by Amber Rides
“Sorry, PC.” But his smile was as wide as his face.
“PC? Now you’re shortening my nickname?”
“Seemed like the next logical step in our relationship. And PC…I can’t help but tease you.”
I rolled my eyes. “And why’s that?”
“You’re just such an easy target.”
“I am not.”
He dipped his finger in the flour and very quickly marked my forehead with an X.
“See?” he said. “Even says so on your face.”
“Hey!”
I scooped up a finger-full of the strawberry sauce.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned.
“Or what?”
“Or else.”
“Brace yourself for an imminent strawberry attack.”
He grinned. “You realize your offense is useless if you’ve warned your prey, right? The mighty lion doesn’t announce itself to the gazelle.”
“So you’re a gazelle?”
“That is not what I said.”
“That’s what I heard.”
I drew my hand back, but the rattle of the door handle made both of us freeze.
“Shit,” Ridley hissed. “That’s Ronaldo.”
“The mean boss?”
“Yes!”
“How do you know it’s him?”
“He’s the only other person with a key.”
“What’re we going to do?”
“Hide!”
He grabbed my hand and yanked me across the kitchen to a heavy door, opened it, then pulled me inside an ice cold room.
We huddled against a wall of chilly boxes, waiting. Heavy boots stomped across the tiled floor, but from where we stood, the sound was muffled.
“What’s he doing?” I whispered.
I was so close to him that my back vibrated against his chest when I spoke.
“Wondering how the hell those tiny tarts made themselves,” he whispered back.
A giggle burst from my mouth and his hand shot up to cover it. His palm was warm under my lips and I had to fight off a little gasp at how good it felt.
“If you promise not to laugh,” Ridley said right in my ear. “I’ll let you go.”
Very slowly – because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I really wanted him to let me go – I nodded my head.
His hand loosened its grip on my mouth and slid down my shoulder, then my arm. At last, his palm found the back of my hand. His fingers snuck between mine, marking the soft flesh there with electricity. It shot through me. It warmed my skin and settled in every sensitive part of my body.
I shivered.
“You cold?” Ridley asked.
His voice was thick and close to my ear and suddenly I was anything but cold.
I shifted a little, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. When I turned, we were just inches apart. I tipped my head up in an attempt to meet his gaze. It was a mistake. In the relative darkness of the tiny room, the only thing that stood out was the stormy color of his irises. And now both his hands were in mine, laced together just like they belonged there.
Oh, God.
I let out a breath, and it steamed a little between us.
“Where are we?” I murmured, hoping the sound of my own voice would snap me out of it.
“Fridge,” he said back, his eyes on my lips.
“It’s small.”
“Funny. Until now, I’ve always thought it was an impressive size.”
He drew my arms up and draped them over his shoulders. Ridley’s hands slid to my waist, possessive and demanding.
I needed to pull away. I needed to tell him no. Right that second.
But there was a snap from outside and Ridley flew into me, pinning me to the metal door. The door shook behind me.
His boss is trying to get in, I realized.
The tighter Ridley gripped the door handle, the harder he pressed against me. He reached around me and flicked the internal lock shut. But he didn’t let me go.
My heart thudded in my chest and it had very little to do with any consequences that might come as a result of getting caught.
“Doesn’t he have a key?” I whispered.
Slowly, Ridley shook his head.
There was a final rumble behind me and then the door went still.
Ridley’s thumb came up and touched the corner of my lips.
“Bit of strawberry. Right. Here,” he said softly.
Automatically, I licked away the sauce. Ridley didn’t move though, and when my tongue darted out, it hit the pad of his thumb and my mouth sizzled.
“Missed,” he told me.
He dragged his thumb sideways across my lips. When he’d swept away the last traces of strawberry, he brought his thumb to his own mouth and gave it a sensuous suck.
The gesture made my knees so weak that if Ridley hadn’t been holding me up, I might’ve collapsed to the ground. As it was, his arm was around my waist and he kept me from sliding down.
But his next move sent me over the edge.
Ridley took the thumb he’d just tasted and put it back on my lower lip. He dragged it open, traced my teeth with it, and then put it to his own mouth once again.
It turned me from a somewhat-in-control girl to a mindless puddle of wanton need.
I took a gasping breath. My hands, which were still positioned around Ridley’s shoulders, were now holding on for dear life.
Either he sensed I was about to fall, or he had a need of his own, because in a move that made me glad I’d seen exactly how much he could bench press, he lifted me from the ground and pressed me to the door.
“Oh!” My little exclamation barely made it out before Ridley tipped his head down and sealed his lips to mine.
His exploration of my mouth was anything but casual. Anything but gentle. He nipped and tugged, and his tongue dove in and teased relentlessly. When he pulled away, it was only so he could run his face along my throat. The stubble on Ridley’s chin rubbed the skin of my throat. I ached to have it rub elsewhere.
I arched underneath him, forcing his face down.
He trailed kisses along the open edges of my shirt, widening the gap and exposing the top of my bra. His tongue traced the lace and my nipples came to sweet, painful attention.
My legs closed around his hips instinctively. He thrust forward and my shorts, which had seemed almost too short before, now formed a frustrating barrier between us. He thrust again and the shorts slid over, just enough that I could feel his erection press into my more-than-damp underwear.
Ridley ground against me and the circular motion was almost too much to bear. Heat rose between my thighs.
Why hadn’t a worn a dress? Why had I bothered with underwear? Why did –
“More, baby?”
Why did he have to use that word?
Any other and I might not have been able to form the command that came out next.
“Stop!”
Chapter Eleven
Ridley
If it hadn’t been for the force with which Brenna said the word, I might’ve thought she was kidding. Teasing me.
Even through my pants, I could feel the slickness between her legs. I knew her heart was beating as quickly as mine and her eagerness was apparent in the way she gripped my neck and the way she gasped with each kiss.
I wanted nothing as badly as I wanted to undo those two snaps on her shirt and to unfasten her bra and push those shorts to her ankles.
“Stop,” she said again, this time a little more softly, but with no less certainty.
I eased away from her and she slid to the ground. I stepped back, set to be pissed off. When I put a bit of space between us, I saw that her face had crumpled and whatever typical guy, asshole thing I’d been about to say died in my throat.
“What’s wrong, Pancake?”
“I’m sorry. I just…” She shook her head like she couldn’t quite finish her sentence.
“Hey. It’s all right. We don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomf
ortable,” I told her, well aware that I sounded like a high school cliché.
“No. It’s not that. It’s…Have you ever done something you know you’re going to regret for the rest of your life?”
“Every weekend for the first seventeen years of my life.”
“Ridley…”
I shot her a crooked smile. “I refuse to believe kissing me is something you’re going to regret for the rest of your life.”
“It’s not. And I don’t want it to be. But I’m not talking about us. Not directly anyway.”
I nudged her shoulder. “So…You regret the kiss indirectly?”
She still didn’t smile back. “Has one of those things you regretted ever had a different consequence? One so amazing you wouldn’t take back the mistake itself because if you hadn’t made it in the first place…you wouldn’t get that fantastic thing, too?”
I ran a hand over my head, carefully considering her words. God knew I was a guy with a helluva past. Girls and fights and fucking up at every opportunity. I didn’t dwell on it too badly. I refused to. My past made me who I was; the bad parts of my life were the building blocks of who I was at that very moment. That didn’t mean there weren’t a few things I wouldn’t undo if I could.
I had a feeling that wasn’t what Brenna was talking about, though.
“Why don’t you give me an example?” I suggested.
“You remember the night of your housewarming?” she asked without meeting my eyes.
A dark feeling settled in my heart at her words, and I paused for several moments before answering. When I did speak, I couldn’t keep the tinge of resentment from my voice.
“I thought we were pretending that didn’t happen.”
This time, the long pause was hers. “For the sake of right now…Let’s pretend only parts of it happened.”
“Less regret that way?”
She ignored my tone, and looked down at her hands as she spoke in a stilted way. “That was the day of my mom’s funeral. It was…I don’t want to say a sad day…But it was a hard one. Mostly because I thought I’d said goodbye years before. I spent so much time hating her that I wasn’t expecting to love her in the end.”
Yes. That was a kind of regret I could understand.
She finally brought her gaze to mine, and the pain in her eyes set off every one of my protective instincts. I wanted to pull her into my arms, to soothe away whatever regret she had, and to make sure she never had another. Except I thought that might make it worse.
She turned a pleading look my way. “Does that make any kind of sense?”
“It makes perfect sense, PC. Death is hard. It’s confusing. It makes you angry and sad and bitter and I think with only a month and half of grieving behind you, you’re being amazingly strong.”
“I feel weak,” she admitted softly.
“If your mom’s death didn’t made you sad, that’s when I’d be worried. It’s weak to let hate consume you. It requires a lot more strength to admit you care than it does to pretend you don’t.”
“I really hated her some of the time, Ridley. While she was alive, anyway. She made the first eighteen years of my life complete hell. When she wasn’t telling me I would never become anything more than a used-up piece of trash, she was busy telling me I already was piece of used-up trash. She did drugs and she stole money from me and chose her men over me, every time. So I have some trust issues. And some self-esteem issues. And I’m wondering…Can we be friends, Ridley?” she asked awkwardly.
“Friends?”
It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t even close.
Except I was damned sure if I said no, we couldn’t be friends, that she’d stop talking to me altogether. And the thought made my chest burn.
Christ, Ridley. You’d barely spoken to her before two days ago. And now you can’t live without her?
Her next words made me shove down the critical voice.
“I feel like I can trust you, even if I can’t trust myself,” she said. “And I could really use a friend.”
“We are friends, Pancake. And you can trust me.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove it?”
She nodded. Any other girl might’ve been trying to be cute, or trying to manipulate the situation. Instinctively, I knew that wasn’t the case with Brenna. She genuinely wanted me to offer her some kind of proof that she could trust me.
I took a breath and grabbed her hand, palm-to-palm, careful to ensure it was a friendly gesture rather than a romantic one.
“When my own mom died, I lost my shit, Pancake. I mean, I’d never been a good kid, or an easy kid or a Little League champ. And she wasn’t going for mom-of-the-year, either, but once she was gone, all I could do was wish she was still alive so I could talk to her one more time.”
Brenna squeezed my hand. “I know exactly how that feels. In the last month and a half, I’ve visited my mom’s grave more times than I saw her in the last four years. Every time something hurts, I go there, to that cemetery and I talk to her in a way that I could never talk to her while she was alive. And the thing is, Ridley…”
“What?”
“It brings me right back to what happened that night at your house five weeks ago. And back to Ian.”
I forced myself to keep from drawing my hand away from hers and up into a fist. “And back to the regret.”
She finally smiled, and it was sad enough to fill my heart with cracks. “That night. My mom’s death. Ian…They’re tied so closely together that I can’t separate the two. Not even for a minute.”
I saw it. I didn’t want to, but I did. She’d hung her hopes on Ian. Going in any other direction would be like admitting her mom had been right about her all along.
“I have to ask, though,” I said softly. “What if he’s not the one to help you do it?”
“I don’t know. I just know I have to try.”
The sincerity in her voice made me close my eyes and say something I was sure I was going to regret.
“I’ll help you.”
“You will?”
“Yes. But I’m going to have a condition to this deal.”
“Other than no hugging?”
I opened my eyes. “Three dates.”
Brenna frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ll help you get three dates with Ian. If he hasn’t rocked your world by the end of the dates…You’ll give up.”
“No one can fall in love in three dates!” she argued.
“Of course they can.”
“It’s happened to you?”
“No. Not yet anyway.”
“See?”
“It’s plenty of time. Hell. Three hours is plenty of time.”
“That’s practically love at first sight.”
“You don’t believe in love at first sight?”
“I thought I did.”
“What happened?”
Her cheeks were pink. “Nothing.”
I studied her face. “That’s a lie. But my condition remains the same.”
“Fine, I agreed.”
“Good.”
I stuck out my hand. “Shake on it.”
Her fingers closed over mine and I pretended touching her didn’t affect me at all.
Chapter Twelve
Ridley
I powered through finishing up the batch of turnovers with as little conversation as possible, dodged the boss, and then drove Brenna home. I left her with the promise that I’d be in touch about Ian. When I was sure she was inside, I drove around the block, parked the truck, and made my way back to my house.
It would make me late, but I had to do what I had to do. For Brenna.
I found Ian in his usual spot on the couch, still in his sweats.
“Five thousand, eight hundred and three dollars,” I stated, aware that there was a little too much force behind my words.
“Huh?”
“And eighty-five cents,” I added.
Ian blinked dumbly.
&nb
sp; “That is exactly how much you owe me in back rent, cash for food, and borrowed-it-for-random-shit money. At least since I started counting ten months ago.”
“You want it now?”
“No, you asshole. I know you haven’t got it.”
“So…You’re kicking me out?”
“Sometimes, I wish I could.” I shook my head. “But I made a few promises to your mother when she took me in. No more fights at school. Easy. No more drinking and driving. Fine. No stupid shit, period. I do what I can. Always looking out for you? Hardest thing I’ve ever done. But don’t worry. Your ass is safe here.”
“I don’t get it.”
“We’re going to start fresh. You’re going to pay me on time from here on out. You’re going to get a real job by the end of the month. You’re going to keep it. And I’m going to forgive your financial debt.”
Ian’s eyes finally cleared. “You’re serious?”
“As serious as I’ve ever been. But I want you to do something in exchange.”
“Sure, cuz. Whatever you need.”
“You are going to go out with her.”
“Who?”
“Don’t fuck around, Ian. I’m not in the mood. You’re going to go out with Brenna.”
“I am?”
“You are. Three dates. No more, no less.”
“Three?”
“Stop repeating everything I say. Take. Her. Out,” I commanded.
“Listen, man. You know I never mind doing you favors…”
“So what’s the problem now?”
“You told me she was hands-off. Like two days ago. Right here, just like this, with the same somebody’s-gonna-get-shanked expression on your face.”
“I changed my mind.”
“This doesn’t feel right,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to marry her, Ian,” I replied. “I just want you to go out with her a few times.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even care. Make her believe you want her. Then make her believe she doesn’t want you back.”
“How the fuck do I do that?”
“Just do whatever dumb shit you normally do that scares off the nice ones.”
Ian cracked one of his obnoxious grins. “I don’t do dumb shit to chase away the nice ones. I just don’t date ’em in the first place.”