Read Online Bound Temptations: Stories of Temptation and Submission by Shiloh Walker - Free Book Online Page B

we're eating."
    She took a drink and then
set her glass down, staring at him. "I'm sorry. Regardless of
whether you still love Mara or not, I can tell it bothers you. So
I'm sorry." Then she wrinkled her nose. "Even though I don't much
care for her."
    "Hell. I don't much care for
her these days," he muttered. Then, he shot Rocki a quick look.
"The woman I fell in love with...I don't think she exists anymore.
I don't know what happened to her, but she's not the one I've been
living with the past few months."
    Silence fell over the table
for a few minutes, broken only by the rest of those in the crowded
pub. Rocki, her appetite all but dead, tried to figure out just
where to start. She needed to tell him. Even if he didn't ask, she
realized. She needed to talk. But…
    "You ever going to tell me
what was going on earlier?"
    Slowly, she lifted her gaze
from her plate, staring at him in the dim light. That light managed
to make him look even more beautiful than he already was,
flickering across the planes and hollows of his face, making that
gilt hair gleam like burnished gold.
    "Eleven years ago, I had a
stalker." She stared at him, watching the way his lashes flickered,
watching the knowledge flash through his eyes. Slowly, he leaned
back in the seat, crossing his arms over his chest.
    His eyes, thoughtful,
considering, narrowed on her face. "Eleven years...that's a long
time."
    "Seems like it was just
yesterday." She sighed, leaning forward.
    It wasn't always the most
demure posture in a corset. Especially if one
had...assets.
    To his credit, Cole's eyes
barely dipped below her neckline...at least for longer than a
second. Rocki chuckled. "You know, I wore this thing wanting to
look nice for you."
    "Ah..." He closed his eyes.
"You succeeded. Although I'm trying to concentrate and I'm having a
hard time reminding myself I'm not a twelve-year-old
boy."
    She grinned at him. Then,
still grinning, she eased back from the table, although she was so
damned tired, all she wanted to do was rest.
    Against something. Or, in
this case, someone. "Yesterday," she reminded him, steering the
conversation back to the unpleasant topic at hand. "It could have
been yesterday. It was just postcards at first. Then the flowers
started, although they weren't so...interesting then. It wasn't
until the phone calls began that I told anybody."
    She licked her lips and
looked down, absently studying her hands.
    She'd called somebody then.
But even then...She closed her eyes. "I knew who it
was."
    "You knew?"
    She lifted her gaze to his.
"Yes. It was an ex-boyfriend. One who didn't want to be an ex."
Lifting a hand, she absently touched a hand to her chest. "One who
would have had ten different fits if he'd seen me wearing something
like this. It wasn't just the way I dressed, though. It was
everything. If I didn't get home when I said I'd be, he got angry.
If I wanted to go out for a movie with friends, he freaked—shoot,
he used to follow us. Once, a girlfriend started flirting with
these guys and he came rushing up…"
    She sighed and shook her
head. "I got tired of it. I broke it off. He..." Rocki turned her
head. Shit. Why was this still so hard? She knew all of this, damn
it. She knew it. She hadn't grown up in an abusive home, and she
wasn't one of those women who'd been made to believe she was just
supposed to take abuse.
    "The day I broke it off,
Dwayne acted like everything was fine. We'd still be friends. I
packed up my things, took it all over to Lacey's. Went to work...I
worked part-time for a theater company, then—did the costumes, that
sort of thing. I was working on designing some of my own stuff, but
it was a private thing. Never made anything, never showed anybody."
Her hands were sweating. Damn it. He wasn't going to do this her
again. Not again.
    Swiping her palms down the
front of her jeans, she looked back at Cole, making herself look
him straight in the eye. "I was leaving work when he attacked me.
He knocked me down, wrapped his