The Lion's Den (Faraway Book 2) (32 page)
“Put me down! I’m not some steer you can toss around,” I yell, as I fist my hands and pound on his back. He’s laughing and pissing me off even more. I pull his shirt up and start to reach for his underwear and Jason runs the last few steps to the truck.
“Do you ever behave?” he asks, and swings the truck door open. He drops me on the seat and leans in the truck between my legs. I push my hair out of my face, my chest still heaving with anger. “Why the hell are you walking alone on a country road, in a goddamned storm, this late at night?”
My stomach knots at his closeness and this angers me, too. Why can’t Jason Leer bore me the way Brian Matlin does? Jason raises his eyebrows and tilts his head at the perfect angle to send a chill down my spine.
“Brian and I broke up tonight.”
“And he made you walk home?” Shock is written all over his face. Brian would never make me walk home. He is the nicest of guys. Not great at holding his liquor, but nice.
“No.” I roll my eyes, calling him an idiot, and he somehow leans in closer, making my stomach flip. “He proceeded to get drunk at Michelle Farrell’s party and I drove him home so he didn’t die.” I think back to all the parties of the last six years, since Jason and I entered high school. Besides graduation, we were rarely in the same place. I’ve barely hung out with Jason Leer since eighth grade. At the start of high school everyone broke into groups, and this cowboy wasn’t in mine.
“Why didn’t you call someone for a ride?” He breaks my revelry.
“Because apparently when Brian gets drunk he texts a lot. My battery died after the fiftieth message professing his love for me.”
“Poor guy.”
“Poor guy? What about me? I’m the one who had to delete them, and drive him home. I thought he’d never pass out.” I’m still mourning the time I lost with Brian’s drunken mess.
“Why didn’t you just take his car?”
“Because I left him passed out in it in his parents’ driveway. I got him home safe, but I’m not going to carry him to bed.”
At this Jason lowers his head and laughs. My irritation with him twists into annoyance at myself for telling him anything. For telling him everything. I want to punch him in his laughing mouth. His lips are perfect, though.
“It’s not easy to love you, Annie.”
“Yeah, well I’ve got fifty texts that claim otherwise. Judging from the fact you can’t even get my name right, everything’s probably hard for you.” Jason leans on the dash and his jeans scrape against my maimed foot, causing my face to twist in pain. Before I can regain my composure, his eyes are on me. He moves back and holds my foot up near his face. He slips the strap off my heel and runs his thumb across the now broken and purple blister. I close my eyes, the sight of the wound amplifying the pain.
“My God, you are stubborn,” he says, his eyes still on my foot. Thunder groans behind us and he straightens my leg, examining it in the glimmer of moonlight. I’m not angry anymore. One urge has silenced another, and awakened me in the process. He pulls my foot to him and kisses the inside of my ankle, and a chill runs from my leg to both breasts and settles in the back of my throat, stealing my breath.
I swallow hard. “Are all your first kisses on the inside of the ankle?” I ask. His hands grip my ankle harshly, but he’s careful with my heel.
His eyes find mine as he drags his lips up my calf and kisses the inside of my knee. I shut up and shudder from a chill. There are no words. Only the beginning of a thought.
What if,
arises in my mind against the sound of the clicking of the hazard lights.
The lightning strikes again and unveils the darkness in his eyes. He lowers my leg and backs up, but I’m not ready to let him go. I grab his belt buckle and pull him toward me. Jason doesn’t budge. He is an ox. His eyes bore into me and for a moment I think he hates me. He’s holding a raging river behind a dam, and I’m recklessly breeching it.
With a hand gripping each shoulder he forces me back to the seat and hovers over me. Even in the darkness I can see the emptiness in his eyes and I can’t leave it alone. He kisses me. He kisses me as if he’s done it a hundred times before, and when his lips touch mine some animalistic need growls inside of me. He’s like nothing I’ve ever known, and my body craves a hundred things all at once, every one of them him. With his tongue in my mouth, I tighten my arms around his thick neck and pull him closer, wanting to climb inside of him.
Jason pulls away, devastating me, until I realize there are flashing lights behind us. His eyes fixed on mine, he takes my hands from behind his head and pulls me upright before the state trooper steps out of his car and walks to our side of the truck.
“Charlotte, honey, are you going to get up? I heard you come in late last night.”
I roll over and put my head under the pillow. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to tell my mom that I broke up with Brian . . . again.
“Is everything okay?” She’s worried. I take a deep breath and sit up in bed. The sheet rubs against my heel and the pain reminds me of Jason Leer.
“I broke up with Brian last night.”
“Oh no. I have to see his mother at Book Club on Wednesday.”
“I can’t marry him because you can’t face his mother at Book Club.”
“I’m not suggesting you marry him, just that you stop dating him if you’re going to keep breaking his heart.” My mom leaves my room. Her face is plagued with frustration mixed with disappointment. I climb out of bed and lumber to the bathroom. My green eyes sparkle in the mirror, hinting at our indelicate secret from last night. I wink at myself as if something exciting is about to happen. My long blond hair barely looks slept on. I think breaking up with Brian was good for me.
“Jack, she broke up with Brian again.” I catch, as I enter the kitchen.
“Through with him, huh?” My father never seems to have an opinion on who I date as long as they treat me well. Brian certainly did that.
“Dad, he just didn’t do it for me.” Jason’s eyes pierce my thoughts again, haunting me. The trooper sent us home and I left him in his truck without a word. There wasn’t one to say.
“Do what? What did you expect him to do for you?” my mother spouts. She’s not taking the news well.
“When he looks at me a certain way, I want to get chills,” I start, surprised by how easily my needs are verbalized. “When he leans into me, I want my stomach to flip, and when he walks away I want to care if he comes back.” My parents both watch me silently as if I’m reciting a poem at the second-grade music program. They are pondering me.
“What? Don’t your stomachs flip when you’re together? Ever?”
“Does your stomach flip when you look at me, Jack?” she asks.
“Only if I eat chili the same day,” my dad says, and they both start laughing.
“Charlotte, I remember what it was like to be young. And your father did make my stomach flip, but I think you’re too hard on Brian. He’s a nice boy.”
“Yeah yeah. He’s nice.” I butter my toast and move to sit next to my father at the table.
He is nice
. For some reason Brian’s kindness frustrates me. He’s a boring complication. “I ran into Jason Leer last night.”
And he kissed the inside of my leg.
I smile ruefully.
My mother’s eyebrows raise and I fear I’ve divulged too much. My father never looks up from the newspaper.
“Butch and Joanie’s son?”
“That’s the one.” I try to sound nonchalant as a tiny chill runs down my neck.
“I haven’t seen him since Joanie’s funeral. Poor boy. She was lovely. Do you remember her?”
I nod my head and take a bite of the toast. “From Sunday school.”
“Jack, do you remember Joanie Leer? Died of cancer about a year ago.”
“I remember,” my dad says, and appears to be ignoring us, but I know he’s not. He always hears everything.
“If you don’t want to be with Brian, that’s fine, but please not a rodeo cowboy,” my mother pleads, not missing a thing.
“I only said I saw him. What’s wrong with a rodeo cowboy?”
“Nothing. For someone else’s daughter. I really want you to marry someone with a job. Someone that can take care of you.”
“Can’t a cowboy do that?”
From what I’ve seen, he can take very good care of me.
“Charlotte, please tell me you’re not serious. They’re always on the road. Their income’s not steady. It’s a very difficult life.” My mother’s stern warning is delivered while she fills the dishwasher, as if we’re discussing a fairytale, a situation so absurd it barely warrants a discussion. She’s still beautiful, even when she’s lecturing me. “I know safe choices aren’t attractive to the young, but believe me you do not belong in that world and he’d wither up and die in yours. Do not underestimate the power of safety in this crazy life.”
“How do you know so much about rodeo cowboys?” I ask.
“Yeah, how do you know so much?” My dad asks. He stares at her over the newspaper.
“Is your stomach flipping?” She asks, and gives him her beautiful smile she’s flashed to quell him my entire life.
“Yes,” he says, and winks at her.
Forgive Me
ELIZA FREED GRADUATED FROM RUTGERS
University and returned to her hometown in rural South Jersey. Her mother encouraged her to take some time and find herself. After three months of searching, she began to bounce checks, her neighbors began to talk, and her mother told her to find a job.
She settled into corporate America, learning systems and practices and the bureaucracy that slows them. Eliza quickly discovered her creativity and gift for story telling as a corporate trainer and spent years perfecting her presentation skills and studying diversity. It was during this time she became an avid observer of the characters she met and the heartaches they endured. Her years of study taught her that laughter, even the completely inappropriate kind, was the key to survival.
She currently lives in New Jersey with her family and a misbehaving beagle named Odin. As an avid swimmer, if Eliza is not with her family and friends, she’d rather be underwater. While she enjoys many genres, she is, and always has been, a sucker for a love story . . . the more screwed up the better.
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The Lion’s Den
Copyright © 2015 by Eliza Freed
Excerpt from
Forgive Me
© 2014 by Eliza Freed
Edited by: Rhonda Helms
Copyediting by: Ashley Williams, AW Editing
Cover Design by:
Regina Wamba of
MaeIDesign
Cover Copyright © 2015 by MaeIDesign
Cover Photo:
Selins, shutterstock.com
Interior Design and Formatting by:
Christine Borgford of
Perfectly Publishable
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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