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  Feels Like Falling

  J. S. Cooper

  Copyright © 2021 by J. S. Cooper

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For my mum, Faye Case, who told me to follow my heart and allowed me to be as creative as I wanted to be.

  Contents

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Afterword

  About This Book

  We were two perfect strangers in the night…

  Every Monday night, I would go to the hotel.

  I never knew his name.

  He never knew mine.

  His eyes held secrets. My eyes held lies.

  When I was in his arms, nothing else in the world existed. Until the night everything changed.

  My past is dictating my future.

  His past is dictating his life.

  And we’re connected in a way I never saw coming.

  I should run from the mysterious man who can only further complicate my life, but it feels like I’m falling, and I can’t stop the inevitable crash.

  Chapter 1

  We meet once or twice a week at a hotel in the bad part of town. It’s not someplace I would normally go, but for him, I do. I don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine. I don’t know his age. I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know what he does for a living, and I don’t care.

  Well, that’s a little bit of a lie. I want to know. But if I know, then he has to know about me, and that’s something I can’t afford to share. I can’t tell him my name. I can’t tell him where I live. I can’t tell him what I do for a living, and I certainly can’t tell him how much I love the roughness of his hands and the softness of his lips. He’s my dangerous mistake. No one would ever call him a Prince Charming, but once or twice a week, for a few hours a night, he’s mine and I’m his, and that’s all that’s keeping me going right now.

  I’m sure you’re wondering, “If you don’t know his name or anything else about him, how did you meet?” That’s a story you won’t quite believe. When I think about our first meeting, I can hardly believe it myself. It’s almost like I dreamed him into being.

  Though the way my thighs ache tells me that he’s not a dream.

  There are nights when I’m restless and I like to go down to the old train station on 10th Street. It’s a desolate place. Trains don’t stop there anymore, but they still have two wooden benches facing the old tracks and one big weeping willow that sits to the left of the benches. I’ll go down to the benches and I’ll just sit there and look up at the sky and stare at the stars. There’s not much artificial light there, so you can see the sky in all its glory.

  There’s something awe-inspiring about looking at the stars. It reminds you that there’s a whole huge galaxy out there, that we know nothing about. It reminds you that in relative terms, you and your problems are nothing. The stars provide me peace. A way to get away from a life that has me feeling trapped and unhappy. When I sit on that old wooden bench, with the gold-inscribed dedication to a trainmaster from 1894, I don’t feel that overwhelming sadness. I feel like there is still hope and possibility for a life I want to live.

  One night, when the sky was darker than usual, he was there. I don’t know what he was doing. I didn’t care. He was sitting on one of the benches. I thought about turning around and leaving, but I didn’t. I went and sat on the other bench. He didn’t even look at me, not for an hour. We both just sat there. Two solitary people looking out at the night sky, neither of us acknowledging the other. And then he got up and he walked past me and he stopped. He looked down at me, his face illuminated by the moonlight. His eyes were dark, his lips were thin, and yet he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life. He had a large tattoo on his arm. It looked like some sort of tribal tattoo, though I wasn’t an expert. I was as clean-cut as they came. I’d never get a tattoo, not for a million dollars—but then, I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.

  He didn’t say anything to me as he stood there, and surprisingly, I didn’t feel scared. Normally, I’m someone who’s frightened all the time but at that moment, I wasn’t. At that moment, I was brave. I was bold. Maybe it was the full moon. I don’t know what possessed me, but as he stood there staring down at me with his secretive brooding eyes, I suddenly stood up and stared back.

  The cold breeze brushed my hair across my eyes and I pushed it away hastily, not wanting my view of him blocked. Then I took one step forward and I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips against his and kissed him. My heart racing, I placed my hands on his shoulders and kissed this virile, handsome, dark, strong man. And for a few seconds, panic filled me because I didn’t know what I was doing. But then he kissed me back and it didn’t matter because the sensation of his lips against mine was absolutely the most perfect thing I’d ever felt in my life.

  His lips were moist, warm, juicy, and sensuous. I gasped as he slipped his tongue into my mouth. I almost felt like I was dancing. Our tongues moved together in an intoxicating rhythm. His hands fell to my waist and he ran his fingers down my back toward my ass. I shivered, not because I was scared or cold, but because I was excited. This was dangerous, sensuous, sexy beyond all normal boundaries, and I didn’t care. I wanted him to continue.

  Then he pulled back from me, his still as he surveyed my face. We still hadn’t spoken. His eyes searched mine as if asking a question. I gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

  His lips twitched for the briefest of seconds, as if he wanted to smile, but he was stopping himself. And I thought perhaps he would smile, but he didn’t. He grabbed my hand and started walking and I, like someone who needed to be led, followed him. We walked for what must have been 10 minutes and then we happened upon a small hotel. I’d never seen it before in my life, never knew it even existed. It wasn’t someplace I’d ever stay under normal circumstances … but this was hardly normal.

  He must have already had a room because he took a key out of his pocket and we walked all the way to the back of the property and he opened a door and in we went. He didn’t even turn on the light. He walked over to the bed and then turned around to look at me. He just stood there waiting. No words. It was as if he knew that if we spoke, the magic of the moment would be gone.

  I walked towards him and stopped suddenly about a foot away, staring into the darkness of his eyes, noticing the way his brows furrowed as he gazed at me. This was absolutely the craziest thing I’d ever done in my life, and I wasn’t sure that I could continue. I mean, who went home with a man they didn’t know? Who went home with a man they’d never even spoken to before? Who went home with a man that looked like sin?

  Not me. I was the good girl. I had always been the good girl, and yet, when he started unbuttoning his shirt, I didn’t flinch. When the shirt hit the ground, I smiled. His chest was a work of art. It looked like it’d been sculpted by DaVinci himself.

  I moved forward as if being pushed and touched him lightly, softly, enjoying the feel of his silky skin and the hard muscle beneath. I ran my finger down towards his pecs, lightly grazed his nipple, and then paused as I saw a jagged scar along the middle of his chest. He grabbed my wrist as I touched his scar.

  “No,” he
said softly, and I looked into his eyes. The first word he said: “No.” His voice was deep, husky, sexy. It made him even hotter, if that was possible. My fingers inched towards the scar again. “No.” I hid a smile. I’d only done that to hear his voice again. So the scar meant something to him. He didn’t want me to touch it. If he was someone I’d known, someone I cared about, I’d have wondered why, but I didn’t care. So, I moved my fingers downwards and I continued to touch him.

  He smiled a warm smile. I stared into his eyes wondering what he was thinking about me, wondering if he was wondering why I had come with him. He pulled me towards him then, roughly, and I gasped as he reached down and lifted my dress up and pulled it off of me in one fell swoop. I stood there in my bra and my panties, and I swallowed hard wondering what he was thinking about my slightly imperfect body. But when I looked into his eyes, all I saw was desire.

  My stomach quivered with butterflies. The way that he stared at me made me feel absolutely wonderful. He leaned down and kissed my neck, and I closed my eyes, surrendering to the sensations and ignoring any lingering doubts. His fingers popped my bra open and it dropped to the floor. My eyes opened and I looked at him again as he stepped back. He kissed me on the lips one more time, and I knew at that moment I would do absolutely anything he wanted me to.

  It’s a crazy way to start a story. It’s a crazy way to start my story, our story. If there is an our. I never thought I’d be the sort of girl who would sleep with a man I didn’t know. And yet, that night everything changed.

  But I guess I need to start at the very beginning for you to understand, for you to not judge me. My crazy journey didn’t start that night. It started three months previous to that. Maybe if you understand the very beginning, you’ll understand how I got to this point. And maybe, just maybe, once you understand where it started you’ll understand what happened next. And then you won’t judge me. Because God forgive me, I am a sinner. A beautiful, hot sinner. And my Monday night lover is worth every mistake I’ve ever made.

  Chapter 2

  I’d be lying if I said I never wondered about his name or his past. When you sleep with someone more than once, of course you want to know more about them, and I wanted to know everything about him, this dark mysterious stranger that I met once or twice a week for the most passionate, rawest sex I’ve ever had in my life. But, we don’t ever talk about anything personal. It was an unspoken rule. Well, not really unspoken, but I’ll get to that later.

  We’ve been seeing each other for a month now. One month of pure bliss. The first three weeks, it started out as once a week, and now it’s twice a week. I wish that it could be more, but I can’t get away more than twice a week, and I don’t know if he can either.

  I told you I’d go back to the beginning so you could understand how I got myself in this dilemma. It’s weird, you know—I never really expected to be in this position in my life. I want to be honest with you, I want to tell the truth. If anyone reads this, I want them to know who I was and why I did everything that I did, but it scares me because what if someone I know reads it? What if someone I know figures out everything that I did? I just couldn’t bear it.

  At least, I don’t think I could bear it.

  I know I’m confusing you, a stranger who’s reading my journal. Don’t be nervous or upset, though. You’re not prying into my life or my personal feelings; I want you to read it. Doesn’t everyone want a shot at immortality? Who doesn’t want to be remembered long after they’re gone? Who doesn’t want to be truly understood?

  I think that’s everyone’s goal in life. We want our parents to understand us, but more times than not, parents don’t understand their children. We want our siblings to understand us. But more than not, there’s too much rivalry for that to be the case. Then we want our friends to understand us. And sometimes if we’re lucky, we’ll meet one or two people who truly understand who we are and where we’re coming from. And that’s a blessing. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have any friends like that. I mean, I have good friends, but not deep friends, not friends that truly understand.

  And then after friends, it’s a partner. Everyone wants to meet their soulmate, that one person who completely understands and completes them. That’s a lie. There is no one in the world that will ever understand every little minute detail about you. It’s not possible; love like that doesn’t exist. And I know this to be the truth. I know because I came so close to what I thought was true love, and yet I was really so far away.

  I guess that’s a good segue into telling you more about my life. I’ll start simply because I don’t want to overwhelm you. My name’s Rosie, and I’m 30 years old. I guess some people would say I’m in the prime of my life, but it doesn’t really feel like that. I feel like I’ve been through so much, like I’m so much older than I am—and yet, in some ways, I still feel like a teenager.

  I live in a small town the name of which I cannot tell you. We’re pretty close to a big city, though. So that’s cool. I like to go to the city quite often. In fact, that’s where I first met Joey. And no, Joey is not Hotel Guy, keep up. Yes, there was another guy—because isn’t there always another guy? But Joey’s not in the picture anymore.

  Joey was the love of my life, or so I thought. Tall, blond, blue eyes, gorgeous smile, outgoing. He made me feel like I was everything sweet and beautiful in the world. He made me feel like a princess when we first met. How cliche is that? I really thought we’d ride off into the sunset together on white steeds, headed toward a castle on some remote private island where we’d spend our days and nights making love.

  Yeah, I lived in la-la land.

  But back to the beginning: we met in a bar. Cliché. I was ordering drinks for me and my friends, thinking about whether or not I should get shots as well, when he came up to me and said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

  And that was it. His big dazzling blue eyes looked so pure. Like a clear lake on a summer day. He was direct and to the point, and by the end of the night, he’d told me he liked me and wanted to take me on a date. I loved that. He didn’t play games. And I didn’t play games. We were a match made in an Irish bar at 10 pm.

  I was 26 at the time, and I’d done the dating thing with plenty of guys who loved to play games, but I was ready for a real relationship. Joey was 27. He was ready for a relationship too, or so I thought. Everything about our beginning was perfect. It was like the movies. My friends were all jealous. Shit, I was even jealous of myself. I had to pinch myself to even believe that I had gotten so lucky.

  Joey, with the big blue eyes—I could look at the sky and see his eyes. Maybe his eyes were even bluer than the sky. There’d be nights that I’d just lie there watching him sleep, thinking to myself, How did I get so lucky?

  He was the perfect gentleman. I attributed that to his Midwest values. He was originally from Iowa. His parents were farmers and he helped them with the yearly corn and soy crops. That sort of hard work gave him muscles, the sort of muscles that you don’t get at a gym. He was all man, you know? The type of man who made you feel like a woman, even if you had thicker thighs and a round belly; I know I’m beautiful, but doesn’t every woman feel insecure and nervous with a new man? I felt like the perfect woman when we spoke, and when he talked to me and held me close, I felt like I was home. I really thought he was home base. And yet it turned out he wasn’t.

  When we made love, he was soft and gentle, and while it wasn’t the most passionate, I didn’t mind because it was sweet. You know the sort of lovemaking that doesn’t make you come, but makes you feel connected? I didn’t not enjoy it; I was just never blown away. I never felt like my body was on fire. I never felt like my orgasms could burn down the house.

  I’d actually started to think that mind-blowing orgasms were a fiction taught by pornos and erotic romance writers. It was only when I met Hotel Guy that I realized they were real. There are men capable of giving you orgasms so intense that you forget your own name. Ever since I met Hotel Guy—is that what I should ca
ll him? Hotel Guy? Let me call him Mr. X, for now—but it was when I first slept with Mr. X that I realized that I didn’t like sex sweet and sugary.

  I didn’t like it gentle. I liked it rough and hard, and oh my gosh, the way Mr. X devours me! There’s nothing loving about his touch, yet it makes me feel so alive. It makes me feel like I’ve never felt before in my life. I don’t know how I can feel that way about someone whose name I don’t even know. He’s the exact opposite of Joey. And maybe that’s why I’ve been able to do this. If I were to go to a psychologist, they’d most probably tell me that was why I’d fallen for him.

  Wait, did I say fallen? No, I haven’t fallen for him. There’s no way I couldn’t have fallen for Mr. X. I don’t even know his name … but there’s something about him. You know, I’m getting confused now. You’re most probably confused. Do I or do I not have feelings for Mr. X? I really don’t know. I just feel so tired when I think about everything, I just feel so tired and needy, and that’s when I normally go and take a walk down to the train station and sit, and just stare at the stars.

  They always used to make me feel so peaceful and guided. Now I just feel tense because I wonder who else knows about me and Mr. X. You see, I got a letter in the mail today with a photograph of me and Mr. X kissing that first night. Someone was there, someone was watching, and I have no idea who or why. And I need to get to the bottom of it because I don’t know if they were there stalking me or for Mr. X.

  You see, there are so many things you still don’t know about me. So many things that I’m not sure I should share or not, but here’s one thing I’ll tell you in case you haven’t already figured it out: Joey broke my heart. Joey was a cheater. Mr. Wonderful with the cornflower blue eyes, Mr. Perfect with the easygoing smile had a fiancée back home in Iowa, waiting for him to come home and take over the family farm. They were high school sweethearts. And he had no intentions of ever leaving her.