Snippet Saturday
Woohoo! It’s Saturday and it’s time for a new snippet. This week’s theme is emotion and I’ve decided to give you a nice look inside the heroine in Tucker’s Fall. One of my favorite emotions to explore in my writing is fear. It’s so easy in every day life to let fear hold you back.
I’ve been guilty of letting fear stop me and I’ve also busted through it by going for it. In this scene Tucker has offered Maggie a chance at something she really wants. But she has to get past her fear before she can have it.
Enjoy!
Excerpt:
“You’re a submissive wishing for a Dominant and I’m a Dominant looking for one submissive.”
Maggie swallowed, trying to get his words to sink in. No way in hell had she heard him correctly. Despite her shock, a wave of lust surged through her. Her head spun and her stomach quivered. This was Tucker. The nice boy who had branded her all those years ago with a searing kiss that shocked her to her core. Now he sat on her couch offering her the one thing she secretly ached for. A frown formed across her face. Apparently her desires weren’t so secret anymore. The scandal of her life had obviously followed her home.
She brought her hands to Tucker’s chest and pushed. He gave an inch and nothing more. “Don’t do this,” she whispered. It wasn’t easy to form words with the high level of need crashing down on her. What she’d fought for weeks to bottle back up inside her now threatened to break free all over again. She’d been so close to true discovery and then everything crashed and burned around her. An unbelievable case of bad timing had opened her eyes to her ridiculous behavior. Tears burned behind her eyes and she squeezed them shut to hold them at bay. Nothing would embarrass her more than to start crying in front of him.
“Don’t do that.” Tucker’s voice whispered through her. “Don’t start reinforcing walls and making plans to shut me down. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Maggie tried to swallow beyond the thick lump in her throat. He didn’t know it all. No one did. There had been a lot of speculation about that night. Her ex didn’t even care why she’d been in the club, only that she’d been caught there and hauled to jail. He’d used her embarrassment to his advantage, had refused to bail her out and filed for divorce. He’d all but dared her to not sign the settlement agreement, too. Suddenly, all the male students he’d slept with meant nothing in the face of her public scandal.
After days of trying to figure out what to do, she’d grabbed the first opportunity to get out.
Yet none of those memories abated the throbbing now going on between her legs. In an instant, Tucker had managed to reawaken her — gotta have it or I’m going to die — craving that had plagued her for years. The mysterious something else that kept her researching late into the night, page after page on the internet as she tried to understand why she’d become so deeply drawn to the lifestyle.
His proximity didn’t help either. Warm breath fluttered across her skin as he waited far too patiently, making her heart beat faster. Good thing she was already sitting down.
“You tell me that I don’t know you very well, yet that doesn’t stop you from jumping to conclusions about me. For all you know you could be one hundred percent wrong.” She hated the sharp edge her voice carried. Her defenses were an auto pilot mechanism she didn’t know how to disengage. Not after what she’d been through.
Tucker pulled back and met her gaze. For a few agonizing seconds, silence enveloped them as he stared down at her. She felt as though Tucker could see straight through all of her lies, her half-truths and the walls she’d concocted to hide the need. She admired this Tucker. The confidence that oozed from him was so different from most men she encountered. Most of the professors at the college she worked were ridiculously old school, and not in a good way. They frowned on her research and spent more time offering snide comments than any real support. Not one showed an iota of interest in anything she had to say.
“Look me in the eye, Maggie, and tell me I’m wrong. If you can do
that then I’ll gladly apologize and drop the whole thing.”
Sheer terror sliced through her. Despite her blustering, she liked
everything she’d witnessed so far. There were a lot of things in life that made her uncertain, that didn’t mean she didn’t go for them. That’s how the big events in life happened. Sometimes you just have to go for it.
She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Just go for it, Maggie. There isn’t much else to lose. “You’re not wrong,” she admitted. For some reason the attack she expected didn’t come. Where she’d thought he’d touch her more, he withdrew. Maggie frowned, unable to disguise her confusion.
Tucker cupped her chin with his palm and titled her head to stare into her eyes. “Don’t look so disappointed, Miss Maggie. You know as well as I do that this needs to go slow. That means tonight you are going to take a long, hot bath after you finish your drink. You’ll wash your body while thinking of me, then you’ll slip between the cool sheets of your bed before midnight and go to sleep without touching yourself. You’re going to need your sleep.”
***
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