Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

of the blue and crazy; she still hadn't figured why it had been so easy to open her heart to Spencer when she'd known from the beginning that their summertime relationship would never last beyond the season.

He was such a beautiful boy. So clean and pure—traits that made it easier to understand the source of her affection, even as she knew she had to let him go. So much in her life had been horribly ugly and dirty. And he deserved better than to have to wash off her stain.

Her hand on the doorknob, she shook her head, knowing this wasn't going to be easy. "I cannot believe you came back out here after last night. You never seemed like a slow learner before."

Spencer took the last four steps to reach her in two stretches of his long and powerful legs. His grin was as wide as the sky. "Feisty this afternoon, aren't you?"

"I'm in a mood, baby. I'm not going to kid you about that."

"Then I should be just the person you're wanting to see." He stopped, shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, and flexed his shoulders, which stretched the cotton of his faded green Pit Stop Pirates T-shirt with all those muscles he had. "I haven't seen a mood of yours yet that has turned me off."

"That's because you're a randy rutting beast." She wanted him to move, to come closer. She wanted to get this over with. Aggravation buzzed around her like a fly. "You have a dick for a brain, boy. You're all about getting turned on."

Spencer winced, then laughed, a nervous, uncomfortable sound. She would've felt sorry for him if she hadn't been busy feeling sorry for herself. She sighed. "This isn't a good time for me, Spencer. Why don't you come back later when I'm feeling more sexy? Let me get over myself."

He obviously didn't think she was serious because he still didn't budge. Just stood there with all that thick dark hair and those broad shoulders, those long sturdy legs and wide chest. He looked like he belonged on the pages of a teen magazine, or in a glossy football program, one pom-pom girls drooled over while they diddled themselves.

She stared off into the distance, blinking back tears. She was so proud of her professional success. She didn't know why it was taking so- long to get her personal act together. Or why she had to judge the beautiful Spencer Munroe by the acts of so many others.

And then the mood shifted. She sensed it like a storm on the horizon, swirling and tightening, sucking away the air she was trying to breathe, and it took her a good long time to look over to the source. She wasn't happy with what she saw when she finally got up the guts and did.

"I'm not going anywhere, Candy. In case you haven't noticed, I don't show up only when you're feeling sexy." His dark eyebrows came down to shadow his bright green eyes. "If anyone thinks of me as a dick, it's you. You're willing to spread your legs, but forget about opening your mind."

He paused for a moment, then charged forward, head low, as if he had a ball tucked to his chest. "I might actually be more than a good fuck. But at the rate you're pissing me off, you're never going to know."

And that did it. He wanted to know where they stood? He wanted to know what she thought? She'd show him exactly. "Then we might as well get busy with the one thing we know works between us. Unless this time you didn't bring a condom?"

Scowling, she opened her door and walked inside, leaving it open for him to follow or not. He did, locking the door before walking across the hardwood floor to where she'd stopped in front of her orange chenille sofa, staring when she reached back for the zipper of her skirt and ripped it down.

The garment pooled around the cowboy boots she wore. Her cropped T-shirt went next. She whipped it over her head, slung it toward Spencer's chest, kicked the skirt to land at his feet, and stood there in turquoise lace bikini panties and a matching push-up bra.

Her pussy throbbed with the need to prove him wrong. He wasn't anything but a good fuck. She couldn't let him be anything more. Believing that he was different from all the men who'd wanted her for sex, believing that anything about the way he made her feel cherished was real. .. Believing either one of those meant she wouldn't be able to tell him good-bye, to send him into the arms of the girls his daddy would be proud to have him date.

She didn't want to deal with an empty bed and a broken heart. It was simply easier to believe everything bad than to believe anything good. Especially when bad had been a constant for her first nineteen years, the years she no longer counted, the years before her current life began. The years that would always keep her from having the relationship she wanted.

How could she when that one horrible night would never go away?

Her heart was pounding like a drum in her chest when she walked over to where he stood and dug into his pocket for the knife she knew he carried. She held his troubled and angry gaze as she pulled it out, made sure to drag her fingers along the length of his erection.

And then she took one step back and flipped open the knife. She tested the tip of the blade with one finger before she pressed it to the scar in the hollow of her throat. "Do you want me to tell you about this scar?"

"Don't," he growled, then cleared his throat. "Put the knife away."

She widened her eyes. "You think I'm going to hurt myself? Oh, baby, I've been hurt too many times to even feel this." She dragged the flat of the blade down