Tequila Truth
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Tequila Truth
Copyright © 2008 by Mari Carr
ISBN: 978-1-60504-218-3
Edited by Lindsey McGurk
Cover by Tuesday Dube
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: October 2008
Tequila Truth
Mari Carr
Dedication
For Jack and Glen
Prologue
“What is your ultimate sex fantasy?” Heath filled the shot glasses with Jose Cuervo
.
Colt grinned while Kylie groaned. “Christ. Surely we’ve answered that one before?” She knew they hadn’t, but this particular question made her uncomfortable. Quite frankly, she didn’t think her two testosterone-laden buddies were ready to hear about her fantasies. They believed her desires to be somewhat chaste. Silly men.
The trio had been following this same tradition since the early days of their friendship. Kylie initiated the celebration, calling it Tequila Truth, explaining that birthdays should be a time of reflection. The concept of the game was simple. The birthday boy—or girl in her case—posed a question and then each member drank a shot of tequila and answered. The only rule was the answer had to be completely honest.
Unfortunately, her attempt to bring deep introspection to her male roommates fell quite a bit short of the mark. They’d played the game since their freshman year of college and Heath’s questions always revolved around sex.
“Nope.” Heath began reciting past questions while ticking them off on his fingers. “Past questions have included your dream bed partner, strangest place you ever had sex and lost-virginity stories, but no sexual fantasies. I was saving this one up special.” He gave her a naughty grin that let her know he wasn’t fooled by her reluctance to share. By now, both men knew her well enough to know if she was holding back or wasn’t being completely honest.
“For heaven’s sake, Heath, why don’t you try to play this game with some semblance of maturity? After all, you are twenty-five this year.”
“That’s an easy one.” Colt licked the salt off his hand, downed the tequila and sucked the lime. Licking his lips, he settled in for a long story. He was nothing if not an imaginative storyteller. “I’ve got this busty blonde all to myself on a desert island. We’re stranded and she’s completely at my mercy. Begging me to save her and all that crap. She’s wearing nothing but a bikini top and thong, as all of her clothes were ripped off during the shipwreck.”
Kylie interrupted at this point. “Holy hell, Colt. Why do these imaginary women of yours always have to be blonde
and
stupid?”
Heath and Colt laughed, but she merely raised her eyebrow, waiting for his response.
Colt stopped laughing when she failed to join in. “Oh, that was a serious question? I thought it was one of those rhetorical ones.”
She grinned despite herself. Colt was the ultimate male chauvinist pig and, for some inexplicable reason, she adored him anyway. He and Heath were the best friends she’d ever had and she didn’t doubt both of them would lay down their lives for her. They’d mistaken her for a male—Kyle, not Kylie—when she wrote expressing a desire to share an apartment with them during their first year of college.
To soften the blow of their mistake, she’d pulled out a bottle of tequila her first night in residence.
Her older brother had given it to her as a going-away present, unbeknownst to their parents. As it was her eighteenth birthday, she started the Tequila Truth game thinking it would be a great way for them to get to know one another. Several drunken hours later, the three of them were as thick as thieves and had never lived apart since.
“So what are you doing to this blonde with questionable intellect?” Heath, as always, was relishing Colt’s detailed descriptions.
“Well, I don’t know if you know this about me or not, but I’m a man who likes to be in control.”
She gasped, as if amazed, and laid her hand on her heart. “No, absolutely not. I will
never
believe that of you.”
He grinned at her sarcasm and continued. “There’s some rope that’s washed up from the shipwreck and this chick is hot for me. I mean way hot. She starts begging me to take her.”
At this point in his story Kylie faked a bored yawn, but he continued anyway. “I grab the rope and take her over to a coconut tree. I throw the rope over one of the low-lying branches and tie her hands above her head.”
“Have you ever seen a coconut tree?” she asked. “The branches are miles off the ground.”
“Shit, it doesn’t matter what kind of tree. Kylie, will you let me finish?”
“Fine,” she answered shortly, pressing her thighs together. The problem with his fantasy was she knew exactly where it was going and she would be hard-pressed to hide her reaction. The idea of being tied up and left completely at a man’s mercy was certainly pretty high on her list of fantasies as well. Definitely in the top five.
“So I tie her to the tree with her hands above her head. She’s helpless that way and her whole body is mine to explore and possess. I pull the thong down her legs and throw it into the sea. I tell her on this island, she’ll always be naked, that she will never hide her body from me. I can tell she likes the way I’m talking to her, all stern and powerful and shit, because she starts squirming and whimpering.”
Kylie struggled to stop reacting in completely the same way.
“I tell her to open her legs and she does. When I touch her, the woman is dripping wet and hotter than hell. I nearly come in my pants right there because I want her so bad. I reach into the back pocket of my ripped-up shorts and pull out a knife.”
He paused briefly and looked at her. No doubt he expected her to make some smartass comment about the convenience of having a knife, but she was struggling to catch her breath, overwhelmed by her own arousal.
Colt, satisfied with her silence, continued talking. “I use the knife to cut off her bikini top and I have to step away because I’m telling you this girl is stacked, with a capital S. She’s got these enormous big brown nipples and they are pointing straight at me.”
He continued describing the woman’s body in detail until finally she cried, “Enough. I think we get the picture.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Heath joked and she sent him a nasty look. “Maybe visuals would help. I’ve got some dirty magazines in my closet leftover from high school days. We could find a model who fits your description.”
“Can I help it if I’m a breast man?” Colt asked the question with a look of injured innocence that fooled her not one bit.
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?” she asked and then lifted her hand in a gesture that said
continue
.
“Well, I was going to go in to detail about how I suck the life out of those babies, but I can skip ahead. You get the picture.”
“Hell yeah, I do. This fantasy is a thing of beauty.” Heath sighed with appreciation apparently enjoying Colt’s answer to his question.
“So once we’re both good and hot, I take off my shorts and tell her to wrap her legs around my waist. She’s holding on to the rope around her wrists and this woman is strong. She uses her toned legs and arms to fuck the hell out of my cock while she’s hanging there naked from the tree. She’s driving her cunt down on me hard and it’s all I can do to hold on to her hips.”
She swallowed hard as she imagined the woman riding him. Problem was the blonde wasn’t a blonde, but a redhead who looked suspiciously like her.
Heath adjusted his pants under the table without bothering to hide his arousal. If there was one thing she had gotten used to in seven years of living with these men, it was that they were always functioning at half-mast. Shit, a strong breeze could arouse her roommates—she never ceased to be amazed by their intense sexuality. Over the years, she’d watched the revolving door of women who passed in and out of their lives and she’d heard enough moaning and banging headboards through the walls to last her a lifetime.
She consoled herself with the thought that through it all, she was the one constant woman in Colt and Heath’s lives. Through college graduation and first jobs, broken hearts and promotions, she was the steady one, the reliable one, their buddy with boobs.
“That was hot, Colt, but not as hot as mine.” Heath poured another round of shots.
“So hit us with your best shot.” Colt picked up his tequila, clearly enjoying his pun and ready to continue with the drinking part of the celebration.
Heath drank his tequila shot and leaned forward. “In my fantasy, I’ve got this smokin’ hot babe spread across my lap and I’m spanking her full, firm ass. It’s flushed red with my handprint and she’s moving into my smacks while her arousal is dripping down her legs. She’s begging me for more and I’m giving it to her. Then she starts pleading for my hard cock. When I think she’s been punished enough, I push her down to the floor and tell her get on her hands and knees. Then I fuck her from behind, hard and fast. She’s so hot she’s burning the flesh off me, but I don’t care. I keep pounding into her tight cunt, while she’s crying and screaming for more.”
She sat motionless after his fantasy for several moments before she realized her mouth was gaping and she closed it.
Colt shook his head in obvious disgust. “That’s the problem with you, Heath. No foreplay. That was the worst description of a fantasy I’ve ever heard. You don’t build the scene or give good descriptions. You just go straight to the climax, so to speak.” When he finished chuckling about his second pun, he pushed her shot glass closer to her. “So what about you, little darlin’?”
Taking a deep breath, she licked the salt, swallowed the burning alcohol and skipped the lime. Before she could think about it, she heard her unspoken dream falling out of her mouth.
“In my ultimate sex fantasy, two guys are taking me the way you both described…at the same time.”
Chapter One
Six months later
“Darlin’, I’m going out,” Colt yelled and Kylie came out of her bedroom in time to see him pulling on his leather jacket.
“Okay. Staking out again?” She finished putting in her earring as she walked down the hallway to say goodbye.
“Yep, bastard drug dealer.” He was dog-tired from too many nights hoping to catch his elusive criminal. He’d served on the police force since his graduation from college with a degree in criminal justice. He’d made detective last year and was often undercover. Much as he grumbled about the hours, he wouldn’t trade his job for anything.
“You’ll get him this time, Detective.” Kylie gave him an encouraging smile.
He wolf-whistled with appreciation as he glanced at her loose hair, silky shirt and tight jeans. “Well, look at you, hot stuff. Got another date with the mystery man?” He tried to appear uninterested though it gnawed on his nerves that she wouldn’t tell him anything about her new beau. Hell, she wouldn’t even give him the man’s name. Not even Heath could sweet talk it out of her and she told him damn near everything.
Kylie claimed she was sick of him doing background checks on all of her dates, then combining forces with Heath to scare the men off when they decided they weren’t good enough for her.
She didn’t have to deal with the scum of the earth day after day like he did. If she’d seen a quarter of the ass-wipes he’d put behind bars during his time on the force, she’d thank them for their diligence. Thing was, none of her past boyfriends had lasted as long as this guy, and he tried not to think about it, as the fact was driving him slowly insane. She was his roommate and one of his best friends. He’d never screw that up for a roll in the hay and truth be told, he’d never really seen her as a woman he might seriously pursue until Heath’s birthday party nearly six months ago. Since then, he’d become obsessed with the thought that her ultimate sexual fantasy was to be tied up and spanked by not one lover, but two. It had been easy to keep his hands off of her as long as he’d believed she was a vanilla girl in his rainbow sherbet world.
“Be careful.” She leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on his cheek and he fought the urge to turn at the last minute to capture her sweet mouth with his own. He’d never given her more than a friendly peck, but lately he found himself consumed with the sight of her luscious pink lips and all the things he’d like those lips to do to him.
“I’ll probably be out all night. You okay here…alone?” Heath was out of town doing work for his architectural firm and wasn’t expected back for another week.
She laughed away his obvious, not-so-clever attempt at discovering whether or not she would be sleeping by herself. “I’m a big girl now and as hard as this may be for you and Heath to grasp, I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah well, just make sure Romeo drops you off at the door. We’re out of coffee. Besides, it’s a school night and you have work tomorrow.” Kylie was a social studies teacher at the local high school and he imagined the teenage boys must line up to get into her class. She was petite and sweet in a sexy kind of way.
“Colt Hardin, you ass. I’ll have you know I can invite any man back to my room that I want. God knows I’ve listened to enough of your sleepovers.”
He frowned at her words. He hadn’t invited any woman back to their place in years and he was annoyed at her for dragging up ancient history. Hell, a man couldn’t be held accountable for inconsiderate actions committed during his drunken college days forever. Unfortunately, his cell phone rang before he could take her to task.
“Hardin. Yeah, I hear you. I’m on my way.” He snapped his phone shut. “I gotta go. Just be careful, eh?”
She looked at him with suspiciously cute innocence and he felt the effects all the way to his gut. “Oh I will.”
As he left the house, he tried to kick back the instinct that told him she wasn’t going to be careful at all. Not…at…all.
When Colt pulled into the driveway, it was not long after midnight. At least he hadn’t been stuck on an all-night stakeout. In fact, he’d gotten damn lucky as his not-so-bright drug lord actually struck an illegal deal right under his nose within thirty minutes of his arrival. He’d filed all the paperwork, dotted all his i’s, crossed all his t’s, and was looking forward to at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
As he walked down the hallway to his room, he heard an unfamiliar sound coming from Kylie’s room. He was surprised to find her home already and a bit annoyed at the prospect of hearing her with some lover. Continuing past his own room, he stopped outside her closed door. Again the strange, sharp sound came, but this time it was followed by Kylie’s cry of pain.
“Please stop,” he heard her whimper.
He tried the doorknob only to find it locked. Impatient to get inside, he leaned back and kicked. The doorframe splintered and the door fell in.
It only took him a second to take in the horrifying scene. Kylie was naked and tied facedown on her bed. Her wrists were secured to the headboard, while her ankles were bound together at the bottom. A man Colt had never seen was standing over her, striking her with a belt. Her ass was covered with painful-looking welts and she was crying for the man to stop.
At Colt’s entrance the man froze mid-strike, but Kylie, obviously in pain, continued to thrash against her bonds in an attempt to escape.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Colt bellowed. She flinched at his voice and her struggles became even more earnest.
Without thought to his actions, he crossed the room in three steps and led with a right hook that had the man on the ground with one blow. Bending down, Colt picked the man up by his shirt only to beat him down again. The man threw his arms over his head protesting, but he was too enraged, too furious to hear anything but the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Finally, one sound made its way through to his consciousness.
“Colt!” Kylie cried. “Colt, please stop. Please. Stop!”
The man was cowering on the ground and Colt struggled to catch his breath. Turning slowly, he saw her fighting desperately to break free. “Untie me. Please.” Tears were streaming down her face and he felt his anger rise again at the red-hot swelling on her ass and legs. “Untie me,” she repeated and Colt quickly crossed to the bed to release her.
As soon as she was loose, she scrambled under the blanket, obviously anxious to cover her nakedness. She winced the second her rear-end hit the bed and his hands clinched into fists again.
“Stop, Colt. Please. Don’t hit him anymore.”
At her request, the man on the floor seemed to rouse himself. “Who the fuck is this guy?” He bellowed the question at Kylie who looked down at her hands, clutching the blanket tightly around herself and avoiding his gaze.
“He’s my roommate.” Her voice was trembling slightly and Colt fought to get a deep breath.
“Roommate!” The man hissed at her.
Colt turned slowly to face the man, more than ready to resume the pummeling, but she must have sensed his intent.
“No.” She grabbed roughly at his arm before he could swing again. “Colt, no.”
He looked down at the jerk on the floor. “You’re under arrest.”
The man stumbled to his feet, wiping blood away from his mouth. When he looked at Colt, his face was snarled with rage. “For what?”
“Assault and battery. Attempted rape.”
“Colt,” Kylie cried as the man laughed humorlessly.
“You can’t arrest me for any of that. She asked me to do it. She asked for it all.”
He drew back his arm to strike again, but she held tight. “Colt, I mean it. Stop now.” Her voice was stronger and it caused him to turn around. “What Scott said is true. Just let him go. I’m not pressing charges.”
“Kylie?” His heart felt lodged in his throat as he took in her tear-stained face.
“Let him go,” she repeated and Scott’s cold laugh assaulted his ears again.
“Told you so. She likes it rough. Don’t you, sweetheart?”
He turned so quickly Scott never saw it coming. Colt’s fist connected with his jaw and laid the man out yet again.
“Jesus Christ,” Scott shouted. “I’m the one who’s going to file for assault, you fucking asshole.”
“Get out.” The words came from between his clinched teeth and his fury was barely contained. The man must have sensed the danger as he gathered up his belt, jacket, and shoes and ran out of the room without another word.
She dragged in a shaky breath as she leaned back against the headboard and he watched tears form in her eyes.
“What the fuck just happened here?” He struggled to contain the rage that was clogging his chest.
She refused to meet his gaze or answer his question, so he repeated it as he dropped down to sit next to her on the bed. When she failed to answer a second time, he placed his hand on her chin and lifted her face until she had no choice but to look into his eyes.
“I’m not going to ask you again, darlin’.”
“It was a misunderstanding. Everything is fine now. Really. You look beat, Colt. Why don’t you go on to your room?”
“Are you crazy? Did you bump your head? I’m not going to bed until I get some goddamn answers.”
“Nothing happened here.” At his angry look, she seemed to rethink her words. “I mean, I think things just got a bit out of hand.”
“That man had you tied up and was beating the hell out of you, Kylie. I’d say things were more than a bit out of hand.”
“It was a mistake, that’s all.”
“He said you asked for that beating, but I happen to know for a fact, my best friend has more intelligence than that.”
She bit her lip and a tear escaped her lovely brown eyes before she could swipe it away.
“Aw hell, darlin’, please don’t cry. I’m right here and I won’t let that man touch you again, I swear it. I’m just trying to understand—”
“I did ask him for it.”
He studied her face for a moment, sure he’d heard her wrong.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
When she complied, he repeated her words in his question. “You asked him to beat the hell out of you?”
“No,” she cried, “of course not. We…we were starting to get intimate. He seemed like a decent man—” Colt snorted at her words, but she continued anyway. “I mean we’ve been going out for a few months and I thought I could trust him. He asked me what I liked…I mean in bed, and I told him—”
She stopped talking and tried to look away.
“You told him what?” He refused to let her escape and held tight to her chin, forcing her gaze to meet his.
“I told him I’ve always wanted to be tied up and spanked.” Her words were no more than a whisper, but they resonated in his head like a cannon.
“You didn’t like what he was doing, Kylie. Regardless of what you asked for, I’ve got eyes in my head and I know he was hurting you.”
She shuddered and closed her eyes tightly before responding. “You’re right,” she conceded. “I hated what he was doing. It hurt, but he wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times I asked him.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you let me arrest the bastard?”
“Because I asked him to tie me up. Christ, can you see me sitting in front of one of your friends down at the precinct stating my case? I asked him to do that to me.”
Her tears fell freely now and his heart froze at the sight. He’d never seen her cry. Not in all their years together as roommates. She was a tomboy, to be sure, and was most at home in a room full of itching, cussing, drinking men. She watched football and hockey with the same rabid enthusiasm as him and her language would make a sailor blush. She owned one dress that he’d ever seen and she’d only worn that for a funeral. She’d never had a manicure and she cut her own hair, usually in a snit when it finally drove her so crazy she had no choice.
“Kylie, why?”
At his question, he watched her tears evaporate and the same tough exterior he’d grown used to reappear.
“I’m tired, Colt. I think I’m going to go to sleep.”
“Kylie—” He started to repeat his question, but she cut him off.
“Don’t. Don’t ask me. Please, leave me alone.”
He considered her request as he studied her face. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t say anything more on the subject. Not tonight, not tomorrow, probably not ever.
“Roll over.” His words were harsh, but he wanted her to understand she could deny him the truth, but she would not deny him this.
“What?”
“You don’t want to talk—fine. You want to be left alone—fine. But I’m not leaving this room, darlin’, until I’ve seen for myself, with my own two eyes, that you aren’t seriously hurt. Now we can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way. Roll over.”
The seriousness of his expression must have convinced her refusal was futile. She smiled slightly and tried to cajole him out of his anger. “You’re just trying to sneak a peek at my ass.”
When her half-hearted joke failed to produce a response, she sighed heavily and rolled over. The blanket covered her and he had to reach up to pull it down. When he did, it took all the strength in his body not to chase down her so-called boyfriend and kick the shit out of him again.
“It doesn’t hurt.” Her words were muffled by the pillow, but he could read the lie inside them.
He reached out slowly as if to touch her, but Kylie must have read his intent as she flinched away quickly, pulling the blanket back up. “I’m fine. Good night, Colt.”
He narrowed his eyes at her dismissal, but rose to leave.
“I’ll fix your door tomorrow, darlin’.”
She didn’t answer, so he didn’t say anything more. Besides, he had some thinking to do and a phone call to make. It was nearly one a.m. and Heath would cuss him out for waking him up, but he didn’t give a shit. The time for action had come and serious changes were on the horizon for Miss Kylie Halston.
