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Blurry memories from the festival last year flood the surface of my consciousness. I wouldn’t say I was waiting for him, so much as he was the only male I felt I could trust. Koa’s my friend, and after avoiding men for the year following yet another failed relationship, I’d been achingly lonely for human touch.
“Stahp,” I slur, attempting to move, but I gasp when his grip tightens.
The scent of alcohol rides each hot breath, and his lips on my skin are unwanted, unwelcomed, and make my stomach lurch.
“Has your friend back there ever made you come the way I have?”
“Ew, Koa. Knock it off.”
Despite his impressive size, he couldn’t get me off a single time. It was twenty minutes of rough, impassionate sex that satisfied him and left me feeling detached and embarrassed.
The hurt on Logan’s face is still fresh, and I wish I could have told him that no other man has ever compared to him, but I was afraid to be vulnerable with the one man who has both held and broken my heart. Just as I’m afraid that if I give him the chance, he’ll do it again.
“We should go. You’ve had a lot to drink, and I don’t think you really want this.”
But he’s not listening. The apparent threat Logan poses has spurred his possessive nature, and he only grips me tighter. “Oh, I want it.”
“What are you doing?”
Koa licks up the side of my neck, uncaring when I jerk my head away. “I bet he can’t handle a woman like you. But you know I can, don’t you?”
“I-I want to go back inside.” My heart thunders like a rabbit caught in a steel trap. Even mind-fogged, I know if he tries to force himself on me, I don’t stand a chance against a male his size. “Please.”
One large hand travels up my thigh, groping, roving, making my skin jump and crawl beneath his fingers. “Come on, Pen. Just relax.”
Nothing about my body language is saying, fuck yeah, keep going, yet he does exactly that.
“Stop,” I pant more firmly this time, wriggling when he drags me around the corner and into the alley.
My thoughts swirl with confusion, wondering what’s come over him. Tears sting my eyes as the thick aroma of garbage forces bile up my throat.
Brick nicks my spine as I struggle, and people pass by, averting their gazes, leaving me completely defenseless and at the mercy of this enormous man blocking my way out.
I try one more time to get him to listen. “Koa, stop. You’re hurting me.”
“Stop fighting me and it won’t hurt so much,” he says before yanking my zipper so hard, it snaps.
“Penelope!” I hear my sister distantly call my name.
“Carrie?” Her voice sobers me, and I lean into the adrenaline with every waking brain cell I’ve got. “Carrie—”
His big palm muffles my shout, but I refuse to surrender.
As a last-ditch effort, I relax, coaxing my mind into quieting long enough to go entirely limp and giving him the illusion that I’ve given up.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he breathes, hot and sticky against the side of my face, slipping his hand into the top of my shorts.
Before he can get so much as a finger inside the band of my panties, I drill my knee into his groin.
“Fuck you,” I hiss, dropping to the dirty concrete in an ungraceful heap.
On all fours, I scramble between his legs, scraping my hands and knees as I crawl toward the sidewalk, and I don’t stop until I’ve made it far enough to get my clumsy feet under me.
“I’m over here,” I cry, but the world’s tilting, and there’s no way to tell where I heard Carrie’s voice coming from.
The full weight of Koa slamming into me from behind knocks the air from my lungs in one forceful whoosh.
“There she is!” Declan shouts.
