“I don’t know about that, Saint,” Dean says, leaning down to kiss the side of my neck. It’s the gentlest touch he’s ever given me, his lips warm and full and soft against my skin. I can feel the heat between my legs despite myself, the growing dampness there as I try desperately not to squirm in my chair. “I think you like this. I think you’re starting to crave it. The danger, the darkness that we bring out in you. The desires you never would have found on your own.”
“Is that why I ended up in the shower with Cayde yesterday morning? Or up against the lockers after his practice?” I ask, tilting my head up to look at him. “Because I like it? Because I want fucking Cayde, who’s been the worst of all of you to me since I got here?” I shake my head, grinning at him. “I think it’s just because I don’t fucking want you to win.”
Dean’s hand slides up, gripping my jaw as his mouth comes crashing down on mine, his lips hard and punishing as he sucks my lower lip between his teeth, the kiss in stark contrast to the gentle caress on my neck a few moments ago. “That’s too bad, Athena,” he whispers against my mouth. “Because I’m going to, no matter what you want. Whether you keep this silly little game going or not, I’m going to win it in the end.” His mouth presses against mine again, his tongue sliding between my lips, hot and demanding, and I have to fight not to respond, not to arch up, to reach for him. Dean’s cool, sleek, sophisticated demeanor makes me wonder what he’d be like if he broke, if he came apart, if someone drove him to the very edge and made that careful façade crack and shatter.
He’s always been the one that’s been hardest for me to pinpoint, to understand. He’s not like Jaxon, who is sullen and rebellious to a fault, or Cayde, who is always spoiling for a fight. With Jaxon and Cayde, I know what they want—Jaxon wants to be free of all of this, to not have anything to do with it. Cayde wants to win, to fuck me, to reclaim his power, something that makes even more sense after seeing the scars on his back. But Dean?
I can’t read him. It’s sexy in a way, mysterious, like he’s the lord of the manor keeping me under lock and key, and I can’t discover his secrets. It fits with his dark, brooding eyes, perfectly kept hair, neat clothes, and leanly muscled figure. Tall, dark, and handsome, that’s Dean summed up nicely. Jaxon sulks, Dean broods, Cayde rages. It’s a dynamic that works, and as I fight the urge to kiss Dean back, to run my hands through all that thick silky dark hair and arch up against him, I have to wonder if he wasn’t on to something earlier.
If I’m just prolonging things because I don’t want one of them—I want all of them.
That’s ridiculous. If anything, you only want Jaxon,I tell myself, but even to me, it sounds like a weak protest.
Dean pulls back a fraction, his thumb running over my cheekbone as his mouth hovers over mine. Suddenly he jerks my chair backward, spinning it so that I’m facing him, and before I can think or breathe or do anything at all, he sinks to his knees in front of me.
“I like this dress,” he murmurs, running his hands up over my knees.
It’s nothing special,I almost say, but the heat in his gaze makes the words die on my tongue. It really isn’t—a 90s style black slip dress, with my Docs and a velvet choker around my throat. It’s the closest thing I own to an outfit anyone other than Jaxon would actually like—Jaxon probably likes half my wardrobe, to be honest. I hadn’t expected Dean to like it; I’d thought he would think it was too low-brow, too casual. But instead, his hands are sliding up my thighs, and as he pushes them apart slowly, I feel my breath catch in my throat at the sight of him kneeling in front of me.
I don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish by this, but for the first time, I feel actually fucking—powerful? Dean’s dark hair flops over his forehead as his hands move up my hips, fingers hooking in the sides of my panties as he starts to pull them down.
And I don’t stop him. Instead, I lift up a little, letting him do it, and I don’t know why, why I don’t argue, don’t fight, except that something about the heat in his eyes for once isn’t about his own pleasure. It’s about what he wants to do to me. And it feels so fucking good to see him down on his knees, his hands on me pushing my legs apart, leaning forward as he pulls my ass to the edge of the chair and presses his mouth against my pussy, his tongue flicking out to part my folds as I gasp with pleasure.
Dean knows how to eat a girl out, that’s for sure. His tongue slides over my clit, circling, flicking, sucking, and licking, his fingers tracing along the sides, hands caressing my inner thighs until I’m gasping, my head thrown back, and suddenly I feel something sticky against my wet flesh as his thumb rubs over my clit.
“Mm,” Dean groans, his tongue flicking out over that same spot. “I do love strawberry. Even better than cherry, I think,” and I gasp as he reaches out to run his thumb over the edge of the knife I used to put jam on my toast, stroking that same thumb between my folds again as he licks up the sweetness he spread between my thighs.
I’m so aroused I can hardly think straight. A tiny part of my brain screams that this is crazy, that I’m spread-eagled in the dining room with jam smeared on my pussy, getting eaten out by a man I could have sworn I hate. Still, all I can think about is that it feels so fucking good, his lips sucking at my folds, his tongue delving inside of me, and then sweeping up to circle around my clit again. When he thrusts two fingers into me, I know I’m going to come, and come hard.
“Oh god, Dean,” I gasp, my hand reaching out to slide into his hair, nails scratching along his scalp as I grip the edge of the chair with my other hand, my hips coming up off of the edge as he laps at my clit in earnest now, licking and sucking until I feel as if I’ll lose my mind from how fucking good it feels. He looks so goddamn hot, fully dressed and kneeling in between my legs, sucking on my pussy as if his life depends on my orgasm. I gasp as he thrusts his fingers into me faster.
“I’m, I’m going to—oh god, I—” the words trail off as the pleasure hits, like a bolt of electricity straight to my veins. My head falls back, my moans turning to a high-pitched shriek as my body clenches around his fingers, my clit throbbing against his tongue as I come hard, grinding against his face as I arch and moan. Dean doesn’t stop, his fingers and tongue still dragging every last bit of pleasure out of me that he can until I finally slump back against the chair, breathless and panting.
He looks up from between my legs, a satisfied smile on his face, and he reaches to pick my panties up off of the floor as he stands. “I think you liked that, Athena. You can’t tell me that you didn’t. My mouth was full of the evidence of just how much you did a second ago.”
“I—” I look up at him breathlessly, reaching out to take my panties back, but he jerks his hand away, stepping backward with a smirk on his face.
“You won’t need these today,” he says with a laugh. “In fact, you’ll need to change completely since what you’re wearing might be appropriate for a quick lick in the dining room, but not at all for my father’s country club.”
I look at him, my jaw slack. “Your father’s what now? We’re going where?”
If there’s one place in my life I’ve been determined to never darken the door of, it’s a country club of any variety. I think I might actually catch on fire if I walked inside of one.
“What the hell am I supposed to wear to a fucking country club?” I demand, making another swipe for the panties that Dean is still holding in his hand, but he just balls them up in his fist, shoving them into his pocket. I realize then that he’s already dressed for it, in fitted charcoal suit pants that do very little to hide the hard-on he has and a black button-down with the sleeves rolled up. I’d been so distracted by our banter and then what he’d been doing to me just a few moments ago that I hadn’t even noticed he was more dressed up than usual.
“I’ve had Brooke lay out clothes for you upstairs while we were—otherwise occupied,” Dean says with a grin. “So you can just go upstairs, wash all of that makeup off your face, and get dressed. A little mascara and lip gloss will do just fine for makeup and leave your hair down.”
I glare at him. “I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t going to be ordered around anymore or told what to wear—”
Dean is in front of me in a flash, his hand gripping the back of my chair as he looms over me. “Don’t test me, Athena,” he warns. “If I have to tie you up and carry you to lunch over my shoulder, I will. But since the other club patrons might find that a bit unpleasant, I’d prefer that we did this the easy way.”
“The easy way for who?” I clench my teeth. “I don’t want to be paraded in front of—whoever you’re planning to parade me in front of today!”
“For me, of course.” He smiles dangerously. “You can fight it all you want, Athena, but you are mine. You can want to belong to Cayde and Jaxon as well all you want, you can keep trying to play this game, but as I said before, the end result will always be the same. You will be mine, and this town will be mine, and nothing you can do will change that. Today is going to be a lesson in why.”
He straightens up then, and I can see how hard he still is, his cock pressing against the fly of his trousers. But he doesn’t bother touching himself, adjusting it, or trying to push me into getting him off in some way. Instead, Dean just circles back around the table, sliding into his seat and picking up his fork. “Finish your breakfast, Athena, and then get ready. We have a few hours still.”
But I’ve completely lost my appetite.