Inside (Bulletproof 1)

He slid his hand up under her T-shirt, leaving a swath of gooseflesh as he skimmed his fingers along her bare skin. When she didn’t resist, he changed direction and slipped his hand into her jeans, where his touch became far more intimate.

Get out of here before it’s too late. He was no longer holding the door. She could go. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this kind of contact, and neither was she. But knowing tonight was probably the last time she’d see him before he was incarcerated, she hoped for a better parting, one that would allow them to feel okay when they assumed their respective roles.

“Friendship isn’t what he’s trying to get from you,” he murmured. “He wants this.” His tongue plunged into her ear as two fingers claimed her with enough force to make her cry out. But it didn’t hurt. Pleasure burned through her veins.

“How do you know?” she breathed.

“Because I want it, too.”

Scarcely able to speak above the racket of her heart, Peyton squeezed her eyes shut. “We can’t…make this mistake again.” She wasn’t sure who she was talking to. That comment hadn’t really been directed at him. She was just grasping for a way to hold on to her resolve. But he answered.

“You’ve already given it to me once. What’s one more time?”

“It’s one more time.”

“Good thing you’re too nice to say no.”

She wanted to correct him. She wasn’t going along with this because she was “nice.” Nice had nothing to do with it—or him. Especially right now. She could sense his anger, but she didn’t complain, even when he peeled down her jeans and took her from behind without ceremony or foreplay.

Although she’d never been treated this roughly, feeling Virgil unleash his frustrations gave their coupling an eroticism that caused every nerve to quiver. He made sure she knew he was the one in control, but she felt safe with him at the same time. Physically, anyway. Emotionally, she hadn’t felt safe from the beginning.

The rhythm of their lovemaking escalated so fast they were out of breath within seconds. Then it was over as suddenly as it had begun and he withdrew as if he didn’t care any more about her than if he’d used a blow-up doll.

Stunned by such intensity followed by…nothing, she fixed her clothes while waiting to see if he’d say anything. Or kiss her. Or hold her. Or coax her to the bed.

He didn’t. He went into the bathroom without so much as a “thanks for the quick piece of ass” and closed the door.

He’d done this on purpose, she realized. He wanted her to hate him. And, in that moment, she did.

What the hell had he just done?

Cringing as the outside door banged shut, Virgil stared at the haggard image looking back at him in the bathroom mirror. He wanted to go after Peyton, to apologize, even beg her forgiveness. But he wouldn’t let himself. He deserved to have her go, would deserve it if she never spoke to him again. There wasn’t any point in pursuing her, anyway. She couldn’t possibly want him in her life, especially now. He’d acted no better than the other inmates he’d served time with—which, in a perverse way, was exactly what he’d been aiming for. He didn’t have anything to offer her. He needed to understand that and so did she.

He’d made his point. But he felt terrible about it.

“You’re a complete ass**le, like she said,” he muttered, and splashed some water on his face before slumping against the wall. Did he really think that little power play could diminish her, make her any less than she was? That the harshness of his actions could obliterate how he’d begun to feel about her?

Not really. He didn’t want Peyton to matter as much as she did, so he’d taken steps to ensure that she stayed out of his life. It wasn’t fair to encounter someone like her when he was at such a loss, not after everything he’d been through. He wished he could relegate her to a different part of his brain or scare her away entirely. When he was bucking against her, telling himself he’d been using her from the start, it seemed to be working. He lost himself in lust and anger, had actually believed, for a few seconds, that he’d stamped out every other thought or feeling.

But in that final moment, he’d reached for her breast and felt something else, as well—something that let him know he hadn’t won the battle he was waging. The regret that’d washed over him then had left him feeling worse than ever.

She hadn’t put his medallion in a glass case with all her other keepsakes. She was wearing it.

15

John Hutchinson watched Peyton hustle away from the Redwood Inn Motel. He didn’t have to worry that she’d notice him. She wasn’t paying attention to anything except what was right in front of her.

Was she upset? Looked that way. She was jogging despite her sore ankle, even though he’d seen her favoring it an hour or so earlier. It could be the rain goading her on, of course. But he got the impression it was more than that.

What had happened at the motel? Who had she gone to see? And why hadn’t she parked in the lot? There were plenty of spaces….

She didn’t want anyone to know she’d been there. That had to be the reason. John couldn’t think of any other explanation.

Trailing her at a distance, he saw her round the corner and get into her car, which sat in front of a dark house one street over. That she’d walk a block on a bad ankle in wet weather was weird and definitely confirmed what his sister had told him—something was up.

Good thing he’d dropped in at a friend’s place before coming here or he never would’ve seen Peyton. Because he knew Wallace normally stayed at this motel, he’d stopped by to talk to Michelle. He thought she might be able to tell him about Wallace’s mystery companion. But he hadn’t expected Peyton to show up. When she’d sent him off, she’d used the excuse that she had a lot of work to catch up on. She hadn’t said a word about going out.

Yet here she was….

Did her visit have anything to do with that strange text she’d received from Wallace? About someone named Skinner? What did it mean?

John clung to the shadows of a neighboring house until Peyton drove away. Then he returned to the motel.

As he walked into the lobby, the bell sounded over the door. Michelle glanced up with a “customer service” smile, a smile that became noticeably more personal when she recognized him. “Hey, handsome. What are you doing here?”

He didn’t have any trouble getting Michelle—unlike Peyton—to respond to him. But he wasn’t really flattered by her attention. People who were that obvious in their loneliness came off as desperate. “Came by to say hello. What’ve you been up to lately?”