I tilted up my chin toward him. “You want to help? Then kiss me.”
His lips parted, and for a moment I imagined he was going to press them against mine. He quickly tightened his jaw and shook his head. “I can’t do that. You’re clearly tipsy.”
I rose up onto my tiptoes and grazed his chin with my mouth. “Don’t make me ask again.”
He exhaled sharply. “Silver…”
“What?”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“So?” I challenged. “You’ve never kissed a tipsy girl?”
“Sure I have. But you’re not just any girl.”
“Right now, I need to feel like one,” I told him as I ran my hands up the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles and over his chest, finally wrapping them around his neck. “I need to feel wanted. For me. All of me.”
“Shit.” He groaned as my cold fingers entangled in his hair and tugged his face toward mine.
I’d never been so vocal about my desires. Pushed to the limits by Preston and partly spurred on by the tequila running through my veins, I felt courageous enough to demand what I wanted. For once in my life. But it seemed like Sawyer wasn’t going to give in that easily.
He took my hands in his and held me at arm’s length. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly. A war between wickedly delicious lust and chivalrous constraint waged in his eyes. I silently prayed for the lust to triumph. “I meant it, Silver. Are you really okay?”
I buried my forehead in his chest and inhaled his icy scent. “I’ve never been better,” I said, diminishing the space between us. My skin heated feverishly upon contact with his body. “But I want to lose control. Again. With you.”
“Goddammit, Silver, you can’t say things like that,” he groaned.
“You’ve been telling me to let go, so here I am—letting go,” I whispered, ignoring his protest. “I need you to catch me.”
“I’m here,” he soothed.
Had he always smelled so good?
“Please touch me, Sawyer.” I felt no shame in begging. “Kiss me.”
“Silver…” he growled in warning. “Stop talking. Please.”
“Then make me stop.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.” My heart was in pain, and he was the only one who could mend it.
Resting his hands on the wall behind me, he buried his head in my hair and inhaled sharply. “The moment my lips connect with yours, I won’t be able to stop myself from wanting all of you.”
“So do it,” I urged impatiently. “Consume me. Devour me. Eat me.”
“Fucking hell.” He pulled away, leaving me cold. “I can’t. Not tonight. Not while you’ve been drinking. I’m not going to come near your lips. For your own good. And my sanity.”
I gazed up into his eyes and bit down on my lip. “Then don’t touch my lips.” I shifted my braid off my shoulder, revealing my bare neck. “You can still kiss me. Right here. Just a little taste, Sawyer. Please.”
“Shit,” he cursed. My eyes burned into his as I watched his restraint shatter. “You win. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
With a fiery growl, he pinned me to the wall and pulled the tender skin above my pulse into his mouth. He placed one arm on either side of my body, trapping me in his prison, submerging me in his kiss. My neck was, without a doubt, one of the most sensitive, sexually responsive places on my entire body. The things Sawyer did with his lips, his tongue, and his teeth sent me soaring into another dimension. A string of moans slipped from my mouth as I surrendered to the throbbing between my legs.
The brick wall felt rough and hard behind my back, and Sawyer’s body was even harder against my front. His lips traveled down the side of my neck to my collarbone, alternating between ravenous kissing and more demanding sucking.
“I can’t…kiss your…neck…either.” His words came out in lustful pants.
I wrapped my fingers through his hair and pulled him deeper into me in protest. “Then kiss elsewhere,” I begged. “Just. Don’t. Stop.”
The moment he pulled my earlobe between his teeth, my knees gave out and I stumbled. His hands swiftly grasped onto my hips, holding me in place, preventing me from crashing to the floor.
“I want you,” he murmured into my ear. “All of you. So fucking bad.” His breath was hot and moist, sending shivers down my spine. With each ragged inhalation, I was falling deeper and deeper into an ocean of ecstasy. My hips thrust against him in response, and he groaned again, dislodging himself from my ear. “I can’t kiss there. Nothing is safe.”
I whimpered, mourning the loss of his touch, and attempted to wrap my arm around his neck to pull him into a proper kiss. He seized my right hand, lightly kissed the soft pad on my index finger, then drew up the sleeve of my sweater and pressed a hungry kiss to the inside of my wrist.
The moment his mouth connected with the milky white patch of skin, my breath hitched. His tongue and teeth teased the skin along my wrist, first softly, then with an insatiable demand. By this point, my panties were soaked. And so very ready to come off.
How could something as simple as lips on a wrist feel so erotic?
I groaned as my free hand tightened its grasp on his hair, tugging roughly.
“Shit, shit, shit...” His voice hummed through me. “I’m running out of places to kiss.” His eyes heated as he threaded his fingers through the belt loops of my jeans, pulling my hips to him. “And you’re making it very difficult to behave.” His lips crashed against my jaw, and with another hard tug on the denim hooks, he obliterated the space between us. “I’ll have to get rid of some of these clothes to find more bare skin.”
Oh, God. Yes, please!
The contact of his body and the roughness of his words pushed me over the edge. I spread my feet, taking his firm thigh between my legs, clenching myself tightly around him. As he continued to kiss my jaw, I began to rock against him. With a firm grasp, he guided my hips, first gently, then harder and faster until I was unable to contain my ecstatic cries and the desperate pleas for more.
Scorching hot waves of pleasure coursed through me, building up tension and intensity deep within my core. The friction of my body rubbing against his sent my nerves into a dizzying delirium; the hard denim of my jeans only served to intensify the thrill. Shutting my eyes, I arched my back and let my head fall back against the wall, completely losing myself in Sawyer’s touch.
I squirmed against him as he pinned me harder against the wall, his tongue flicking along my jaw and neck, teasing my bottom lip, but never fully penetrating my mouth. My senses ignited, sizzling to attention. The air around us was hot and sticky with raw need, contrasting with the rest of the icy atmosphere.
“I told you this was a bad idea.” The heat in his voice betrayed his words. As did his rock hard erection. His fingers hooked into the waistband of my jeans, causing me to shudder in anticipation. “So very bad, Silver.”
Wetness pooled between my thighs, and for a brief moment I wondered if he could feel my warmth through his jeans as I tightened my grasp on his leg. My need for release grew more urgent, threatening to detonate my entire body.
It was pain. It was pleasure. It was pure ecstasy.
“Dylan? Sawyer?!” Adam’s voice doused me in a cold shower of shame.
OH. FUCK.
Fuck, fuck, fuck…
A bucketful of fucks!
Anyone but him. Where the hell was Maddie when you needed her? I’d even take Preston right now. The scowl on my brother’s face affirmed that he wasn’t too happy to see me either.
“What are you doing?” he barked.
I stupidly said, “We weren’t kissing.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.” Disapproval didn’t even begin to describe his tone.
Sawyer took a tiny step away from me, though his hand remained on my hip. “Look, man—”
My brother cut him off. “Right now, inside this very bar, there’s a nice, smart, safe guy waiting for Dylan to accept his pro
posal,” he said to Sawyer. Turning to me, he added, “You’re going to get back in there and do what’s right.”
Sawyer stiffened. “Proposal?”
“As if you didn’t know she had a boyfriend,” my brother snapped as Sawyer’s hand dropped from my hip.
“He didn’t,” I said in an attempt to protect Sawyer. “I don’t,” I couldn’t help but add.
“My parents were right about you before, and they’re right about you now.” White puffs of hot air blazed from Adam’s mouth as he spoke, reminding me of some kind of angry dragon. “You’re not the guy for Dylan.”
“I’m not sixteen anymore,” I told my brother. “I can be with whoever I want.”
“Not if you’re with someone else,” Sawyer said curtly.
Shit. There were three things in life Sawyer hated more than anything: his father, alcohol, and cheating. Both of the latter things were linked to the former. And now I looked like the world’s biggest cheater.
My head was spinning; the entire world was spiraling out of control. “Preston and I aren’t together in that way,” I tried to explain.
Goddammit, why wasn’t the ground staying still?
“Preston sure has a different idea about that because from what I’ve heard, he just asked you to marry him,” Adam said. “A man doesn’t usually perform such a grand gesture unless he’s in love.”
The irony of his words was unfathomable. Preston’s proposal had nothing to do with love, but the way Sawyer was gaping at me, my brother may have as well tarred and feathered me and made me hold a big sign that screamed “Liar!”
“You’re engaged?” Sawyer’s eyes drilled into mine. The disbelief reflected in them made me want to cry.
What have I done?
Sawyer’s father had constantly cheated on his mother while in his drunken stupors, and I was sure that in this very moment, I reminded him of the one person he hated the most in the world. Though I didn’t technically have a relationship with Preston, there was no way I could make Sawyer understand that. Not with Adam looming over us, not before I could share the entire story from the very beginning, not when my head pounded so much.
Shame. Guilt. Disappointment.
A slew of negative emotions washed over me, rolling into one heavy ball and settling in the pit of my stomach. I blinked back the tears clawing their way behind my lids and swallowed the acidic taste at the back of my throat.
My brother only added fuel to the fire by continuing his assault on Sawyer, “Dylan is going to marry a well-educated, hardworking CEO of Stonewall Enterprises. And you’re going to let her go because you know it’s the right thing to do. For Dylan. I mean, do you even have any guarantee in your career, Sawyer? What if you broke your neck tomorrow? Ever thought about that? Who’d take care of her?”
“Fuck off, Adam,” I growled as my cheeks flushed. “I’m not a child. I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
Adam ignored me and continued to drill his gaze into Sawyer. “And all that travel…would you even be around? The girls? The parties? Don’t think I don’t know what goes on in your sport.” For a split second, I could swear there was a twinge of jealousy in my brother’s voice.
“Stop it, Adam!” I yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Sure,” my brother said, raising his hands. He didn’t leave, though. Instead, he moved closer toward Sawyer, lowered his voice, and said, “Just tell me this…do you think you can do better than someone with a Harvard education and a stable career? Can you promise to be everything my sister needs and deserves?”
“I thought growing up was supposed to make you less of a prick,” Sawyer said to Adam. “I guess your parents really did a number on you, huh?”
Perhaps it was the fault of our upbringing, but my brother suddenly reminded me of a chauvinistic asshole. I half expected him to ask Sawyer how many sheep he could pony up as a trade for me. The thought may have been a funny one if my heart hadn’t felt like it was being clasped by a tight vice.
“How about what I want, Adam?” I shouted. I couldn’t recall a time when Adam and I had ever raised our voices to each other, but I was fuming. My hands fisted, desperately wanting to unleash my anger. “You’re just like Mom and Dad. Ever thought that maybe I’d like to have input in my own life? My own relationships?”
“He’s right about one thing, Dylan,” Sawyer said. My first name sounded so cold and foreign coming from him. “It’s obvious that nothing has changed. We’re still not right for each other and we’ll never be.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you’re off to marry some rich asshole your parents probably picked out.” The winter air had nothing on the frostiness of his tone. “Clearly this was just a fling.”
With those words, he turned and stalked off into the darkness, leaving me to shatter into a million little pieces on the cold, snowy ground.
CHAPTER NINE
After Sawyer’s departure, I headed straight home. I couldn’t be around Adam and I needed to figure out how I was going to tell Preston that I had no intention of ever marrying him. Unable to sleep, I tossed and turned from dusk to dawn. Maddie had boasted about the high thread count of our Egyptian cotton sheets, but I felt like I was lying on jagged rocks.
The inside of my skull was partaking in a game of lobotomy with a concrete drill, and my stomach threatened to perform a show-and-tell of its contents—mostly just alcohol since I’d elected to skip dinner.
Every time I closed my eyes, the prior evening’s events played out behind my closed lids. Preston’s unexpected proposal; Sawyer’s kiss—or, rather, non-kiss; Adam’s sudden interest in my love life. Just before midnight, Maddie crawled into my bed, but upon realizing that my aerobics were keeping her up, I ended up convincing her to move to her own room for some shuteye.
Finally, after what felt like the longest night of my life, the sun’s rays crawled into the room, gliding over the plush white carpet and showering the bed in bright light. I forced myself to go through the motions of my usual morning routine of showering, brushing my teeth, and dressing, but my movements were slow and my mind functioned on a lethargic delay.
To put it plainly, I felt like an idiot. What was even worse, the mess I was currently in had been building up over the years. Every time I decided not to stand up to my parents or chose to put off an argument about my wishes and desires, I breathed a little more life into my guaranteed demise. If it hadn’t been for my unexpected reunion with Sawyer, I would’ve carried on the charade and kept living a lie for who knows how long. He opened my eyes to what I was missing out on and made me think that I could be different.
But now he thought I was a cheater. And rightfully so. I was an incredibly huge cheater. Perhaps not in a relationship sense, but I have been cheating myself out of a life that I deserved. A scary life that wasn’t perfectly controlled and didn’t have any guarantees. A life I wanted. I had to make amends and stand up for myself. I had to start living as a New Dylan Silver.
My first order of business was to speak to Preston and end our convenient arrangement once and for all. Screw what my parents thought. Unless I stopped playing childish, cowardly games, I’d never be a grown-up in their eyes and they’d never allow me to move forward with my life.
Outfitted in black tights, a long red tunic, and Maddie’s fluffy bunny slippers, I made my way to the guest room that Preston occupied. Halfway down the hall, Maddie jumped out of her room, startling me half to death.
“I need to talk to you!” she exclaimed breathlessly.
“How long have you been standing behind your door, waiting to scare the shit out of me?” I placed my hand on my chest and tried to soothe my wild heartbeat.
“No time for a chat. Come here.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me into her room. “Do you know what a dick pic is?” she asked before I was even able to settle down on the corner of her bed.
“Uhh…I can infer.” I sleepily rubbed the corner of my eye.
; “A picture of a guy’s package,” she said.
“Yeah, so?” Perplexed, I stared blankly at her, trying to understand the meaning behind her urgent ambush. “Is this little piece of trivia a part of some million dollar sex game show at seven o’clock in the morning?”
“If that game show is about your life, then yes,” Maddie said. “Last night when I saw the way Preston was acting toward you, I had this inkling that he may have someone else in his life.”
“He probably does,” I told her. “We never talk about it, but it makes sense. Especially with his whole ‘you’re welcome to sleep with other people’ deal.”
“Call it a best friend instinct or whatever, but I was sure there had to be a really good reason he wasn’t into you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not into him either,” I said, shrugging. “And I honestly can’t even cite a good reason as to why I don’t like him.”
“But Preston can. He has a very good reason for not liking you.”
“What did you do?” I groaned, rubbing my hands over my face. “Interrogated him until he revealed his lover’s name?”
“More like snooped through his phone.” She grinned. “Guess what I found?”
“A dick pic?” I deduced.
“More like a whole army of dick pics.”
“So he’s sexting with some girl?”
Maddie giggled. “No. The pictures I found were all from incoming texts. And judging by Preston’s super pale skin, they belong to someone else. A rather well-endowed, dark-skinned someone.”
My jaw unhinged. “A guy someone?”
“I know it’s early, but I did say it was a dick pic. Obviously a guy someone.”
It all suddenly started to click into place. The lack of chemistry between us, the fact that he never even tried to touch me when we were alone, his need for a fake relationship. His parents, especially his mother, wouldn’t understand and accept her son partaking in what she deemed to be “an unconventional lifestyle.” I’d heard her voice her conservative opinions many times—and very loudly—to know that she would never accept her son being attracted to the same sex. She would flip if he revealed that he was in love with a poor girl; I couldn’t even imagine how she’d react if he told her he had feelings for a man.
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