Oh my fucking God.
My head ached, residual anger and shock whirling about with the words spilling from his mouth. But he kept going, spewing it out fast.
“Then the car came speeding around the corner. The guy outside, he died instantly. Kendra went to the hospital, but...” Dean swallowed, his mouth so dry his tongue clicked against his teeth when he freed it again. “She died because of me. Because I was a jealous asshole.”
Shit.
He held me closer now, and I almost couldn’t breathe. My heart wrenched in my chest. This was awful. Why hadn’t he told me this?
Dean’s fingers clamped on my back. His lips came gentle on my head, again and again. His voice wavered. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I did that. I can’t do that to you. I wanted to be okay with it.”
Wanted to be okay with it? Wait. Was he not okay with the idea of a threesome now?
He fell away, and I had a second to spy the darkness of his eyes and the sorrow consuming his face. His shoulders slumped as he shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t.” Then he whipped around so fast that I almost didn’t register him speeding out of my kitchen and into the hallway.
“Dean!” I raced out of the room, beating him to the door and throwing myself in his path. “Don’t you dare leave!” He tried to walk around me, but I pressed my hands to his shoulders. He kept barreling forward, his motion slamming me back hard against the door. I wheezed.
“Shit, I’m sorry! Maya, I can’t.” He grabbed the handle at my hip, but it was me who pushed hard this time, carried by anger, confusion, hurt and ache for the agony he must’ve felt and now for whatever he was trying to tell me that didn’t make sense. I dug my fingers into his shoulders and swung him around, wedging myself against his chest to smash him between the door and me. So he’d listen. Dean’s lips parted, his hands limp at his sides while his pained eyes scanned my face.
“It’s not your fault!” I slid my palms up to his neck, cupping it, trying to get his attention. “It was an accident.” He shook his head, his mouth screwed up tight. “I don’t understand why it came up now. What’s going on? Didn’t Ansel know?”
“No. I never told anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know I did that!” Dean snapped.
I quivered at the torture he’d put himself through, all this time. This was getting too big, a giant vat of information I needed to have known before. I palmed his cheeks. “Dean, was she the last time you two...?”
He closed his eyes and dropped his head back to the door in answer.
“Please look at me,” I said. Hesitantly, he did, and I cocked my head, trying to comprehend this mess and holding on to him tight. “No more secrets, please. I need you to talk to me. Tell me everything.”
“I was jealous,” he blurted. “Jealous with her, jealous with you.” When he swung his head to knock my hands away, he exhaled a gust of air that rustled the baby hairs around my face. “I shouldn’t have been, but it caught me off guard. That’s why I got too rough with you this morning. I fucked it up, again.”
Did he mean the last strike? It had been intense, but I hadn’t been terribly thrown by it. This, though—Dean’s body trembling in pain... The faintest hint of a chill passed through my arms, a dense tension clouding the space of my hallway.
“Why’d you say yes? Why would you do that if...?” I drew back, confused. “With this between you, why would you ever have said yes when I suggested him?” I grimaced.
“Because I love you! We tried it before and it didn’t bother me then, but we weren’t what we are now. I hoped it wouldn’t bother me, but it did. I just... I want you happy.”
“I am happy! With you, not Ansel. Not anyone, but you! We should’ve discussed it. You should’ve told me. Jesus, Dean.” My heart beat so fast my chest hurt, pins and needles layering my hands with the frustrating realization that he’d led us—me—blindly into this. “I’d never have proposed it if you’d told me about Ansel!”
His forehead wrinkled, and he kept himself pressed against the door while I pulled back my hands and rubbed my eyes. This was a mess. A total mess. “So we’re over?” he whispered.
“What?” I dropped my hands to his chest. The thick churn of my pulse overtook my ears, a heavy pulsing that made it hard to see. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I don’t think I can do it anymore. I can’t...” he pursed his lips, “I can’t watch you with other men anymore. I didn’t expect it, but I think I love you too much to share you.”
“Dean!” I took his wrists, pulling his hands up onto my chest and squeezing his fingers. “I’m invested in this, too. I don’t need that!” His breath shifted when I kissed his fingers. “Not all fantasies need to be acted on. They shouldn’t be acted on if they’re this big of a disaster. If both people aren’t into it! That’s not what I need, Dean. I need you.” He shrank back, but I swayed my head, waiting for him to hear me, for it to click as his face started to relax. I straightened my lips, not wanting to frown and hoping he’d see how much I needed him. “Don’t you chicken shit out of this with me. Don’t you dare!”
Dean’s eyes brightened as he scanned my face. “Your sass...” He almost whispered the words, but he came alive, his expression rapt when he seized my shoulders. His hold lifted me onto my toes.
“Don’t let me go, Dean. You’re what I want. Don’t you see?” I fell against him, and I leaned close enough to his face to hear the hitch of his breath before he slammed his mouth to mine.
Both of us sucked air in through our noses when his tongue sought entrance, tangling with mine in a ferocious dance. I moaned into the kiss and the sweep of his hands down over my arms. Once they curved around my waist, he held me to him in a rough, frenzied clutch. I felt the growing bulge in his jeans in my press on him, and I wrestled my hand down between us to lock on to his fly. Dean kissed me harder. I unfastened the button and tugged his zipper, using both hands to work down the top of his jeans and anchoring him against the door with the thrust of my chest. Dean gasped on my tongue. The second I slipped my hand under his briefs to curl my fingers around his thickening length, he grabbed my ass. Hard and unyielding, pulling me nearer.
I gripped to the root of him and back, using the firm pressure he loved before he groaned and broke away from our kiss. “You touch me like you own me.”
“Because I do, Dean. Just as you own me.”
His next groan was lower, louder. I stroked him down and back again, loving the slit of his eyes as he grabbed the hem of my shirt. He broke my hold on him with a tug of the fabric up and over my head. “Let’s find out,” he said, yanking the shirt down my arms. He didn’t take it off, instead tightening it behind my back and looking me over. The lust in his eyes seared down into my hips, especially after he dropped his voice into that commanding, gruff tone I loved. “Turn around, Maya.”
I obeyed, tingles running down my arms. Dean arched his half-covered pelvis against my ass and ushered me down the hall. He circled a hand around to my breast, cupping me through the fabric of my bra, and pinched my nipple once he found it. I closed my eyes, because I didn’t need to see where he steered me as we moved deeper into my house.
I’d go wherever he asked, wherever he wanted me.
When my legs bumped my dining room table, Dean grasped the shirt tighter around my wrists. With his other hand, he unfastened my jeans and worked them with my panties far enough down to press his solid cock against my ass. He trailed his fingers around to take a smooth glide between my folds. I said, “I need your touch. Yours. Only yours...”
“And I need you. God, Maya.” Dean’s fingers slipped inside, and I moaned, his thrusts exploring, teasing my ridges while he kissed the side of my neck.
But then he jerked back his hand to push on my shoulders, guiding me until my chest lay flat on the table surface. “I love how your mind works.”
Dean trac
ed my opening to rev me up more, and fireworks lit my senses. Even with my hands pinned at the angle they were, I was able to graze my fingertips along his length behind me.
“Maya... I’m yours. And you’re mine.” Dean snatched his finger away and slid his cockhead along my wetness in a slow taunt down to my clit and back.
“Fuck, yes. Please...” When he pushed inside, my suck of air was almost a whistle with my cheek smashed on the table as it was. Dean stayed buried to the hilt, rocking his hips like he wanted to caress the deepest parts of me. I moaned, already lost in the pin of my arms and the fullness of his cock. He dragged his fingers over my back and brushed the loose ends of the shirt to press completely against me, then his fingertips kneaded and prodded my hipbones, spiking waves down my thighs and into my toes. I whimpered at his withdrawal until only the rim of my cunt kept him inside me, and I mewled, “Please, Dean. Don’t stop.”
“Never.” He drove forward, widening me. “You feel so good...”
“More...more!”
Dean thrust again, the slide of his length sending tremors through my core. I clenched around him, wanting him deeper, harder. Always. Heat spiraled in my limbs when Dean sank himself inside for another long moment, then bent to kiss my back. He snaked a hand around to rub my clit, the spasms starting to rise up within me, a tumult of ecstasy that’d been waiting to feel him. Dean. My Dean.
“Fuck me,” I wailed, the sound a raspy plea. Dean responded with a groan before taking a swifter, fuller thrust. The pleasure ricocheted deep, and I felt it in my heart, in my lungs. In my soul. “Yes!”
“Maya.” Dean lost control in the best of ways, each drive of his cock followed by another, and another. One hand grasped my hip as he massaged my clit in a beautiful orchestration that kept me gasping for air. Then he pushed again with the sexiest growl.
My pussy trembled around him, and I shuddered at his deep thrusts and the eager grind of his fingers until his come slicked inside in spurts that made it impossible to stop crying out his name. After, he coasted his palms along my spine while the two of us steadied our breath. We were a mass of trembles and sighs virtually steaming up my dining room.
“Christ,” he said. His cock slipped out fast, but he guided me up, carefully spinning me around with my pants around my ankles. He stripped the shirt from my wrists and enveloped me in his arms, and I hooked mine over his shoulders. “That was...”
An unstoppable grin took over my face in my pitch against him. “Spectacular?”
“Yes.” Dean rained gentle kisses over my lips. “You are spectacular. My goddess.” Despite his shirt and my bra in our way, and the rumple of our pants trapping our legs close together, I felt the warmth of his belly on mine. Dean drew back to stare over my face, his next words lighting me up more than any one of his touches. “It’s unreal how much I care for you.”
“I love you too, Dean.” I kissed him, so happy. The two of us stood there doing nothing more than gazing at one another, propped together in our embrace as a picture of bliss.
We were only interrupted by the loud growl of Dean’s stomach.
“Hungry?” I said, giggling.
“Starving.”
“I have just the thing for that.” I stepped out of my pants and underwear. There wasn’t any point, considering we’d probably end up entwined again before Dean took off later. He gave up on his own clothes, too, following me naked into the kitchen. There, he wrapped his arms around my waist and planted kisses over my shoulders while I made sandwiches to satisfy our cravings.
Or at least one of them.
* * *
Over the next several weeks, the feeling that Dean and I were not only all right but a million times stronger never left me. I sensed it in the conversations we shared, the dates we had around his trip to L.A. and in the many texts he sent me each day, be they meant to check in or wind me up for the next time we planned to see each other. Our fight—or whatever it was—mixed with all the epiphanies the night with Ansel had brought about had opened a door between us. There were no more secrets, all of them replaced with honesty and openness, and this further solidified what we were. Dean had even started to share more about his past with Kendra, because he probably realized he was as safe with me as I felt with him.
This thought swelled my heart in my chest when I lay beside him one Sunday morning after we’d dozed in and out, coiled up to the low light of the sun that came through my blinds. I kissed the warm skin of his chest, shuffling my head on the pillow as I skated my fingers in a slow trail up his belly and back and forth between his nipples.
“What’re you thinking about?” Dean asked, tilting his head down to see me.
I smiled. “You, and us.” I wet my lips. “I like us.”
“Me too.” Dean grinned. “But what about us? Anything in particular?”
I kissed his neck with a slow inhalation, then drew back so my eyes were level with his thanks to the rest of our cheeks on the pillows. Dean ran his hand along my side, his fingers tender on my skin. I didn’t cease the glide of my fingertips across his chest. We’d already fucked once this morning, and now the press of our hips was more comfort than lust. His body was warm, his expression soft. “It wasn’t a sexy thought—just a sweet one.”
“That’s okay. I like those too,” he said.
The admittance compelled me with a flutter in my belly. “I like how much closer I feel to you now. How I really love the openness between us.” I swallowed when the corners of his lips lifted in a smile. “I feel like we can talk about anything.”
Dean kissed my forehead. “I do, too.” For a few seconds we lay there, still, his fingertips sliding around to my back to stroke me with a light touch while his kiss lingered on the arch of my eyebrow. But when he drew back, he looked serious. “Hey, speaking of—I wanted to tell you I talked to Ansel yesterday.”
“You did?” We’d had a couple of conversations about the brawl between him and Ansel the week after it’d happened, and Dean had acknowledged he needed to talk to him in time. He hadn’t mentioned anything more on that, but I wasn’t going to pressure him to talk to his old friend. I’d gotten the sense he eventually would.
“I did. I told him everything, why I was upset...and I apologized.” Dean’s lips tightened, but him taking ownership for his outburst with Ansel made me happy. Proud of him, even. He was a good man, and a surge of love overpowered me then. I slipped my fingertips up to the front of his neck and caressed the skin on the underside of his jaw.
“So you two are okay?”
Dean shrugged. “Sort of. We haven’t hung out in such a long time, we’re already distant. But I wanted to clear the air. He didn’t do anything wrong, though he understood when I said I probably shouldn’t have let the whole thing happen, considering.”
I trailed my fingertips to the back of his neck, where I grazed them along his hairline. “Considering...?”
“Us.” Dean met my eyes. “How I feel about you. How I want you all to myself.”
My heart pounded.
“I like that.” I nestled closer, my mouth almost on his. “Say it again?”
“That I want you all to myself?”
The warmth of my pulse amplified into a tempting throb and I purred, “Mmm-hmm. That.”
Dean chuckled, but the flat of his palm on my lower back ushered me against him until we pressed our lips together in a sweet, soft kiss. It was incredible how in love with this man I was, how everything could feel this good between us. “I mean it. I love you, Maya.”
“I love you too, Dean.” When he brushed back my hair, I drew my thumb to his mouth and traced it across his bottom lip. “Is it weird that I’m proud of you?”
He rolled his eyes. “I guess not.”
“I can’t help it. You’re such a sexy, amazing man.” I growled into his neck, but when Dean tried to kiss m
e again, I flattened my hand on his chest and drew back. “You know... I think maybe you deserve a reward for that.”
“Oh, really?” The lightness in Dean’s eyes amused me, and I crawled on top of him to straddle his hips.
I didn’t move for a moment, tapping my finger on my lips as though I was thinking something through—which probably looked ridiculous, considering I was sprawled naked over him and already aware of the wetness of my cunt resting on his semi-hard shaft. But I loved the sheen in his eyes and the shift of his pelvis beneath me as his cock swelled further at my blatant grind.
I grabbed on to Dean’s hands, interlacing our fingers and pushing them down beside his head. “Uh-huh. And I think I have the perfect thing...” I took another grind and dipped my head down to catch one of his nipples between my lips. I circled it with my tongue before sucking it into my mouth, and Dean gave a low groan, rubbing his cock along my folds, the wet sound turning me on even more. His thickness and the electricity of his skin on mine shocked my body with tingles. Both of us sighed as he rocked against me as if contesting the weak pin of my hands. I took a gentle bite of his nipple and he nudged his cock up again, and when he eased past my entrance, he watched me closely. Undeterred, I shifted across his chest to suck his other nipple into my mouth.
“You’re going to get yourself in trouble, young lady.”
“Am I?” I bit down hard enough that Dean nearly hissed, then he stole his hands out from under mine so fast I gasped.
He gripped my wrists and yanked on my arms, guiding them up to my headboard and arranging them there for me to hold on. Though I protested with a wriggle on his cock, Dean dragged his hands down my sides. His fingers scraped my skin in a sexy trail before he latched onto the cheeks of my ass and squeezed. “Yes, you are.”
He spanked me, hard, the clap sharp and sudden, rushing a bolt of pleasure up my spine that had me biting my lip. But I kept up my tease, using the hold of my headboard as leverage to grind on him further. Dean grabbed my ass and jerked me up, the head of his cock teasingly close. I whimpered at the distance between us—it was too far away from where I needed him, and when he wrapped his hand around his length and stroked himself, he lifted his chin to watch the pout on my face.
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