Page 56 of Dahlia Made A List

Her knee bumped against my leg. I wrapped my hand around her thigh and pulled her half over me. “Settle down and watch this thing.”

She flopped down until the side of her head rested against my shoulder, and muttered low, “Could watch it better if you read this part.”

Shame moved over me like a mist, a polluted film coating every inch of my skin. A fog that had shadowed me for years, but never as threatening as tonight. A low-hanging cloud I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t read the crawling words on the screen.

I couldn’t fucking read.

I’d called what happened up on the mountain “just a fuck” but then proceeded to spend the day with her. Letting her think I was normal. Whole. Letting myself think I was normal.

Did I need a clearer picture of why I had no business messing around with her? Dahlia wasn’t fuckin’ around with her list. She’d started it to make changes, to cure her bad choices, she said. So she would make good decisions and break bad habits. So she could have the family she’d only had glimpses of with her friend Jaelynn, but yearned for with heart-wrenching passion.

As much as I was drawn to her, getting in any deeper would be a mistake. The fire in her eyes, the determination guiding her journey, proved too seductive. I wouldn’t be the one to hold her back.

Just a fuck.The reminder burned, a scorch of lightning I couldn’t ignore.

She’d seen the way my family treated me. While she didn’t know the reason, their contempt had to have been clear. She wouldn’t want to bring that kind of torment into her own life. Subject her future kids to derision and heartbreak.

Just a fuck.

She’d opened that door when she let me inside her at the yurt. The List didn’t mean me, she’d said. What had that meant, anyway? She’d never clarified. She’d fucked me again this morning, no more said. And here she lay, curled up along my side like a fuckin’ gift.

I smoothed my hand along the bare skin of her thigh, silky smooth and deceptively strong. She snuggled closer, splayed her palm over my chest and even through the fabric of my shirt, her warmth reached me. The heat of her palm seeped past my skin, dug deep to find the ember inside me with her name on it and fanned the damn thing to life.

I threaded my fingers through her hair, the pinks and golds muted in the dark of the night, but the strands streaming through my hands like silk. She tilted her pretty face toward me, eyes on me, the hint of a smile curving her lips. A little tug on her leg and she abandoned any semblance of watching the movie and settled into my lap.

Touching her, I could forget about the movie, too. With my hand still lodged in her hair, I pulled her head down and the trembling sigh that slipped past her lips convinced me I could forget about words and difficult families and lists and a future just out of reach.

Her hands feathered over my shoulders before lacing her fingers into the hair at the back of my head. I dipped down to taste skin along the stubborn line of her jaw, to trace my tongue up to the sweet curve of her ear. “Think we’ve seen all we need to see of the movie, yeah?”

She mumbled something, and my lips kicked up and I had to taste her mouth again. I slid both hands into her hair, the light of the enormous movie screen limning her body, shimmering in her hair. I held an angel in my arms.

Then she grinned, wicked and silly and inviting all at once and no fucking wonder I was one confused son of a bitch.

“We’re gonna do it in the back of my El Camino at the drive-in, huh, Wyatt?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, sucking in a breath full of her honeysuckle scent and night air. “Your list?”

She rolled her lips together and splayed her hand along the bristles of my beard, her thumb sweeping a line along my cheek. “My list is fine. You’re different.”

For a flash of an instant, irritation clashed with desire. The drive to fuck against the need to protect this precious woman. While the two needs battled, she leaned down and put her lips on mine and the time to change my mind was gone.

I kissed her hard. Every cell in my body wanted to keep on kissing her. Forever and longer. Just her soft lips open against mine, her sweet tongue teasing and welcoming. Her fingers slipped down my chest, tugging my T-shirt up and I let her go only long enough to lose it over the side of the car. Her nothing tank disappeared in the next instant, her bra followed and then I had her tits in my hands and her sighs in my ears.

“Perfect fucking tits.”

She sighed, pleasure curling around her words. “You think so?”

I sucked her nipple into my mouth, flicking my tongue against the tight little nub. “Perfect.”

I slid my hand down over her ass, skated along the bare skin of her back and the band of her cut-offs. “Lose these, yeah?”

She shoved up and off my lap, the cold of her absence hitting my chest like a freezing blast. Standing between my outstretched legs, she shimmied her hips and wiggled free of the tiny shorts and the pink strip of lacy underwear. I could just make out her grin as she looked down at me, a goddess, an angel, a treasure I had no business dirtying with my ignorant hands.

“C’mon, Wy.” She plopped her hands on her bare hips. “Your turn.”

As though my hands had a mind of their own, I had my jeans unfastened and shucked off to the side in a second flat and my hand held up to draw her back down into my lap.

She sank back to where she belonged, my hands greedy over her supple skin. I relished the feel of her under my fingers, the weight of her in my lap, the press of her hands on my chest. Thunder pounded in my ears, need rising up like a beast inside me. My dick heavy and hard as a fucking pipe between us.

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