Dylan (Bachelors of the Ridge #1) (15 page)

“It’s fine, Kat. I understand.”

Her grateful smile helped. But the entirety of how her background affected her was finally becoming clearer. And I was pretty sure in that moment that I was out of my depth completely.

S
eeing
Dylan sprawled on my couch was freaking weird. He was so
big
, the way his arm was slung along the back, his long legs braced on the coffee table that I could barely reach with my own feet.

And there I sat on the other end, my hands knotted in my lap, not paying the slightest bit of attention to what he’d put on the TV. Definitely part of my discomfort was that fact that we were actually at my place. That so rarely happened, but my car had been acting up, so he agreed to come over.

But seeing him so comfortable in my space was only part of it. My snappish behavior at the clinic a couple days earlier ran on an endless track in my brain, and I couldn’t stop it no matter how much I wanted to. It was a weird thing, to know that I was being legit crazy about his request to meet his mom and sister, about the fact that I all but freaked out when he tried to hug me in public, but not be able to do anything about it.

Like I wasn’t stronger than my unconscious reactions. That made me look down at my lap, with a twinge of shame that pinched at my stomach. When Dylan dropped his hand off the back of the couch to gently push at my shoulder, I pasted a smile on my face and shifted to face him.

“Can I ask you something, Sprite?”

“Of course.”

Tapping his thumb on the remote, he lowered the volume on the TV and I got inexplicably nervous. “I shouldn’t have tried to hug you at the clinic, huh?”

While I was mildly surprised that he didn’t bring up the visit first, I tried to keep my face neutral, though it was probably bright red. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

He laughed easily. “Well, that clears it up.”

“Hey,” I said with a slight edge and his smile smoothed out a touch, “I can’t help it that public displays make me twitchy. And this is new for me. I don’t know what the rules are.”

“I don’t either. So don’t grope you at work, no problem.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking completely unfazed by my prickliness.

“You shouldn’t
grope
me anywhere,” I mumbled, not really meaning it. And he could tell by the way he turned and caged me into my seat with his thick, muscled arms on either side of me.

“No?” He dropped a kiss to my collarbone and I sighed.

“It’s not a nice word. Groping doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy.”

“Okay,” he said, pulling back a little, and I tried not to whimper. Then he dragged the tip of one finger up along the line of my neck, tracing the bud of my ear. “What about touching? Does that sound better?”

“You’re evil,” I moaned, fisting two hands into his shirt and yanking him back down on top of me. But he held his mouth away from mine, his blue eyes dancing with a playful light that he wore effortlessly. “How am I supposed to tell you my boundaries when you’re doing this?”

The tip of his tongue followed the edge of my jaw and my hips tilted up like he’d yanked on a string that was twisted around my bones. The sharp edges of his teeth caught my skin and tugged.

“So I shouldn’t do this in front of other people?”

“No,” I snapped, gripping the sides of his face and trying to turn his mouth toward mine. But damn him, he chuckled into my neck and resisted my advances like he was swatting away a gnat.

“Do you want me to ignore you in front of the guys? Act like you don’t melt like sugar on my tongue?”

“I …” My brain stalled completely when he sucked on my neck. “I don’t know. Don’t
ignore
me. But …”

“But?” One of his huge, calloused hands smoothed up my side and traced the edges of my ribs, arching my back up so that my breasts pressed against him.

My head was swimming and I sank away from him, trying to make sense of the fact that we were having an important conversation. Right now. I couldn’t even remember what my opinion was on
cheese
at the given moment, let alone whether I was ready for the guys to know about us.

“But,” I said haltingly, bracing a hand on his chest so that I knew he was paying attention to me, and he was. There was a smile in his eyes, but he was looking. I smiled back. “But no, I’m not ready for the whole group to know about … this.”

Dylan pulled in a deep breath and it made his chest expand, the front of our shirts touching again. Just that tiny point of contact was enough to start my heart racing again. He nodded and I pushed up, forcing him backward. When I swung a leg over his lap, he got with the program real quick.

Good boy.

I writhed in place until I was settled over his strong legs, and the small circles of my hips made him grasp my thighs so tightly that I moaned.

“You are killing me, woman,” he said in a rough, scraping voice.

“Will you kiss me now?” I whispered, our lips touching with my words because we were so close.

We both moved, angling our heads and meeting in the middle. His tongue pushed into my mouth and I sucked on it, eliciting a tortured groan from deep within his chest.

Note to self: Dylan enjoys the tongue-sucking.

I’d never felt sexy in my life, not once. But wrapped around Dylan like I was, feeling the effect that I was having on him, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my entire body was covered in flames.

Then two things happened at once to totally kill my mojo.

1. Dylan slid a hand inside my thigh, edging his fingers beyond the hem of my shorts, like, an inch from the Promised Land.
   
2. My brain shut off.
   

“I’m totally a virgin,” I blurted out. His eyes popped open and stared into mine. Then he blinked a few times, breathing heavily into my mouth. And I didn’t stop there. Oh no. “Yeah, I’m a virgin. And I thought you should know before anything gets inserted there and you’re like,
whoa
, this hoohah is very inexperienced.”

His face stayed frozen in that shocked mask for another breath, then he started laughing. A big, delighted, purely amused laugh that came from deep within his belly. I might have been embarrassed, but he wrapped his arms around me and held me so tightly that I could barely breathe. So I snuggled in and let his laugh vibrate through me.

After another minute, he quieted down and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “I’m glad you told me.”

I pulled back and wrinkled my nose at him. “I didn’t do it because I wanted to stop. I was just … being honest.”

His eyes tracked over my face and settled on my mouth before he dipped forward to kiss me again. It was a soothing kiss, not one that was meant to amp me back up or divest me of my clothes. Me and my stupid mouth.

“I know we don’t
have
to stop, but we’re also not trying to win a race, right?”

I growled a little and he leaned forward to take my bottom lip between his teeth. The small bite was enough to silence me, and he looked all too pleased by it when he settled back on the couch. His hands smoothed over my hips and up my back, a fluid motion that he didn’t stop until I relaxed.

“I’m not trying to be a saint, Kat, trust me.” He lifted an eyebrow and then looked down at his lap, which made me laugh, because yeah. He wasn’t. “But I don’t mind waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” I whined. Only a little. Like, a womanly, mature sounding whine.

“Until you can let me touch you there without jumping a foot in the air and yelling out the status of your sexual experience.” He kissed me again, moving his hands up to tangle in my hair. “And maybe you’ll learn that waiting can be fun too. There’s so many things we can do in the meantime.”

I swooned. Just a little. “Yeah?”

Dylan nodded, his lips brushing against mine. “All those benefits we haven’t explored yet.”

My skin tightened at the low, husky tone of his voice. “Which ones?”

With one hand, he pushed my shoulder until I was laying back on the couch. He braced above me and slowly pushed up the hem of my shirt. When he scooched down and settled with his shoulders in between my legs, I stopped breathing. I don’t know why, but I covered my eyes with my hand and focused on what I could smell and feel and hear.

His breathing deepened when he smelled the skin around my belly button.

“This is one of them,” he whispered. Then his tongue dragged in the shape of a heart on my stomach and I laughed. “And I know the answer to my question now.”

“What question is that?” I groaned.

“You definitely do taste as good you smell.” And then he pulled my shirt up further and kept his taste-test going until I could barely breathe.

“
S
o
,” Garrett said in between wolfish bites of the sandwich he’d made.

“Could you chew with your mouth closed, please?”

He rolled his eyes. “So are you and Kat going to hold hands during the poker game?”

When I threw a wadded-up napkin at him, it bounced off his forehead and didn’t slow his chewing at all. “Am I going to regret telling you about our little arrangement?”

“Most likely. She gonna be here soon?”

“Yeah.” I tipped my head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Don’t make it a thing, okay? It’ll freak her out.”

“If she can’t talk about it, maybe she shouldn’t be doing it. Did that ever occur to you?”

He was obviously prepared for me to lift my head and glare at him, because he already had his middle finger up when I did it. “We’re not
doing it
.”

“Not yet,” he said with a meaningful glance. “Don’t even deny that you’ve thought about it.”

“I’m not denying it.” We’d only seen each other once in the last week, and she’d been a little reserved. The thing with my family obviously freaked her out more than I realized. She hadn’t been rude or even stand-offish, but I could tell she was holding herself back from me. Maybe not physically, but the wall was there between us nonetheless. But despite her reservations, even if they didn’t seem completely justified to me, of course I was thinking about it. I wasn’t dead. And Kat was driving me crazy in a way that I was wholly unprepared for.

“Okay, so can you explain to me how what you’re doing isn’t actually dating? The whole thing doesn’t make sense to me.”

“That’s because you have the IQ of a rock.”

Garrett flipped his middle finger up at me again. “Can’t answer the question, Steadman?”

With a groan, I leaned back against the counter. “It’s not that I can’t answer it, I just don’t see why I should have to. You already know I don’t want a serious relationship. Not only did I just move here, but man, you of anyone else remember the luck I had with girlfriends.”

He nodded with wide eyes. “Bitches. All of them.”

“They weren’t
bitches
, Garrett, they just wanted more than I could give them. And it gets old really fast to constantly feel like you can’t measure up to what a woman expects of you on a daily basis. I don’t want to have that hanging over my head when I’m starting over in this brand new place in my life. It’s the perfect arrangement for us, because believe me, she wants a relationship even less than I do.”

He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “Why don’t you want the guys to know?”

“It’s not that I want to hide it, but what would I say? Hey guys, neither Kat or I want a relationship, we’re just using each other.” I shot him a look. “Not only does that sound horrible, but they’d kick my ass, probably blame me for anything that went wrong.”

“Probably,” Garrett said with a nod. But his face looked strangely sympathetic. “We like her, you know? She’s kind of our little mascot. And if you do something dick-ish, she’d stop coming around. Then we’d have to vote you off the island.”

I rolled my eyes, but stopped when I saw how serious Garrett looked. The sound of Kat’s car roaring down the street halted our conversation. “I’m not going to do anything to her. It’s a lot more likely that she’ll end pushing me away, honestly.”

He looked completely unconvinced. “Yeah, because you’ll do something dick-ish. You’ll get it in your thick head that the rules will change. I just think this a stupid idea in general.”

“We’re adults, dude. Calm down.”

Garrett held his hands up in concession and went to open the door for Kat after she knocked. She smiled up at him, then her eyes searched me out immediately. My heart expanded on a thick beat at the way her smile softened. This wasn’t distant Kat tonight, she looked like my Kat again.

My Kat.

The thought unnerved me, because she wasn’t really my Kat. I was just … borrowing snippets of her time.

“Hey,” she said as she slid onto the couch, kicking at my foot where it was resting on the coffee table.

“How was your day, dear?”

Kat snickered, wrapping her arms around the throw pillow she’d hauled into her lap. “Good. We had a pot-belly pig come in today. His name is Rufus.”

“Interesting.”

“I think I want one.”

I tilted my head. “A pig?”

“I know.” She deflated, like I’d told her no. “I’m pretty sure my landlord would evict me if he ever found out.”

“Yeah, maybe wait until you own your own place before you get a pet swine.”

She glanced over at me and was about to answer when Michael and Tristan burst through the door, followed closely by Cole. They were arguing about the Broncos salary cap like it was the key to world peace.

Tristan flung his hands in the air and bit out a curse when Cole said they should’ve let go of some defensive players to make room in the salary cap for a better quarterback. Kat and I traded a glance, because Tristan was easily the least demonstrative of the group. He kept to himself, only spoke when absolutely necessary and didn’t really offer his opinions until you specifically asked him to.

Then he stalked over to the couch and fell backwards onto the cushions, glaring over at his brother and Cole.

“You don’t agree, huh?” Kat asked, the picture of innocence. Even batting her eyelashes at him. Tristan took a deep breath and then stared up at the ceiling.

“Nope.” Just one word, one syllable. Of course. I shook my head when he didn’t offer anything else. Kat started laughing, which made Tristan’s face ease into a reluctant smile. She had that effect on all of the guys, honestly. Which meant Garrett was right. If I screwed it up and pissed her off, they were just as likely to keep her around over me.

We started our poker game, Kat blatantly cheating by peering over my shoulder when she’d get up for a drink of water. I tried angling my cards in when she returned to her seat, but she just snaked her hand down and lifted my arm by the wrist so she could see.

“What the hell?” Michael grumbled. “Someone take her chips away.”

Garrett snorted and threw two more chips into the pile. “Please, like Dylan will do anything to stop her. If she wanted to dye his hair pink, he’d hand her the color with a smile on his face.”

I whipped my head over to him, giving him a warning look, but he wasn’t paying me a single speck of attention. Thankfully, it seemed, the guys weren’t giving him any more attention than that. But when I looked over at Kat’s face, her eyes were huge and her mouth set in a thin, unamused line.

We hadn’t precisely discussed whether the guys should know or not, but it didn’t surprise me that she’d hate if they did. Making our arrangement common knowledge probably ranked somewhere beneath her hatred of public displays of affection (as I discovered at Leonidas’s appointment the other day). It shouldn’t have bothered me, that she’d pushed away like that, but it kinda did. I certainly didn’t expect her to make-out with me on the poker table or anything, but if I felt like grabbing her hand, I should be able to.

The game continued, and I took a chance and slid my hand over Kat’s bare thigh, but she tensed immediately. She didn’t move her leg away, but her face bloomed with color and her shoulders and arms went rigid. And her eyes practically breathed fire when she looked over at me.

Garrett chuckled, and I looked over. He was staring right at my arm where it disappeared under the table. Then he muttered under his breath, “Such a stupid idea.”

Suddenly Kat’s chair shoved back from the table and she marched around to where Garrett sat. He grinned at her until she snatched his ear with her hand and yanked him to standing.

“Ow, what the
hell
, Perry? Let go of my ear!”

The four of us left at the table gaped while Kat marched straight to the slider leading into Garrett’s backyard, dragging the six-two man behind her and never letting go of the hold she had on his ear. His bellowed curses muted after she pulled him into the backyard, only letting go of him long enough to slam the slider shut behind her.

“Is anyone else confused?” Cole asked. Michael and Tristan raised their hands. I just slumped in my chair.

“One of us should probably go check. Make sure she doesn’t rip his ear off,” Michael asked after taking a long swallow from his beer. “Actually, maybe we should wait. He deserves it, I’m sure.”

I was just about to offer to go out there when Kat whipped the door open again and pointed a shaking finger at me. “You. Get your ass out here.”

“I’ll go,” I said, standing quickly before one of them decided to press the issue.

By the time I quietly opened the slider, I could hear their muted voices.

“I’ve never seen you mad before, Sprite. It’s kinda awesome. If you hadn’t turned to violence.”

“I’m not
mad
,” she huffed. “I just don’t understand why you can’t keep your mouth shut.”

I turned the corner to find Garrett leaning up against his house, cradling the side of his head with one hand. He glared at me. “Thanks for showing up now. You couldn’t have stopped her
before
?”

“He couldn’t have stopped me,” Kat snapped. “You think it’s one big joke, but it’s not at all humorous to me that you’re using my business to try and be funny. How would you like it if I aired your private stuff even though I
knew
you didn’t want anyone to know about it?”

I tucked my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and rocked on my heels. Kat didn’t mean her statements as darts, but nevertheless, each one landed with precision somewhere in the region of my chest. Because it felt like she was embarrassed. Of me.

Garrett rolled his eyes. “Geez. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d get so pissy.”

“Hey,” I said in a hard voice. “Don’t call her pissy. And that’s a pathetic excuse for an apology, Garrett.”

“Oh,” she said on a laugh, making bullet-eyes at me. Like, if she was physically capable, she would be
shooting them at me
with her eyeballs. “He’s not the only one who’s going to need to apologize, Mr. Grabby Hands.”

He straightened from the side of the house, giving me a stern look and then set his hands on Kat’s shoulders. “Katharina, my darling, I truly never meant to offend you. You two are just so damn cute that I can’t keep my mouth shut.” Kat narrowed her eyes and I shook my head. But Garrett dogged along. “Would you please accept my sincerest apology? I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’ll beg for it all the same. I am your humble slave until it’s been granted to me.”

Unbelievable. Honestly, I never questioned why he was single. Kat held the glare longer than I expected, but after a few seconds, her lips curved up to one side. “Fine. I’d rather forgive you than have to deal with you as my slave. Just keep your mouth shut, okay?”

Garrett glanced over at me and I kept my face even. It was more difficult than I expected, because I thought maybe she’d say something like,
just don’t say anything for now
. Or
I’m not ready for everyone to know
. But she’d effectively slammed the door shut on either of those possibilities. I clenched my hands into fists when Garrett walked back into the house, and when Kat made no move to go back in the house, I grabbed her hand and pulled her in front of me.

“Hey,” I said gently. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for, Dylan? I need to hear it.”

Shit. I hadn’t expected that she’d need specifics. With the hand that wasn’t holding hers, I scratched the side of my cheek. “Umm …”

“You weren’t capable of respecting my boundaries for even one night after we talked about this. One night, Dylan. I
told you
that public displays make me twitchy.”

“A public display?” Instead of dropping her hand like she probably wanted me to, I weaved my fingers through hers, fighting against the defensiveness that was swelling up in my blood. “Kat, I touched your leg for five seconds. And not once in our conversation did you talk about how you expected me to act around the guys.”

She was chewing on the inside of her cheeks, eyes darting around, landing on anything except me. “I hate it when you’re sort of right. It pisses me off.”

“Sorry?”

Finally, her mahogany eyes met mine, and I saw the softening in them. “You should be.”

Even though the sentiment made me want to crack a tiny smile, I couldn’t help but feel a little unbalanced. How was this the same woman who asked me to strip off my shirt so she could feel my skin under her hands? Who straddled my lap and scratched my scalp while we traded deep, soul-sucking kisses?

“You’ll always keep me on my toes, won’t you?” The question was purely rhetorical, because I’d never intended to give her time to answer. I stamped my mouth over hers, gripping my hand into the short, disheveled hair that always tumbled around her face. She squeaked in surprise, but clamped her hands on my waist and met the sweeping motions of my tongue with answering ones of her own.

I walked us backward until her back met the house and wrapped my other arm around her back. She tore her mouth away and gasped for breath. I kissed the angle of her jaw.

“Dylan,” she whispered. “They’re just inside.”

“And they can’t see us. That’s what you’re worried about, right?” My voice was harsh, but much milder than the pounding frustration I was feeling in my body. “Do you want me to stop? Do you want
us
to stop?”

Kat hesitated, but ran her hand along the length of my arm, scratching her nails lightly on my skin. Her eyes were pinched shut, so I dropped kisses on each. They flipped open in surprise when I pulled back. As close as we were, and with how the bright the sun was behind me, I could see flecks of green in her irises that I’d never noticed. Deep forest green among the brown, and they gazed at me with heat and anger and a little bit of wonder.

“All you have to do is say the word, and I will.” I kissed one side of her mouth, then the other. “Are you asking me to stop, Kat?”

I was drowning in her eyes while I waited, and my heart seemed to halt in my chest. Then she shook her head. Her hands snaked around the back of my neck, and I dove in again, taking deeper and deeper kisses from her, like I could suck the air from her lungs if I tried hard enough.