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“And?” She arched an eyebrow, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We’d always shared this wild attraction, me and her. Since she was eighteen.
The air became thick and charged between us. I stepped toward her. She didn’t retreat, though I detected a glint of fear in her dark, upturned eyes. I leaned into her personal space, a breath away from the shell of her ear. No need for her daughter to accidentally hear the depraved man in their apartment.
“No condoms, Casablancas. We exchange clear medical sheets, you get on the pill, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
The pill wouldn’t be necessary, I knew, but I didn’t want to delve into that. Not now. Not ever. She couldn’t know. Couldn’t learn the level of fuckery that was my life.
“Whoa. Do you always do it without a condom?” She looked grossed out.
“Nope. Never.”
“Why skip it with me?”
“Because I want to. That should be reason enough.”
It was misogynistic. It was dark, twisted, and screwed up. And yet my cock was already throbbing, achingly excited at the prospect of doing filthy, wicked things to my best friend’s baby sister.
A shudder ripped through her entire body. I watched as her silky skin pebbled into a trillion goose bumps. And that was before I’d even touched her.
“If it’s too much, forget—” I started, already regretting everything I’d said.
“Deal,” she said in a rush, sounding like she’d just run a marathon. “It’s a deal.”
RHYLAND
Iwish I could say I was able to concentrate on some (or any) of what Bruce Marshall blabbed about in our meeting, but the truth was I was too busy shifting in my seat to adjust my six-foot hard-on. All I could think about was Dylan and the million implications of what we’d just agreed to.
Who’d brought up sex first? She had, I was sure of it. My mind hadn’t even gone there. And not for lack of attraction to her. She was forbidden, completely off-limits, which begged the question: What were we doing?
I couldn’t screw my best friend’s little sister. There were limits in this world. Sure, I never adhered to any of them, but this one I actually cared about. Row was more than a buddy. He was my ride or die. He’d given me a job and taken me for a spin all over the world in our early twenties. This was insanity. I wasn’t going to cash in on Dylan’s offer.
Not initiating sex with her was one thing. I could do that, even if it shaved off a few years of my life and a good amount of my sanity. But if she threw herself at me? I was only human—and a terribly immoral one at that.
Maybe we should cancel the whole thing.
As if he were privy to my inner turmoil, Bruce lounged back in the velvet recliner in the trendy coffee shop, sipping his black coffee, which he’d asked his aide to fetch from “the shittiest, dirtiest diner you can find on this block, no fancy-schmancy stuff.”
“About that pretty lil miss of yours…”
I snapped back to attention.
The meeting had been a disaster. Everything I’d planned for it—the spreadsheets, market overview, presentation, layout, audience research, sales pitch, app mock-up—had evaporated in a fog of sweet, aching desire as soon as I stumbled out of Dylan’s apartment.
“That dog don’t hunt, I’m thinkin’.” Bruce stroked his stubbled chin, chewing on the tip of a stir stick. “Why would you hide someone like that from the world? None of our mutual friends ever mentioned her, and I sniffed around about ya.”
“Love that you are so committed to the canine analogies.” My tone was clipped. I decided to go for some version of the truth. The fewer lies I had to remember, the better. “She just moved here from the small town we grew up in,” I supplied. “It’s new, but it’s real. We’re as serious as a heart attack.”
“How new?”
“A few months, but we’ve known each other forever. She’s the one.” It took everything in me not to hold my fucking nose as I said it. “When you know, you know.”
In reality, I wouldn’t marry Dylan if she were the last woman on earth. She was, among other things, a rebellious, stubborn, foul-mouthed, sharp-witted troublemaker. A twenty-six-year-old Swiftie, she was sex on legs and as manageable as an F5 tornado. Even if I were crazy enough to contemplate marriage, she’d be at the bottom of the list, right after Catherine the Great and that woman who boiled a bunny in that eighties movie.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t still thinking about fucking some sense into her, as though I didn’t also need a re-up. But Bruce looked so fucking pleased, his stern scowl finally relaxing into a smirk of approval, his brow smoothed out of wrinkles for a change.
“I’m searching for another ring for her now,” I heard myself say. “Something perfect, just like her.”