Page 17 of All That Glitters (Endurance #1)

Ashton was at my bedroom door before I could form any other thoughts. I hadn’t snuck a boy inside the house in years and the last time it hadn’t ended well for me or the boy. I was grounded for three months and he was told never to speak to me or look my way again.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “If Hale catches you…”

“But he’s not going to catch me,” he whispered back, silently slipping inside.

“He will if I call for him.”

“Then I’ll have to make sure you don’t do that.”

“And how do you plan to keep it from happening?”

“By stuffing your mouth with…things.”

“Crude.”

“Yes, but you’re turned on anyway.”

How did we go from friends to this?

“Why are you here?” I asked again, annoyed and aroused and annoyed that I was aroused. “How are you here?”

“To see you. And I walked.”

“You walked? Jesus, Ashton. It’s so cold out. Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.”

He couldn’t have misread the dubious expression on my face.

“So, you walked all the way here?”

He shrugged as if it were no big deal.

“I walk a lot these days. I crossed the highway and walked along the beach to the back of your property. It’s much more pleasant and less dangerous than me walking on the side of the road in the middle of the night. And driving a car was just…”

He did and didn’t make sense, but there was no use arguing with him. He was here now and the sooner we dealt with why, the sooner he could leave.

“We can’t do this here.”

“Sure we can. You just have to be quiet about it.” He looked around. “I always wondered what your room looked like, what your bed felt like, what your moans sounded like.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You never thought of me like that, Ashton.”

“You must not have much experience with guys.”

“I have plenty of experience.”

I cringed at the defensiveness in my voice.

“Then you should know that plenty of us thought about you like that.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Maybe he was telling the truth and maybe he wasn’t. It really didn’t matter.

“Okay, but…”

“But?”

“But what isn’t your choice is what happens tonight, in your bed.”

“Ashton…”

“You said yes, remember?”

“Not here.”

“You wouldn’t come down, so…”

“What does that have to do with anything? Were you planning to fuck me in the front yard?”

“Crass, Helen. Once upon a time I would’ve said it doesn’t become you, but I actually think it does. I like it.”

“Just go and I’ll come meet you.”

“Too late. I’m already here.”

I wouldn’t pretend, to myself at least, that I hadn’t spent years in this very room wishing he was here, wishing he was interested in me, wishing he wanted me the way I wanted him.

Now that he was, though, I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to stay or to leave.

He advanced on me, stripping his shirt off over his head, unbuttoning his jeans… I was momentarily distracted, my eyes widening at the sight of him. He stopped mid-stride and that bravado, that irritating and sexy and pushy attitude slipped.

“Go on. Look. Touch.”

He sounded angry, almost belligerent, but it didn’t stop me from looking, touching…

Scars marred his otherwise smooth skin. Long gashes that had healed and were mostly white. Surgical marks where his bones had to be repaired. There were scars on his legs, too. I’d seen them in the hospital when I’d been to visit him. The gown hadn’t been able to hide everything.

His fire suit had protected him from the flames.

And the damage to his body could’ve been so much worse had the car not absorbed the impact the way it had.

He could’ve died without all the safety improvements.

He could’ve been paralyzed. He could’ve…

There were so many could haves… But the car didn’t absorb all the impact given the broken and fractured bones.

I knew how many pieces of him were held together with pins and plates and screws and rods.

The media had reported some of it. The marketing team at Glitterati Racing had been careful how much they revealed about the extent of his injuries.

I understood that.

He didn’t need to know how much I knew. He didn’t need to relive how vulnerable he was. I’d known him long enough to know being that defenseless, that helpless was something he hated. He didn’t have to say the words.

Just like he didn’t have to say right now how much he disliked the scrutiny he’d allowed me. It wouldn’t last for long and I wouldn’t take more advantage than what he was willing to grant me.

Ashton Glitterati, scarred or not, was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen and racing was full of beautiful men. But none like Ashton.

“You never saw me before I was like this.”

“Only when we’d all go swimming, but I tried not to stare.”

“The other girls did.”

“I’m aware. And there’s nothing wrong with you like this.”

“There’s everything wrong with me like this.”

He was angry. It was just beneath the surface, it simmered there, and spit bits and pieces out when it was too much.

I didn’t know if he was going to be able to hold it back when it came to me or not.

I trusted him not to physically harm me, but I knew I couldn’t trust him not to hurt my heart, not to break our friendship to the point of no return.

If I were honest with myself, if I was brave enough for that, then I’d admit that I’d rather my heart be broken by him than by anyone else.

I could still function with a broken heart.

I could still function and love him.

That thought, those words in my head brought me up short and my breath caught.

“Stop looking.”

“Ashton…”

“Stop looking. You look…disgusted.”

“I’m not and that’s not what that look was for.” My fingertips skated over his skin, tracing his scars, memorizing the feel of them, the edges. I wanted to remember him like this. This Ashton, this version of him was more beautiful than the one before.

His uneven breathing told me that he wasn’t as unaffected as he’d like us both to believe.

He needed to be accepted for the way he was now, whether he was able to admit it or not, to himself or to me.

He thought every mark was a flaw, but I didn’t see them that way and I needed to show him that.

“Then what was it?”

“Fear.”

“You’re scared of me?”

“No.” In a bold move, I leaned toward him and kissed one of the scars that ran across his chest, a long puckered white welt. I didn’t know what it was from and I wasn’t going to ask.

“Then what?”

“Losing myself.”

I thought briefly to hide behind little fibs to protect myself, but he’d been brave enough to ask for help and I knew it cost him a lot of pride to do that. The least I could do was be honest with him and in the process, with myself.

I couldn’t be honest with Hale. I couldn’t tell him what was going on between Ashton and me. But I could be honest with Ashton. Honest within reason, that is.

I looked up, met his gaze, and wasn’t quick enough to duck away, or to open my mouth before his lips captured mine.

His kiss started soft, but turned hard, rough between one heartbeat and the next. He hauled me up against his body, slid his tongue against mine.

I couldn’t escape his hold. Not that I wanted to.

My defenses were down and I felt that the kiss was his chance to rebuild his walls.

I met him tilt for tilt, nip for nip, lick for lick.

I gave as good as I got.

When he lifted me and I wrapped my legs around his hips, his cock pressed to my flannel covered pussy, I could’ve come. He walked until he could brace me against the wall.

“Ash…”

“Just… Don’t talk. Please. I haven’t…”

I nodded, held on, kissed his face, his jaw, his neck… He rocked into me. It was the first time I’d been dry humped since I was a teenager and it was always so fucking frustrating, but this, with Ashton… It was different. It was…

I stiffened, pushed myself into him, gasped, and the wave broke over me. I couldn’t stop meeting him thrust for thrust, crashing into him. I felt his smile and his hold on me tightened before he mirrored my movements from moment ago.

He stiffened, pushed himself into me, gasped…

He grunted, groaned, and his knees gave out.

We slid down the wall until I was kneeling across his thighs, but with a grunt of pain he quickly had me on my back, his mouth coasting down my throat, his fingers clawed at my nightshirt baring one breast, one pointed nipple.

He dove on it, sucking, nibbling, biting.

And still his hips pushed against me, rocked against me.

When he slowed, then stopped, he laid his cheek on my chest.

“Ash?”

“It had been so long… I hadn’t been able to…

It fucking hurt it felt so good.” His voice was soft, but when he lifted his head and looked down at me, the distance was back in his eyes, the coldness.

I tried not to let it affect me, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t, even if I understood he couldn’t handle being vulnerable all the time, or even most of the time.

I wasn’t surprised that the shield had come down again.

But it was still hard to see, so I did the only thing I could. I turned my head away. Ashton took it as a sign to get off me, to help me up, to cover his body again.

I righted my shirt and closed myself off as best I could. When my eyes met his, he seemed to approve, if the slight nod was any indication.

“What was it you said back at the garage? This isn’t personal?”

Had I said that? Yeah. I had. But it had been in the heat of the moment, an argument with him, but he caught me with my guard down. It had happened more than once starting when Hale and I had arrived at the Glitterati estate earlier.

“And you said that it was.”

“I did. It is. For me. Don’t make it personal for yourself, Helen.”

“How am I supposed to keep that from happening, Ashton? It already is…”

“It’s a means to an end. It’s me using you and you using me. That’s all it is.”

“Me using you?” Was that right? Was I using him, too? “Get out of my room.”

“I wish you meant that. I wish you wanted me to go.”

“I do.”

“No you don’t. You want me to stay, to crawl into that bed with you, and fuck all your desires to life.”

“Crude.”

“You don’t really believe that. You’re too easy to read, Helen of Troye. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Maybe we should agree to a different day.”

“No. Tomorrow. That should give you plenty of time to get yourself put back together and this one time, I’ll save you the trouble of having to explain my presence in your room to Hale.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He only smiled as he slipped his shirt on over his head and out the bedroom door. I stared out the window and watched him exit the front stoop and make his way around the side of the house with the walkway that led down to the beach. He never looked back.

I turned the alarm back on with shaking fingers, flipped the lock on my door, then climbed between the blankets and settled into the bed, my body low-key humming, already missing him, already anticipating him.

Wanting him. Hating him.

Fuck.