Chapter 1: Lauren
1.
Lauren
Lauren Saunders lay sprawled on the cold bathroom tile, telling herself she had to get up.
I’m hurt.
She blinked, confused. The room was spinning.
She tasted blood. Blood and something else. Something hard and sharp. A jagged little stone. She rolled her tongue over the pebble. Was that her tooth?
It was.
“Someone…” The word fumbled out of her mouth, no louder than a whisper. “Someone, help.”
Two hours ago, she had been drinking overpriced fruity cocktails out of tall cylinders with Janet and Sandra. All of them celebrating Lauren’s move to Black Wells.
Antonio had sauntered over to the girls’ table, gliding over the flashing neon dance floor with a handsome, albeit less attractive, friend. He had come right over to Lauren and asked her if he could buy her a drink, his voice coated in a thick Cuban accent.
He was nothing like her fiancé Ryan—no, ex-fiancé. She had to stop doing that to herself.
Ryan, with his blond hair and shining green eyes, who did nothing but raid with his pals on whatever fun-come-lately computer game had just been released. A game Lauren had paid for with money earned from double shift after double shift at the hospital. An emergency room nurse’s cash spent so he could sit his fat ass in that deluxe gaming chair she’d paid for. Ryan, who made promises of getting a job. Ryan, who told her she was beautiful, but always reminded her what the number on the scale said. Ryan, who loved to talk just for the sake of hearing that pinched, whiny voice of his.
Antonio, slender and darkly handsome, who had floated out of the writhing crowd of dancers like a prince among subjects. He’d bought her drinks. And it was drink after drink later that Antonio inched closer to her on the rounded leather booth, smelling sweetly of a cologne she had never smelled.
Ryan didn’t wear cologne.
Ryan wore aerosol body spray with names like Hunters Path and Onyx Armor, stinking like a fraternity dipshit.
Fucking Ryan. Three years wasted on him.
It took Antonio just over an hour to slide his hand over her bare knee under the table. Goose pimples shot up her thigh. He didn’t push the touch too far, just rested his hand on the freshly shaven flesh. She allowed it. Even let him run his thumb up and down her knee, as if they had been a romantic item for weeks. There was strength in his hand. A strength Lauren hadn’t known in years. Or, come to think of it, ever. She casually slipped her hand away from her glass, letting it drift under the table to fall upon his. They laced their fingers together, each of them looking at the others at the table, laughing and talking and just…touching for the sake of it. It was something she deserved to feel, but it had been beyond the abilities of a pampered man-child—no, of a parasite.
Synthwave music pulsed feverishly. Her heart thumped along with it.
“Lauren is a nurse,” Sandra said, brandishing her patented open-mouth, Valley girl smile while stirring the straw around in her glass. “She’s coming off a bad engagement. We finally convinced her to move here.” She was such a freaking loudmouth. A real bitch sometimes, with her stupid Jennifer Aniston haircut, wearing so much makeup that when she smiled her foundation cracked like an over-baked cake.
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Antonio squeezed her knee again, reassuring.
“Yeah, he was a real jackass who kept telling poor Lauren here that they were going to get married beside a mountain or some dumb shit. What was it again?”
“It was a river,” said Lauren, regretting ever telling Sandra anything about anything at any time in her life. “Anyway, Antonio, what do you do?”
Antonio gave his portly friend a smile. “Edmundo and I run a construction company. We build subdivisions all around the county.”
“So, you’re in real estate,” said Sandra. “Interesting. You must make lots of money.”
Antonio’s dark cheeks blushed. He laughed dismissively. “Construction. But yeah, we do okay.”
“He’s rich,” said Edmundo, a consummate wingman.
Everyone at the table laughed and dove deeper into their drinks, telling surface-level stories about who they were. An hour or so later, Antonio let the others spill into a side conversation before he leaned over and whispered a secret into Lauren’s ear.
“I like your dress.” The heat from his mouth sent a shiver down her spine. She concealed its effect with a bashful grin.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I picked it up this week as a kind of gift to myself. For making the move alone.”
“I would say that I’m sorry to hear about your breakup, but I wouldn’t want to start our friendship with a lie.”
“He was an asshole. I’m here, and that’s all that matters to me right now.”
“Lucky me,” said Antonio, flashing that perfect smile at her again.
It wasn’t just his words that were charming; it was the way he said them. Relaxed, cool, and confident.
“Dance with me,” he said.
Lauren patted him high on the thigh. “Lead the way.”
Antonio scooted out of the booth. Lauren followed, doing her best not to notice how close her belly came to grazing the edge of the table. Three complacent years with Ryan and working overtime at the emergency room had led to the poor diet of the overworked. She was fifteen pounds heavier than she should be. But there would be time to take care of that. Maybe, if Antonio was the real deal, they could work out together, take long jogs or hikes through the Astolat trails. She’d always wanted a guy who was active, not just a slug who suckled on the nipple of low-calorie entertainment.
“Oh, okay,” said Janet, pretending to be upset while watching them move toward the dance floor. “We’ll just wait here then!”
Lauren turned back and playfully flipped her off. She took Antonio by the hand and before she knew it, they were swimming together in a sea of music and light. She placed her palms on his shoulders and pulled him close. His fingers fluttered over the sequins of her shimmering dress, running the length of her ribs, down the curve of her hip. She waited for him to look into the crowd before she wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead.
Antonio danced with a masculine grace, sliding his knee between her legs, letting their thighs grind against one another with the bumping rhythm of the music. Lauren had always wanted something like this. Someone like this. Not someone who wore HUNTER’S PATH but someone who actually hunted the path. Came after her. She chuckled. Comparing Ryan to Antonio was like comparing a warm breeze to a summer heatwave.
“What’s funny?” Antonio asked.
“I was just—Nothing.”
Antonio rolled his hips into her, allowing his thickness to press into her hip.
Yeah, there was no comparison.
“¿Te puedo besar?”
She hung her arms around his neck. “Is that Spanish?”
“Si.”
Lauren laughed.
Antonio laughed too. “It means, ‘Can I kiss you?’”
Her smile widened.
She kissed him first, gently. Sweetly.
“Want to do something dangerous?” he asked, then leaned closer. He kissed her earlobe.
Lauren’s eyes widened, looking back over to the table where Janet and Sandra were laughing at one of Edmundo’s jokes. “How dangerous?”
“Well, it would involve you and me going into one of the bathrooms…just the two of us.”
Normally, the idea of going into a bathroom to do anything other than use it for what it was intended would have repulsed her. But not this time. Something about the two of them alone in a small, public space shot the heat of her stomach down, transforming it into swollen anticipation. She had never done anything like this before. But the past few weeks had been filled with things she would never have considered while she was engaged. Moving to a new town before she even had a job. Going out night after night with her friends to dance clubs and bars just for fun. That’s what this was all supposed to be: fun.
Was it reasonable to go into a bathroom with a man she’d just met, after so many drinks?
No.
And that was exactly why she took Antonio by the hand and led him toward the women’s restroom. Lauren pushed through the crowd eagerly, shoving aside everyone in her way. When they reached the door of the one-seater bathroom, she knocked, looking around to check if anyone was watching. No one responded. The coast was clear. She opened the door and pulled Antonio inside.
She locked the door behind them and turned. Antonio kissed her hard and deep, running his fingers up her neck into her hair. His hands cupped the back of her head, lightly clawing at the skin beneath. His other hand squeezed her ribs, pulling the fabric of her dress. His tongue, sweet from liquor, glided past her lips and into her mouth. Not too strong and not too deep. Lauren clamped her nails into the hard muscle of his shoulders. She’d never been kissed like this before. Time passed, their lips greedy, hot, and wet.
Antonio sank his thick fingers into the swell of her hip, mashing her pelvis against him.
A little hushed moan escaped her lips. A sound she hadn’t heard in…
Stop thinking about that dipshit.
Antonio pulled back, resting his hand on the damp skin of her neck. His panting through parted lips gave him a sensual, predatory appearance. A man that had been offered a great deal and yet still wanted more. More of her.
“Ready for the danger?” he asked.
“Umm, I thought this was the danger.”
He winked. “Part of it.”
He reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and produced a small clear baggie filled with white powder.
“What is that?” she asked, a scalpel of worry cutting through her arousal. She felt stupid the moment the question left her mouth. She knew what it was. ...
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