Page 97 of Once Upon a Lie

She stares at my cock and licks her lips, and my cock jerks involuntarily from the sight of it.

She takes his nod as a cue, sucking me past her lips while her tongue slides up and down my length, and I fall into a place I’ll never come back from.

How can something be so perfect and so wrong all at once?

Her hands are everywhere—urgent, familiar, sure of me in ways I don’t deserve. She sucks my cock like having it in her mouth is the greatest thing she’s ever experienced.

I don’t deserve her body. I don’t deserve her faith. I don’t deserve the way she says my name like it’s the safest one she’s ever heard.

But I’m trapped in a moral dilemma so deep, I can no longer tell which direction is up.

I love her. I’m in love with her. My mark. My job. A woman who, no matter how I picture it, ends up hating me in the end.

She pushes my back to the bed and climbs on top of me, her thighs straddling my hips. And then she guides my bare cock inside her.

“Shane. Yes.” Her eyes fall closed as she starts to ride me, and I grip her hips, guiding her up and down my length. I’ve never seen something as beautiful as Valentina using me for her pleasure, and I memorize it like a man who knows he might never see it again.

She locks her eyes with mine, and what I see is more than pleasure or fucking—it’s a woman looking at me like she trusts me with everything.

Her body. Her heart. Her world.

It hits me square in the motherfucking chest and breaks me. I’m the biggest fucking fraud that’s ever been.

When we finally come together—breathless and undone—I lie awake beside her, her head on my chest, her fingers curled into my side like she’s anchoring herself there. She sleeps easily, but I don’t.

There’s no pretending this was a mistake. This time, I chose selfishly, and that means I can’t let it happen like this again.

No more beds. No more nights that blur into mornings. No more giving myself space to forget why this is dangerous.

If I’m going to protect her—from the case and from me—I’m going to have to stay moving. Keep us busy. Keep distance where it counts.

I press my lips to her hair, commit the weight of her against me to memory, and make the decision I know I’ll hate later.

I have to put her first. Even if she hates it.

34

Valentina

Sunday, October 31

10:15 p.m.

A group of bachelorettes pass by us, some of them wearing rhinestone witch hats and glittery devil horns. Their makeup is already smudged with sweat and neon light. A guy dressed like Elvis—cape and all—staggers past with fake blood smeared down his chin, laughing like it’s the best night of his life, and a trolley of folks dressed up like the Village People hanging from the rafters goes by on the street.

I hang on to Shane’s arm with a tight grip, stepping around a questionable substance on the ground that might be beer, fake blood, or both. I smile up at him when he groans.

“Halloween is always a shitshow on Broadway.”

He didn’t want to come to Broadway, but he did it anyway for me. “Oh, come on,” I say with a laugh. “You’re the one who’s had us on an activity schedule all week. I swear I was going to start calling you Rita if you scheduled one more thing on our to-do list.”

Since the night we slept together at his place precisely three days ago, Shane has had us on an itinerary that rivals something from a travel agency. We’ve been swimming in Alfred’s pool, with Alfred and Pip, of course, gone out to eat almost every night, been to a movie, a comedy show, and just tonight, went on a tour of the Nashville Parthenon. Despite living here for two whole decades, I didn’t even know they gave tours.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been fun, but at some point, I’d like to get boned again before I get a complex about my ability to do the sex or the shape of my vagina or something. I felt the connection between us—I still feel it in our interactions and his soft touches—but I’ve never in my life met a man who hasn’t actively pursued submerging the submarine. Especially on a night when half of the city looks like it’s already having sex in public.

“I’ve had us busy, but Broadway is different. Broadway is . . . Broadway.” I laugh as he drones on, a teasingly haughty tone in his voice. “It’s not for locals. It’s for tourists. You know that.”

“Well, tonight,” I say, lowering to a sultry purr, “we’ll be tourists, then. Where do you want to be from, Mr. Miller?”