Page 17 of Promised Secret (Promises, Promises #3)

Chapter Fourteen

CLAY

There came a time in every man’s life when he had to decide between doing what was proper and doing what his heart wanted.

Fuck manners when the person who’d restarted my heartbeat was hurt and running from me.

I brushed off Jessica’s arm, threw apologies over my shoulder as I dropped my tray at the table Mom and Victor were sitting at, and booked it after Dan.

I vaguely heard Mom shouting my name over the drum of my heartbeat in my ears, but my feet didn’t slow down until I’d caught up to Dan.

“Wait,” I called, reaching out to grab his shoulder. Dan stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

I huffed out a couple of breaths, trying to get the air in my lungs. Working as a police officer for a slow-paced town had slowed me down as well. I’d kept up my weight training at the gym, but I really needed to work on my cardio.

“Why’d you leave without me?” I asked once I’d finally caught my breath.

“Looked like you were busy,” he muttered, his back still toward me.

“Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have waited,” I argued. The only reason I was at the damn fair in the first place was because of him.

Dan shrugged and tried to brush my hold off of him, but I only held on tighter. I wasn’t going to let him run away this time, not when I saw the hurt in his eyes.

If he wanted to avoid me because I pissed him off, fine. But if he was running to suffer alone, I’d have to be dead before I ever allowed that to happen.

I hugged him. My front pressed toward his back, and my arms wrapped around the front of his neck so that he couldn’t get away.

“Clay, what are you doing?” he exclaimed. He looked to either side of us, probably at the people who were no doubt staring. They could look at us all they wanted. It didn’t bother me.

“People are staring,” Dan said and tried to break free. My arms tightened around him.

“Let them,” I replied. “We can give them something new to talk about.”

A small town wouldn’t be a small town without its little quirks. And if there was one thing residents of Kither Springs loved, it was their gossip.

Jones would love it if we finally managed to get our townsfolk to stop talking about him being a masochist. One comment at Hector’s diner a while back, and everyone was still mentioning “the kinky Denn boy” weeks later.

“Don’t push me away,” I whispered into his ear. I loved the way my breath had his eyelids fluttering closed for a second. “Tell me what’s going on in that pretty mind of yours.”

Dan huffed out a hot breath and gritted out, “Can we not do this here?” He tugged at the arm wrapped around his neck again, and I loosened my hold around him.

“Let’s go home, then,” I told him, and switched my position so that I was beside him, arm slung around his shoulders now.

Something told me that if I wasn’t careful, he’d slip out of my reach forever.

Like hell I was letting that happen, so I held on tight the entire walk home.

The fairgrounds were only a twenty-minute walk from our house, and it didn’t matter how much Dan complained about how hot and sweaty he was with me plastered next to him, I clung to him like he was the only reprieve from this heat.

Once we made it back into our house, Dan shook me off. I let him go, since he couldn’t escape now that I had him home. I basked in the wonder of AC for a second before following Dan to the kitchen.

He pulled out a cold beer from the fridge, passing it to me, and grabbed another one for himself. He quickly chugged its contents, and a stream of liquid dribbled down his chin. I reached out to wipe it away for him.

He glared at me.

“You know you shouldn’t be doing things like that now that you have a girlfriend,” he spat out.

I was taken aback, having never heard him speak like that before.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I replied carefully.

“That’s not what it looked like to me,” he said with a snort. He opened the fridge and grabbed another beer, which he proceeded to drain as well.

“Whoa, why don’t you slow down there?” I said, which earned me another glare.

Dan had never been much of a drinker in the first place. At the rate he was going, plus having only a few fries in his stomach, he was gonna end up drunk before I could get some actual food in him. I stood between him and the fridge before he could grab another one.

Dan let out a frustrated growl, swiped a hand through his hair, and stormed out of the kitchen. I followed to find him pacing the living room.

Dan’s hair stood up every which way, probably from constantly running his hands through it. He didn’t even register me entering the room and continued his pacing.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter if she was your girlfriend. If not her, then it’ll be another girl. At the end of the day, you’re going to belong to someone else, and there’s nothing I can do about that,” he muttered. I had a suspicion he was saying it more to himself than anyone else.

I could see where he was coming from. I dreaded the day he found someone to marry. A bullet to the heart might be better than someone else taking my spot, but it was part of growing up. A part of life.

That’s what I told myself, but it never made me feel better. I didn’t think it’d comfort Dan either.

“Nothing will change. It’ll always be us against the world,” I told him instead, because that was a truth I fully believed. Even if we both found other people to marry, he would always be the most important person to me.

Dan shook his head, his eyes going wide and wet, and fuck, he looked like he was about to cry.

“You don’t understand,” he said, voice cracking. “You’ll never be mine.”

Panic welled up inside me because why did it sound like he was putting a ticking time bomb on our relationship? He was foreseeing an end that I never considered.

“I am yours,” I said, needing him to believe me.

He shook his head again, eyes closed and facing the ground. I shot toward him and forced him to look at me.

“I’m yours,” I repeated. “Yours to do anything you want with.”

Dan’s brown eyes pierced through me. They were still glassy, probably from his unshed tears and the alcohol that went straight to his brain, but I didn’t miss the heat in them.

His usual dark browns turned amber. The fire that burned in his gaze was so similar to the way he looked at me as he explored my dick with his wonderful hands.

My pants began tightening.

“Anything?”

The question came out soft and breathless, and I was fully pitching a tent now.

I gulped, trying to bring back moisture to my suddenly dry mouth as I nodded.

Dan sucked in an unsteady breath. His eyelids fluttered closed, but I could see his eyes flitting around under there like he was thinking hard about something. When he opened them again, there was a determination in his gaze.

“Stay there,” he ordered and tried to pull away. I was scared he was running again, so I grabbed his wrist. He half turned, eyes roaming down my body.

“I’ll be back,” he said, warm palm covering my hand and telling me to let go. “And you better be naked when I am.”

That had me dropping his arm like his words had burned me. Maybe they had. That had to be the only explanation for the heat that lingered in the pit of my stomach and shot straight to my groin.

Dan exited the living room without looking back, and I scrambled out of my clothes. Even with the extra layer gone, the AC couldn’t cool down my burning skin or my raging hard-on.

I didn’t have much beer, but the alcohol had to be the only reason I was so…excited, right?

Was that what this was? The anticipation of Dan’s return had precum spilling over my length. He’d told me to strip, just like last time. And just like last time, that meant he’d put his hands on me, right?

My cock throbbed at the thought, and I couldn’t resist giving it a comforting stroke.

“Don’t touch yourself,” Dan ordered, returning to the living room with a dining table chair and…neckties?

What the fuck was he going to do with that? I didn’t have time to wonder. I quickly dropped my hand like I’d been caught doing something bad.

Dan looked pleased that I’d followed his orders. That only made me want to follow them even more.

He pushed aside our coffee table and placed the chair in its place. I was dropping into it before he could even tell me to.

Dan quickly reeled in his surprise and knelt in front of me. I thought he was going to touch my aching cock, but he pushed my feet apart instead and used the neckties to tie my legs to either side of the chair leg.

That explained what the neckties were for.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he did the same with my hands and tied them to the back of the chair.

I tested the restraints. Dan definitely wasn’t a professional, and I could have broken free if I’d really wanted to, but I didn’t…

Dan was behind me and pressed a kiss to my nape before dragging his lips up my neck to whisper in my ear, “Testing the validity of your words. You said I can do anything I want with you, but how true is that, really?”

I shook in my seat, and my eyes pressed closed as his sweet-as-honey voice echoed straight into my lust-filled brain. How had I never noticed how nice Dan’s voice was? Everything about him was so fucking nice. He was fucking perfect.

When I’d gotten my emotions under control enough to open my eyes again, he was sitting on the couch in front of me, smirking like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. Anything,” I told him again just to make sure it really got into his head.

His smirk quirked up. It was pure mischief and looked so fucking sexy on him.

“I’m going to touch you,” he said slowly.

I couldn’t stop the “yes, yes, yes,” that repeated in my mind. My hips bucked up, needing his hands on me already, please and thank you.

Dan’s eyes lazily dragged down my body to my erection, pointing his way, as if trying to get to him.

His smile grew.