Double Dare You

by Cara Lockwood

Her whole body shivered with the compliment, its pulse purring in her veins. She loved Beck’s attention. She couldn’t apologize for it, either. She loved making him hot, making him lose control. She loved how even now his eyes burned with pure want. She felt heady with that power, and for once, it didn’t feel like she was the one so powerless after all.

  She lifted her hands and tangled her fingers in his soft blond hair, as her legs wrapped around his waist as she invited him in deeper, ever deeper. He groaned as she squeezed him. He pushed himself up on his elbows, and then the palms of his hands, and he gazed at her as he slowed the rhythm. His amazing chest muscles worked, and she traced them with her fingertips, awed by the simple beauty of his body in motion. This body he’d taken and pushed to limits other men didn’t dream of, and now it was here in front of her and she was exploring it in ways she could never imagine tiring of. She stroked his body as if it belonged to her, because for this moment, this one moment, it did. She met his stare and for a second was fixed by it.

  “I want to feel you in every way possible,” Beck said, and he withdrew, rolling her over on her belly. It was primal, rabid, raw, as he pushed himself against her, entering her from behind. She gasped as he pushed between her legs, again and again and again, her chest against the carpet, his mouth on her ear. She felt primal, base, driven by pure animal instinct. No rules. No words. Just what the bodies did best.

  “I think you need to be teased,” he said, as he withdrew himself from her.

  “No,” she murmured. She wanted him in her, more than she wanted to breathe.

  He moved his fingers between her legs, stroking her, making her pant with heat and need. “God, you’re so wet. So very, very wet.”

  “I’m wet for you,” she managed, voice hoarse.

  He grabbed her by the waist and raised her up. He wanted her on all fours, and she wanted to be there. She loved and hated that he had all the control. But there was something delicious about giving in, giving up to her desire for him. He grabbed her by the hips and entered her fast, hard, the way she wanted it. He worked her hard, and the muscles in her arms strained as she struggled to keep herself upright. She loved the sound of him against her, how it felt being on all fours for him. She was surprised by how much she liked it, by how she wanted more. By how she felt like a dog in heat, run by pure animal need. This was what she was made to do. This was what her body needed. He reached around then, finding her most tender spot, and began rubbing it, ever so softly.

  “You’re going to come like this,” he promised her, and she believed him. And then it was all him: his hands, his very hard self, and she knew she’d come again. She was already at the edge, and all it took was a gentle flick of the pad of his finger against her clit, and then she was toppling over the edge, plummeting into the great abyss. She clenched him, hard, crying out in a voice she hardly recognized. Pure animal. Pure release.

  He pumped again and again, and then drove even deeper still, until he let out a guttural shout, and then, he, too, came at a deep, hard thrust, which he held fast against her. She took it, loved taking it, and when he collapsed on her back, sweaty and spent, she felt a glowing sense of pure accomplishment. That was sex worthy of any god. They fell together on the floor, needs temporarily satiated, and Beck spooned her protectively from behind. She felt so warm, so safe, so happy. It was the happiest she’d been in two months. The persistent ache in her chest was gone for the first time in a long time. Words bubbled up in her throat, like fizzy champagne, unable to be contained. She felt them coming, felt them take flight, and this time, there was no stopping them.

  “I love you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BECK FROZE, HIS ARMS around Allie. The L-word landed loud and heavy in the room, and as much as he wanted to say I love you, too, the words dried up on his tongue, the familiar fear dragging them downward, keeping them deep inside him. He hated the L-word, hated how people threw it around so carelessly, so effortlessly. He’d never been able to say it all that easily. Hadn’t been raised in a family where they said it routinely, by rote. He told himself that was because when he said it, he meant it. Except that what ended up happening was that he never said it at all. Not to his mother. Not even to his father, who died of an overdose at the hospital days before Beck’s eighteenth birthday.

  He knew in his heart he felt more for Allie than he’d ever felt for anyone. Was that love? It could be. So why couldn’t he say it? Why was he such a coward that the words couldn’t come out of his mouth? So he hugged her tighter to his chest, because he knew, without a doubt, that he was about to ruin this moment, about to possibly lose the only thing that mattered to him. It was as if that inky blackness in him, his father’s legacy, had taken control of his vocal cords. But he knew that was a cop-out. He glanced past Allie to the Christmas tree near her window and felt like one of its bright silver balls was lodged in his throat. “I...need you.”

  That was horrible. He knew it was horrible, but it was the best he could do. He could admit he needed her, so why couldn’t he say out loud he loved her? Meanwhile, Allie was pulling away from him, moving out of his arms. He could feel the distance growing between them, and he knew he put it there. He’d made this happen. And he felt lousy about it. But wasn’t this what Beck men did? Pushed away the people who loved them?

  Allie was silent for a minute, and he could feel all the wheels whirling in her head. He knew she’d be poring over this conversation in her mind, worrying over each word, and he hated that he’d done that to her. Something shifted between them. A wall had gone up between them in the space of a few seconds, made of something even harder than concrete and steel. He knew it was all his fault. He’d do anything he could to make her happy again, except that he knew the one thing that he couldn’t give. Something in him was broken. He’d known it for a long time. And now Allie did, too.

  * * *

  Allie felt like a fool. She’d thought maybe Beck might say “I love you, too.” Honestly, she was kicking herself for even saying it in the first place. She might as well just open the door so he could run out as fast as he could. What was she thinking? She hadn’t been thinking, and that was the whole damn problem. She’d let the moment sweep her away, delirious with the aftershocks of Beck’s hands and his tongue. Anytime she thought of the long pause after she’d said those awful three little words, she felt herself inwardly cringe. Yet he’d said he needed her. Was that good enough?

  Her heart told her no.

  Her heart told her that wasn’t good enough, not by a long shot, and that needing wasn’t the same as loving. Part of her felt confident Beck would come around, maybe, but another part of her felt tired of waiting. He’d slept over, but he might as well have been a million miles away. He managed to fall asleep, but Allie had lain there most of the night with her eyes wide open, trying to figure out what she was going to do next. She decided in the dark of the night that there really was only one solution to her problem with Beck. Only one thing she could do.

  She must’ve fallen asleep in the wee hours of the morning, because she woke to find Beck tugging up his jeans.

  “Leaving?” she asked him, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. A dull ache of a headache thudded in her temples, a clear sign of lack of sleep. Sunlight shone weakly through her window, so it must yet be early morning.

  “Gonna hit the slopes,” he said as he zipped up. “My Christmas Eve run down Pete’s Peak.” Allie suddenly had a vision of her life with Beck: of eternally chipping away at the emotional wall he’d built, of waiting, constantly waiting, for him to give her what she needed, but not quite meeting that want. While he wanted her, did he want to change himself? Did he want to heal himself? As much as she wanted to do it, she knew she couldn’t. Only he could do that. She sat silently, waiting for...what? An invitation to go along? He wouldn’t invite her. This was Christmas. The time he ran away from everyone he cared about, when he cocooned himself in bad m
emories. She realized she had to make a change. She needed to do it. For herself, and probably for Beck, too.

  “I’m moving to Denver.” The words came out easily, but they landed heavily in the room. She’d decided this overnight when it seemed the only answer.

  Beck froze as he pulled his shirt over his head. Then he quickly pulled it down and turned, eyeing her.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got a job offer. For an accounting firm. Pays better.”

  “I thought you loved being your own boss.” Beck moved closer and sat on the bed. His weight bounced her a little as she tried to read his face. Why wasn’t he talking about them? But then, she knew why. There was no them.

  Was he disappointed? Did she even want him to be? Wouldn’t it be easier if this was just a clean break?

  “I think it’s better this way, if I go.” Because she knew she would always be holding on to him if she stayed in the same town; she’d always be hoping he’d change. She realized she’d been waiting for him to change for years, waiting for him to want to change, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She’d waited first for him to be more than a friend, and that had taken years, and now, when they were so close to being more, he didn’t seem to want to move, to bend, to change at all. Worse, Beck wasn’t arguing with her. He wasn’t saying anything at all. She was about to walk out of his life forever, but he kept silent. Maybe he wasn’t even into the chase after all. Or maybe she’d finally figured out how to run far enough.

  “When did you decide this?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it awhile.” She shifted and turned, propping herself on one elbow.

  “But what about...us?” Beck looked crestfallen and she could feel his pain, a thin cut of a very sharp knife. A surprisingly deep wound.

  “What are we doing? I know you’re not going to give me what I want, and I won’t be able to give you what you want.” She sighed. “I can’t stay away from you. And you’re right. I can’t do casual.”

  “Al.” Beck’s voice sounded heavy, sad.

  “Whatever it is we’re doing isn’t working,” she said. “And I’m not going to ask you to change who you are.”

  “Ask me, Al. Just ask me.” There was desperation in his voice. But how could she ask him? He had to want to do it himself. She couldn’t just ask him to love her. He needed to do that all on his own.

  “I can’t do that.” She shook her head.

  “This is about last night, isn’t it. About me not saying...”

  Allie almost laughed. He couldn’t even say I love you now. In some ways, it just underscored the chasm between them, a gap that might never be bridged.

  “Al, I just need time. Please.” Beck took her hand in his. “Please, just give me a little time.”

  His pleading tugged at her heartstrings. She wanted to give him this and so much more. She wanted to wait forever. But she couldn’t.

  “I just want to be loved, Beck. That’s all. Completely and fully,” she said. “I don’t think you’re ready to do that. You might never be ready.”

  Beck didn’t argue the point. “When are you leaving?”

  “Don’t know yet. Most likely the first or second week of January.”

  “Can I change your mind?” Beck asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Beck fell silent a moment. “Will you come with me? Today?”

  “I thought you always skied solo on Christmas Eve.”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  Allie thought for a moment.

  “Okay,” she said after a beat. Her time with Beck was running out and she didn’t have the heart to deny herself what time she had left.

  * * *

  Few skiers were on the mountain, which surprised Allie. But then, a storm was supposed to move in around lunchtime, and so most skiers had opted to stay in their condos. They were the smart ones, Allie thought, as the air had already dropped ten degrees by the time they’d made it to the ski lift, which would take them to one of Beck’s favorite black-diamond runs. The backcountry he normal skied was closed for the weekend, due to avalanche alerts, and Allie was just fine with that. The idea of skiing unmarked trails was still a little terrifying. Allie shivered, even though she was wearing an extra layer, and the clouds seemed to hang low in the sky. It felt colder than any of the weather reports predicted. Her fingers tingled in her gloves and she gripped her ski poles a little tighter.

  As they got on the ski lift, empty of all but them in line, the snow flurries started to fall.

  “Are we going to have time to make this run before the storm comes?” she asked him.

  “We should,” he said, looking up at the sky and then at his phone. “Weather says the worst shouldn’t hit until after two.”

  “That weather app has been wrong before.” Allie remembered their time at the lodge and then felt a little heartsick about it. If they’d never gotten stuck there, would Allie be leaving for Denver? Probably not. She’d probably still be pining for Beck, waiting in the shadows of his friendship, hoping he’d take notice. Denver would be better than that, too, she thought. Denver offered the possibility of a fresh start.

  They rode the ski lift to the top, the view breathtaking from the suspended metal bench. She wore her downhill skis and poles, a traditional skier, and Beck sat loosely, one foot out of his snowboard as it dangled. Beneath them, it was a long way down to the snowy ground, and up here, Allie felt like she could reach out and touch the treetops.

  “I don’t want you to go to Denver.” Beck wouldn’t look at her, as they both stared out into the cloud-covered mountain above them.

  “I know. But I think I have to do it.” She just didn’t see a way forward where she and Beck worked, and she wasn’t always running after him and he wasn’t always running away, or vice versa.

  “I told you I was trouble,” Beck said. “I told you that you’d be better off without me. But now I’m in deep with you. I don’t know how to let you go.”

  “That’s why I need to leave. You’ve got things you need to deal with...your past...”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Beck said, his mood abruptly turning black.

  For once, Allie obliged him. She had to, or she’d start crying on this damn lift, and that was not what she wanted to do. “So, no adventure tours today?”

  “Gave my staff the rest of the week off,” Beck said. “Willis, Gwen and Zach deserve it. We don’t need to chase the holiday dollars. We’ve gotten a lot of good trips already this year.”

  Allie nodded, but then remembered something that had stuck out to her on the spreadsheets. “You just have three employees and yourself? No more?”

  Beck nodded. “That’s right. Why?”

  “I have to go back and check the paperwork, but it seemed like you had much more in payroll this year. Did you hire more staff?” Focus on the mundane, focus on the business, Allie thought, as she watched his snowboard swing beneath the seat. She was pressed against him in the two-person lift, their shoulders square.

  “Not that I know of. And I approve every hiring decision.”

  “You didn’t hire contractors, maybe? Temp workers?” She rubbed her own skis together and watched the snow fall, mingling with the snowflakes already in the air, headed to the ground far below.

  “No. Gwen handles the front office, and Zach helps Willis and me with the tours. I run a pretty lean operation.”

  “Did you give raises to Gwen or Zach or Willis? Or bonuses?” The wheels in Allie’s mind were already turning. This was what bothered her about Willis’s books. It seemed like he was paying too many people. But maybe he was just paying himself.

  “No bonuses, and just the normal three-percent raise I give every year,” Beck said.

  “You’re sure.”

  “Positive.”

  “Then I think there’s something wr
ong with Willis’s reports.” She tried to tread carefully. She didn’t want to throw around allegations, but she suspected he could be embezzling.

  “Like what?” Beck frowned.

  “I don’t know. I went over the books. Payroll went up by thirty percent over last year. I thought you must’ve hired new people. Or given raises. Or both.” Allie glanced at Beck’s profile as he stared out into the cloud-covered mountain. “But if you didn’t, then Willis’s reports are off.”

  “Willis does payroll,” Beck said, voice low. “I never wanted to mess with it. And whenever I suggested you could do it for us, he balked.”

  Allie felt a growing unease in her stomach. Willis was embezzling—she was becoming more and more sure of it by the second.

  “Could he be stealing from you?” Allie almost hated to bring it up.

  Beck seemed to shut down then. “No,” he said. “He wouldn’t do that to me. There’s got to be another answer.”

  Allie knew she was right. She hated that Beck doubted her, but she also understood that his friendship with Willis went back years, longer than she’d known him. But it still irked that he wasn’t taking her claims seriously. It just underlined the fact that Beck didn’t really trust her, wasn’t really letting her in his life. It couldn’t be more crystal clear to her: moving to Denver was the right decision.

  The ski lift spit them out at the top of the mountain, just as the wind kicked up and suddenly the snow started falling harder. Allie put down her goggles, protecting her eyes from the icy onslaught, and glanced down the mogul monstrosity before her, the double-black-diamond run that Beck had picked. She was a confident skier, but even her confidence was challenged by the icy drop. And the increasingly poor visibility on the mountain.

  They seemed to be the only two skiers crazy enough to take on this mountain today. Allie was beginning to regret her decision to come out. She feared that in the back of her mind she’d somehow wanted to believe that the magic of Christmas on Christmas Eve would fix everything. Beck would say he loved her and they’d live happily ever after.