Ryan (Mallick Brothers 2)

Collapsing into him, my head turned and I planted a chaste kiss to his throat, too overwhelmed to overthink anything or even think at all.

I wasn't sure how long it had been since I had had an orgasm. Months at least. And from someone else? Years. Several long years.

It was almost like the first time in its novelty, in the all-consuming wonder of it all.

Ryan's hand slid out of my panties and rested on my thigh, the other going around my lower back and holding me against him tightly. "Fuck, Dusty," he said, his voice a desperate growl.

I smiled against his neck at that.

Fuck.

That just about covered it, didn't it?

My hips shifted and I felt him press against me, harder than before, and a surge of guilt coursed through me, realizing the selfishness of the situation.

I pulled back a little nervously, my lips parting to speak, when he shook his head.

"No what?" I asked, my forehead creasing.

"No, we're not taking this any further tonight," he said, somehow reading the situation perfectly. "Or," he went on as I opened my mouth to object, to say I was happy to... even things out, "until I can be inside you and kiss you without fucking hurting you."

"Ryan, it's ok..."

"Nope," he said, shaking his head, giving me what I could only call a stern look. "Not happening. When it happens, I want it to be right. It's not right if I'm hurting you in any way. So we're putting that off."

"But it's not..."

"Shh," he said, yanking me sideways suddenly and making me land on my butt beside him, my legs cocked up on his thighs.

"Did you just... shush me?" I asked, smiling big because it seemed so out of character for someone like him.

"Yep," he agreed as he reached around looking for the remote.

"The couch probably ate it," I supplied, knowing I had fallen asleep with it settled beside my body and that I tended to roll around a bit when I was first settling into sleep. "Isn't it too early for," I started, but then he found the remote, switched the channel, and there was Times Square. "Oh," I said, looking below the TV at the time and finding it was already well after nine.

"We have three hours of drinking ahead of us," he said, slamming a hand on my knee and squeezing before using it to push himself up. "Better put some lining down," he said, going toward the liquor cabinet. "What's your poison?"

I drank wine, one or two glasses by myself. And when Bry came over in a mood and needed a drink, we had vodka because that was his drink.

My drink, well, used to be a very dry gin martini with two olives.

And about two of them could put me on my ass, even back when I used to drink more socially.

"Dusty," he prompted when I just sat there. "What do you drink?" he repeated, lip twitching just the slightest bit like he found me amusing.

And, well, if a man could find my awkwardness amusing, he was a keeper.

"Do you have vermouth?" I asked as I slowly got off the couch. I realized my fly was still open when his gaze went there and a knowing smile pulled at his lips. I felt my cheeks heat as I reached down self-consciously to close up.

"What self-respecting liquor cabinet doesn't have vermouth?" he shot back, bending down and looking inside. "How do you want it- wet, dry, dirty, or perfect?"

My head ducked to the side as he straightened, two bottles of vermouth in his hands and I just knew one was French, meaning dry, and one was Italian, meaning sweet. "Wow, that's some impressive drink knowledge," I said with a smile. "Dry. Very."

He nodded, tucking one of the bottles away and moving to grab a martini glass and the gin. "We all worked shifts as bartenders when we were legal. Pops thought it was important to understand how to run the business. Some of it stuck."

"Sounds like a lot of it stuck," I countered, moving over to the island and grabbing an adorably festive New Years Eve paper plate and loading it up, going light on the carrots and celery and heavy on the fries and cheese. If we were drinking for hours and my tolerance was as low as it probably was, he was right, I needed lining.

So then we ate and drank and I got pretty wasted, every part of me tingly and alive and my head a fun little anxiety-free zone that felt refreshing as I snuggled into Ryan on the couch, his strong arm around me, handing me a champagne flute with the other as we were at the one minute mark from midnight.

We watched the ball drop.

We watched a new year come to us, offering things I prayed I could have.