The Hierarchy of Needs (The Portland Rebels #2) (3 page)

Chapter Three

“Dean, how do you know what to do with girls?”

Mikey’s question barely registered. The pounding between Dean’s ears was blocking out everything around him. He lifted his head from where he’d pressed it against the passenger side window of his truck.

“What?” His mouth was dry. An unpleasant taste threatened.

“With girls. How do you know what to…” Mikey lifted a hand from the steering wheel and waved his fingers in the air. “
Do
with them.”

Ah. His infamous reputation for knowing how to turn a woman on. Exactly what Dean wanted to talk about right now.

“You’ve gotta pay attention,” he replied, then cringed. Talking made his head hurt more. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to finish the rest of the beers while he waited for Mikey to return from his walk.

Fuck, he was cold.

“It’s like working on a car,” he continued. “You listen for the right noises. The right vibrations and movements, and you find what makes them tick.”

He was the world’s biggest fucking hypocrite. Wasn’t it obvious he didn’t have a clue how to make anything work, with the way things had gone down with Jamie tonight?

What the hell had he been thinking?

Mikey sighed. “That really doesn’t help me at all, Dean. You know I don’t have a lot of experience with cars. Or girls.”

That was the truth. Mikey’s Schwinn had its own parking space in the corner of Dean’s loft. And he was pretty sure his buddy was still a virgin.

He closed his eyes and tried to force his brain into action. Mikey needed to know how to get a girl’s motor going. They’d been friends since the fourth grade, and the guy had become Dean’s personal DD more than once. The least he could do was help out with some advice.

“Every girl has something that sets her off. Dirty talk, kissing their necks—” Dean cleared his throat. “—playing with their hair.”

Don’t go there.

Keep talking.

“You try out a couple of different things, start out easy and watch how they react. See what makes their eyes go wide, what makes them shiver or gasp, then ramp that shit up. You’ve just gotta listen until you figure out what it is.”

It was the fail-safe blueprint that had worked for him every single time. He had this…
knack
or something. He’d learned to pay attention, to gauge their responses, finding what set them off.

Jamie’s trigger? Having her hair pulled. He’d figured that out a long time ago.

“What if you can’t figure it out?” Mikey asked.

Dean closed his eyes and rested his temple on the glass. “Then I advise you not to forget about the power of lubrication.”

Mikey wasn’t laughing. Dean peeled one eye open.

“I take it things didn’t go well with Krissy?” he asked.

“Things didn’t even ‘go’ at all.”

Poor guy. He’d always been the odd man out when it came to Dean and Connor, trying to figure out how to pass go when the two of them were already at the finish line.

“She’ll be around for a few more days. Maybe you’ll get another shot,” he said. “You’re putting too much thought into it anyway. Sex is a biological need. A time to check out and lose yourself to the rush. When you make it into more than that, it stops being fun.”

It was another thing that had worked for him. Keeping sex and emotions separate.

He guessed that made two strikes for him tonight.

“Right. Sure.” Mikey nodded. “Thanks.”

Dean crossed his arms and settled back against the seat. “No problem.”

They pulled into the lot by the old waterfront warehouse Dean called home. It was once a building for handling cargo at the height of Portland’s shipbuilding age. His father bought it five years ago with a hefty bank loan and a plan to let Dean rent out the second floor, using the space on the first as storage for the family business.

All that was in there now was junk covered in more junk. Dean avoided going down there as much as possible. He avoided his dad’s place too.

He flinched when Mikey snapped on the light fixture in the kitchen. The wide-open space echoed with the painfully loud noise of Dean’s keys being slapped down on a kitchen counter. The brick walls, high ceilings and exposed pipes didn’t do much to absorb the sound of Mikey clomping toward the fridge either.

“Do you have anything to eat other than PB and J?”

It was a given his friend would be crashing here—there was a permanent ass print on his couch from the number of times Mikey needed to get away from his folks after a blowout—but that didn’t mean Dean had to play the host. He needed a shower, some painkillers and his bed, stat.

Dean leaned against a wall. “There’s some cereal in the cabinet.”

“That’s it?”

“There might be some milk left too. I don’t know, I think I finished it this morning.”

“Your diet frightens me.”

Dean pushed off the wall. “G’night, Mikey.”

Trudging toward the bathroom, Dean pried off his clothes and stepped into the shower. He scraped shampoo over his scalp and rinsed it through, trying to wash out the salt water along with the images playing on repeat in his mind: firelight and Jamie’s smile. Her slim hips and firm ass. The soft spill of curls inching down the slope of her neck.

He was a shit. A real grade-A fuckup, because he remembered what happened six years ago, and he’d wanted it to happen again.

He couldn’t help himself, not with the way she looked tonight, as fresh-faced as she’d been in high school with a grin that lit up the whole fucking block. She’d been an enigma to him since she showed up in detention, a ray of sunshine trapped between drab walls and fluorescent lighting.

She’d asked if he remembered her on Halloween. As if he could fucking forget.

A white, long-sleeved sweater that set off the olive tone of her skin. Matching leggings that showed off every curve. Shimmering wings, and a halo sticking up out of her headband. There was something in her eyes too—big and brown and sparkling, like she had a secret she wasn’t sharing. Combined with those cherubic curls, she’d looked like some kind of deviant angel: innocent, but with a body that had him sporting wood the rest of the afternoon. He couldn’t help imagining what that angel would look like with her hand between her legs. A fallen star burning up with pleasure.

Dean’s body reacted instantly. It was a fantasy that still woke up his dick nearly every morning.

His brain fast-forwarded to two years later. A ride home after dark had them parked at the shoreline, a six-pack between them in the back of his truck. Tugging her hair had been a whim, something he’d done to tease her. He’d never expected her spine to go rigid, shoulders hiking up to her ears, a shiver rolling through her like a wave crashing on the shore.

Dean rubbed his hands over his face, trying to block out the memory of the moment everything changed between them, but it was too vivid, too clear. He’d wanted to coax that reaction out of her again. To find out how to make a stronger tremor rock through her. To make her eyes grow heavy-lidded with lust.

He found it by pushing that tug in her hair a step further and making a fist. She’d moaned. Lifted her hips. Whispered the word
yes.

Shit, he’d tried to stop himself, but it was too late. He needed to get off. Now.

Dean groaned and gave in—one slow-fisted pump that sent sparks of pleasure through him. Bracing his other arm against the tile and resting his forehead against it, he let the memories wash over him. Her mouth, hot and eager. Breasts a perfect handful, nipples rising to a rosy pucker under his thumbs. Her head falling back on a gasp when he held her wrists down. The sound she’d made when he brushed his fingers over the damp cotton between her thighs.

The noise had gone straight from his ears to his cock.

Dean’s strokes turned fast and brutal, his dick as thick and greedy as it had been that night. He wasn’t a virgin, but he’d been far too amped up, worried he’d hurt her. And no one’s first time should be in the back of a truck. So he’d spent ages rubbing and teasing her, learning her body like he was learning to drive stick, memorizing every gasp and shiver until her back arched, mouth going slack as she whimpered out his name.

Sensation ripped through him. Dean clamped his eyes shut and pressed his mouth against his bicep, silencing his shudder.

Disgusted with himself, he rinsed his hand and shut off the spigot. He had no business thinking about her like this. There was a reason he’d promised himself to keep his relationship with Jamie strictly in the friend zone, where it belonged. She had a future, a life to live.

He didn’t.

Dean stepped out of the shower and snatched a towel. Two painkillers and one heavy swig of water later, he padded down the hall to his room. It was freezing in there, so he grabbed some boxers and went hunting for his sweats. He found them in a drawer, noting they fit more snugly than he would’ve liked. He had shoulders he was proud of and jacked up arms, but the abs of steel he’d once had weren’t as visible anymore—the result of a few too many beers making themselves at home in his gut.

He didn’t like it that Jamie had noticed. Cutting back on that shit was definitely going on the agenda.

Still too cold, he pulled one of his heavier Henleys down from a high shelf in his closet. The sleeve got snagged on something. Dean tried to wrench it free but the clothes started fighting back. One strong yank later and a whole pile of crap toppled down and landed in a heap on the floor.

Grumbling out a curse, he began gathering up the mess. Buried under everything, so dark it nearly blended with the wooden slats of his floor, was a thin, flat, leather folio.

Of course he’d have to see that tonight.

Dean snatched it up with the intention of putting it back in its place, but the handle felt heavy in his hand. The contents beckoned him, calling him into a past he didn’t want to remember. Tucked inside it were a dozen of his favorite photos.

The kid’s hobby he’d given up long ago.

Dean sighed and sank down onto his bed. Sixteen and defiant, he’d thought school was a waste of time. What was the point in studying when he was going to be fixing up cars for the rest of his life? Goofing around instead of doing his homework was what landed him in detention, something he’d mildly regretted until Connor showed up. The kid had no boundaries. He was a powder keg, eager to fight, and Dean fed off that energy. But the persistent misbehavior brought him to an obligatory meeting with his guidance counselor.

She’d looked at him with tired, pleading eyes and asked if there was
anything
other than cars that interested him. Desperate for a way out, he’d begrudgingly admitted that taking pictures was kind of cool.

He wasn’t actually invested in it or anything. He only had a camera because his mother sent him one as a birthday present after the divorce, a shiny digital one back when that technology was brand new. It was a gift distant enough that it was obvious she hadn’t put much thought into it, but expensive enough that it would seem like she cared.

Dean shifted the portfolio to the side and collapsed back on his bed. His parents had been high school sweethearts, married at eighteen. Mom had big dreams of a life somewhere else, of traveling and seeing the world, but Dad needed to take over the family business when his father suddenly passed away, so she stuck by his side.

Fifteen years later, the business was struggling and so were they. Dean heard them fighting pretty much every night. He came home one day the summer before high school started to find them waiting for him at the kitchen table, solemn expressions on their faces.

Now his mother lived with her new husband in a nice house on the Cape. Dean saw her at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

He had the option of going with her when she left, but he’d wanted to stay in Portland. At the time, he’d been stoked to have a future filled with nothing more than blasting music in the garage and playing with gears and carburetors. It wasn’t until he realized he was good at photography that he’d started to think about any other life.

And that, of course, was Jamie’s influence.

She never ended up back in detention, so he hadn’t seen her again until he’d reluctantly walked into the beginner’s art class he’d agreed to take the following semester, a pre-req for photography. Her smile was the only thing cooling his temper when he’d lumbered sullenly into the classroom, ready to bolt or punch someone as soon as the first snicker was thrown his way.

No one laughed. Or if they had, he’d been too busy with Jamie once he sat down with her to notice. Too fascinated with her skill with a charcoal pencil and the human form. What the hell she was doing wasting her time in a pool, he’d had no idea, because her drawings were pretty damn good.

She’d encouraged him too. Her smile pushed him to want to stay there, to actually concentrate for once. Soon he was enjoying the class, learning concepts he’d never spent time with before: color, form, space, texture. Studying the works of Dali, Warhol and Van Gogh. A semester later, he was spending his time in a darkroom instead of detention and showing up late to the garage because he was on the side of the road, caught up by some moment he absolutely had to get on film. And that night senior year when he’d found her without a ride home after practice, he’d parked them by the cove and told her he put a portfolio together. That he’d played with the idea of applying to college after all.

Her squeal of approval had been infectious, and a world of possibilities suddenly opened up to him.

The possibilities had seemed endless that night.

He hadn’t realized how badly he wanted her support until he said it, and turned the tables on her then, wanting to know where she was going after graduation. He knew the world she came from—one where going to college was a guarantee. But he’d wondered if there was a chance she’d be sticking around in Portland.

If he had an actual shot with her.

She’d looked up at the sky and said she’d been offered a swimming scholarship, but didn’t know if she wanted it. That she had no idea what she wanted at all.

It didn’t make sense. She came from a life of privilege, countless choices lined up in front of her, and yet she seemed unable to make one. So he’d tugged on her hair to get her attention. To make her talk. To look at him.