taste of her is still on my tongue but her eyes are closed and she’s limp. I groan, my knees cracking as I leap to my feet.

“Hey, baby! Willow, baby! Come on, sprite! You’re scaring the hell out of me!”

I sit down beside her and haul her limp body over my lap and that’s when I see the scars on her left leg. Burns.

My stomach lurches. This is why she wears so much covering her.

My fingers reach out and tentatively trace the puckered, pale pink skin. She moves in my arms and then her eyes open.

She smiles mistily at me until she realizes. I see it when she feels my hand on her leg.

She scrambles upright and tries to tug her shirt down to cover her lower legs but when that doesn’t help she almost buries herself in cushions.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“You passed out. I was trying to wake you up.” I keep my eyes locked on hers. I want to run my hands over every inch of her, trace every hurt and heal it. Take it on myself.

I lean back in the couch and cross my legs, reaching down to grab her pants and hand them to her. She grabs them and I turn away, letting her cover herself because it’s what she needs right now.

“What happened, little sprite?” I hold up my hand when she opens her mouth. “I saw the report. I don’t want to hear that again. I want to know what happened to you. I want to know how you felt. I want to know how you feel know. I don’t need a bunch of dry words. I need your words.”

She ducks her head and I see her swallow roughly. “You read it so you know that he was a fan.” I nod my head. “He was pissed because I killed off a character that he liked. He decided to try and change my mind.”

She sighs and leans her head back and my heart aches to touch her. My fingers fist at my sides and I take a deep breath, fighting to stay calm. To sit there and listen to what she needs to say.

I can tell she’s never talked about it and it’s frozen in time in her head. She’s frozen in that fear, in that place. She needs to talk about it. Move past it.

Move towards me. Us.

Her flame-red curls hide her face but I can picture her in my head. See the terror I’ve seen flash in her eyes. And I want to kill him. Slowly.

“He got in and came up to buy a book and then I told them I needed a break. There was just something about him that made me feel…wrong.”

“That’s your gut, honey. Telling you that danger’s near. Something’s wrong. Always listen to that little voice in your head that tries to tell you when something’s wrong. It won’t steer you wrong. And even if it does, it’s better to face a little embarrassment than something a helluva lot worse,” I whisper to her.

She nods her head lifts up to look me in the eye. Hers are dark, haunted. I move closer and she doesn’t move away. “Can I hold you?” I ask her.

She freezes…but then she slowly slides over to me. One inch. Two. I wait patiently as she seems to try to decide how far she wants to go. But then she climbs into my lap and I close my arms gently around her, letting her sink into me. I lean down and bury my nose in her sweet-smelling hair. Like peaches and cream.

She sighs and leans into me. Then she says, “he followed me. I didn’t have any warning. He just holleredBitch! You killed her. How could you kill her?And then there was a knife and so much pain. He stabbed me about five times. And then he grabbed the bottle he had hidden in his coat. Kerosene. I could smell it. And he threw it on me and lit a match.”

She says it so quietly, calmly. But my heart is pounding in my chest and I can’t stop thinking, he could have killed her. I could have lost her before I found her.

A tear trickles down my cheek and I bury my face deeper in her soft, flame curls.

“Livvy realized what was happening and she got a guy that was there to tackle him and then she grabbed some curtains off this reading nook and dropped it over me and rolled me until the flames went out.”

Her tear-filled eyes come up to mine. “It hurt so much. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move. There was blood everywhere and I got an infection because of the open wounds and the fucking kerosene. I was in the hospital for so long. I thought I’d never get out of there.”