Every woman in the place was wearing something short and sexy, which made Kennedy only slightly self-conscious as she glanced down at her jeans and sweater. When she had gotten dressed, she’d only been thinking about arming herself against Sawyer’s wicked ways. Never would she have imagined feeling underdressed when going to a sex resort, but she did.
“You look beautiful,” Sawyer whispered, his warm breath right up against her ear. A chill raced down her spine at his words and the sexy, gruff sound of his voice. She didn’t believe him for a second, but she appreciated the effort he made to make her feel better.
Unfortunately, less than a minute later, Kennedy had several more reasons to feel like an outcast.
“Hey, Sawyer.”
There they were, face-to-face with a group of women who were looking at Sawyer like he was candy and they were ready to eat him up.
“I was hopin’ I’d see you here tonight,” the well-endowed brunette said, brushing up against Sawyer’s arm as she spoke in that rough, throaty tone.
Kennedy couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes.
To Kennedy’s surprise, Sawyer tightened his hold on her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders as he pulled her closer against his side. Kennedy willingly moved to him. He nodded his head at the woman as they moved past them, not a single word spoken. However, Kennedy didn’t miss the way the woman grabbed Sawyer’s ass as he walked by.
“I’ll be here when you’re done with her,” one of the women said, giggling uncontrollably.
A sudden churning in Kennedy’s stomach had her wanting to pull away from him, but his arm was like a steel band around her back.
“Hey, baby,” another woman crooned, her eyes sliding over Kennedy once before clearly dismissing her. “If you’re free later, call me.”
The woman had the audacity to slide a slip of paper into Sawyer’s front pocket, her hand sliding down to cup him intimately. To Kennedy’s utter horror, Sawyer didn’t say anything to her, nor did he do anything with the obvious phone number that was now in his pocket.
A wave of nausea rolled over Kennedy and this time she did pull away from Sawyer. He looked at her suspiciously, his mouth a hard, thin line.
She had no idea where they were going, but she managed to follow him, making an effort not to touch him. Every ten feet or so another woman approached him, smiling as though he’d hung the moon. Several more phone numbers went into his pocket, but he did nothing with them, and a fury unlike anything Kennedy had ever known took root deep inside.
“I need some air,” she finally told him as they approached the bar. Without waiting for him to follow her, she turned around and forced her way back through the wall of bodies grinding alongside one another. The music pounded against her eardrums, giving her a headache and making her stomach roil even more.
She needed to get out of there. Fast. More importantly, she needed to get as far away from Sawyer as she possibly could.
As she raced through the resort, making her way to the front after getting lost only once, Kennedy managed to get in touch with someone to pick her up. Granted, it wasn’t the someone she’d originally hoped for, but she hadn’t been able to reach her father when she’d called into dispatch. He was out on a call, but her ex-boyfriend, Tim, a deputy, was on his way. Had she known he would’ve been sent, she would’ve just preferred to walk, but it was too late for regrets.
“Are you all right?” Tim asked when she reluctantly climbed into his car. He must’ve been in the area because he’d managed to get to the resort in record time. Kennedy had been praying he would hurry, hoping she would not have to see Sawyer. With every second that passed, she knew it was a real possibility.
“I’m fine,” she told Tim as he pulled out of the resort and onto the road that would lead them back to town. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“What were you doin’ there?” he asked.
Kennedy noted the contempt in his tone. Tim was one of the people who had rallied to keep the resort from being built, but in the end, they’d been outweighed by the promises the Walkers had made to the town.
“I had a date,” she informed him, wishing he’d let the subject drop. If he would just take her home, she’d be more than happy to ride in silence.
The police radio made a strange noise, but Tim merely turned it down, his eyes darting over toward her. “With who? What asshole would take you there for a date?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. None of it mattered because she didn’t intend to have a second date with Sawyer. Not after that little debacle that had left her feeling about three inches tall. How could she have been so stupid? She had told him she trusted him.