Free Three Little Words by Lauren Hawkeye

serious stare, but I warmed when I noticed the tiniest bit of softening in her expression.
                “The café is right across the street. Hang out in there and you’ll see me sooner or later.” She nodded, and then she was gone, leaving me alone with a confusing mix of emotions and a cock that was shouting for attention.

 
 Chapter Five
 
 ADELE
 
                Seeing Mal had shaken me up more than I cared to admit, even to myself. I found myself shaking as I walked, my muscles trembling like one of the orange leaves that danced in the wind around me.
                I had never imagined that he had come for me, that he’d gotten over our stupid, stupid fight just as I had. It made what had happened to me at that horrific party all the more tragic.
                If I’d know I still had Mal, I might have been able to get through the taunts, the humiliation that had been heaped on top of the pain of what had already been taken from me. I might have found the guts to stay.
                No one had ever gotten under my skin like he had, and it was beyond annoying that time had failed to diminish his effect on me. When he’d wrapped me in a hug, it had felt like coming home. When he’d cupped my face in his hands...
                The touch had startled me with its intensity, with the need that it pulled from my very core. Half of me had wanted to jump right back in, to pull him down to that ugly couch and lose myself in the bliss I knew he could provide.
                The other half of me hurt. Malachi Hunter was a reminder of who I once was, back before that one night had changed my life.
                And to top it all off, I was horny as hell, which blew my mind. I didn’t even think about sex anymore—I wanted nothing to do with it. But while Mal had been gorgeous two years ago, now...
                Damn . He looked like sin, like a man any and every woman would kill for a chance to be with.
                “Forget about him, Adele.” I lectured myself as I hurried around my condo, stripping off my jeans and hoodie and replacing them with the spandex shorts and snug pink T-shirt that I wore to roller derby practice. Though I would wear a jacket or hoodie with long sleeves on the way there, derby was the one place where I felt comfortable exposing the tattoos that colored my arms.
                The ones that reminded me, as Mal had, of the wild, carefree girl who had once lived inside my body.
                I threw myself into practice with even more vigor than usual. I’d always loved to roller skate, had been drawn to the solidity of four wheels beneath my feet even after my mom had decided that skating was no longer an appropriate activity—and when I say she had decided, really I meant her husband.
                I’d gotten into derby just over a year ago after seeing a posting for tryouts on a flyer at Java the Hut.
                Derby was wild and unpredictable, full of strong women who didn’t take any shit. When I skated with my team, I basked in that strength, pretending that some of it was mine.
                “Watch out for fresh meat!” One of my teammates called to me, and I feinted to the side just in time to avoid tripping over one of our newer teammates, who had clearly not yet learned to fall small .
                I smiled at her reassuringly as I whirled past.
                I noticed that her attention was fixed on the bleachers of the high school gymnasium. Trying to focus as I continued to push past the burn in my thighs, I made out the good looking face and long, rangy build of some random hottie who was otherwise alone on the bleachers.
                For the second time that day, I felt my libido perk up. Huh. Maybe I wasn’t dead down there, after all. Still, just noticing him made me feel guilty,