Page 13 of Crave

Our mouths met in a kiss that tasted of cherries and sugar, of woodsmoke and sex, and as his hand fisted in my hair, the ache between my legs grew to a desperate hum. Raw moonlust surged in my blood, the image rising unbidden of Dallas in front of me on his knees, sucking a hot trail of kisses down past my navel, then splaying me out over the counter and showing me just what nine years had done for him downstairs.

Dallas growled, hand tightening possessively at the back of my neck.

Yeah. Pretty sure he’d just seen the gist of that.

Yanking up his shirt, I kissed a path up the hot skin of his throat, panting when he tore it off and moved back over me, muscles flexed and chest bare. I’d seen Dallas half-dressed plenty of times on pack hunts, nights where I’d tried not to stare as he pulled off his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face and smoothed back the loose strand of hair that always fell past his ear from the knot at the back of his head, giving him a striking resemblance to Thor. Not that I’d noticed. Really.

He half lifted me onto the counter, pressing into my center so I could feel how hard and ready he was.

“Just. Like. That,” I groaned, nails digging into his back.

I shivered as he lifted my tank top away, his hands warming my bare skin. With a growl, Dallas pushed me back onto the counter, ravaging my mouth, the two of us grinding like teenagers. His lips and teeth grazed the column of my throat, pulse slamming in his veins, and I realized in a dizzying rush that he wanted to bite me, fuck me, mark me.

“Do it,” I rasped, head tipping back, offering him my throat.

Growling, he pressed his mouth to my pulse point, soft hot lips tasting sensitive flesh, and with a gasp, I came. Dallas threw his head back, teeth gritted.

My wolf arched in my bones, the primal part of me responding to the heat radiating off his skin, the fire raging in his blood as I watched him release. I’d never seen him like this, so close to losing control, his wolf barely caged. And I wanted him just like this. Raw. Hard. Unleashed.

“What are we doing?” he whispered against my throat.

Instantly my stomach shriveled, that morning from almost two months ago when I’d confronted Ethan rushing back.

Look, we said up front this was just casual—

—and then the way he and Hayden had both stared. Like they couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or pity me for being that pathetic. For all the good intentions people had at the start of something new, feelings faded. Those blissful I-can’t-wait-to-see-you texts stopped. You started fighting more than making out. Nothing in life was permanent. It was easier to understand that going in. And even worse than the idea of ever letting someone make me feel that pathetic again was the idea that I might inadvertently hurt someone else in exactly the same way. Worst of all, Dallas, my best friend and maybe the only man I’d ever truly allowed myself to love. Because much as I wanted this, wanted him, it couldn’t happen, and we both knew why.

I grabbed for my shirt. “We should get dressed.”

Dallas lifted his head, eyes a dark inferno. After a beat, his gaze slid away.

“Yeah. Sure.”

We fumbled for clothes. The silence stretched until I thought my chest would explode. God, could the sound of two people breathing be any louder?

Kill me now. I was so going to regret this.

“You’re my best friend. But we both know you and Ican never be endgame.”

Back to me, Dallas stilled. “This about your mom?”

“She has no idea we’re still in contact. If we were to start seeing each other—” I bit my lip. “We could still hook up. This doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“You think I came here looking for a random hookup, sweetheart?”

For one hopeful, breathless moment, my heart fluttered in my chest, that indescribable, incandescent feeling of being seventeen and in love, of having a boy who looked at you like you were the only person in the world, and nothing could ever go wrong as long as your hand was clasped in his warming me from my fingertips to my toes. And then reality came rushing back like a knife to the chest.

“I can’t.”

Striding over to the window, Dallas raked a hand through his mop of dirty blond hair. I stared at the rigid muscles of his back, trying to ignore the way my heart was pounding so hard it was starting to hurt.

“You never want to talk about those four years I was gone.”

I closed my eyes, the kitchen suddenly so quiet I could hear the heat radiating off the ovens, the buzz from the fluorescent lights overhead causing my pulse to spike. I was suffocating, sure every terrible, shameful secret I’d ever buried beneath a pillow, scratched from a page, and sworn never to think of again was written across my face.