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He’s a stranger to me
MIA
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“DO YOU KNOW HIM?” Penny whispers in my ear, and I could kiss her right there. For her tact, for her quiet voice, for the fact that she doesn’t draw any attention to me.
I swallow my wine and set the glass down carefully with hands that are suddenly shaky.
I drag my eyes away from him, but it’s like the image of him is burned on the back of my eyelids. Every time I blink I see him.
He wasn’t lying. He is tall.
And the pictures were accurate. He is hot and looks just a little mean.
And those pecs, and his arms, the tattoos. His shoulders.
Even his thighs are beautiful in jeans just a little snug. Not emo tight, just like his thighs are so developed, they fill them up where other men wouldn’t.
His eyes, I can only describe them as tight, intense. After a long moment, he inclines his head briefly and says something to the man beside him in the wheelchair, a man with the same dark hair, thick brows, strong thick chest.
James.
My heart tightens in my chest at seeing his missing legs in person and the way they look at each other. There’s a deep connection there.
I want to do what feels natural to me. Cross the room, introduce myself, thank him for his presence in the life of a lonely man who loves him. But I can’t.
“Mia?”
“He’s a stranger to me,” I whisper.
“Hell of a stranger. He certainly seems to know you.” She bites her lip pointedly. “If we were single...”
My stomach is doing a constant slow roll. I’m almost nauseated with it. My chest feels tight, my cheeks blaze hot, my nipples pebble hard. I can barely focus and I can’t stop my gaze from moving constantly, relentlessly toward him.
Penny bumps me with her shoulder. “I would be dragging your ass straight over there to find out what that look meant.”
He turns to pick up a glass of wine from the top of the bar, and catches me staring at him. His mouth stretches into the half-smile I remember from facetime.
And like that, the tears that seem to always be half a step away from spilling start burning the backs of my eyes.
I look away, blinking fast, trying to pay attention to the convo, but it’s like my eyes are attached to invisible tethers, and he keeps yanking on them, because I can’t stop looking back at him.
His brows draw together.
And James, in his chair, keeps casting stray looks my way.
I sit there as long as I can, barely managing to follow the elaborate story Erica and Caesar are telling about a trip they just took, and how they crashed their car in a ditch and had to walk in the rain. I finish my wine, gradually forcing my heartrate to slow.
Finally, when my cheeks aren’t burning, I jerk my head at the hallway that leads to the bathrooms.
Stranger’s brows lift.
I jerk my head at the hallway again.
“I need to go the bathroom,” I mutter to no one in particular, rising from my seat.
Jeremy nods vaguely, still focused on Caesar, and I walk toward the bathroom.
As I walk, Stranger stares at me intently, eyes narrowed, body tight.
I stare back, nervous, terrified, excited.
I stand in the hallway, shaking, my heart thundering like mad.
I don’t even have time to plan what to say, because then he’s there, blocking out the whole world with his gigantic shoulders. The light is behind him and it’s just the two of us now, standing in the dark.
Silence drags between us awkwardly.
He’s so big.
So huge.
And he’s staring at me like he’s equally uncertain.
“What are you doing here?” I say. It just bursts out.
He makes a face. “You told me to come here.”
One of the bathroom doors opens, and we both freeze when a man walks out of one of those unisex, single stalls.
“I didn’t tell you to come here.” I yank the handle open and stalk inside.
Stranger follows. And the room isn’t big, but man alive, he is. He fills it up with shoulders and tallness and... man.
“What were you thinking?” I say.
He studies me. “You told me a location and a time that you would be there, twenty minutes from my home. I thought you wanted me to come.”
“I’m here with my fiancé.”
His jaw clenches tight, the little muscles in the corner of his mouth dancing, making my knees wobble. “Want me to go?”
I study the rounded black tips of my boots. I don’t want him to go. I want to stare at him, at his hard, bristled jaw, his black hair, his hazel eyes. I want to touch his chest and smell his neck and feel the warmth of his skin.
I curl my hands into fists. “That would probably be for the best.”
I tap my toe on the floor.
A brown boot steps up, toe-to-toe with my shoe. It’s big, and scarred, and it creaks a little. A broad warm hand settles on my waist, his thumb grazing my hip bone. I draw in a breath of air that smells soapy and manly and so delicious my eyelids get heavy.
That hot thumb traces down, from my hipbone along the ticklish skin of abdomen, like a brand.
All the anxiety and fear and frustration fades away, and I’m left burning and wet and stupid.
My lips part, and I look up at his face. He’s close now. So close I’m spinning, dizzy with the very real, very solid, very intimidating presence of him.
I think if I don’t touch him, hold on to him, I might fall over.
He’s moving so slowly, too slowly, like he’s afraid I might scream at any moment, as he touches my chin, his long, calloused fingers sliding along the back of my neck.
My hands shake, my knees shake, and so does my heart, as I touch a hand to his shirt, spread five fingers over the soft material stretched over hard muscles.
The Henley bunches at his elbow, his Adam’s apple bobs sharply. His breath and mine come faster and faster.
He lowers his face, I rise up on my toes, so we’re hovering, only centimeters apart. His breath drifts over my cheeks.
“Hello, Mia,” he whispers against my lips. “That’s what I wanted to say to you. I even planned it out. I was going to whisper in your ear and say ‘hello, Mia.’”
I’ve never done heroin or ecstasy, but this is what I imagine it feels like. Some evil spirit just injected me with pure lust and it hits me low, ripples through my blood, stealing under my skin like a fever and I’m... lost.
I’m not me anymore. Kind, decent, wants-to-be-good, Mia. All I am is a primitive woman who wants this one man.
“That was your line?” A bead of moisture slides out of the corner of my eye. I don’t even know why. It’s just... too much. After all this time.
“Yes. What was yours?” He thumbs the tear.
“I didn’t have one. I was going to let you lead.”
His eyes flare at that, his grip tightens on my waist and he leans down so his lips graze my ear, all bristle and sex. “Then hello, Mia.”
I whimper, that pathetic dumb breathless whimper he drew from me at our first crazy PM about buckets. “Stranger.”
I lean right into him, close the distance between us, desperate for the first touch of his lips on mine. Me. It’s my choice.
His lips are soft, but not too soft. Smooth and firm.
I open to him. His grip on my neck tightens as he tilts my face back, gets the angle right, slants his head and strokes his tongue deeper.
He tastes like wine, and so do I. Jammy and bright. Like sex and rich tannins and man.
My hands slide up his chest.
This is so wrong—his tongue strokes over mine—but it feels so right.
I press against him with my hips, seeking out the long, hard bulge in his pants.
It’s like it snaps, the whole dam of pent up need that he’s been building inside me since his very first message.
He groans impatiently, changes the angle, tugs me closer.
A massive hand slides down my back to palm my ass in a grip so possessive it demands reaction.
My hands clutch at any part of him they can get.
I get my hands up his shirt, moving restlessly over scorching hot skin, over the hard, bunching muscles of his stomach, the thick rise of his pecs.
He grunts, I sigh. He pushes my hips, I pull his. He backs me up against the door, I writhe against it, and when he growls low and deep in his throat, I’m amazed I don’t orgasm on the spot.
He works my dress up and his rough palms graze over the bare skin of my ass. His lips coast down my neck, I roll my head against the door behind me, hooking a leg around his waist, drawing him in closer to where I need him. My whole body is desperate, annoyed, frustrated, determined to have him.
I want him inside me, filling me, driving inside me with a cock that practically feels like a religious destination after all this time. How many nights have I laid awake and imagined, wondered. I want him everywhere.
I buck against him. He jams his hard thigh between my legs, and I swear on whatever there is in the world that is holy, I hump his goddamned leg. I’m that far gone.
“I told you it would be like this.”
His words tug me out of the moment. Like this? I blink up at the ceiling. Of a bathroom. A public bathroom at a winery. A winery I came to with my fiancé. Cheating. Whatever Jer won’t be tomorrow, right now he is technically my fiancé.
Ugh. This isn’t what I wanted. “Kissing next to a toilet?”
His teeth scrape my earlobe, his stubble scratches my neck.
I shove at him, ignoring the wet heat pooling between my legs.
He straightens, his gaze roves over my face, and that hot, hard thigh leaves me. “What’s wrong?”
I pull away.
“Wait, Mia. I still don’t know your body language well enough to read you.” His brows draw together. “Talk to me. What’s wrong.”
“Everything. My fiancé is thirty feet away.”
“Don’t call him that.” His mouth hardens. “You don’t belong with him.”
That echoes around the still room, off the hard surfaces. The faucet leaks a steady dripdripdripdrip in time with my heart.
We stare at one another.
“And what? I belong with you?” Maybe it’s panic, but I want to run now, fast, away from him, from Jer, from Cayuga. Someplace far away where no one needs or wants anything from me at all.
“Maybe.” His deep voice drags around my ears and gives me chills.
“I don’t even know you.” I turn away. Reach for the door.
And then he’s there, surrounding me from behind, holding me still.
My face presses into the dark black wood of the bathroom door.
“You don’t know me?” He hisses, his breath touching against the back of my neck. His lips, and the bristle surrounding them graze against my ears.
“You know me, Mia. We’ve been inside each other’s brains for months. All this time, getting to know one another. I know your schedule, I know your dreams, I know your likes and your dislikes. I know what you’re doing every fucking minute of the day. There is no one in the world I know better. And you know the same for me. We may be touching for the first time, we may still need to learn each other’s bodies, faces and expressions, but don’t you dare fucking pretend you don’t know who I am or that I don’t know you.”
He slides a hand down my dress, all the way down to the hem, strokes his fingers up over my bare skin, higher and higher until he touches the top of my panties.
I don’t know if I want to move away. I know I should, but I also know he’s got me trapped in his spell. My neck arches, my core spasms, my nipples burn. I can’t even think. I just sag against the door, panting, as his fingers slide up to the bare skin of my stomach, and down under the top of my panties, lower over the smooth rise of my pubic mound, and down between the slit at the entrance of my core.
He touches me like he has every right in the world to do so.
My mouth hangs open. I grind my ass backward, against the hard bulge that he settles right between the crack of my ass. Holy mother of god, I want this man inside me like I’ve never wanted anything in my entire life.
His fingers slide inside me. One at first, then I think it’s two, but I’m not even sure. I just know I feel instant relief with his long fingers filling me for the first time.
The hard heel of his palm presses into my clit, his teeth drag over the skin behind my ears, shoving and pressing until I’m clawing at the door, riding closer and closer toward a high I’m not sure I can ever come back from.
It builds so fast, with such strong momentum I can’t stop the long keen that comes from my mouth. It’s like the orgasm that never ends, it just keeps spiraling and piling on top of itself, my body clenching around his fingers. I’m dimly aware of his voice in my ear, calling me a good girl, praising me for coming all over his fingers, telling me I’m perfect, telling me I’m going to do that again soon, only with his cock inside me, all the while massaging my clit and pumping his fingers inside me.
It triggers another one, a bigger one, that leaves me drained. I sag against the doorway, vaguely aware of two things.
His cock is still wedged against my ass, rock hard.
And... I’m drooling.
I blink, dazed as a long line of saliva drifts, glistening in the low light to the floor.
I’m a mess.
When his fingers leave me, I blow out a long breath.
In this moment, all I want is to turn around, wrap my arms around his waist and fall asleep on his chest, shut out the rest of the world, tell him to take me somewhere else, somewhere we can be alone, find out what the hell this is.
The connection, the chemistry between us is even stronger in person.
I wipe the drool from my mouth. “That was intense.”
He turns me around so I’m facing him, a massive smile spreading across his face. “Was? We’re not even close to finished.”
“We are. I can’t stay here.” I blow out a long breath.
His smile fades.
“Everyone is going to be wondering where I am.” I open the door behind me and take a step out.
“Fuck them. This matters, Mia. Quit pretending it doesn’t.”
“I never said it doesn’t matter. I just... I need time. I have to end it with Jer.”