Every Part of You: Resists Me Read online

  “Were you ashamed?”

  “No.” Simone gave a breathless laugh. “I knew I was supposed to be. Or I was supposed to be angry at him. Something. But I wasn’t. I loved it. And when I asked him what had made him do such a thing, all he could say was that he’d seen it in a porno movie and thought he’d try it.”

  “Oh my god.” Teresa laughed and shook her head as she manipulated herself into another set of poses. “What if you’d hated it?”

  “Right?” Simone punched the air, one-two-three, and burst into laughter. “What if I had punched him in the nuts or like, pressed charges for assault? It left bruises. Split my lip.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I did not.”

  Teresa shook her head. “You figured out that you liked it.”

  “I did. And I guess I’d probably known it for a while, I mean, I don’t remember it being a surprise. Other than how good it felt. And then I wanted to do it more and more, but we sort of stumbled around it, you know. Neither of us really had any idea how to go about it. And as it turns out, we didn’t last much longer after that, anyway. But he was the first guy who helped me figure out what really, truly gets me off.”

  “Think how sad it is for women who never figure it out.”

  Simone nodded. “Yeah. Totally.”

  “Wanna work on your core?”

  Simone groaned. “How about we drink margaritas and eat nacho chips instead?”

  “We could do that, too. Ed won’t be back with the kids until closer to nine.” Teresa grinned. “Sucker.”

  Simone sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. There weren’t many times when she envied her friend’s life. Kids, husband, pets, house. But for a moment, something panged inside her.

  “You okay?” Teresa unfolded herself and stood in a fluid motion that emphasized her lean shape, unchanged even after kids.

  Simone got up, too, much less gracefully. She’d prided herself on trying to stay fit, but there was no denying that everything about her creaked when she got up. She steadied herself for a moment with a hand on the back of Teresa’s armchair.

  “It’s hard to find someone,” Simone said.

  Tree frowned. “Is this about this guy again? This Elliott.”

  Sudden, unbidden, and surprising tears burned in Simone’s throat and her eyes. She blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. She cleared her throat, again struggling uncommonly to find the words to describe what she wanted to say.

  “Oh. Oh, honey.” Teresa reached to hug her, and Simone let her. “Hey. Don’t.”

  “It’s hard to find someone who gets it. Who gets what I like. And who likes it, too, without all the trappings and … and rigamarole. Without the bondage and submission stuff. And he gets it, Tree. He gets off on it, the way I do. And he’s smart and beautiful and he smells so fucking good. And he’s got this smile, Tree. He doesn’t smile a lot, but when he does … it’s amazing.”

  “He sounds wonderful.”

  “He is.”

  “But he doesn’t want to see you, honey.”

  Leave it to Tree to put it that way, all blunt and honest. It made Simone laugh, though. Because it was true.

  “And he’s a dumbass,” Teresa added.

  “He doesn’t want me,” Simone said quietly, letting herself feel the sting. “And it’s not like I thought we were going to have this mad, wild love affair or anything like that. I wouldn’t have cared if it was just sex.”

  Teresa made a face. “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s not wrong, is it?” Simone couldn’t stop herself from saying. “To hope?”

  Teresa hugged her again, holding her hard. “No, honey. It’s never wrong to hope.”

  Several margaritas and a plate of nachos later, everything should’ve felt better, but it didn’t. Not really. Still, Simone left Teresa’s house determined to not let the whole stupid Elliott thing get her down. Just because he was the first guy in forever who’d been able to give her what she liked and wanted and needed, what she craved … just because he was all that and a motherfucking bag of chips …

  It didn’t matter.

  He didn’t want her.

  At home, she took a long, hot shower and let herself cry, not so she could wallow, but so she could get over it. It wasn’t the first time she’d been rejected. Wouldn’t be the last. And, staring in the fog-filled mirror at her sopping wet reflection, Simone stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.

  She pushed her tits together, noting the cleavage she always had to work extra hard for. She turned to look at her butt, which was nothing to be ashamed of either, even if it could be rounder. Her belly was nice and toned although she had no core strength, at least compared to Tree’s amazingness.

  “He’s an idiot,” she breathed into the mirror. “And he doesn’t deserve you, anyway.”

  She had to say it several times before she could convince herself, and even then it was a hollow victory. Idiot or not, Elliott Anderson had left a mark on her, deep enough to scar.

  In the bedroom she found a message waiting for her on her phone. Not from Elliott, which would’ve been too good to be true. Not from Aidan, either, which would’ve been less surprising but welcome, since it had been a long time since they’d spoken, and that conversation hadn’t ended well. But it wasn’t from either one of them, it was from a man whose voice she recognized only after a few seconds.

  “Hey, bébé,” said the future governor of Louisiana. “I sure hope you’re ready to party.”

  About the Author

  MEGAN HART is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of many romance and erotica novels, including Switch, Tempted, Deeper, and Dirty. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and children.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  EVERY PART OF YOU: RESISTS ME. Copyright © 2014 by Megan Hart. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover photograph © Conrado/Shutterstock

  Cover design by Olga Grlic

  e-ISBN 9781250039347

  First Edition: February 2014