Slade

by Adriane Leigh

  “Slade?” Her eyebrows shot up before she glanced to the paperwork and scooped it all into one pile. “What are you doing?” She shuffled everything together and flipped it over, face down.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Kinda busy here.” She frowned then looked back to me. Searing grey-blue eyes caught my own.

  “I don’t care. Walk with me.” I held a hand out to her.

  “Okay…” She clasped her hand in mine and I led her out the door and down her porch. We used to play in this neighborhood when we were kids. She still lived in the house she’d grown up in, just a block from a secluded patch of ocean beach. We meandered through an old, worn trail that’d been there since the beginning of time until we hit the rocky coastline.

  I took long strides practically dragging her behind me.

  “Jesus, will you tell me what’s going on?” She pulled her hand from mine own and rooted herself on a slab of marbled granite.

  “Tell me what’s going on in that head.” I turned to her, all broad chest and false machismo. I wasn’t above a little friendly persuasion.

  “Nothing. Everything is fine.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me, Dillon.” I smoothed a hand across her cheekbone to cup her jaw. Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment before she shook her head, and my hand, away.

  “Don’t make me spank it out of you,” I murmured in her ear, running my tongue along the sensitive shell. A full body shudder washed through her.

  “No.”

  “Just tell me…if what you saw the other weekend wasn’t okay, I want to know.” My voice had lowered an octave. This meant something to me, I needed her to see that. Her locking me out gutted me.

  “No, I’m fine. I don’t care how you make your money, long as it’s not illegal.” She scrunched her nose and looked down the coast to the battered, barn-red lighthouse in the distance.

  “So what’s going on?” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  “Just stuff. Stress. I don’t want to involve you.”

  “Talking about it doesn’t make me involved, just lets you vent.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She turned and crossed her arms against the chilly spring air. I walked in step behind her before placing heavy palms on her shoulders.

  “Tell me, Dillon. Let me help you, or be there for you.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry if you thought it was about you.” She turned and glassy eyes caught mine.

  “It’s gonna be okay, babe.” I cupped both her cheeks in my palms and placed a delicate kiss on her nose.

  “Are you okay?” She pulled away and locked me in her gaze.

  “Yeah, other than you shutting me out, I’m great.” I shoved a hand in my pocket and made a mental note to bring a jacket for the both of us next time.

  “I guess I should have talked to you about the other weekend. I get the sense that you wanted to do those things to me. Fair assumption?”

  “Fair.” I nodded, afraid of the next words to come out of her mouth.

  “Well, I’m not sure I’m into that. It looks pretty fucking terrifying.”

  “It’s all about trust. I’ll never take you farther than you want to go.”

  She huffed and averted her hardened gaze. “I have issues with that.”

  “No shit,” I mumbled. Her eyes cut to mine. “I read you like a book, Dillon. You think I didn’t realize that you have trust issues when you can’t even look me in the eye when I’m inside you?” I ran a lock of her champagne hair between my callused fingers.

  She wrinkled her nose and looked out to white-capped waves crashing against grey stone.

  “I want to earn your trust.” I took a step closer.

  “Who says I want you to? I never asked you to. We were just messing around, Slade. If you hadn’t noticed, I mess around with a lot of people.”

  Red flames licked my vision. My fists clenched at my sides and every muscle in my body went rigid. “You still fucking around with other people?”

  “If I was?”

  “Christ, Dillon. I haven’t been with anyone since we started–”

  “Started what? Started fucking? I’m just the town slut. Down for a fun time, nothing more. Surprised one of your buddies didn’t warn you not to get involved with me.”

  “Oh, they did,” I grumbled, thinking back on Wild’s warning not to get wrapped up in Dillon. Too little, too late.

  She arched full eyebrows at me, gnawed her lips between her teeth until they turned winter white while anger flared in her indignant eyes. “Don’t come back to my house, Slade. Don’t fucking do it. From the beginning you’ve acted like you have some sort of caveman claim on me, why is that?” She nailed me with her pointer finger.

  “Because you’re mine,” I grunted as my entire body vibrated with anger. Strung tight like a rubber band. Why did she always do this to me? Let me in a little and then push me away?

  “Don’t fucking say that. Don’t you ever say that.” She turned, her blonde hair whipping in the wind and curling around her shoulders, storming off.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  Boy had that gone spectacularly wrong.

  “Still fucked up with Dillon, huh?” Wild took a long sip from his bottle.

  “Fuck off,” I gritted as I sunk the last ball in the pocket. “I won, pay up, you cheap cocksucker.” I held a hand out. Wild quirked his lips in a shit-eating grin and slapped a twenty in my palm.

  “You lost, why the fuck you look so happy?”

  “Something about you being all bitchy over a girl tickles my funny bone.” He stood and gathered the balls on the pool table for another game. “So, what’d she do?” he asked as he lined up the first shot.

  “It’s not what she did, I don’t think…” I gnawed the problem over in my head. “I took her to LUST.” I said the last word under my breath.

  “Well, shit.” His ball went off kilter with his shot. He stood and rested both wrists on his pool cue. “Didn’t take it well then, I assume?”

  “Guess not. I’m at a loss. I went to her place in the hopes of making some grand gesture and she shut down.”

  “Yeah, Dillon isn’t one for grand gestures.”

  “Little late for that head’s up.” I bent and aimed for a solid.

  “You want her back?” he asked with interest.

  “Problem is, I never had her. She said we were just fucking around.”

  “Well, I coulda told you that too.” He grinned and took another sip from his bottle.

  “You’re a wealth of information in hindsight, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged with a chuckle. “Play hard to get.”

  “I don’t do games, brother. You know that.”

  “Also probably why you’re thirty-two and still single.” His blue eyes glinted with amusement.

  “You’re such a fucker.”

  “Seriously. Dillon is more man than woman. Play to her baser instincts. Let her see you with someone else, the territorial bitch will come out to play. She’ll be all up on your dick.”

  “Really? That feels…”

  “Dishonest? It is, but means to an end, ya know?”

  “I was going to say like a bitch move, but dishonest too.”

  “Bitch move or not, man, I bet you it works.” He shrugged and lined up his shot after I missed my second ball.

  “So what? Ask someone out on a date and bring her here? I hate this already.” I ran a hand through my hair when I missed another ball.

  “Jesus. She has you acting like a chick. You usually smoke me.” He frowned at the pool table. “Gonna have to call Ridge if I want to play a decent game.” He rubbed at the scruff along his jaw.

  “Fuck off.” I took another shot, added extra power and sunk it with a thunk.

  “Ha, see, I just played you. You think I’d ever call my brother for a game of pool?”

  “Okay…” I pointed at him as realization dawned. “You’re an epic asshole, and I get your point. And I thought you and Ridge were bett
er?” I’d heard rumblings of Ridge sleeping with Mia, Wild’s one-time fiancé, but as far as I knew Wild and Ridge had worked it out, as best as something like that could be worked out, I guessed.

  “We are, we are. But still, ten foot pole, ya know?” He shrugged and I saw their history swirl in his ice blue eyes. He and his brother had been through a lot, some good, mostly bad. All not my business.

  “So, play games, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Like a bitch?”

  “Exactly.” Wild stood from his barstool. “And you sunk my ball, fucker, pay up.” He held his hand out.

  “What? I was distracted.”

  “By a chick. No excuse. I want my twenty back.”

  “Jesus, no wonder your bother said you were a douche.”

  His laugh boomed through the small pool room as I shoved the twenty back in his palm. He took a long swig of his beer and winked.

  “I don’t know why the fuck I even talk to you.”

  “Because I’m a wealth of information.”

  “In hindsight.”

  “Still better than what you got going on. Dillon! Beer!” He slammed his bottle on the table as he called for another round.

  I locked myself in my house for the rest of the weekend and thought over Wild’s words.

  Was I that guy? The douche that played women? I’d never thought so, but Wild…Wild had been a ladies’ man and now had it all. A gorgeous wife with two babies on the way. He had the life I’d been wanting through the latter part of my twenties up to now.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Dillon texted me once on Saturday morning and asked about talking to me later that night. I didn’t answer. For minutes, then hours, and before I knew it it’d been a whole day.

  At that point I realized the game had begun.

  Dillon was going to be mine, a means to an end. I’d bed her, wed her, and fuck the daylights out of her as I went.

  And she would love every minute.

  I waited a week. An entire week.

  I was following Wild’s cue. Appealing to baser instincts.

  I showed up at her house the following Sunday night.

  No flowers. No chocolates. No pretenses.

  I knocked on her door in worn jeans and a button-down shirt, open and swaying in the warm May breeze. She answered in cut-offs and a tank top.

  She had me undone. The plan nearly went straight out the window.

  “Hi.” The soft timbre of her voice called to my dick. Made my heart pound, as if every vein in my body was pulsing arousal straight between my legs.

  “Can I come in?” I ducked my head and hit her with a boyish half smile.

  Now or never, Slade. Now or fucking never.

  She nodded and stepped away. I walked in, brushing past her without making direct contact.

  “Sit.” She nodded and then ran her hands up and down her arms as if she was cold.

  “You okay?” I sat back in the kitchen chair, legs spread wide and relaxed, taking in her athletic form. Tight muscle, smooth, creamy skin that I wanted to trail my palms across.

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay work week?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You?” she replied.

  “Good.”

  “It’s been a while.” She stared at the pattern on the linoleum.

  “Yeah. Had some stuff to figure out.”

  “Oh,” she mumbled before finally seating herself in the chair beside me.

  “I’m just gonna lay it out for you, Dillon. I don’t do games. Not my style, never has been, and won’t ever be.”

  “Okay.” Confusion and a slice of anger burned in her eyes.

  “I told you I wanted to show you me.”

  “Yeah?” She twisted her long hair over one shoulder and fiddled with the ends.

  “Give me the night.”

  “The night?”

  “And tomorrow too.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her face twisted in disbelief.

  “Nope.” I tapped my fingers on the table and held her eyes.

  “So what does that mean? Give you tonight and tomorrow?”

  “It means let me have you. Just you and I here. In your place. We lock ourselves in and don’t come out.”

  “What, until we hash things out? There isn’t anything to hash out, Slade. I don’t do relationships, I really don’t. I’m not interested. You don’t do games, I don’t do long-term.”

  “I know. All I’m asking is one night.”

  “And a day.”

  “And a day.” A cocky grin lifted the side of my lips.

  “So what’s this night gonna consist of if we’re not hashing things out?”

  “Showing you the other side of me.”

  “Wasn’t that the plan in Portland?”

  “Yeah, but that was too much. Over the edge. I’ve learned my lesson.” I smiled again.

  “I feel like you’re talking in circles.” She frowned and then crossed one long leg over her knee. I gritted my teeth as my eyes ran up her body.

  “So that’s a ‘yes’ then?”

  “Fine. I have a thing tomorrow at three, but otherwise I’m yours.”

  “Good. Come on.” I stood and pulled her up by the elbow.

  “You’re all…handsy.”

  I threw my head back in a laugh as she tugged her arm away.

  “It’s not funny, you big ass.” She narrowed her eyes but I could see amusement sparkling.

  “Okay.” I placed a hand at the small of her back and guided her towards her bedroom.

  “Skipping right to the good stuff.” She reached a hand behind her and made a play for my dick.

  “Nuh-uh, antsy girl. Hands off tonight.”

  “What?” She turned and her face fell.

  “Don’t like that, huh?” I backed her against the wall just inside her room. “Want your hands on me? Want to touch me? Get me off?”

  “Maybe,” she murmured as her eyes fluttered closed. I took the moment of surprise and pulled the spaghetti straps of her tank down her shoulders and kissed along her collarbone, sucking at the hollow of her neck. My hands skimmed down her body to hook in the band of her shorts and tug them down. She kicked them off at her ankles before I pulled the tank to land on the floor with her shorts.

  “You’re fucking stunning,” I murmured as I stepped away for a minute and gazed at her naked curves on display.

  Her eyes opened and with arms crossed and feet shifting, she looked at me under hooded eyelids.

  “Slade…”

  “Does it make you uncomfortable that I’m looking at you. That I see you? That you can’t hide from me?”

  “Mmm…” she moaned and stepped to me.

  “Stay.” I held a hand out and pressed her against the wall. Her eyes flickered with irritation before she obeyed. “Good girl.” I ran a fingertip down the inside of her arm, over the slope of her breast to circle around a nipple. It puckered in the cool air before I moved on and circled her navel, then down to her pelvic bone.

  She sucked in a sharp breath when I dusted one finger along the damp lips of her pussy.

  “Do you like when I tell you what to do, Dillon?”

  “No.”

  “Sure? ‘Cause your pussy loves it.” I pushed a little deeper to gather more moisture. “This says so.” I held the glistening finger up for her to see in the evening light filtering through the window. A quiet groan escaped her lips and she sagged against the wall. “Does it make your knees weak?”

  “Yeah.” Soft words fell from soft lips.

  “Good. Go lie on the bed.”

  She licked her pink lips before taking tentative steps around me. “Don’t be afraid,” I murmured in her ear as she passed, catching the shell between my teeth.

  “Okay,” she said between thick swallows. I followed behind her before I bent her over the edge of the bed, her feet on the floor, hands stretched across the thick down comforter. My hands ran up her back, past her shoulder blades to graze over her elbows and l
ock in her palms. She clenched my hands tightly, nearly white-knuckled.

  She was terrified.

  “Like being open like this? Not knowing what I’m going to do next? Where I’m going?” My hands slid down her back, appreciating the dips and hollows before gripping her round ass cheeks. I pushed them together and pulled them apart, appreciating the fullness. She wiggled under my grip before relaxing again. “I’ll be right back.”

  I heard her suck in a ragged breath and fist at the bed covers.

  “Are you okay?” I ran soft fingertips over her thighs.

  “Yeah,” she croaked.

  “Deep breaths, baby.”

  Her head nodded for a moment before I turned and made my way to the kitchen.

  Slow breath in.

  Slow breath out.

  Slow breath in.

  Slow breath out.

  I repeated the chant in my head as I sucked in oxygen. Felt it fill my lungs to near bursting before releasing it again.

  My fingers clenched at the bedsheets as I shifted.

  Cool air filtered over my ass cheeks that had goosebumps erupting across my body.

  Where the fuck is he?

  What is he doing?

  This isn’t for me. I can’t handle it. No surprises. Never surprises.

  Deep breath in.

  Deep breath out.

  I clenched my eyes tightly, just like I always did when emotion, fear, and vulnerability bubbled to the surface. Sex was an escape for me, I didn’t want to live in the uncomfortable reality of men using my body to get off.

  This is Slade. He’s okay. He’s not using you. He’d never hurt you.

  I huffed and blew the hair out of my eyes as I heard soft footsteps coming down the hallway.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Here.

  “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”

  “Please…” I squirmed, unsure of what I was begging for.

  “Please what?” The bed dipped and I felt warm breath whisper along the heated skin of my back, caressing every knob of my spine before curling around my neck in a warm embrace.

  “I don’t know,” I murmured as unknown tears filled my eyes. I blinked them shut, held them tight, as if hanging on to the rebellious leaking water would help me maintain my control. My sanity.