Stuck: A Secrets and Lies prequel by Booth, Ainsley (e books for reading .TXT) 📕

“Yes.” Sam brace exhales hard, then braces his arm above my head and looks down at me with a kiss-drunk smile. “Tea, and uh, friendship. Spare room if you want it.”

“I don’t want the spare room. When I asked if you wanted to have sex, I meant, I want to have sex. With you.”

He blinks down at me.

“Is that too forward?”

He swears under his breath and crushes me against the wall in the gentlest way possible, his mouth hot and demanding against mine.

No. Not too forward for Sam Preston.

Excellent.

Eventually we stop kissing long enough for me to get in the (now shorter) ticket line. The ticketing agent explains they’re trying to add another train on for the next day, but they can’t say yet what time it will be at.

I’m definitely missing my afternoon check-in at the fancy Christmas lodge.

But I don’t care.

When I return to Sam’s side, he has good news. The collision on the train tracks has finally been confirmed by the provincial police, and it’s a holiday miracle, because there were no fatalities.

This time, I kiss him right in the middle of the concourse. When we break apart, Sam takes the lead, guiding me outside. It’s relatively quiet now, just a few pedestrians trudging through heavy sludge on Front Street. Snow has been falling steadily on the city for a while, blanketing it in a lovely silence.

He flags a waiting taxi and hustles me into the back. He gives an address I don’t recognize, and when we head west, I realize why—Sam lives in an area that was nothing but old warehouses when we were in university. Now it’s an in-fill village inside the city, with impossibly attractive townhomes on newly created streets, glittering restaurants, and retrofitted lofts in the warehouses.

It’s one of these we stop in front of.

Despite his legal troubles, Sam has done okay for himself.

He doesn’t say anything until we’re in the elevator. But when we’re alone, he leans in and brushes his lips against my temple. “Did I make it clear that, while I gambled and lost a lot of money, I paid back all my debts? I spent two years living on my brother’s couch. I moved here six months ago. I wouldn’t seduce you back to my den of ill-gotten gains.”

I tip my head to the side so I can see the edge of his profile. “I was wondering. A little.”

“I’m an open book.” His voice rubs against my skin. “About my mistakes, or anything else.”

“Anything?”

His lips twist into a smile. “Ask your questions.”

Instead, I confess a deep, dark secret. “I wanted you so much back then. It was awful, because I thought you were awful—”

“I was.” He grins, and it makes my insides flip-flop.

“But I wanted you anyway. Actually, no, I wanted you because you were awful. That unrepentant bad boy appeal.”

“Don’t tell me you’re disappointed to discover I’ve straightened myself out.”

I laugh and turn more fully so I can look right at him, and so he can see my face. “Not at all. When I realized who was sitting across from me, I was…wary. The Sam I knew had a twisted appeal which my foolish twenty-one-year-old self was briefly into, but I wouldn’t have come home with him.”

“He didn’t deserve you.” He presses against me and brushes my hair away from the collar of my jacket. “But I can still be wicked.”

“Good.” I lick my dry lips. “I can be wicked, too.”

“I have no doubt. Can I ask you something?”

It’s only fair. “Yes.”

“You started to tell me something on the train. It made you blush.” His fingertips trail up my neck and onto my cheeks. “I like the way you blush. Would you tell me what that was? What do you remember from the night we kissed?”

My pulse pounds. “You circled my wrist with your fingers. It was—I mean, maybe you were just dragging me off the dance floor, but there was something about how you held my arm. It felt good.”

He groans as the elevator comes to a stop. “And remembering that makes you blush?”

Heat swarms through me. “Yes. Definitely.”

He cups my face and kisses me softly. “Good. Let’s play with that.”

I’m not any kind of innocent. I’ve spent the last ten years doing my best to navigate the dating swamp, but too often sex is a mediocre experience.

The good sex I’ve had has been amazing.

The bad sex, though—to call it off-putting would be a kindness. So I’ve learned to be straight up with my desires. Some guys get weird about that.

Not Sam. Not this Sam, anyway. Grown-up, owning his mistakes, and—as he opens the door to his apartment—coming out the other side of that with a very nice loft.

I whistle as I step over the threshold. It’s ruthlessly empty, but not cold. There’s an obscenely large couch in the middle of the space, covered in pillows and a generous throw blanket. Soft, touchable. But the dark plank floors between us and the sofa are completely bare. Beyond it, there’s a television on the wall and a low, wide walnut bookshelf below that. That’s it for the entire living space. Everywhere you look is an endless expanse of wood floor, leading to an open kitchen area at one end, and a set of doors at the other. Abstract art and sculpture decorate the space, making his loft more a gallery than a home. It takes my breath away.

“This is a nice place. You have a, wow, gorgeous art collection.”

“It’s almost all my sister-in-law’s work, and the paintings she curated for me. It was a housewarming gift, because she was so glad to get me off her couch. I’d mooched far too long while I was feeling sorry for myself.”

I shrug out of my coat, and he takes it. While he hangs it up, I move closer to a mixed-media sculpture of a woman. “Is she…masturbating?”

He laughs, then sighs. “Yes. Most of it has an erotic bent. That’s Gemma’s thing. Woman-focused erotic art.”

“I love it.” I