“How old are you Lily.” It was part question, part statement.
“Twenty-three.”
Ten years difference.
“How many men have you been with?”
She reached out and grabbed my pants, using them to yank me toward her. She was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“Enough to know how this goes. You’re going to take off those pants and push me back against this wall. Maybe you’ll hold my hands above my head or maybe you’ll grip my chest. I know you want me, Dean.”
She slipped her hand beneath the waistband of my pants and gripped me, hard.
“Stop making me wait.”
Fuck her.
I had planned on pinning her to the wall, but not any more. She wasn’t in control; she might be a feisty young lioness, but I was a lion. I pushed off my pants, gripped her hand, and yanked it off me. Her mouth fell open in shock, but there wasn’t time for her to question my actions. I was already lifting her up, forcing her legs around my hips. I had to fight the urge to groan. She felt like heaven and I wasn’t even inside her yet.
I walked us up the stairs, toward my bedroom, but it wasn’t for romantic reasons. I needed leverage. I needed her on my bed so I could hold my body up over her and angle inside her so deep that her head rolled back and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming.
The last coherent thought I had that night was when I stood at the end of my bed, staring down at Lily spread across my navy sheets. She was a sea of blonde hair and full, pink lips. I was going to lose myself in her, more than I’d lost myself in anyone before.
She smirked and arched a brow. “Do you need help with that?”
I was holding the condom in my hand, staring at her.
I shook my head.
They say if you aren’t sure if a berry is poisonous, you’re supposed to touch it first, rub it on your skin, and see if you have a physical reaction. After that, you take a lick and wait a day. Still breathing? Take a small bite. If you’re not dead, then the berry is probably safe to eat.
I feared Lily was poisonous. I feared she’d make my heart stop, but instead of testing her touch and tasting her slowly, I slipped into her until her nails dug into my back. I bit down on her lip so hard as she came that I tasted her blood in my mouth.
For all I knew, I had hours to live. For all I knew, Lily would be the death of me.
I smiled at the thought.
What a way to go…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lily
I woke up with a start in a dark room, lying on the softest sheets I’d ever felt in my life. Am I dead? Is this a cloud? I inhaled a deep breath and glanced to my right. Dean was lying next to me on his chest. His face was angled toward me and half smashed into his pillow, but he was still the most picturesque thing I’d ever seen. The moonlight illuminated a fading set of teeth marks on his shoulder. Mine. I smiled at the memory as I slipped the sheet off my legs and pressed up out of his bed.
A quick glance at his bedside clock announced the time in bright red numbers: 4:30 AM.
I tiptoed across his room, wholeheartedly aware of my nakedness. My thighs ached and there was a light bruise on the left side of my ribcage. Dean had been rough at times, just enough to thrill me, but even then, I’d known I’d be feeling the aftereffects in the morning. I flushed just thinking about it.
I pulled open his door as quietly as possible and didn’t bother looking back. I’d see him at the airport in a few hours anyway.
My leggings and tank top were still on the marble floor of the entryway, passing judgment on me as I descended the staircase. I’d had casual sex before, but nothing about last night had been casual.
I slipped into my clothes, listening for any sign of Dean. It’s not that I didn’t want to see him, I just needed five minutes to collect my thoughts. I’d come to his house on a whim, assuming I’d have really good sex and then be on my way. Instead, Dean had reached inside and scattered pieces of me across his house. My sanity sat on his front stoop, my self-control was splattered across his entryway, and my heart was up there on his bed, too tangled in scattered sheets to find.
Walking through the streets of New York at 4:30 AM wasn’t on my bucket list, but I didn’t have a choice. There were no cabs roaming the streets of the Upper West Side and I was too scared to go down into the subway stations. I’d already walked two miles south before I remembered Uber. Fucking Uber. I requested a ride on the app and a few minutes later a small Romanian woman with a head-wrap pulled up in front of me in a white Buick.
“You Lily?” she asked with a thick accent.
I nodded, slipped into her backseat, and typed in my address.
She peered back and scanned over my outfit. “You always run this early?”
“No.”
She veered out into traffic without looking—which was fine since we were the only car on the road—and then glared back at me. “Good. Bad for your knees. Running.”
I stared out the window. You know what else is bad for your knees? Wrapping them around Dean Harper’s hips.
By the time I arrived back at my apartment, I was ready for a full night of sleep. I wanted to crawl onto my futon and burrow myself under the covers so far that I would never wake up again. Unfortunately, when I pushed the door open, I was greeted by a wide-awake and frantic Josephine.
“You idiot! You stupid idiot!” she said, waving a spatula in the air like she was going to hit me with it. Had she even slept? Or had she been awake the whole night stewing because I wouldn’t answer her phone calls?
I dropped my purse on the table near the door and shook my head. “You’re not allowed to be mad at me for sleeping with Dean.”
Her eyes widened. “I’m not mad about that! I’m mad because you just walked home by yourself at 4:30 AM. Dean called me twenty minutes ago demanding to know where you were.”
My heart stopped. “He called you? This morning?”
She narrowed her eyes and studied me. “Of course. You left and he had no clue where you went. That was really stupid, Lily.”
Knowing he’d woken up, knowing he cared that I was out by myself did a weird thing to my heart. The sick, selfish part of me wanted him to be up, worried about me.
Josephine huffed and turned back toward the kitchen, and finally, I registered the smell of fresh pancakes. That explains the spatula.
“It’s not like I could go out looking for you,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “So I decided to make breakfast for when you got here.”
I smirked and walked closer to the kitchen. “I could have been dead out on the streets, and you’d be here, enjoying your fluffy pancakes.”
She glared at me, still pissed. “Pancakes soothe me.”
I edged around the counter, dropped my head on her shoulder, and flashed her my best attempt at puppy dog eyes. “Remember when I babysat you that night you got super drunk last month? When you fell into the ditch and couldn’t get out?”
She groaned. “Please don’t ever remind me of that.”
“Well, now we’re even, okay?”
She pointed to the plate of warm pancakes sitting beside the stove. “Fine. Eat up and let Dean know that you’re home safe.”
My stomach clenched at the reminder of Dean. I knew I had to text him; only a true psychopath would let him worry for nothing. I went to retrieve my phone from my purse and found the evidence of his worry: two missed calls and three texts messages.
Dean: Did you leave?
Dean: I just searched my entire house looking for you.
Dean: Call me when you get home.
I skipped the call and instead shot him a quick text.
Lily: Home.
One word. One word that would guard my heart and make it impossible for him to know how affected I was by the last twelve hours.
“Anyway, how was it? Last night?” Jo asked behind me. I swallowed and stared down at my phone.