His Outlaw Valentine Read online

  HIS OUTLAW VALENTINE

  Jessa Kane

  Copyright © 2020 Jessa Kane

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Epilogue

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Jessie

  Walking out of my bedroom, my lips curve at the sight of Ryan standing at the stove cooking breakfast. Based on the amount of clothes he’s wearing, one might think we’re expecting a snowstorm in the kitchen. The oversized police sweatshirt and beanie are typical of my lifelong best friend, though. Even his cop uniform is two sizes too large.

  Funny, when we were kids growing up in the Philly suburbs, I don’t remember his clothes being quite so…roomy. Then again, a lot about him has changed. At six foot five, he towers over me. He wears glasses. His voice has dropped approximately nine octaves. One thing that hasn’t changed about Ryan, though? He’s safe. Dependable.

  And he doesn’t try and get too close.

  Sure, we’re roommates and all, but our bedrooms are on opposite sides of the apartment. I pay half the rent, he pays the other, so neither one of us owes the other anything. When I come home from working at the hair salon, he seems to always know what kind of mood I’m in. If I’ve had a rough day, he hands me a bowl of whatever he’s been cooking, pours me a glass of wine and listens patiently while I vent about lousy tips or dramatic coworkers. No prying questions or judgment. And I do the same for him, although his venting mostly comes in the form of a grunt or two.

  He’s my big, safe teddy bear of a best friend and I don’t know what I’d do without him.

  Do I feel guilty for keeping so many secrets from him?

  Against my will, yes.

  See, though? That guilt is why it’s best to keep everyone on the other side of the glass. When a woman starts piling all of her problems onto a man—and then he eventually leaves—those problems fall back on her like a mountain of bricks. Ryan knows more about me than anyone else in the world, but he still knows very little. And that’s the way it has to be. If I keep the most important parts about me to myself, he can’t shake them if he leaves.

  I prop a hand on the dining room table and slide on my black high heels, comforted by the steady scrape and flop of Ryan cooking pancakes, his broad back turned to me.

  Ryan has given me no evidence to think he might vanish from my life any time soon, so maybe this need to stay withdrawn from my best friend is irrational. If anything, he’s given me reason to think he’ll stick by me forever. Unfortunately, the more I rely on him, the shakier the ground becomes under my feet. If he were to leave…

  “Morning,” he says without turning around, his voice still raspy from sleep. “One pancake or two?”

  “Two, please.” I take my usual seat at the table and pour us some orange juice, trying to subdue the tremor in my hand. “I have a long day.”

  He must detect the unusual note in my voice, because he sends me a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say curtly, desperately needing the subject to drop. At twenty-six, Ryan has already been promoted to detective, thanks to his skills of deduction. If he knew exactly why my day was going to be so long…well, I have no idea what he would do.

  I just have to make sure he never finds out.

  “Um…” Hastily, I gather my long, strawberry blonde hair, pushing it to one side. “What about you? What’s on the agenda today?”

  So much time passes, I wonder if he’s going to break our unspoken rule and pepper me with prying questions. “Still working the Garvey case,” he finally says in a low voice. “Going to question a potential witness in South Philly later. Then…”

  My lips quirk up. “Paperwork?”

  He sighs. “Always.”

  Ryan turns from the stove where he’s been plating pancakes, setting my dish down in front of me. I drown my breakfast in syrup, earning a quiet chuckle from my roommate. He sits across from me, his hand curled around a coffee mug. Watching me in that quiet way of his.

  I glance down at the pancake and wrinkle my nose. “Did you make this in the shape of a heart?”

  He frowns. “Must have been accidental.”

  “Good thing it’s not some cheesy Valentine’s Day gesture,” I tease him. “You know how I feel about February fourteenth.”

  “It was invented by the greeting card industry and places shame on single people.”

  “That’s right.” I shiver. “God, can you imagine the thousands of tacky price fix dinners being served tonight in Philly? Prove your devotion to one another and get a free glass of champagne. No thank you.” Why does Ryan’s smile look a little sick? “Aren’t you going to have any pancakes?”

  Shaking his head slowly, he leans back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. It’s a move that should be familiar to me, but when his socked foot accidentally nudges me under the table, my belly sucks in hard and I gasp, dropping my fork, left shaken by the sensation of…what? What was that?

  “Sorry,” he mutters, taking a long drink of coffee. “Sometimes I forget how damn long these legs are now.”

  I pick my fork back up slowly, still trying to recover from the interesting little twist beneath my belly button. “W-well, they weren’t always that long.”

  “I remember.” He winks from behind his glasses. “You used to beat me in races.”

  “Until eighth grade and then…” I make an explosion sound. “Goliath.”

  “Come on, now. I used to let you win on occasion.”

  “Only if I fake cried.”

  His amusement dies. “Yeah.” He clears his throat hard and sets down his coffee mug. “I’ve always hated it when you cry.”

  Ryan says things like this all the time. Things that make me want to throw my arms around him and let him cradle me like a baby. So that’s usually when I panic and get out of his vicinity as quickly as possible, because I refuse to make myself vulnerable to anyone. It’s like handing someone a weapon to use against you at will. “Good thing I’m so tough now,” I breathe, pushing back from the table. “Right?”

  “Uh-huh.” He watches me gather my purse with unreadable eyes. “Jessie.”

  “Yes?”

  Without another word, Ryan stands, straightening to his full height. I strive to keep a blasé expression on my face, but inside, my heart is pumping like it belongs to a cornered rabbit. Why is he coming so close? Ryan is usually so good about giving me space. It’s not that I have a fear of being touched. Not exactly. But any kind of skin-on-skin contact is intimate—and I don’t do intimacy in any way shape or form. It’s too risky, letting someone so close.

  I hold my breath as Ryan stops in front of me, so tall I would have to crane my neck to meet his eyes. But I don’t do that, I stare straight forward at his chest, trying to quell the urge to run. To run from this person who I’ve come dangerously close to letting in. Lately, keeping any part of myself from Ryan makes me feel like Superman trying to withstand kryptonite.

  Maybe I’ll just tell Ryan about my mother being back in town…

  Maybe I�
��ll just ask him for help…

  Then I remind myself the only person a woman can depend on is herself.

  Pulse racing, I watch Ryan pick up my fork and stab it into the only piece of pancake I left on the plate. Slowly, deliberately, he brings it to my mouth. “All our lives, I’ve let you get away with shutting me out,” he rasps, pushing the syrupy pancake bite between my lips. “But I feed you, Jessie. Every single day. That’s the one privilege you allow me and you’re not taking it away. Eat.”

  Speaking of syrup, I feel like I’ve been caked in the hot, sugary substance, head to toe. My brain is in syrup, too, processing the moment in a slow haze. Ryan’s attention is fastened to my mouth and I’m…am I looking at his, too?

  What am I hoping for?

  What am I doing?

  Not only is Ryan my best and only friend, which makes him super off limits, but I could never kiss him and proceed with today’s plan.

  Also I don’t kiss anyone!

  I touch no one and no one touches me.

  Inside or out.

  I swallow quickly and step back, shaking myself free of the trance. “Happy?” I say with a shaky laugh, picking up my purse and going around Ryan. “I’ll, um…see you later. Good luck with the Garvey case. Bye.”

  As soon as I close the apartment door behind me, I lean back against it and breathe like I’ve just hiked Kilimanjaro. What happened in there?

  Why are my breasts so tingly?

  Ryan isn’t supposed to get in my personal space like that. Or say things that even border on being too personal. What’s gotten into him?

  Moreover, how could I let whatever it is affect me like this? I know better.

  With one final, steadying breath, I check to make sure my gun is still safely stowed in the inner compartment of my purse. And I leave to go rob a convenience store.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ryan

  I grind my jaw as the sound of Jessie’s high heels fade out in the hallway.

  She’s hiding something from me.

  Which, hell. Smoke and mirrors from Jessie is the furthest thing from usual. When she was thirteen and I moved into the house next door to her, she told me her parents were retired opera singers turned lawyers who took her on vacation to Paris every year. That same night, I watched her father stagger drunkenly up the walkway, provoking a fight with her baseball-bat-wielding mother that spilled out into the yard and required the cops to break it up.

  They weren’t lawyers, they needed lawyers.

  Call me callous, but I didn’t give two shits about blood spilled between adults. I’d just wanted to know Jessie was all right. See, I’d fallen so deeply in love with her the moment we crossed paths, I forgot my goddamn name, and there are a million reasons why. Her combination of strength and fragility. Her humor. That secret smile she gives me. The way she gives me just enough attention to have me panting, before flitting away like a strawberry blonde fairy.

  Yeah, I love her. Compulsively. At the time, it was almost more than my thirteen-year-old heart could stand. So while her parents were being cuffed in the front yard, I’d climbed in through her bedroom window and found her sobbing brokenly on the floor.

  I learned a hard but valuable lesson that night when I tried to comfort the love of my life. After I witnessed Jessie in an authentically weak moment—not just pretend crying over losing a foot race—it took me a year to coax her into speaking to me again. Rule number one of dealing with my best friend, don’t expose her weaknesses or she’ll drop a motherfucker like a bad habit.

  Yes, I might have learned a hard lesson that long-ago evening, but it was also the night I vowed to myself to protect Jessie forever. Always. No matter what.

  It’s why I became a police officer, then a detective.

  It’s why I rented this apartment and made it the most secure living space in all of Philadelphia, before “casually” suggesting she move in with me. Where I could keep an eye on her. A very, very close eye.

  So close, my skittish friend would probably be terrified if she found out.

  Everything about me, down to my clothing and glasses, is designed to make me non-threatening, but I’m the furthest thing from it underneath the layers. I’m a lethal weapon with the sole purpose of making sure Jessie never has to sob on the floor another day in her life.

  Jessie is beautiful, complicated, terrified of commitment and secretive—

  And I’ll worship her until the day I die.

  I reach down and unzip my pants now, groaning as my cock pushes free and smacks off my stomach. In my other hand, I’m still holding the fork I just took a huge risk by sliding into Jessie’s angelic mouth. Laying my dick out on the table, I gently stroke the smooth underside of the fork up and down my length, turned on to a fever pitch just knowing her saliva is now on me.

  “Fuuuuck,” I grit out. “Good little princess. Get your spit all over that cock. Make it easier to take.”

  I’m depraved. Jesus, I know I am. But I’ve been obsessed beyond recognition with this girl for thirteen years and I’ve never even laid a finger on her, afraid she’d sprint in the other direction where I’d be cut off completely. My urges have never been satisfied and they’ve taken a darker turn. Darker and darker, the longer I go without her taste.

  Knowing it’s going to take a lot more than a fork to satisfy me, I send it clattering onto the table and drop to my knees. I walk forward until I’m kneeling in front of her chair and I press my nose to the middle of the seat, right in the spot where her pussy pressed down. I suck in her lilies and sugar scent greedily, sliding my nose to where her tight asshole touched.

  God yeah. Smells so good, all fresh and feminine and mine.

  This is as close to Valentine’s Day sex as I’ll ever get, unless I can convince Jessie I’ll never hurt her and never, ever leave. Someday I will convince her. I have faith.

  Now, I straighten long enough to spit on my hand and stroke the moisture all over my aching cock, before sliding it into my curled fist…no. No, it’s Jessie’s pussy now. She’s here with me, her legs spread open on the chair. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other at breakfast and now she’s going to be late for work because she’s a horny girl that needs her pussy eaten.

  This is so bad, she whispers. You’re my best friend.

  “This will only make it better, Jessie,” I push through clenched teeth, burying my nose in the seat once again and inhaling deeply. “I’d die before letting anything come between us, don’t you know that?”

  I had no idea you could lick me there, she moans. I feel all shaky.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” I growl, pumping my dick into my wet fist. Above me, her strawberry blonde hair is tangled around her pouty nipples, her red lips open and calling my name, tits shaking up and down. “Such a delicious little princess, aren’t you? You’ve been saving it for me. You’ve been saving this pussy for my private use.”

  Yes, Ryan. I know it’s so bad, but I can’t help it. You protect me so well…

  At that, my balls cinch up and I experience that telltale tightening low in my belly, down at the base of my spine. I’m going to come with my tongue in Jessie’s virgin pussy, like I’ve been dreaming about for over a decade. Ah, fuck, I’m going to come now—

  The sound of a key sliding into the front door lock stops me cold.

  No one has a key but Jessie.

  With my balls on the verge of emptying, I lunge to my feet and cross to the bathroom, shutting my self inside as fast as possible and turning on the shower. This is where I prove how dark and depraved my infatuation with Jessie has become. When I hear her heels clicking on the hardwood floor and entering her bedroom, I cross to the medicine cabinet on the wall and slowly lift it off the hook, setting it on the floor.

  There.

  Now I can see her, though the small hole I drilled in the drywall—years ago. I’ve been watching her sleep, change and do morning yoga in her bedroom since we moved in together. I’m well aware that I’m a s
ick bastard, but I’m desperate to connect with her any way possible. It’s painful wanting to know every single detail about Jessie and having her keep me at arm’s length. So I watch her. I don’t always jerk off. Sometimes I just stare at her utter perfection and marvel at God’s most incredible creation, but I can’t help it this morning.

  Fuck, she’s so goddamn hot, in her tight jeans and red, flannel shirt, tied up enough to show off a hint of her belly button. She’s the most sexually decadent woman on the planet and I’ve had to threaten countless men who tried to get close. Not even over my dead body will another man breathe on her. Jessie is mine.

  What is she doing?

  My hand pauses its furious stroking of my dick when Jessie peels off her jeans, muttering to herself. Even as I devour the sight of her thighs and ass, I listen closely.

  “Really, Jessie? You have to come home to change your wet panties?” She slides off the pink, silk thong in question and holds it up to the light. “How did that happen, anyway?” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Was it…Ryan?”

  Semen shoots from my cock in thick white, ropes and it happens so quickly, I almost don’t have time to stifle my growl. Did Jessie just say I made her wet? Oh fuck. Yes, yes, yes, she did, and now I can’t stop coming. My spend drips down the wall onto the tiles and splashes onto my socks, soaking them through to my toes. She’s in her room putting on a fresh thong, bending forward and giving me a peek at her sexy asshole and the rear view of her pussy, and my balls squeeze roughly, spewing the final drops of milky white liquid onto the wall.

  A moment later, her jeans are back in place and God, I would give anything to enter Jessie’s room and have her welcome me. I’d sit on the bed and make her ride my thigh until she was on the verge of coming, then I’d throw her down on her back, rip off her jeans and shove my tongue straight up her tight cunt. I was obsessed before. Now I’m an obsessed animal, knowing I made her wet by feeding her that bite of pancake.

  Mine. You’re going to be mine.