Start With Me: A Novel (Start Again Series Book 3)

by J. Saman

  I do my business in record time, rub my hands together because they’re already wet, and then I jump back into his car.

  I’m drenched. Water is running through my hair and down my body in rivulets. My panties and bra are not even salvageable. I shiver, trembling uncontrollably. Because goddamn I’m freezing.

  “C-close y-your e-e-e-eyes.” My teeth are chattering so badly I’m afraid I’m going to chip one. Kyle has the sense to turn up the heat to full blast, pointing the vents at me.

  He looks at me and then I glare and he gets it. His eyes shut, but a small smile twitches up the corner of his lips. “I already looked.”

  “Y-yeah, b-but I’m a-about to get n-n-n-naked” “Why?” he asks, suddenly all Zen with an even bigger smile. Asshole.

  “B-because I’m w-w-wet.”

  He groans, throwing his head back and everything, and suddenly I’m flooding with heat.

  I rip off my bra and panties, sitting naked on his passenger seat, which is nicely warm since he also turned on the butt heat for me. I use one of my t-shirts to wipe down my body—my frozen sodden body—very grateful that I thought to wear multiple layers. Between the blasting heat and the warmth from my seat, I’m already feeling better, and my teeth have thankfully calmed down enough for me to speak. “Are you looking?”

  “No,” he says, that impish grin still in place. “But I have the perfect image of you mostly naked and soaking wet with your hard nipples poking through your bra, so I’m good.”

  “Asshole,” I mutter, as I slip commando into my jeans and throw on my long-sleeved thermal followed by my jacket. I twist my soaking wet hair up into a bun and secure it with an elastic. “I’m good.”

  “No baby, you’re fucking gorgeous.” His eyes open and he looks at me with a devilish smile I feel all the way in my toes. “How on earth am I going to sleep next to you and keep my hands to myself?”

  “You’ll manage.”

  He shakes his head, his eyes dark and filled with lust. Damn, I want to straddle him in his seat and ride him until morning.

  I hand him a package of trail mix and a bottle of water from my backpack and we eat, accompanied by the sound of the pouring rain and the radio. We don’t speak. Our sexual tension is too tightly wound for words.

  He silently shuts off the car, bathing us in blackness. The rain makes loud clanking sounds against the metal of the roof of his car. Lightning flashes violently, lighting up the black sky for a fleeting second followed closely by an angry ripple of thunder.

  “You ready to try and sleep in this hellhole?”

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice thick, my breaths coming out just a touch faster.

  He flips on the flashlight app on his phone, hits a button on his car and the back seats go down.

  “Bow chicka wow wow,” I sing playfully.

  He laughs and then we wordlessly crawl back into our new bed.

  We settle in, my back to his front. My ass far too close to his dick.

  “Claire?” he whispers, the darkness and our proximity requiring that level of intimacy.

  “Yes?”

  “I promise to be good,” he says and then pauses. “But you should know that I’m having all kinds of thoughts. All. Kinds. So, if you wake up to a wandering hand, I’m apologizing in advance.”

  “You’re forgiven,” I breathe and giggle a little, trying to play his words off as a joke.

  He drops an open mouth kiss to the crook of my neck. Once. Twice. It’s not enough. My eyes clench shut at the warmth of his mouth on my skin, a moan caught in the back of my throat. My eyes blink open and I stare into the blackness in front of me. It would be so easy to ask for more.

  So, goddamn easy.

  And so fucking stupid.

  Then he pulls me into his chest, his arm wraps snuggly around my waist, forming my body to his incredible heat. I can’t get close enough.

  I sigh. He sighs. I close my eyes and I spend the entire night talking myself out of turning around.

  Chapter 18

  Kyle

  I wake up with an incredibly painful hard-on. I mean the sort that absolutely only has one way of relieving it. My hand reflexively begins to move south toward it, but I freeze, instantly aware that there is something warm and soft and sweet smelling in my arms, curled up against me.

  Against my rock-hard dick.

  She’s not awake yet, but if I don’t move back now, the second she does wake up, she’ll know just how much I want her. And though I may have tried to come off like I was just joking around with her last night, I wasn’t. The image of her soaking wet in her see-through bra and panties is forever burned into my brain. And with that lovely thought, my cock presses even further against my jeans, and God help me, it’s taking everything in me not to groan and rock into her supple ass.

  All of this is made infinitely worse by the fact that she slept in my arms last night. But I want my best friend here for way more than just a backseat fuck.

  I want her.

  I know she does not feel the same. I think she’s attracted to me. She gives me looks that cannot mean anything else, but this is Claire. And Claire doesn’t date. Claire doesn’t do relationships. Claire has meaningless sex with meaningless men. And I am not meaningless. I refuse to be meaningless to her.

  I want to mean everything to her.

  And I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to get her to accept that things don’t have to be this way. That she can open up and tell me her secrets and that they won’t matter. They won’t have me running for the hills. Or the mountains, in this case.

  But Claire’s stubborn, and in her mind, this is the way things have to be. I don’t even know if she really wants them like that, but it’s her go-to. It’s her finely crafted and artfully manipulated truth. Even if it’s all bullshit.

  My eyes are glued to her sweet, placid face. The way her long eyelashes dance along the crest of her cheek as she dreams. The way her full, bow-shaped lips are slightly parted as slow even breaths pass through them. Her hair is a delightful mess of crimson, and with the early morning sun shining in at just the right angle, it glows.

  I don’t want this moment to end.

  I don’t want her to wake up and pull away from me the way I know she will.

  In truth, this has never been something I’ve enjoyed before. Sleeping with a woman. And now that I think on it, I’ve really only done it a few times.

  But in this moment, I wonder if I was missing something by avoiding that.

  Or maybe it’s just this woman.

  My fingers reach up, gently brushing a few errant strands away from her face. She stirs and I cringe, inwardly chastising myself for my stupidity.

  “How long have you been watching me?” she asks with a smile, her eyes still closed.

  “Longer than I should have,” I admit. It’s funny, sometimes I hold everything back. I let our friendship be my guiding force. And then other times, like right now, I can’t stop myself from going for it. From saying, fuck it. “Happy birthday, Claire.”

  Her smile slips a little and she nods her head in acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything about that.

  “Are we still trapped here?”

  “Good question.” I laugh, because I hadn’t even thought to look. I can’t decide what I’m hoping for.

  “This wasn’t how I envisioned our first hiking trip together,” she says, blinking her eyes open slowly before squinting them against the intrusive sun. She rolls onto her back, glancing up at me with those dark blue oceans of hers.

  I laugh, brushing more hair away from her face, my fingers gliding across her smooth skin because I simply cannot help myself. Having her like this, against me, in my arms, it’s so goddamn tempting.

  “Me neither, but in all honesty, I’m not complaining.”

  “Yeah?” she smiles softly. “So, I won’t have to resort to begging and bribery the next time?”

  An unstoppable smile lights up my face. “Begging and bribery, huh?” I bounc
e my eyebrows suggestively. “That might be too good to pass up.”

  “You’re a flirt,” she giggles, playfully pushing my chest, her palm flat against me, and even though I’m wearing a million fucking layers, I feel her heat sink into me.

  Our eyes lock. She’s smiling up at me. I’m smiling down at her. And before I can make sense of it, I’m leaning down. Her hand is still pressed against my chest and I wonder if she can feel my heart racing. I wonder if she knows it’s all for her.

  Claire licks her lips, just a small reflex really, but it sets my blood on fire and my already aching cock twitches. I need her more than I need anything else in this world and that includes air, water, and food. Really, I’d give them all up for a shot with her. Her eyes flutter closed as my face approaches and just as my lips are a whisper above hers, a motherfucking car alarm goes off right next to us.

  Her eyes bolt open and I pull back and then she scoots away from me, sitting up and rubbing her hands up and down her face like she’s trying to clear her wayward thoughts.

  Goddamn it!

  “We should get going,” she says hastily. “It looks like the car that was blocking us in is gone.” She brushes some hair out of her face, trying to tame her wild locks that are still tangled up into that bun. “I’m hungry. And I have to pee again and there is no way I’m copping a squat in all this sunshine.” She laughs awkwardly and then scrambles as fast as she can into the front seat.

  I sigh, sitting up and banging my fucking head on the ceiling of my car. I rub my hands up and down my face, adjust my stupid dick and then climb up to the front the way she did.

  I hate everything right now.

  “We have dinner tonight at Kate and Ryan’s, but what’s your plan for today? Do I get to hang out with the birthday girl?” I ask as we drive out of Olympia National Park back towards civilization.

  “Sure,” she says, her tone despondent as she stares out the window at the passing landscape.

  After stopping to eat breakfast at a small diner, we drive into Seattle on a gorgeous summer day. The city is sparkling, the air is sweet, and the last thing I want to do is take her home. But we both need showers.

  “So, I’ll pick you up again in an hour?” I ask as I pull up to the curb in front of her building.

  “I can just walk over,” she says and I shake my head, because no, she can’t. That would ruin everything.

  “Nah, I’ll scoop you and then we’ll go do something fun. Whatever you want.”

  She looks over at me with a small smile. “I don’t care what we do today, Kyle. I honestly don’t. My birthday has never been anything all that special for me, but hanging out with you is. So even if we just stroll around and stare at the water all day, I’m cool with that.”

  When she says things like that to me, it’s impossible not to imagine my whole world with this woman. I don’t care about all the warnings. About the way both Ryan and Luke have tried to steer me away.

  I need her.

  I just can’t have her.

  She makes her ideology on relationships known. Claire has issues. Big, fat, ugly issues that I want to roll around in until they’re so thoroughly intermingled with mine that neither of us can figure out where hers end and mine begin.

  I want it all, even though I know she’ll run me through a time or two.

  She’ll fight me and resist me and fucking kill me. God, this girl has a power over me like no one else. And she’ll wield it, even if she doesn’t know she can. Even if she finds the idea of hurting anyone abhorrent. She’ll crush me. So, it’s not like I’m not going in with my eyes open. It’s more a matter of treading carefully and precisely so that she’s completely mine before she even realizes the trick was played.

  “Claire?”

  She looks over at me expectantly before stepping out of the car.

  “Happy birthday.”

  She nods her head at me the way she did earlier when I said that, and then jumps out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

  I drive home and shower off the night spent in the car. After getting dressed into an old t-shirt and jeans, I walk past her present. It’s beautiful. Classic. All sleek lines and black painted wood. I hope she likes it.

  Tonight.

  It’s going to be tonight.

  And I need today to be perfect. Not just for her, but for us. I need to show her that it all makes sense. I’m taking her to the Museum of Pop Culture. I have no idea if she’s been there or not, but the place just seemed like her mecca when I checked it out online. It’s also really close to the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden of Glass.

  I plan to hit it all up with her. Even though Claire does not want a party and Kate finally relented, I was told to keep her away from their house all day.

  “This is one of my favorite places in the city,” Claire says as we meander through the glass garden. “It feels like something out of a Doctor Seuss book.”

  She’s right. It does. The Chihuly glass is unbelievable and seems to sprout out of the ground and the gardens like they’re part of the natural landscape. I’ve seen some of his work before, but nothing on this scale. The midday sun is shining brightly on us with the towering Space Needle as our backdrop.

  I live here. It still feels surreal.

  But I don’t regret my decision.

  In fact, I think it was something I should have done years ago.

  I was never fully satisfied with what I had going in New York. I was chasing a dream. Thinking that the more notoriety I got or the more money I made, the closer I would be to obtaining it. But I don’t think I ever had a full understanding of what my dream was.

  I still don’t, but I feel closer to something more tangible than I ever did before.

  That, and even though I’m still anemic and borderline thrombocytopenic, my leukocyte count has normalized. And those other numbers have improved. It’s like my body is saying a big, fat, thank you for getting away from New York and the resounding stress that ran my life there.

  I haven’t heard a peep from Franco Rovelo or any who works for him. No, I think the New York mafia has more important fish to fry than me. That right there is a tremendous relief.

  “Why do you hate your birthday?” I ask randomly as we stop to admire a snakelike piece of glass.

  “I have something similar to this in my apartment,” she says. “It was a graduation present from my mother. Serves no freaking purpose that I can decipher, but it’s still pretty.” I just stare at her as she leans forward, examining this particular piece like it holds all the answers.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I say, realizing I need to let her off the hook.

  She rights herself slowly, angling her body so that she’s facing me. “I hate my birthday.”

  Her expression is trying for impervious, but it’s not. She’s got a well of emotion lurking behind those blue eyes of hers.

  “When I was a kid, I used to look forward to it.”

  I nod. All kids do.

  “Every single year, I was disappointed. My father rarely ever called me and he never showed up or sent a present. You met him. He’s chronically disappointed in me. My mother was usually too preoccupied with herself to put much effort into it, and I didn’t have grandparents. By the time I was old enough to know better, they were all dead. So, it was always a disappointment that sort of grew from there. After a bit, I never wanted to think about it because it was never a day that anyone celebrated.”

  Fuck. My heart clenches in my chest. I hate the idea of a neglected Claire. And her father is a real prick, just as she said. I asked her recently if she’s heard from him again and she said no. I still don’t understand everything that transpired with them, but I have a feeling I never will.

  “You were just hanging out with the wrong people,” I tell her, trying for a smile I don’t feel.

  “Yeah,” she agrees. “I have you, and Kate and Ryan and Luke and Ivy. But my mother is dead and my father is an asshole.”

  I take a step
toward her and wrap my arms around her neck, hugging her in just such a way that she cannot question what she means me to me.

  “Sorry,” she mumbles into my neck. “I’m not usually Debby Downer like this. I’m really having a great day with you.” She pulls back and meets my eyes with her steady gaze.

  “Good. Because it’s just getting started. My tenacious sister-in-law has spent the entire day cooking, and Ryan bought you some really expensive alcohol, and everyone got you gifts that you’re going to gripe about because you don’t like people making a fuss over you. And I’m going to take you through a museum after we’re done exploring all this glass. And you’ll never question again how much you’re loved.”

  She swallows hard. Blinks. Sighs.

  “Did they teach you this in law school?”

  “What?” I say through a chuckle.

  “How to say the perfect thing at just the right moment?”

  “Not really. You just sort of learn that as you go along.”

  “Well, baby cakes, you’ve mastered that particular skill.”

  I love you, I don’t say. The thought popping into my mind unbidden. But it’s still true and I refuse to challenge it. Even to myself.

  “Come on, I want to finish looking at the Land of Oz before we hit up the museum. I could spend hours in there, so I hope you’re ready for that.”

  “Baby, I’m ready for anything with you.”

  Chapter 19

  Claire

  Leaning back in a cushy lounge chair on Kate and Ryan’s patio, my eyes are fixated on the dancing orange and blue flames of the fire burning in the built-in fire pit. It’s hypnotic and warm, and even though this is a decently mild night, the heat is still welcome against my skin. I’m surrounded by the sounds of popping and crackling, which is somehow overpowered by Kate’s laughter.

  Today I turn twenty-five.

  Initially, Kate had planned an extravagant surprise party that included every single person I know in the greater Seattle area.