Then Came Love - Patricia Pellicane

Could they survive the pain only those who love deeply can know? She hated him beyond measure. After a year of torturous separation her feelings had only grown in strength. When would he leave? She couldn’t allow him to know her most carefully guarded secret. She couldn’t allow him to ever know.

He was tired of waiting for her to come to her senses, to return to him, to realise she’d made a mistake. She was the love of his life, he was taking what she refused to give. Fight him or not, she was his and was always going to be only his.



EXCERPT

“How much are you paying him?”

She pulled back and narrowed her gaze. “What are you talking about?”

“Is he an escort?”

“Would it soothe your ego if he were?” She laughed, partly in shock at his accurate guess and partly to cover her sudden nervousness. “What’s the matter, Rick? Is he too handsome? You really are obnoxious, aren’t you? I’m not allowed to have an attractive boyfriend, but you can show off a harem of bimbos. Where do you get them? Sluts R Us? Don’t they have any with less than a double D cup?”

Rick grinned. “Is that what you think they are? Bimbos? I’ll have you know Tracey is a very nice girl.”

Jackie wiggled her brows in unhappy sarcasm. “I’ll bet.”

“You want to know how nice?”

“No, I don’t want to know how nice,” she repeated nastily. “I don’t want to talk about her or you for that matter.”

“How very Jackie of you.”

She pulled back just a bit and frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means just as long as you get to say what you please, there’s never a need to hear another’s side of the argument, is there?”

“What other side?”

He glared down at her, his gaze narrowing in anger. “You know what other side.”

She stiffened. “If you insist on talking about this, I’m leaving you on the floor.”

“Fine, we won’t talk. We won’t do anything but dance.” Jackie easily read the anger in his dark gaze. She didn’t care. He could rage at her from now until forever and she still wouldn’t care.


She wanted to pull out of his embrace and run, but to do so would tell him this meant more to her than it should. There was no way she would show this liar the slightest bit of weakness. As far as she was concerned, he was a nonentity, and she felt nothing towards him.

“There’s no point in trying to be romantic. You said yourself this is only a dance.”

“I love the way you smell.”

“Do you? You mean I smell better than Monica? How has she been, by the way?”

Rick stiffened as the mention of the woman. “Damn, but you really are a bitch, aren’t you?”

She glanced up, her features hard with hate. “It’s ‘a fucking bitch’, if I remember correctly.”

“Fine,” he said, knowing she referred to their last argument, the hateful things that were said. The frustration he’d known the night she’d left him, the first night in an endless year of curses. He moved her deeper into the crowded dance floor. Bodies swayed smoothly around them, enclosing them in almost total darkness.

Her head pounded; a pulse throbbed in her throat as his mouth lowered to her cheek. She took a deep calming breath. Her lips tingled. She needed to feel his mouth on hers. She strove to keep her gasping breath as smooth and silent as possible. She felt like crying as she struggled to breathe, while he hadn’t done anything more than brush his lips against her skin in whispery soft promises of pleasure. His mouth lowered again. Now his lips grazed the edge of her mouth. She wanted to turn into the kiss. God, she wanted it more than she wanted to live, but she somehow managed to keep to her control.

“Have you fucked lately, Jackie?” he asked on a low, warm breath. “Has your man been taking care of you?”

“What do you care?”

His hand on her hip slipped down her leg, around the front of her, between their bodies, inside her thigh and up. Under her short skirt, in the near total blackness of the dance floor, his hand moved higher. She didn’t stop him. She didn’t even try. He needed to know nothing he did could make a difference. Higher. His fingers moved higher and higher again.

Under her skirt, inside the tiny wisp of panties she wore, her pussy felt heavy, aching and soaking wet. She trembled with the need she knew for his touch, she was hotter than she could ever remember. Every nerve ending screamed for more, straining towards the coming pleasure. Pleasure only he knew how to give. His hand was inches from her heat. Inches from touching her, inches from where she wanted most to be touched. She forced back the moan that threatened.

Bodies pressed close. No one could see them, and they saw no one as they watched only each other. Eyes glittered with raw emotion, hate, anger, betrayal but most of all lust, a desperate want, until finally his fingers reached under the leg of her panties.

He groaned and closed his eyes in pleasure at the warm creaminess he found, while her knees trembled almost buckling beneath her. She reached an arm around his neck, her cheek against his chest and held on. This was going to be wild. She knew it and hadn’t the power to stop it.

He held her tightly with one arm, while the other under her skirt explored the folds of her body and centred at last upon her clit. “I love it when you cream for me, Jackie.”

“It’s not for you. It’s you and a hundred others.”

She felt his body tense against hers as he asked, “Has there been a hundred, Jackie?”

She hissed a low sound that was almost lost in the music surrounding them, even as she glared her hatred. He had some nerve. How did he dare to question her after all the women he’d been with?

What he was doing meant nothing. They both knew it meant nothing. He had no right to question her. He was a man, and she’d been too long without. It was as simple as that.

She wouldn’t turn away. He couldn’t make her turn away. It had been a year since he’d touched her last. A year of loneliness and pain, but she wasn’t about to whimper, to cry, to beg this liar, this cheat for more. “I don’t know. I never counted.”

God, why couldn’t other men feel like this? Why couldn’t they touch her like this? Why didn’t they smell like this? How did he alone have the power? It had been a year, but had it been ten she knew not one could do the things this man could. Damn him, damn his lying, cheating soul to hell.

Again his mouth brushed against the edge of her lips. “Just a kiss, Jackie. No one will ever know.”

“You will.”

“What? What will I know? Will I know you want me if you kiss me? Is that it? Is that what you’re afraid I’ll find out?”

She didn’t respond.

“I already know it, Jackie. I know you want me.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know.”

“It doesn’t. Wanting isn’t love so don’t get your balls in an uproar.”

Rick grinned. “If I promise not to get my balls in an uproar, will you kiss me?”

Erotic Rating Total-e-burning
Genre Contemporary/ Romance
Cover art by Natalie Winters
Book Length Short Story
ISBN# 978-0-85715-250-3


Patricia Pellicane
for romance that sizzles
www.patriciapellicane.com
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