Because I Can (Necklace Trilogy 2)

At this point, neither me nor Dash are on our barstools. We’re both on our feet and facing each other. “What does that mean, Dash? You know what you have to do?”

He catches my hip, and drags me to him, his free hand sliding under my hair, folding possessively along the line of my neck. “It means she wants me to do what I want to do and make you mine, Allie. If you’d even let me. But then she doesn’t understand that you’ll run before I ever get the chance. And you should run, Allie.”

He’s hit a raw nerve and the impact vibrates through my body.

Running and me are synonymous and a little too obvious. Meanwhile, Dash doesn’t run, not even from me after I saw him fighting. Or did he? Does he still want me to live with him? He did, yes, he said so, but half a day has changed everything, and inviting me to stay last night is not inviting me to live with him.

I want to live with him. I want to be with him. And I didn’t want to admit that to myself, let alone him, until now. I owe him the truth after all that happened in the past several hours. He’s vulnerable and exposed by way of what I’ve learned, and witnessed, about him, aware of the questions I will surely ask. If I want him to open up to me, I have to shove aside the past. “What if I don’t run, Dash?”

“That’s the problem,” he says softly. “I don’t want you to run.”

That’s the problem.

I’m a problem.

And yet, on some level, I understand this and welcome the confession that tells me he might want to walk away from me and us, but like me, despite all reason, he cannot. My hands go to his waist. “If I didn’t run already, do you really think I scare that easily?”

“There is so much you don’t understand, Allie.”

“Make me,” I challenge, eager to see behind the curtains.

“That’s what you don’t seem to get. I don’t want you to understand.”

His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue sliding deep. I moan with the rush of sensation through my body, with the taste of hot man and torment, and deep, biting self-hate. And I’m not oblivious to the fact that he intends for me to find these things, he wants me to feel what he feels, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever known. With all his secrets, somehow Dash is the most real man I’ve ever known, and I am suddenly hungry for him in every possible way.

I kick off my shoes, letting him know that I plan to be naked, the sooner, the better. Even as I do, my fingers slide under the tail of his shirt, my palms pressing to his hard body. He tears his mouth from mine, breathes with me, a second dragging into two and then three.

“Dash,” I whisper, shoving his shirt up, telling him what I want.

He responds by pulling it over his head. I have a moment, maybe two, to appreciate his sculpted torso before he’s turning me to face the island, my hands catching the counter, his lips pressed to my ear. “I’m wrong for you, Allie.”

“Do I get to decide that?” I pant out, a flashback of last night with me pressed to the door, his hand on my neck, his cock buried inside me, reminding me of how much he needed control, how much he still does.

“Yes,” he says, his hand sliding under my sweater and covering my breast. “You do. Because that’s the thing about me being the selfish prick you met last night. Now that I found you, cupcake, I can’t make myself let you go.”

My reaction is a mix of relief and a surge of desire so intense it clenches my sex. His fingers are on my nipple, teasing it, a rough tug following that, parts my lips in a pant. I moan with the ache building in my sex and Dash drags my shirt over my head, tossing it away. That part of him that’s all about control is alive and well, and I won’t take that from him. I don’t want to take it from him. There’s something about this man in control that should make me step back, pause, but instead, he arouses me in ways that astonish me. And right now, there’s a furious heat about our energy that is downright combustible. The kind of heat that requires I touch him. I attempt to turn around but his hands scoop under my pants and drag them down my legs. Just when I think this will become a game of push and pull, that is not where he leads me.

Dash’s arm wraps my waist, and he lifts me just enough to untangle my legs from my leggings. The minute I’m free, I anticipate his hand on my backside or some sort of teasing in a power-play we both know he will win. Instead, he goes down on one knee, turns me around, gripping my hips, and the look on his handsome face, the combination of possession and tenderness, weakens my knees. Anticipation burns between us and when he leans forward and presses his lips to my belly, I tremble beneath the touch.