Ryan (The Mallick Brothers #2)

by Jessica Gadziala

  But there was Ryan- good, patient, understanding Ryan and he wanted to know. Not because he wanted to accuse me of anything like being a bad friend or not supporting him, but because he wanted to understand me better.

  I couldn't refuse him something that was such a big part of me.

  I took a deep breath, turning my gaze to my own hands and rubbing my thumbnail with my other thumb- a strange habit I found comforting. I might have been able to tell him, but I didn't think I could do it with eye-contact.

  "When my mom dropped me off for the last time when I was a teenager, I thrived with my uncle. It felt good to have roots and to know they wouldn't be yanked out again at any time. So I settled in. I made friends. I socialized. Eventually, I dated. I was normal. Went off to college. Came back and got a job at the elementary school. I got an apartment and had a lot of friends and social engagements.

  And then one day, completely out of the blue, I was shopping at a store I had been to a million times before and I just... lost it. I didn't understand it at the time- the dizziness, the rapid heartbeat, the cold sweat, the tingling and hot and cold sensations, the pressure on my chest that made it hard to breathe. All I knew was I needed to run. So I ran and I never went back to that store. All was fine for a while. And then it happened in a different store. So I stopped going there. It happened at restaurants, bars, clubs, coffee houses. So I stopped going there too. Then, work. I had to quit.

  I didn't understand at the time that the avoidance was what made it progress so much. I didn't learn that until I finally started seeing a therapist. You know," I said, smile a little at my own expense, "until I couldn't go to her office anymore either. The only real way to deal with it is to face up to it."

  "Exposure therapy," he cut in, making my head jerk up, surprised he even knew the term.

  "Exactly. You have to plant your feet and deal with the panic attack, not let it drive you from the place. Because, chances are, once you leave... you'll never go back again. And that will eventually have it so that you can't leave your apartment anymore. You can't do anything anymore. It happened maybe... over a year and a half. From first panic attack to not being able to leave my apartment. Just a year and a half. And in that time, all those friends I had decided that I was too 'wrapped up in myself' or 'unsupportive' of them because I couldn't make it to their band gigs or 'overreacting' by saying I wanted to go, but I couldn't make myself do it."

  I closed my eyes then, taking a few deep breaths, feeling a familiar sting of tears. It wasn't often I let myself think of those people I lost along the way, the hurtful way it generally happened. Bry had been the only one who had went with the flow. When I was able to go out, he would go with me. When I had a panic attack and needed to leave, he let me go, paid whatever tab we had, got our food boxed up, then drove to my apartment and hung out with me there. When I eventually couldn't even try to go out anymore, he had shrugged and just accepted it.

  Eventually, his new 'business venture' took him away from me more and more, made me all the more reclusive and starved for human contact, but I knew that I couldn't expect people to let their lives revolve around my issues. He still came sometimes, but usually only on pick-up or drop-off days. Though he always made a stop on my birthday or to bring over a movie that got onto DVD that I had wanted to see in the theater but couldn't. So he never saw them either and waited to do it with me.

  He had been good to me.

  At times, I felt I didn't deserve it.

  That's the anxiety talking, my therapist would say.

  "Can I ask one more thing?" Ryan asked when I finally opened my eyes again, having won the battle with the tears.

  What left was there to ask that could bother me?

  "Sure."

  My eyes even went up to his and I found him watching me intently, like he was looking for even the smallest reaction to the question he was going to ask. "Have you and Bry ever dated?"

  "What? No!" I shrieked, the idea so absurd that I actually laugh/snorted at it. It was a real delicate and charming sound let me tell you. "Of course not. He's the closest thing to a brother I have. Why would you ask that?"

  His head tilted slightly, his mouth opening and closing a couple of times like he was trying to decide to tell me or not. Eventually, he did. "Because he's in love with you, Dusty."

  I was pretty sure an entire cannonball dropped and settled into my belly at that phrase.

  In love with me?

  Bry?

  No, that wasn't...

  Except, maybe it was.

  If I were being honest with myself, I would admit that there had been times over the years when there were tense moments, heavy silences when he was fighting saying something to me, touching that could maybe have been friendly from a touchy-feely person (which Bry was not), but weren't normal for just a pair of childhood friends. He catalogued even the smallest details about me and somehow brought it up again months or years later. His gifts were always exactly what I liked.

  Friendships like that between two women, I could say that was the norm.

  But maybe it didn't exactly work that way with men and women.

  Maybe his awareness of me had less to do with just friendship and more to do with... something more.

  "You had no idea," he observed accurately, giving me a half-smile.

  "I should have," I said, shaking my head. "Wow. I really, really should have seen it. I mean, maybe I was just not admitting it because he was all I had left and denying him that way might have ruined it..."

  "I think you underestimate him," he surprised me by saying. "He might be in love with you, honey, but he also just plain loves you. I think a part of him knows that you've never returned the feelings and that's why he hasn't acted on them. Maybe he never would have. Maybe he would have always just been there for you in whatever capacity you needed. And I am probably a shit for even telling you about it, but I think it's something you needed to know. And, well, I needed to know about your relationship with him."

  "Why?"

  His smile was a little teasing at that. "Because this thing here, with you and me, if this goes the way I want it to go... it's happening."

  "It's... happening?" I repeated, my belly doing another of those delicious little flutters, but I wanted more clarity. I needed it so I didn't drive myself half or fully crazy over what he meant.

  "Yeah. Happening. You're in my place. I like you here. I'd like you to keep being here. I get that it's early and we don't know everything about each other yet, but I figure we will do that eventually. I needed to know you weren't having mixed feelings about him before we move forward."

  Forward.

  As in a future.

  With me?

  I didn't think he truly understood what he was saying.

  "Ryan, I don't think you..."

  "I get it," he cut me off, shaking his head. "I, ah, well I did some research before I made my decision, Dusty. I know what I am getting into here. And I know there is no magic cure and I know it's going to be progress and regression, but I think you are overestimating how much it matters to me. I'm not a social person. I work, I come home. Occasionally, I see my family. I would eventually like you to be able to come to those occasions too, but I'm not saying it needs to be next week or next month. All I am asking for is..."

  "Progress," I cut him off.

  I could do progress.

  I mean, I was out of my apartment. I was in his. And I wasn't freaking out about it. That was progress. I had met his brother and interacted with him and that was progress too.

  So long as the steps were small and not expectations that set me up for failure, I was pretty sure I could do that.

  "Exactly," he agreed, reaching out and grabbing my knee, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Think that could work?"

  I gave him a small smile, not wanting to get ahead of myself, but feeling hopeful. "I think so," I agreed.

  The smile he gave me, yeah, it was so worth deciding to agree to continually step out of my c
omfort zone.

  "Alright," he said, eyes getting just a little heated as his fingers sank into my hips and pulled until I had no choice but to move toward him, to go over and straddle him as he sat back. His fingers glided down slightly then, almost touching my butt, but not quite. "Don't want to kiss you because I don't want to hurt your lip," he explained, giving me a little squeeze.

  My lip?

  Who the hell cared about my lip when I had a sweet, considerate, gorgeous, and sexy as all hell man beneath me who wanted me even though I was a complete and utter mess?

  Certainly not me, that was for sure.

  I curled forward, my hands sliding up his arms to settle on the sides of his neck. His brilliant light eyes went heated with understanding just a moment before I carefully pressed my lips to his.

  They were still swollen and there was a pinch of pain at the pressure, but the second his lips moved against mine, well, all I felt was a heady, almost overwhelming rush of desire. His tongue traced the seam in my lips and wet pooled between my thighs as my breasts got heavy.

  My hips dropped low as his tongue moved over mine, making a small whimper escape me as I ground down on his hard length, trying to ease the clawing need inside.

  His hands dug in to the point of pain, pulling me back then forward again, encouraging me to take what I needed from him.

  And I wasn't exactly going to refuse that offer, was I?

  I moved against him, feeling the need build, not easing the ache but promising an end to it. My forehead pressed into his, too lost in the sensation to remember to keep kissing him.

  "Honey," he said, his voice a deeper, sexier rumble than usual which was really saying something because his normal voice could bring me to my knees. I pulled back slightly, opening my eyes. And that was just when his hips thrust upward and hit my clit with perfect pressure. An almost embarrassingly loud moan escaped me and his eyes closed as he let out a slow exhale.

  When his eyes opened again, his hand shifted around from my butt and toward the front, snagging my button then zip faster than I knew was possible.

  Then his hand slid up and in, slipping under my panties and stroking up my slick slit. Finding me wet, a rumble moved through his chest as his finger went up and pressed into my clit, the sensation something akin to white-hot and I made a choked sound as my hand flew out and grabbed his arm hard.

  "Okay?" he asked, finger pulling back slightly, wanting to make sure he had permission.

  Words strangled in my throat, in a good way which was entirely new to me, I gave him a tight nod as my hips did a small stroke that made a devilish little smile pull at his lips.

  There was no teasing, no hinting at something he was going to get to the brink of and pull me away from. His finger worked my clit with perfect pressure, changing directions occasionally, keeping my body guessing.

  Then, just as suddenly as he found my clit, his finger stroked downward and his finger circled around my entrance for a long moment before pressing slowly inside, the sensation so long forgotten, but so welcome, I let out a sound that was suspiciously similar to a cry as I leaned forward and nestled my face into his neck.

  His finger slid fully inside and without hesitation, started a slow, sweet, perfect thrusting that had every muscle in my body tensing, my breath coming out in choked, frantic huffs as the pressure built.

  Then, when I thought anything better wasn't even remotely possible, his finger curled, stroking over my top wall and hitting my G-spot with the kind of assurance I found astounding. To be honest, I was pretty sure I had never found that spot myself. And, as the sensation became different than one I had ever known, yeah, I was sure that his knowledge of my body seemed to surpass my own.

  My hips rocked up and down as his thumb moved up and started working my clit again, the two sensations together making the whimpers and cries become loud, frantic moans that I wasn't sure I was even capable of as he pushed me to the edge. Then, without hesitation, pushed me off the cliff.

  I crashed into the orgasm.

  There was no other way to put it.

  My whole body slammed down hard, my leg muscles going liquid as the pulsations moved through me, deep in my belly at first and then moving outward until the sensation seemed to take over my whole body.

  I came back to my senses with Ryan's name still whimpering from my lips, my body shuddering, my breathing a mere imitation of what it was supposed to be, coming out in odd strobe-like huffs as his thumb left my clit but his finger did a slower, gentler, almost lazy thrusting, carefully bringing me back down.

  Collapsing into him, my head turned and I planted a chaste kiss to his throat, too overwhelmed to overthink anything or even think at all.

  I wasn't sure how long it had been since I had had an orgasm. Months at least. And from someone else? Years. Several long years.

  It was almost like the first time in its novelty, in the all-consuming wonder of it all.

  Ryan's hand slid out of my panties and rested on my thigh, the other going around my lower back and holding me against him tightly. "Fuck, Dusty," he said, his voice a desperate growl.

  I smiled against his neck at that.

  Fuck.

  That just about covered it, didn't it?

  My hips shifted and I felt him press against me, harder than before, and a surge of guilt coursed through me, realizing the selfishness of the situation.

  I pulled back a little nervously, my lips parting to speak, when he shook his head.

  "No what?" I asked, my forehead creasing.

  "No, we're not taking this any further tonight," he said, somehow reading the situation perfectly. "Or," he went on as I opened my mouth to object, to say I was happy to... even things out, "until I can be inside you and kiss you without fucking hurting you."

  "Ryan, it's ok..."

  "Nope," he said, shaking his head, giving me what I could only call a stern look. "Not happening. When it happens, I want it to be right. It's not right if I'm hurting you in any way. So we're putting that off."

  "But it's not..."

  "Shh," he said, yanking me sideways suddenly and making me land on my butt beside him, my legs cocked up on his thighs.

  "Did you just... shush me?" I asked, smiling big because it seemed so out of character for someone like him.

  "Yep," he agreed as he reached around looking for the remote.

  "The couch probably ate it," I supplied, knowing I had fallen asleep with it settled beside my body and that I tended to roll around a bit when I was first settling into sleep. "Isn't it too early for," I started, but then he found the remote, switched the channel, and there was Times Square. "Oh," I said, looking below the TV at the time and finding it was already well after nine.

  "We have three hours of drinking ahead of us," he said, slamming a hand on my knee and squeezing before using it to push himself up. "Better put some lining down," he said, going toward the liquor cabinet. "What's your poison?"

  I drank wine, one or two glasses by myself. And when Bry came over in a mood and needed a drink, we had vodka because that was his drink.

  My drink, well, used to be a very dry gin martini with two olives.

  And about two of them could put me on my ass, even back when I used to drink more socially.

  "Dusty," he prompted when I just sat there. "What do you drink?" he repeated, lip twitching just the slightest bit like he found me amusing.

  And, well, if a man could find my awkwardness amusing, he was a keeper.

  "Do you have vermouth?" I asked as I slowly got off the couch. I realized my fly was still open when his gaze went there and a knowing smile pulled at his lips. I felt my cheeks heat as I reached down self-consciously to close up.

  "What self-respecting liquor cabinet doesn't have vermouth?" he shot back, bending down and looking inside. "How do you want it- wet, dry, dirty, or perfect?"

  My head ducked to the side as he straightened, two bottles of vermouth in his hands and I just knew one was French, meaning dry, and one was I
talian, meaning sweet. "Wow, that's some impressive drink knowledge," I said with a smile. "Dry. Very."

  He nodded, tucking one of the bottles away and moving to grab a martini glass and the gin. "We all worked shifts as bartenders when we were legal. Pops thought it was important to understand how to run the business. Some of it stuck."

  "Sounds like a lot of it stuck," I countered, moving over to the island and grabbing an adorably festive New Years Eve paper plate and loading it up, going light on the carrots and celery and heavy on the fries and cheese. If we were drinking for hours and my tolerance was as low as it probably was, he was right, I needed lining.

  So then we ate and drank and I got pretty wasted, every part of me tingly and alive and my head a fun little anxiety-free zone that felt refreshing as I snuggled into Ryan on the couch, his strong arm around me, handing me a champagne flute with the other as we were at the one minute mark from midnight.

  We watched the ball drop.

  We watched a new year come to us, offering things I prayed I could have.

  He leaned over, gave me a sweet, soft, careful kiss to the lips and gave me an almost whispered, "Happy New Year, honey."

  "Happy New Year," I agreed, giving him a smile I felt down to my soul as he raised his glass.

  "Progress?" he asked.

  And I nodded. "Progress."

  Perfect.

  It was all so perfect it hurt.

  You know, until the next day when it all got ruined.

  ELEVEN

  Ryan

  I never really gave a shit about New Years Eve. Most of the time, I was in bed and half asleep while answering work emails at midnight. It just wasn't my thing. I wasn't a party guy and I hadn't had a serious girlfriend to give a shit about a midnight kiss since I was probably in my early twenties.

  But putting a little effort in, staying awake, and watching Dusty get fucking bombed in the goddamn cutest way possible then getting a kiss at midnight?

  Yeah, totally worth it.

  Getting to feel her come around my fingers as she cried out my name into my neck?

  Fucking perfect.