My older brothers love Dean, but they also don’t want us dating either. Well, in their defense, Duke and Austin don’t want me to date anyone, ever. If I chose to remain celibate for the rest of my life, that would make them super happy.
Dating has always been a struggle for me. And once Theo and Travis started at Strick U, my dating life went from somewhat hopeless to impossible. With an overprotective dad and four brothers who hover over me, they have chased away every guy I ever liked. But Dean never let their attitudes deter him.
I slide the wristlet in place and turn away from her, sick of having this conversation. “I have to meet Dean and the twins. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”
She shakes her head. “Nope, I’m meeting the girls at O’Shea’s. It’s two-dollar beer night.”
“Have fun.” I pull her into a hug, and she smacks a kiss on my cheek.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I laugh and then head out the door.
On the front porch at the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity house, I find Dean, leaning back in a chair. He sips a beer as he talks to his teammates. As usual, men and women crowd around him, competing for his attention. He’s the life of the party wherever we go.
Dean glances over, and once our eyes meet, he jumps up with his beer in hand. “You made it,” he says, shuffling down the steps. “And you’re late.”
I laugh. “I didn’t think it mattered. These parties usually go all night.”
“Yeah, but I thought you were bailing on me.”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “Where’s Theo and Travis? I thought they were here.”
He glances around the porch and front lawn that are covered in plastic cups, bottles, and cigarettes. Then, he shrugs. “Who knows? They were just out here. I think I heard Theo say something about getting beer for the girls.”
“How many of them were there?”
Dean looks away from me. “Four.”
I let out a disgusted snort. “All of my brothers are such pigs.”
He smirks. “They’re men. What do you expect from them?”
“You’re not like them.”
He laughs. “That’s debatable.”
I ignore his comment and change the subject. “My dad booked me a suite at The Peninsula for next weekend. You can stay with me if you want.”
The men’s ice hockey team is playing in Chicago this year. If they win, the Strickland Senators will be the NCAA Division I champions for the third year in a row. None of these idiots should be drinking while they’re in the middle of chasing down another win, but no one said hockey players were smart.
“I’m supposed to stay with my team.” Dean places his hand on my lower back and leads me into the house. “I don’t think your brothers will be happy if I bail on them to sleep at some ritzy hotel with you.”
“We can order room service and rent movies and eat until we can’t stuff our faces anymore.”
He snorts. “How am I supposed to play if I eat a bunch of shit?”
“Good point. Maybe no junk food. But you’re coming over and watching movies with me. My dad is taking all of us to dinner on Saturday night, so you can come back to the hotel with me after we eat.”
Dean grins like an idiot. “Nick will be there.”
I laugh and smack his arm as we enter the crowded house. He doesn’t even try to hide how much he loves my dad.
Inside, the living room is jammed with at least a hundred sweaty, drunk students, who are grinding on each other. The couches are pushed up against the walls to create a makeshift dance floor. A rap song cranks through the speakers suspended at the corners of the ceilings, the bass thumping beneath my feet.
As we move toward the kitchen, I choke on a thick cloud of cigarette smoke floating through the air. This place is a nightmare. I’m not a fan of fraternity parties. I usually avoid them whenever possible. But with graduation around the corner, I want to spend as much time with Dean as possible, even if it means hanging out with stupid frat bros.
Dean knows most of the people in the kitchen, the bartender included. He chats with a few people, yelling to them over the loud music, and then hands me one of the beers the bartender passes to him.
“Can we go somewhere more… quiet?”
He tilts his head back and laughs. “We’re at a party. It’s supposed to be loud in here.”
I roll my eyes at him and stick out my tongue.
“We can go downstairs,” he offers. “It’s usually not as loud. You have to know the guys in the frat to hang out down there.”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
Dean always has a VIP pass at Delta Sig. When I actually come to a party, I’m usually the girl in the corner, nursing her beer and trying to blend into the background. For most of my life, I’ve been the center of attention. And not because I wanted to be. I grew up with photographers snapping my picture, reporters chasing after us to get interviews with my dad. It was awful.
So, as an adult, I like when people don’t notice me. It’s nice to be normal. But it’s hard to do that around Dean. Girls throw themselves at him, and guys want to chill with him. He’s that guy. Like my dad. Like my brothers. And then, there’s me.
In the basement, I sit next to Dean on one of the old, ratty couches and cringe. I’m pretty sure someone puked on the fabric earlier, which causes me to scoot closer to Dean. I’m ready to jump on his lap but that would be weird. It would only give the people on campus more to talk about. Everyone assumes we’re dating when we’ve never even kissed.
The room is filled with smoke, the stench of beer, weed, and cigarettes thick in the air. I can barely see through the fog. Dean coughs a few times. He hates smoking as much as I do. We’ve both trained for most of our lives to be athletes. Neither of us was ever into smoking or drugs. Sitting with the fraternity brothers and their latest victims in this dank basement reminds me why I never bothered with this shit.
“Are you playing?” A guy asks Dean and me, pointing his finger at us.
Dean leans in to whisper, “We can get out of here if you want. We can go back to my house and drink there instead.”
“What are we playing?”
He sips his beer and shrugs. “This game is stupid. Think of it as a more advanced version of Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
I roll my eyes. “We’re not in grade school anymore, but it sounds simple enough.”
His face turns to stone. “We can go. I don’t want you to do anything you’re not ready to do.”
I wave him off. “I’m good. We haven’t been here long. Let’s stay a little while longer, and then we can go back to your house.”
“We’re in,” Dean says to the frat boy with dark ink running up the length of his biceps.
Worst-case scenario I have to kiss Dean. Silvia was right about one thing. My best friend is hands-down one of the hottest guys on campus. Some girls hate me because of our friendship, while others cozy up to me to get in a good word with Dean. Tall and toned, he has muscles everywhere, bulging from beneath the tight black shirt stretched across his thick chest.
He’s the best defenseman in the league and one of my father’s top picks for the NHL Draft this summer. Despite his modest upbringing, Dean has a lot going for him. He never thought he would ever have a shot at becoming a professional hockey player until he made the men’s ice hockey team on the first try in his freshman year. For his sake, and his mother’s, I hope Dean takes his career all the way.
Dean glances over at me with a worried look on his face. He runs a hand through his dark, wavy hair to push a few strands off his forehead. “I don’t want you to kiss some random,” he whispers. “You’re too good for this frat shit. This was a stupid idea. We should’ve gone to O’Shea’s instead.”
I flash a crooked smile and tip the beer in my hand to my mouth. “Stop worrying about me, Dean. It’s our last semester of college. We’ll be out of here in a few weeks. So, why not have fun, right? We said we would play. Let’s get throu
gh this round, and then we can go.”
Dean has more experience than me. But with Dean at my side, I’m not scared. He has a way of calming me down without saying a word. Just knowing he’s here with me is enough.
If we weren’t best friends, Dean would be my type. Hell, he’s every woman’s type. He’s the perfect mixture of sweet and rough, a gentleman when he needs to be and a dick when it comes to any man who gets near me. I’ve always wondered if his feelings for me extend beyond friendship. My brothers and Silvia constantly annoy me with their questions about our relationship.
Until tonight, I never thought much of it. Because he’s Dean. My best friend. The one person I can talk to without judgment. He knows me as well as Silvia. I can tell him anything and be anyone when I’m with him.
But now, because of these stupid frat guys and their silly game, we might find out if there’s something more between us. What if there is? My heart races so fast I can’t catch my breath. Beads of sweat dot my forehead. It’s the beer, I tell myself, even though I know it’s the nervous energy shooting throughout my body.
I watch everyone take their turns playing Russian Roulette with shot glasses of vodka and water. For every shot of vodka we find, we have to perform a dare. Of course, all of them involve something dirty.
Dean switches his beer to his other hand and watches the game unfold. I can tell by the concern furrowing his brows that he wants to back out. After we take our shots—both of them full of vodka—one of the fraternity brothers tells us we have to do a dare.
The boy on the couch across from us throws a key onto Dean’s lap. “Top floor, last door on the right.”
What the hell?
Chapter Three
Kat
Dean lifts the key from his jeans like it’s burning a hole through his thigh. He glares at the idiot frat boy who wants Dean to take me upstairs. A strange look crosses Dean’s face that I cannot place. I’ve never seen him look so… conflicted. Does he want to take me upstairs?
“Nah, man,” Dean says after a long, awkward pause. “We’re just friends.” He throws the key back to the blond boy who dared us. “It’s not like that.”
“Nick Baldwin’s daughter is worth extra points,” one of the guys says loud enough for me to hear, and I want to smack the smirk from his face. Asshole.
Dean launches the key across the table, and the same guy catches it and immediately throws it back. This time, it lands on my leg, the cold metal burning my skin with the promise of what this means. If we follow through with our dare, our friendship will never be the same. We both know this, and yet I lift the key, feeling the dull ridges between my fingers.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say against the shell of Dean’s ear.
His body goes rigid, and then he sits back enough for me to see his eyes narrow. “I’m not going to fuck you in some nasty room in a frat house, Kitten.”
Dean is the only person to ever call me Kitten. One time he swore I purred when I laughed, and from that day forward, my nickname was born. He never uses my real name when speaking to me directly.
“We can pretend,” I whisper. “No one will know the truth.”
He nods and then helps me up from the couch. While Dean doesn’t even closely live up to his reputation on campus, the people in the room with us expect more from him. I could care less what any of them think about me. I’ve never turned down a challenge, and I don’t plan to start now, not with everyone watching us.
Dean leads me by the hand up the basement stairs, through the crowded living room, and past tons of drunken people dancing, until we reach the top floor of the old Victorian home. This is for appearance sake, nothing more. No one will even notice how long we’re gone or if we bother to come back.
Once inside the bedroom, Dean shuts the door behind us and locks it. I was expecting a bed, but instead, there are two couches, a coffee table, and a flat-screen television hanging on the wall. I sit down and grab the remote from the table to turn on the television. If we have to pretend, we might as well keep ourselves entertained.
“I’m sorry.” Dean sits next to me on the couch, places his hand on my knee, and gives it a quick squeeze. “I should’ve known better than to bring you into the basement. That’s where all the fucked-up shit happens in this house.”
I shrug against the cushion and lean into his bulky frame. “Don’t worry about it. They have no idea what we’re doing up here. No one will know if we kiss or not. We can hang out for twenty minutes and then return the key and get out of here.”
Dean leans his head back against the cushion and peeks over at me, his deep blue eyes glassy. I still have Silvia’s stupid comments stuck in my head, unable to think of anything other than Dean being more than my friend. Is she right? Are men and women incapable of staying friends forever?
Curious if he feels something other than friendship for me, I say, “Have you ever wondered?”
His eyebrows rise in confusion. “Wondered about what?”
“What it would be like if we… you know?”
As he considers my question, what feels like an hour passes between us. We stare at each other, his bright blue irises burning a hole through mine. Dean’s chest rises and falls with each breath he takes. He bites his bottom lip, his teeth lightly grazing his skin. The same gesture repeated over the past three years never affected me… until now. Which gives me the answer I never expected.
One question can change everything. The way I think about him. The way I look at him. How hard my heart slams against my ribcage at the thought of kissing my best friend. What girl with a pulse wouldn’t want to kiss him?
“I think about it all the time,” he confesses, stroking my jaw with his fingers, his eyes fixed on mine. “You’re beautiful, Kitten. It’s hard not to look at you that way.”
His confession causes me to gasp.
Feeling brave, I say, “What’s one kiss between friends, right?”
His expression darkens. “One kiss could change everything.”
I swipe a strand of hair out of his eyes. Dean cups the side of my face in his big hand and smiles.
He runs his calloused thumb along my jaw and traces his way to my lips. “Any man would be lucky to have you. But I don’t want you to do this because some asshole dared us to come upstairs together.”
I brush my lips against his. The heat from his breath sends a shiver down my arms. “We can kiss and still be friends.”
He slides his free hand to my waist and holds me tight. “Once we do this, we can’t go back.”
“It’s just a kiss, Dean.”
“You say that now, but what if everything changes tomorrow? What if you can’t look at me the way you do now? I can’t afford to lose you. You mean too much to me.”
“Shouldn’t we see if there’s something more between us?”
Dean brushes a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Don’t let those idiots get under your skin. You don’t have to do this dare. It’s just a game.”
“Just kiss me,” I whisper.
With that, Dean pulls me onto his lap, his hands falling to my ass. He grips me with so much force I let out a soft moan. “Are you sure this is what you want, Kitten?”
“Uh-huh.” I grind on him, feeling him grow beneath me. “I know you do, too.”
“You’re drunk,” he grunts. “I feel like I’m taking advantage of you. I made a promise to your brothers that I would take care of you. I’m violating their trust and abusing the situation.”
“You can’t take advantage of me if I want it to happen, Dean. Now shut up and kiss me. Stop overthinking the dare. We won’t even remember this in the morning.”
What a lie? Kissing Dean is something I never want to forget. Once our lips collide, Dean slips his tongue into my mouth, taking his time at first. It shouldn’t feel this good to kiss my best friend but damn me for wanting more of him. I want all of him.
Heat spreads from my cheeks and down to my chest, warming my insides. As Dean navigates my b
ody with his strong hands, he commands his dominance over me. He fists my hair in his hand, his soft kisses turning more passionate and rougher with each flick of his tongue.
For years, I’ve had to watch Dirty Dean come out to play with other girls. Years of pent-up sexual frustration is released with each moan Dean rips from my lips. We run our hands over each other’s bodies, the hunger between us fueling our desperate need for each other.
Everything I’ve ever felt for Dean comes crashing over me in waves. Though we’re careful not to push the limits too far, there’s no way we can go back to being just friends. Knowing how good Dean tastes and the sexy sounds he makes will forever be imprinted into my mind. Sex is a fine line that could cost us everything. I don’t want to cross that line, I want to leap over the finish line with Dean.
Breathless, he peels his lips from mine. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”
“Our friendship can survive anything. I’ll still be me, and you’ll still be my best friend.”
He shakes his head and dark strands of hair fall in front of his eyes. “I don’t think you get what I’m trying to say.”
“What are you so worried about?”
Dean sighs. “Everything.”
I run my hand beneath his shirt to feel the hard ridges of his abs. “A kiss won’t ruin our friendship.”
“You don’t get it, Kitten,” he hisses, his eyes still closed. “One night with you will never be enough.”
His words surprise me. Has Dean been hiding his true feelings for me all along?
I press my lips to his. His eyes open for a few seconds before he slips his tongue into my mouth. Dean grunts when I grind against his rock-hard erection. I moan when he rolls his thumb over my nipple. There’s no hesitation in our movements, and yet there’s so much underlying tension between us.
He wants more. So do I. But I can feel Dean trying to resist how much he wants this.
“Don’t think, Dean,” I breathe against his lips. “It’s just me. Nothing will change between us. You’ll always have me.”
Dean (Face-Off Series Book 6) Page 2
