The Panty Melter Read online

  THE PANTY MELTER

  LILI VALENTE

  The Panty Melter © 2019 by Lili Valente

  All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, hilarious romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover by Lori Jackson. Editorial support from Help Me Edit.

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  CONTENTS

  THE PANTY MELTER

  About the Book

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Tell Lili Your Favorite Part!

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Lili Valente

  THE PANTY MELTER

  By Lili Valente

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  I don’t date alpha males.

  * * *

  Especially not alpha males with egos the size of Jupiter, who also happen to be my boss’s big brother.

  * * *

  Deacon Hunter is domineering. Condescending. Infuriating.

  * * *

  And yet I can’t seem to keep my panties on for five minutes when we’re alone together.

  * * *

  He keeps melting them right off. With that sexy voice, those confident hands, the way he brings my body wildly to life, he’s proved my libido hasn’t gone into permanent, post-divorce hibernation after all.

  * * *

  Surely there’s no harm in being enemies with benefits… Right?

  When Violet Boden asks me to take her Divorce Virginity, the only thing I can think is—come again?

  * * *

  No, seriously, come again.

  * * *

  And again and again, until both of us are so satisfied we can’t remember the people who did us wrong.

  * * *

  Best if we keep conversation to a minimum, though, considering I drive her crazy. She drives me crazy sometimes, too. But she’s also sweet, loyal, fearless, and so much fun she’s making it damn hard not to fall for her.

  * * *

  But how to convince a woman who’s put me in the emotional no-fly zone that I deserve a place in her heart?

  PROLOGUE

  THE PANTY MELTER

  O ne shot.

  That’s all you get.

  One chance at a love that lasts.

  Maybe two, if you’re really lucky or really stupid or really good at forgetting how bad love roughed you up the first time.

  Me? I’ve got a memory a mile long. My heart is an elephant that never forgets. Every miserable moment of my failed first shot at love is tattooed on my soul, lodged so deep in the wrinkles of my brain I couldn’t pull them out if I tried.

  But why would I want to do something like that?

  I like to learn from my mistakes, and to do that, I need to remember them. You know what they say—fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice…

  I’m nobody’s fool, especially Love’s. That’s why I keep things casual, physical. I’ll make you come so hard you’ll forget your own name, but I’m not coming home to meet the folks. I’ve got enough on my plate with my own crazy family; I don’t need a booster shot of nuts from yours.

  Especially when we both know it’s not going to last.

  Chemistry fizzles, love fades, and happily-ever-after is the stuff of fairy tales. The only thing you can count on is this moment, this breath, this chance to choose pleasure over pain, to make love instead of ill-advised romantic declarations you’ll regret when the hormone rush fades away.

  I know these things to be true.

  They might as well be tattooed next to the pin-up girl I got inked on my shoulder during my first deployment.

  But as I guide Violet Boden to the dusty floor of the attic at the Morton’s annual Halloween party—lips fused, breath coming fast, and hands everywhere, all at once—I’m possessed by the certainty that everything is about to change. There’s something on the wind, in the honeysuckle and sage scent of her perfume, in the way her hands tremble as she threads her fingers into my hair and holds on for dear life as I make her come with my mouth.

  Again.

  And again.

  And then one more time because I can’t get enough of the sexy sounds she makes and the sweet taste of her body and the warm rush of her pleasure soaking through my skin to settle in my bones. It just feels so good, so fucking right that I want to stay with her in this attic forever, to die getting each other off and haunt it together as hedonistic ghosts.

  I’ve been a Panty Melter for as long as I can remember—I know what I’m doing between the sheets and have never had any trouble getting a woman out of her clothes and into my bed—but I’m usually ready to make tracks the moment things threaten to get heavy.

  But when Violet kisses me with tears in her eyes, the intimate taste of her mingling with the rum and coke lingering on her lips, and says, “Thank you, Sexy Stranger. I didn’t think I’d ever feel that way again. It had been so long,” I don’t want to bolt. I want to stay, kiss away her tears, and make her happy all over again—this time with my cock instead of my mouth.

  “I don’t have a condom, but I’m shooting blanks, and I’m clean.” I cup her breast in my hand, rolling her perfect bud of a nipple between my finger and thumb. “And I would really love to be inside you.”

  “Yes,” she breathes, rubbing my erection through the thin fabric of my costume pants. For the fourth year in a row, I’m dressed as Westley from The Princess Bride, complete with a fencing sword that I tossed aside a good twenty minutes ago.

  There’s only one sword on my mind at the moment…

  “But I want to see you,” Violet continues, reaching for the knot holding my mask in place.

  And yes, I’m wearing a mask.

  And yes, it covers all of my hair and half of my face.

  And yes, Violet and I are relatively new acquaintances, only having met once before this party, when I stopped by the shelter where she works to let my brother, her bo
ss, know that his pet cow was knocked up.

  So it’s not all that hard to see how she could have mistaken me for someone else. But when she pulls off the mask, her eyes widening in horror as recognition apparently dawns, I’m still thrown for a loop.

  “Deacon? Oh my God.” She scrambles backward across the dusty boards, fumbling for her discarded genie pantaloons with a frantic hand. “Oh my God.”

  “Is something wrong?” I ask, wincing as I adjust my equally confused cock.

  “You. This. Me.” She shakes her head as she jabs one foot into her pants and then the other, jerking them up around her hips with a rush of breath. “We can’t do this. No way. If I’d known who you were, I never would have—” She cuts off with a laugh that stings a little. “Oh my God, this is crazy.”

  “You seriously didn’t know who I was?”

  Her eyes bulge. “Why do you think I kept calling you Sexy Stranger?”

  “Role-playing? For fun?”

  She huffs. “I don’t role-play on a first date. Or first hookup. Or whatever this was.” She winces. “I don’t do this at all. Ever. I must have been out of my mind.” She backs away, hands flapping at her sides. “I’m sorry. Please, let’s just forget this ever happened. Okay? Thanks. Sorry. God. Bye.”

  Before I can say a word, she dashes across the drafty room and disappears down the secret staircase, leaving me holding my own sword and feeling like an asshat for letting “this could be something special” thoughts knock around inside my skull.

  Tonight wasn’t special, and nothing is going to change. Violet Boden clearly likes me about as much as she enjoys razor blades in her Halloween candy, and I can’t say I’m too fond of her right now, either.

  But as I head back to the party, I can’t get her smell, her taste, her touch out of my head.

  I go home, lie in bed alone, and jerk off to memories of her writhing beneath me, but it doesn’t help. I pass a restless night plagued by erotic dreams of Ms. Boden until a call from my youngest brother, Tristan, wakes me up the next morning so he can announce he’s decided to get married in his backyard.

  Today. Immediately.

  And guess who’s officiating the service?

  That’s right—Violet, wearing a skimpy sundress with no bra and acting as if nothing happened between us.

  She’s cool, distant, and so fucking sexy I can’t keep my eyes off of her.

  I spend the ceremony hiding a semi behind my crossed arms and bad attitude and spend the after-party as far from the object of my erotic frustration as possible. I leave early, heading to a dive bar to drink the insufferable woman off my mind.

  Only I’m not sure there’s enough whiskey in the world to numb the sting of the cold shoulder she gave me today—or how damn much I still want her in spite of it.

  CHAPTER 1

  VIOLET

  The only thing worse than being stood up by your first-ever Blender-app date in front of two of your closest friends?

  Being stood up in front of your friends after having spent the previous evening regretting an ill-advised make-out session, and the day officiating the most romantic wedding ever.

  I just married two people who are joyfully wallowing in the kind of love I’ll never have again. The kind of love I probably never had. After all, if the love had been real, my ex wouldn’t have run off with his secretary and left me with three girls to raise on my own.

  And yes, Grant pays child support.

  And yes, he shows up every other weekend for visitation.

  And yes, he’s a decent human being, and most days I would call us friends and effective co-parents who nailed the amicable divorce routine and stuck the landing.

  But today I want to wrap my hands around Grant’s muscly neck and squeeze until his stupid tongue flops out. Today, I’m feeling everything I lost all over again—all raw and sad and awful.

  Even after two years of the new normal, it still hurts so much sometimes. To remember how safe and loved I felt. To remember how certain I’d been that I was smack-dab in the middle of happily-ever-after. I’d been so sure that the loving family Grant and I had made with our girls was the one thing in this crazy, mixed-up world I could count on.

  And then all that certainty vanished. Instantly, in the heartbeat between Grant’s tortured, “There’s something I have to tell you, Violet,” and the moment the bomb dropped.

  That’s what I called her at first.

  The bomb.

  It’s fitting. Tracey might be a twit with a brain the size of a shriveled persimmon, but she’s a bombshell. Flawless. Perfect from her halo of blond curls and her crystal-clear blue eyes to the oddly tiny feet holding up all five feet ten inches of her willowy, yet impossibly big-breasted, frame.

  And the boobs are real. Which is worse, somehow, isn’t it? More unfair than if they’d been purchased at a plastic surgeon’s office and tacked on to all that other perfection at a later date.

  I glance down at my pink and orange slip dress, the one I absolutely do not need to wear a bra with to keep the girls contained, and wonder for the thousandth time if it was my nearly flat-chested state that drove Grant into the arms of another woman.

  But deep down I know my itty-bitties had nothing to do with it. Grant has a thing for younger women. Once upon a time, I was the barely legal girl who caught his eye, the dumb kid who got knocked up on our third date and had been so grateful that Grant was willing to try to make it work with a starving artist for a wife.

  Now I’m newly forty. Still only making art part-time. Barely dating at all. And having no sex, not even bad sex, because the men I’ve been barely dating are awful or mean or weird in gross and unattractive ways. Oh, and being publicly stood up on a street corner because, once again, I’ve managed to go bobbing for apples and pluck a wormy one from the bottom of the barrel.

  Silently, I wish Chad67 chronic erectile dysfunction and a nasty case of shingles and force a smile.

  “Welp. That’s it!” I clench my jaw to keep my grin in place as Mary and Virginia, my work buddies, wince sympathetically in my direction. “He’s clearly not coming, so I’m going to buy two pints of ice cream and head home to binge-watch House Hunters International. You guys have fun at your concert.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mary murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrug a breezy shoulder. “So I got stood up. It’s fine. I’m totally fine.”

  “Better than fine,” Virginia agrees with a nod that makes her gray ponytail twitch. “I’m telling you Violet, males of the species are more trouble than they’re worth. You’ll see.”

  Mary and Virginia have been volunteering at the animal shelter where I work for fifteen years and are some of my sweetest old friends. They’re both in their sixties and gave up dating many moons ago. They assure me I’m going to love being older and alone. Apparently, as soon as my sex drive sputters out, life will be all smooth sailing, bingo nights, wine tasting with girlfriends, and long walks through the redwoods with no one droning on and on in a big stupid man voice, disturbing the peace.

  It sounds amazing.

  So amazing that the back of my nose begins to sting and tears stab into my eyes as I contemplate a life with no kisses in it. No snuggles into shirts that smell like smoky cologne. No more catching someone’s eye across the room and knowing the smirk that curves his lips is just for me.

  And, of course, no more orgasms that don’t come courtesy of my battery operated boyfriend. Last night with Deacon was a mistake—a huge, terrible, awful, no-good mistake—for so many reasons, but the worst part is that he reminded me of all the things I’m missing. Things like human touch and kisses and pleasure and orgasms.

  God, there were so many orgasms…

  I’ve missed them so much. No vibrator on earth can hold a candle to a man’s mouth, a man’s hands, a man’s—

  Nope. I shake my head firmly. I’m not going to think about that.

  Deacon was a mistake I won’t be repeating, and the rest of Sonoma County’s single men are mor
e trouble than they’re worth. I’m just going to have to get used to a life without cock. A cockless, solitary, lone-vagina-against-the-world existence.

  I can’t stop a pathetic little sob that makes both my self-appointed chaperones coo with concern as they close ranks around me.

  “Oh, sweetheart. Come here. Ugh. I could just kick that jerk in the face!” Mary gathers me into her arms, crushing me against her ample bosom, proving that even the big-breasted among us can get tossed aside. Mary’s husband left her when she was thirty-eight, too, right after she gave birth to their second child.

  “That’s not where I’d kick him. I’d aim lower,” Virginia mutters, making me laugh.