3

Stephen was charming. More than my heart could take, even with both our parents there with us. It didn’t help that he would keep looking at me. I kept imagining the fire in his eyes, even when I looked away.

He was also a little smug like he knew the effect he had on me, and he played it out well.

Beneath his cool, polite exterior around Mom and Paul, and beneath that designer suit he wore, was a bad boy with tattoos and a love of hard sex.

That last part, I knew because he turned my world on its axis one night when his dad took us out to eat. He’d got me to leave the table with a muttered excuse, nobody was really paying attention anyway, and I’d followed along, too curious to say no. The next thing I knew he had me backed up into a wall in a dark hallway. I had been trying my best not to look at him and failing at it, so when he undid his cuffs and rolled his sleeves back, I could only gape at the ink running down his right arm.

Because I was so preoccupied, I didn’t even realize wh