She kissed me back, openmouthed and eager. I was consumed with thoughts of making love to her. Horny for her. "Another kiss like that and I'm going to take you right here in the bushes."
"Promises, promises." Her laughter turned to a frown and a pout. "I wish one of us had our own place. Somewhere safe and private we could go…" She ran her hand through my hair.
I kissed the hollow of her neck, running my tongue in a circle around it until she gasped. "Seriously, pledge, only that awful perfume you're wearing is stopping me."
"You mean Jordan's?"
My heart stopped. I pulled back and stared at her. "Shit! How do you know her name?" I paused and swallowed hard.
"Dakota told me. The perfume reminded him of her."
"He told you about her?" My heart pounded. Things were worse than I imagined. "Just how good a time did you have in there?"
"I had a fantastic time!"
It wasn't what I wanted to hear.
She dropped her legs from around my waist until they dangled again and she reached for the ground. "But not the way people think I did. Don't believe the rumors." She laughed like she was flirting. "Frat guys exaggerate."
"What the fuck? What rumors?" I set her down with my heart beating out of control.
She took my hand and laced her fingers through mine. "The mind-blowing sex I had with Dakota." She squeezed my suddenly limp fingers in hers. "It was all faked. Just sound effects."
She laughed again. She was clearly trying to lighten the mood, but her voice shook like she was nervous. "We got carried away and broke his bed. That's what happens when you bounce too hard. Just like Mom used to warn."
"You were alone in his room?" I scowled and turned took a step toward the frat house, ready to beat the shit out of Dak like I had promised.
She held me back with our locked hands. "We faked it for a reason."
I froze. "Are you screwing with me? You faked sex with Dakota?"
"Yes." She stroked the hand she was holding as she looked me in the eye. "Don't be angry. Just listen, okay? I have so much to tell you!"
I stared at her, trying not to blow up and blow things. Remembering how I'd lost my best friend by losing my head. The excitement in her voice fueled the jealous burn in my gut, threatening my control.
She leaned in to me. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?" Shit, I kept a secret better than anyone I knew. But how would she know that?
She laughed, still trying too hard. "Brace yourself for some scandalous gossip—Dakota only invited me to this stupid date dash as a cover! He's in love with someone else."
"What?" I frowned, confused. "Why?"
"Because he's expected to date the hottest sorority girls." She stroked my arm and laughed. "And I'm evidently one of them. And she's not up to standards."
She mocked herself, but she was wrong. She wasn't one of the hottest girls. She was the hottest.
"He doesn't want to date the hottest girls? What the fuck is wrong with him?" I didn't trust Dak.
"He's in love with someone his parents, and frat brothers, don't approve of. Sound familiar?" She rested her head against my shoulder. "Delicious irony, huh?"
I had to ask, though I had a sick feeling I knew whom. "Who?"
She smiled like she was happy I asked and eager to share. "Jordan."
The bottom fell out of my stomach. I masked my expression so I didn't give anything away.
"They're keeping it secret. Like we are. While I was using him, he was using me. He went to get a beer and I caught him outside talking to her on the phone. Checking in with her! And she was pissed he was with me."
"I can't believe Dak had the balls to get back together with her." Things had just gotten more complicated.
"His guts are our good luck." She kissed me again, just a quick brush of lips.
I was startled by the sweetness of it. It was enough to get me hard again. A burst of laughter stopped me short. A group of drunken girls was stumbling toward us.
I untangled our fingers. "We'd better get back to the house before we got caught. If anyone asks, you texted me to come walk you home."
"I hate this," she said as we started toward the Double Deltsie house, walking side by side while I ached to touch her.
"How long have they been back together?" Morbid curiosity was hell.
"On and off since he graduated."
I bit back a curse, remembering how Dak and I used to know everything about each other. I was still pissed at him. But I guess you could be pissed and still miss someone.
"There's something you should know," she said as we turned the corner. "Dakota knows about us. He figured it out."
I stopped short and stared at her. "If he figured it out—"
"Don't worry. He knows you better than anybody. No one else will know, especially now. Dak and I have agreed to help each other. We're going to be in a decoy relationship. Go to enough functions together, flirt just enough, to throw everyone off and leave us free for the relationships we're really in. No one will have any reason to suspect a thing."
How could I feel so cold when my heart was beating so fast? She sounded so confident and assured of her plan's success.
"Zach?" She looked at me with concern.
"Dak was my best friend. Now I'm supposed to watch you act like his girlfriend?" I shook my head. "No! I can't do it. I don't trust him."
"Why?" She grabbed my arm. "He has as much to lose as we do. If he betrays us, I'll out him to his frat brothers and parents for the fake he is."
I couldn't speak. I didn't want to tell her why.
"He's sorry for what he did to you." She sounded sincere, like she really believed him. "He told me all about it. He misses you. He wants to be friends again. That should count for something."
The pleading in her voice felt like a slap. Dak had sucked her in. If she was going to be on his side now…
My mouth went so dry with fear the words stuck in my throat. I searched her face for some clue she knew the dark truth about me. "What, exactly, did he tell you?"
"Exactly what you told me before." She stared at me like she was waiting for me to flinch.
Shit, I had the feeling she knew something.
"He said he got drunk at a party and spilled a secret you'd asked him to keep. He wishes he could take it back," she said. "I believe him. It's hard to fake regret and guilt like that." She paused. "He's trying to make up for it now by helping us. Let him help. All of us win this way."
I shook my head. She knew more than she was telling me. I grabbed her by both arms. "Tell me the truth. All of it. No lies of omission. What did he tell you? What do you know?"
Chapter Seventeen
Alexis
Zach held my arms too tightly. The planes of his face fell into hard, worried lines. His muscles were taut and tense, like he could snap at any minute. Maybe I should have been afraid. Instead, I ached for him.
I made a split-second decision. Right here. Right now. This was going to end. Either Zach was going to trust me and let me love him. Or he was going to break my heart. But I would be damned if I would betray Dakota. I stared into Zach's eyes and ramped up my courage, raising my chin like I wasn't afraid. "He didn't tell me anything I hadn't figured out already myself."
Even though the lighting was dim, I swore Zach paled. If I backed down now, I lost him.
I made my voice as gentle as I could and still maintain control. "I know about your sister, Zach. And the accident. It doesn't change how I feel about you."
He was stone silent, scarily so. His grip on me loosened just enough so it didn't hurt. But I felt him slipping away from me, like he was letting go emotionally, too.
I had to explain. "Sarah told me, though she doesn't know she did. She doesn't even know you have a sister. She repeated what Dakota said at that party about how you would kill your sister to get attention." I said it as gently as I could, but he flinched like I'd slapped him.
I kept talking, hoping I wa
sn't pushing him away with every word. "You told me about the tattoo on your arm. When Dakota said he'd betrayed you, I put it all together. I made him give me the details. That's it. That's all. I should have come to you. I'm sorry."
Zach dropped my arms. His Adam's apple bobbed. Once. Twice. Again.
"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked.
"Fuck! No. Drop it, Alexis." His gaze was stony.
"You were three, Zach," I said. "Three. You weren't responsible. You didn't even know what you were doing. You shouldn't have been left alone in a car. Your mom should have known better."
"Don't try to blame her. I ruined her life." He turned his back on me.
I was desperate. I pleaded with him. "I'm not blaming her. I know you've heard all this before. But I mean it. No one's to blame. It was an accident. A tragic set of events."
"That doesn't change things." His voice was hard and final, like death. "She's still dead." He started walking away, leaving me before I could leave him.
I couldn't let him go. But he had to come back on his own or nothing would work.
"You're alive, damn it. Live!" I took a deep breath. "Nothing can change what happened," I called after him as tears welled in my eyes.
If he walked away now, I wasn't going to get him back. I felt the urgency as my heart cracked, ready to shatter for both of us. "But you can change what happens from now on. That's what you decided in the woods. Why are you giving up now that I know the rest? I know the truth and I still love you. I'll always love you."
He froze. His misty breath rose in the dark night like he was a breathing statue.
I came up behind him with tears streaming down my face, wrapped my arms around him, and pressed my face against his back. "Forgive yourself, Zach. Forgive Dakota. Live the life your sister would want you to live."
I let the tears stream down my cheeks. I wasn't too proud not to beg. "Don't walk away from me. Don't walk away from us. I love you. Believe you can be loved. Let me love you."
I felt the rise and fall of his chest. I watched his breath curl out in the cool night air. And I held on to him like I would never let go and never stop loving him.
"Shit." He leaned his head back against the top of mine. "I love you, Alexis."
I came beside him and took his hand. "I love you, too."
He needed me and I needed him. I pulled him into the alley that ran between the frat houses, into the dark where a brick wall separated two houses. It smelled like chimney smoke, asphalt, stale leaves, and beer. None of that mattered. I didn't need the romance of rose petals.
"I want you. Right now." I reached for his pants and unzipped his zipper.
"Shit, Alexis. I need you so bad." He pulled up my jacket and T-shirt and lifted my breasts, kissing the mounds at the top of my bra, licking the valley between them.
When he started sucking them through the thin fabric of my bra, I gasped and shoved his pants down on his hips. I reached for his dick, stroking him until the tip was wet.
By the time he undid my pants, I was wet, too. He slid his fingers into my panties and stroked the building heat between my legs. His fingers were rough, cold, and tender at the same time as he caressed me.
I slid my jeans down and pushed his hand away. "I can't hold on much longer. Come with me." I wrapped my legs around his waist again, rubbing against him like I had earlier. This time, though, I was naked against him and barely hanging on. I slid him into me as he backed me up against the wall and thrust in deeper.
Then I hung on and held him tighter and tighter as I grasped his shoulder in my teeth to muffle the scream of pleasure building inside me. He pierced me again and again, with his hands at the small of my back to cushion it from the rough, unforgiving, unyielding bricks of the wall behind me.
I felt the tension building in him as it reached higher and higher in me. And then every muscle of his tensed and he let go. "Alexis!"
I came with him then and let the waves crash over me, trembling with the power of the climax and being with him.
When it was over, we leaned our foreheads together and panted, trying to catch our breath as its white mist gave us away in the dark.
"Wow! Just wow." I unlocked my legs from his waist and dropped my feet toward the ground.
"'Wow' doesn't even come close." He slid out of me and set me down, letting my T-shirt and jacket slide back into place.
As we zipped our jeans, I noticed the raw back of his hand. "You're bleeding!" I took it in mine. "The bricks scraped you up. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't even notice." He stared at his hand, where the blood looked black in the dark. "I didn't feel a thing." He grinned. "Until you mentioned it. Now it stings. Thanks a lot, pledge." He sucked on the back of it and wiped it on his jeans. "Totally worth it. Best way to get scraped hands ever."
I took his hand in mine. "You shouldn't have done that. Blood doesn't come out."
"Maybe I don't want it to." His voice was husky. "Maybe I want permanent proof I bled for you."
When he released me, I pulled a tissue from my jacket pocket and pressed it against the scratches. "Up against the rough grain of a brick wall—think that will ever make it in a porn movie?"
"In an alley behind a frat house? Probably not." He kissed me and took my hand as we walked out of the alley.
Out on the sidewalk, where we could be seen, he let it go and shoved his hands in his sweatshirt pockets.
"Why did you stop?" I had to know. "Did I say the right thing?"
"You made all the right points. That's not why. I couldn't walk away from you." His voice broke with emotion. "I'm a fool for you, pledge. It's going to kill me watching you pretend to be Dakota's."
I hesitated, but I had to ask. "If you ever want to talk about…the accident, or your sister, I'm here. I won't judge."
He was silent a moment, like he was thinking. "Dak told you I was three? That they found me in the driver's seat pulling the handbrake?" he said.
I nodded. "Yeah. Trying to save her."
He took a deep breath. "And all I remember are sirens and being in big trouble?"
I nodded again.
"Then you know everything I do. My memories of it are like snatches of a nightmare. Disjointed and unreal. With too many gaps to fill in. If I hadn't seen my sister's grave and lived with the fallout it did to our family, I might have gotten away with thinking I'd imagined the whole thing. I might have even forgotten it altogether. How many things do you remember from when you were three?"
I frowned, thinking. "Not much."
"Neither do I." His fists bulged in his sweatshirt pockets, like he wanted to punch something. "But my parents have never forgotten. Or forgiven."
"That's really why you almost killed yourself that day in the woods, isn't it?" I blinked back tears. The whole thing was so tragic. How could his parents not love him? Why didn't they hurt for him the way I did? The story would have made me cry even if I didn't know and love Zach.
He looked at me without blinking. "I was tired of fighting with my parents and hoping they would eventually give a shit about me. I wanted to give up."
"They don't matter." I felt fierce. "You have me now." I grabbed his arm. "You promised, remember? You won't ever try that again."
He looked off into the distance. "I promised I would fight the urge. Sometimes, though, I think if I sacrificed my life for someone else's it would make everything right."
I stared at him, terrified.
He grinned. "Don't worry. Life doesn't give many people a chance to be a hero. Let's go home."
Em got back late, glowing. I was at my desk, studying for a lab exam.
"Whoa!" she said. "Aren't you the studious one! The girl who screwed the frat president in wall-pounding fury heads back early to study? Weird. You were like Cinderella ditching the party so early." She tossed me my water bottle. "You even left this behind. What's the scoop with you?"
"I'm trying to make the dean's list." I grinned, but I was glowing, too, with the memory o
f Zach. The sex had been hot, but the intimacy we shared went deeper. He trusted me with his secrets now.
"Shut up!" She studied me. "Are you and Dakota an item now?"
"Maybe," I said. "You and Carter?"
She flashed me a sly grin, looking like I'd convinced her. "Definitely. I want all the details."
"You already heard all the details." I closed the notes I was studying. "Tell me about Carter."
Zach
I spent Thursday morning when I wasn't in class or working looking for a new job and place to live. Anything to get Alexis out of this decoy relationship. There was nothing. Probably would be nothing until semester. I would keep looking and hope to get lucky.
Thursday afternoon was lingerie football practice. The first day Dak and Alexis would be full out faking their relationship. There were two things I couldn't stay away from—Alexis and football. Combining them would have been like making a peanut butter cup out of chocolate and peanut butter. Great on their own. Combined, best thing ever. Except for Dak. Throw him into the mix hitting on Alexis, real or faked, and the whole sweet thing went sour. There was no way I was missing that practice.
Since last night, I'd been thinking about what Alexis had said about forgiving Dak. She was right. How did I expect to be forgiven if I refused to forgive someone else? Holding on to anger and blame had destroyed my family and the best friendship I'd ever had. The problem was me. I was going to have to forgive myself and come clean.
Alexis' love made it seem worth the effort. My life was coming into focus, becoming more and more worth living. Letting go of an old grudge was another step forward.
I walked with a group of girls from the house to the practice field, happy and tormented at the same time. I couldn't get last night in the alley out of my mind. My story about how I scratched my hand was lame. But no one had seen through it yet.
It was hell acting like Alexis was nothing special to me. Leaving her to walk in the middle of her group of friends and not come up beside her and put my arm around her like she was mine. She sparkled and laughed, totally gorgeous. I fought to keep my eyes off her.
Rushed (The Rushed Series) Page 18