Page 29 of One Mistake

And to the contrary. Drinking did not render his cock useless. He got hard in my hand. Stayed hard in my mouth. Then again in my pussy. Hard and hot. Exciting. Amazing.

He held me with a hand on each of my hips, my ass pressed against his groin. He bucked his hips, went deeper with each thrust until I was out of control, whimpering and moaning in reply to his groans and grunts. Clawing red marks into the back of one of his thighs. I wanted him. Needed him to quench the ache inside me.

When I came, my body went rigid and I straightened, my hand seeking out the curve of his ass, muscles tight and tense. A second later, he groaned and strained, his arms strong and unyielding. His eyes squeezed shut and his lower lip pulled between his teeth. Adorable.

No wonder I was too weak to deny myself. “I guess it was a hold my beer situation.” I smiled as he moved away to run his head under the spray of ever-cooling water. Once we washed each other which took a lot longer than it should’ve because we paid close attention to some very vital areas, he shut off the water and wrapped me in a towel.

But stopped on about the third or fourth swipe of the towel against my back. “Did you do it on purpose?” His voice was steel. Icy. Like his mother’s.

“What?” He reached to the shelf behind the toilet for a towel and wrapped it around his waist then stalked out of the bathroom back to the bedroom like I’d forced myself on him.

“Hey!” I called after him, and there was no way he didn’t hear me, but he kept going. By the time I convinced myself to move and arrived in the doorway, he already had his pants on and was sliding a t-shirt over his head. “Ryder?”

“You took advantage of me.” His voice was a thousand nails down the chalkboard.

“I did what?” And I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. I didn’t hear him say no or ask me not to put his cock in my mouth. Kind of negated his assertion. But I still couldn’t wait to hear the justification. “How did I take advantage of you?”

“Fuck me without a condom because your ovaries are crying out for a kid?” He wagged a finger in my ovary area. “Because your tits need the”—he gestured to my boobs in a knob-twisting kind of motion—“gentle suckling of a little baby to make you feel like you’ve checked all of life’s boxes.”

Every word he said was stupider than the one before it. It wasn’t hard to understand how he managed to look like that and still remain single. “We had sex without a condom because you’re the one who pulled me up off my knees and bent me over so you could put your dick in.” There would be no blaming me. Well, a little because I’d followed him to the bathroom. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I was a cop and not so desperate for a kid that my devious little mind went straight to unprotected sex makes baby for me. Surely, he had to know that. But obviously, he didn’t. And that pissed me off. “You know what, Ryder? You are a fucking idiot.”

He shook his head. “Yeah. Get what you want then call me names, right? I’m an asshole and a dick and a fucking idiot.”

I scoffed when he paused. “Why don’t you hold your breath while you wait for me to argue. Solve both our problems.” I snatched my mom’s robe off the back of the door and shoved my arms inside because I argued better when I wasn’t standing mostly naked in front of the person I was having it out with.

“And let you raise my kid by yourself?” The indignance was overkill.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to forgive you because alcohol kills brain cells and judging by the bullshit you’re spewing, I’m going to say you drank a lot. And so the couple of cells you have left aren’t functioning properly—definitely not from overuse, but… Whatever. Not my place to judge. But don’t say something you’re going to regret later. I’m not going to let you take it back.” Not a threat. He might’ve had the size advantage, but I had years of pent-up rage. Ryder rage.

“What does that mean?” He stuffed his shirt into his waistband a couple extra times even after it was securely tucked. Angry, fine. So was I.

But purposefully obtuse was too much. I narrowed my eyes, but he still looked like sex on a stick and my anger wavered. Later on, I would happily dissect what it said about me that I was so angry I wanted to throttle him and so hot for him I wanted to throw him down on the bed at the same time. Right now, I wanted to hit him with arrows pointed by my words.

“It means before you say something shitty that makes me hate you worse than I do now, you might want to think about it because you aren’t the kind of guy who can afford to lose another friend.” His eyes flickered like I’d hit the bullseye with that one.

I waited for the sting of whatever he replied. “You were never my friend. You were just the girl I was fucking.”

And there it was.

One Decade Ago

“Oh, honey, are you sure?” She looked at me through the mirror in front of me. “That’s a lot of stress on your hair. The extensions and the color.” She had the nasal drone and big poof of shiny black hair reminiscent of eighties sitcom TV.

But I hadn’t traveled to New York with all the money I’d saved over the years and decided to spend on this makeover because I wanted to pay extra for someone to second guess me. “I’m sure. Let’s just do it.” If my hair was too stressed, I’d shave it. Or find it a shrink. Didn’t matter. I needed a drastic change and I scoured magazines and websites for days. Then I found this.

No one was ever going to mistake me for some plain Jane pushover who let people say whatever they wanted. No fucking way.

And an hour later, I checked her work in the mirror. Gone was the mousy brown, replaced by a vibrant almost silver that extended way past my shoulders thanks to the extra hair she’d woven in with mine. She explained care, took my three hundred fifty dollars plus hundred dollar tip—birthday money saved since second grade—and I picked up my bags from Vannie’s Vintage and Goth Thrift which included skirts so short my ass cheeks showed, shirts ripped and tight, shoes with thick platforms and square heels. My nun days were over.

I drove straight back, pulled into Felicity’s driveway, and smiled when she stumbled over a “Can I help you?” before she recognized me.

“Holy shit. What did you do?”

“Let’s see that bastard call me plain now.” I pushed past her into the living room of her place and sighed. She knew what had happened between Ryder and me, and she understood.

“They—the Alphas—had court today. An arraignment.”

I didn’t want to ask, but… “Did everything…come out…okay…for Finn?” We both knew who I was asking about.