Meant For You: Rocktown Ink, Book 3

by Gray, Sherilee

  Then I felt him dip his head, and he breathed in deep, his chest expanding. Had he just sniffed me?

  His mouth moved back to my ear. “You smell good.”

  Yep, he’d just sniffed me. My heart was beating hard enough to make me feel out of breath. Did dancing with me like this, crossing off one of the things on my list, mean he was going to give me what I wanted? “So do you,” I managed. “Smell good, I mean.”

  He leaned back, and his eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them.

  I blinked up at him, trying to see the old Dane, the boy, but again it struck me how much he’d changed. He wasn’t there, not one trace of him. Dane was a man now, a damaged, protective, talented…beautiful man.

  And my best friend.

  What did he see when he looked at me? Did he see the scared, heartbroken girl or did he see the woman I’d become?

  I wanted to know the answer to that so badly I almost said it out loud.

  He huffed out a breath and pulled me back in. “You were always beautiful, but now…shit,” he said roughly. “Every fucker in this bar wants a piece of you, baby girl.”

  Baby girl.

  He’d started calling me that when I was twelve.

  I laughed and shook my head, pulling back to look up at him again. “You’re seeing things. No one’s looking at me.”

  His hand slid higher, fingers going deeper into my hair. “You’re every guy in this room’s wet dream, Eves, and I want to poke their fucking eyes out.”

  What about you? The thought took me by surprise. I ignored it and shook the ridiculous thought from my head, grinning up at him. “I think you wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to me.”

  He’d always been that way, like he held me on this higher plane. Like I was something special, untouchable, something precious to be protected. His words didn’t come from a place of desire for me. No, it was that fierce instinct to protect me, that’s all.

  The same thing inside him that had him driving to Rutherford and doing what he had, attacking a boy who’d planned to hurt me.

  “Nah, you’re perfect,” he said.

  Sometimes I thought he truly believed that. “Far from it.” If he kept seeing me as some breakable, untouchable thing, nothing would ever change. I’d be stuck in that role created for me by everyone else. A role I was sick of playing.

  His gaze moved over my face. “You are to me.”

  What could I say to that? “See? Rose-colored glasses.” I was determined to show him I wasn’t so perfect, even if it killed me.

  “You got something going on with Tanner?” he said roughly against my ear.

  I stilled, but he kept moving. “Um…no? I mean, we went on a date, and it…didn’t go well.” And I’d been kind of hoping he’d ask me out again despite bleeding all over his truck. But I kept that part to myself.

  “So…what?” Dane said low. “That’s who you want to practice dating for?”

  Maybe. Though I thought it might be a lost cause now. “He seemed nice.”

  Dane grunted, and I rested my head back on his chest.

  Something hard brushed my ear, and I jerked back and looked up at him. “Are your nipples pierced?”

  He chuckled and nodded.

  “Both of them?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pulled me back against him, and I tried to control the urge to yank up his shirt and take a closer look. We stayed like that until the song ended.

  I wished it hadn’t.

  When I lifted my head again, Lila and Riff were beside us. My friend’s face was flaming red, and Riff was looking down at her with that same wolfish expression.

  I took her hand, trying to control my own racing heart, and headed back to the bar. The guys followed us.

  We stayed and danced, with the guys watching on, until the band finished just after one in the morning. I noticed Dane had stopped drinking after we arrived. When the last song ended, I made my way back to him.

  “You want a ride home?” he said.

  Lila’s sister lived in Rocktown and we were going to crash at her place, but being alone with Dane would give me the chance to find out what he’d decided about my dating lessons.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “It’s an hour round trip.”

  Dane shrugged. “I’ll crash at Cal’s.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Lila decided to go to her sister’s, so we all climbed into Dane’s truck, sans Riff who stood on the street watching us.

  “See you later, Bambi,” he called, making my friend blush all over again.

  Dane muttered something and drove her to her sister’s, then we headed for Springhaven.

  “So what’s it like back in the shop?” I said when we’d been driving a few minutes.

  “Yeah, good. Kind of weird, but good, you know?”

  “You liked where you were in Black Stone?”

  He glanced over at me. “Yeah, they taught me a lot.”

  “And pierced your nipples,” I said and laughed even as my belly fluttered thinking about them.

  Stop it.

  This is Dane. You’re not allowed to get flutters over him.

  He chuckled. “Nah, I did those before I left Rocktown.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Didn’t tickle, that’s for fucking sure.” He grinned. “Why? You want yours done?”

  My face started burning almost instantly, especially since all I could think about was how mine had been all over him earlier. “Hard pass.”

  He laughed. “Loads of girls get them.”

  “One of your girlfriends?” I said before I could stop myself.

  He shrugged. “A couple, though girlfriend’s too strong a word.”

  That sounded about right. Dane liked to keep his options open. He was not a one-woman kind of man. I was sure it made him an excellent lover, but yeah, not boyfriend material.

  I shifted in my seat. The thought of him with someone else made me kind of nauseous. “You didn’t have a girlfriend in Black Stone?”

  Do you really want to know the answer to that? No, you do not.

  “No one serious.” He glanced at me. “You?” His nostrils flared and his chest expanded sharply. “Any boyfriends?”

  “No, not since I moved here.”

  “You were seeing someone while you lived with your aunt?”

  Damn, why did I bring up girlfriends? This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “Not really.” I bit my lip.

  “What does that mean?” he said too sharply. “I thought you didn’t have any experience?”

  Dammit. “I said I didn’t have much experience, not none. You know what my aunt’s like. I couldn’t exactly date anyone until I moved here.”

  “So you…what?” he asked, glancing at me again, grip on the steering wheel so tight his knuckles looked white.

  We’d already established that Dane was no virgin—far from it. There was no reason for me to keep my past a secret. We were friends. Friends talked about this stuff, right? And if I wanted him to agree to my request, I needed to let him know what he was working with.

  Also, I’d had to put up with the knowledge of him and other girls for years. It wouldn’t hurt to give him a taste of his own medicine. Yes, we were only friends, but he wasn’t the only one who felt territorial at times.

  And it was an opportunity to let him know I wasn’t the perfect, untouchable thing he saw me as. “There was a guy on the ranch next to my aunt’s. We hooked up occasionally.”

  “What?” The truck jerked to the left before Dane quickly straightened up. “You and some guy hooked up? When? Where? How often?”

  Wow. Okaaaay. “Did you think I was some innocent little virgin? I’m nearly twenty-two years old.”

  “No,” he said too quickly. His fingers tightened on the wheel again. “But you want dating lessons. I assumed…” He stopped whatever he was going to say and glanced at me. “Did he pressure you or something? What’s his name?”

  Honestly, it was like h
e saw me as Barbie’s pathetic redheaded cousin, the collectable edition. Perfect, but not to be played with, the “box” to remain unopened. And yeah, a smooth piece of plastic where my vagina was supposed to be. Like I wasn’t even a real girl. “Seriously? I’m not some perfect thing, Dane. I like sex as much as the next person.”

  “You really fucked this guy?” he said, brows dropping low.

  Now I was just getting irritated. “Yes, we had sex. We’d meet in a barn on my aunt’s property and…well, I’m sure you don’t need me to go into detail since you’re more than familiar with the act.”

  “He the only one?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing…I just…”

  “What?”

  He cursed.

  “Yes, he was the only one, not that it matters or is any of your business. He took my virginity. It was awkward and messy. I cried a little. He was sweet and kind. We slept together a handful of times after that, then he went to college. We’re still friends, and he texts me sometimes. There. Satisfied?”

  “You cried?” he bit out. “He made you cry?”

  Out of everything I’d just said, that was what he picked up on. “Have you ever had sex with a virgin?”

  His gaze darted to me then back to the road. “No.”

  “Well, everyone’s different. For some girls it’s a nonevent, no biggie, and for others there can be some pain. For me it was the latter, and it was also kind of emotional. He didn’t make me cry.” I shrugged. “He was just my first.”

  “It hurt? Was emotional for you?”

  “Well, yeah.” Mainly because, as nice as Martin was, he wasn’t who I’d thought my first time would be with.

  I shoved that thought ruthlessly from my mind. I didn’t want a romantic relationship with Dane—I didn’t. I just wanted him to teach me his mad sex skills. That was all.

  When he didn’t say anything more, I looked over at him.

  His jaw was tight, a muscle under his eye twitching.

  Unbelievable.

  Chapter Six

  Dane

  He was just my first.

  Some guy had fucked my girl in a barn and made her cry. The experience was emotional. I hated that story, every part of it.

  “Are you really angry right now? Seriously?” she said.

  You’re making shit worse. Cool it the hell down.

  “Someone hurts you, I get pissed,” I said, because that was the truth and all the other things flying around my head needed to stay right the hell there.

  She reached over and curled her fingers around my forearm. “Dane, he didn’t hurt me. He was gentle and considerate.”

  Bullshit. “He get you off?”

  I wanted to bang my head on the steering wheel as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Why the fuck had I said that? I didn’t want to know the answer to that. But then, Everly had been the one to take us there, hadn’t she? That’s the kind of shit I’d need to know if I was going to do what she wanted.

  She was quiet several very long seconds. I glanced over, and she was looking at her fingers curled in her lap.

  Shit. “I’ll take that as a no,” I said.

  “Not everyone can orgasm during sex,” she said, eyes now trained straight ahead.

  I snorted. Which was extremely dickish of me, but I was fucked if I could stop.

  Her gaze shot to me. “I hate to break this to you, Casanova, but if every girl you’ve slept with—and I know the number is vast—has wailed like a fire siren as soon as Little Dane made an appearance, at least some of them were faking it. It takes more than just wiggling it around a few times. Or do you have a magic penis?”

  I choked. “Little Dane? Wiggling it around? Fucking hell, no wonder you didn’t get off. Did this fuckwit even try?”

  “Of course he did!”

  “Okay, you’re right, not all girls can get off from fucking alone. They need more than just a dick, which is why I make sure the women I’m with get off first. It’s not fun if we’re both not enjoying it. This guy, he sounds like a selfish asshole to me.”

  “He was not.”

  I hated that she was defending this dickhead. “Babe, if you have to go home afterward and finish yourself off, there’s something wrong.”

  She said nothing, the cab of the truck going deathly silent. I glanced over at her again and she was bright red.

  Fuck. That’s exactly what she’d done.

  I needed to cut out my own tongue and get it over with. I also needed to scrub my brain, because I had no business having the image I did playing on a loop in my head.

  I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make it groan. “Shit, I’m sorry for being a dick, Eves. I just…I guess I’m territorial when it comes to you,” I said, going for honesty. “I know it’s fucked up and twisted.” I rubbed at the pain behind my sternum. “It’s like I hate that the fucker touched you, because I want to protect you from everything and everyone, but I also hate that he didn’t do you right, because you deserve that.” I glanced over at her again. “Does that make any sense whatsoever?”

  The cab was shadowed, making her eyes look darker. “I get it, but at the same time, you’ve been out of my life a long time, Dane. You can’t just walk back in and be this way. If we’re going to be friends again, you need to respect the fact that there are boundaries.”

  We’d never had them before. None. And the night before, her boundaries had included asking me to teach her to fuck.

  Shit, I knew my possessiveness was a problem. It always had been, which was why I stayed away for so long, but I thought I had it somewhat under control now. Obviously not.

  But then we’d come from a fucked-up place. Two terrified kids clinging to each other. I’d spent almost every night in that foster home too afraid to go to sleep, that if I closed my eyes, one of Wayne’s drunk friends would come and try and get to Eves. That they’d snatch her out of my bed. I saw the way they looked at her. Heard the shit they said when they were drunk.

  The shit they did when they had parties at the house.

  I’d been everything to her, in a seriously messed-up way. Brother, father, protector, best friend, and I was only fourteen fucking years old. I lived off nervous energy, constantly on edge, worried if I dropped my guard even once, let her out of my sight, they’d take her, they’d hurt her, or worse.

  It skewed shit, the way I saw Everly, the way I treated her, until I took it too far and I’d known I needed to back off before I hurt her.

  And in the process, I’d hurt her even more.

  “I’m finding my way with you, Eves. Trying to get to a middle ground, you know? But I’m struggling,” I said, giving her more honesty.

  “I know. And we’ll get there. But I need you to trust me…and I need you to stop treating me like I’m some delicate thing that will fracture if someone looks at me wrong. I’m not that little girl anymore.”

  Yeah, I knew that, and that was another thing that I was struggling with. The girl sitting beside me was far from the skinny little girl curled against me in the dark, relying on me to keep her safe. She was a woman, a fucking gorgeous, funny, confident woman. So beautiful my gut ached looking at her.

  “You think me teaching you how to get some asshole off is going to make this any less complicated?” I asked.

  When I looked at her, I saw them both—the girl and the woman. They both looked back at me, and that made it so damned hard to let go of that role I’d taken in her life. So hard.

  “I know this sounds…weird, but I think it’ll put us on a more even footing, and I think it’ll stop you from looking at me like I’m perfect. I’m going to date—I’m going to do a whole lot of things—without you, Dane. But I’d rather do it going in with confidence. I’ve felt…God, weak, afraid, lost, so often in my life, in so many situations. I don’t want whoever I date to see me that way, too. I want them to see me as confident and sexy. And there’s no one else I trust more to show me how to be that, wit
hout judgment or ridicule, than you.”

  I glanced at her, gut in knots, and I forced myself to say what I’d been desperate to know since she told me what she wanted. “What are you actually asking for here, Eves? You want me to…touch you, show you…or am I just relaying my greatest hits, telling you what I like, what gets me off?”

  “I think touching…like that, could make things way more complicated. You’re my best friend, Dane, even after everything. I don’t think anything could destroy that. But I don’t want to risk ruining what we’re trying to get back. If you really don’t want to do it, maybe you can help me find someone else? Someone you trust to help me?”

  Like fuck. No motherfucking way.

  I was going to do it.

  There was no way I could say no to her after that, and she fucking knew, too.

  We arrived at the ranch, and I walked her to her room off the barn, trying to work out what the hell to do next.

  “Do you want to come in? We could watch a movie on my laptop. I don’t think I could sleep.”

  “Sure.” There was no way I was sleeping with everything we’d said on the drive there flying around my head, but if I was doing this with her—and I was, even if it was just taking her out and talking about fucking—we were taking it slow.

  I was in no hurry to see her with some guy, dating some prick, and knowing she was using the moves I’d taught her to get the asshole off.

  She switched the light on, and I followed her in. The room was an okay size once you were in it. It had a decent-sized built-in closet, and there was a bathroom off to the side.

  Eves had her bed at the far end up against the wall and a small couch down from that. There was also a bookshelf full of books on the opposite wall, which didn’t surprise me. Everly had always loved to read.

  “Nice setup.”

  She smiled over at me. “Cassy offered me the guesthouse or to stay in the ranch house with them, but I didn’t like the idea of rattling around in that house on my own, and I didn’t want to invade their private space either. I like it out here.” She motioned to the bathroom. “I’m going to wash my face and get changed. The laptop’s on the bed. Why don’t you pick something?”