I reach up and absently slide my fingers through his hair. I have no idea how to feel about all this, but I guess I’m glad he’s talking to me about it, too.
His mouth claims mine, and I close my eyes as I kiss him back. He moves on top of me, still wearing all his clothes while I’m completely naked. I feel bare and breakable beneath his weight, completely incapable of keeping him from any part of me he wants access to.
I also feel like he is very well aware of the imbalance, and likes it this way.
He breaks the kiss and pulls back to unbutton and unzip his jeans.
“Dare.”
“Yes, baby?”
“How do I know you won’t hurt me?”
“Well, it helps not to give me a reason to.” He takes his cock out, leaning over me and lining it up at my entrance. “But at the end of the day,” he shoves his cock into me, “you just have to trust me.”
Chapter thirty-seven
Aubrey
The rest of the week goes just how Dare said it would.
The police come, and I tell them what he told me to.
Frank gets arrested, but no one at Baymont High really believes he did it. Dare was careful so all the evidence lines up against him, but there’s one glaring impossibility: there’s no way in hell Frank Tunstall had the confidence to say all that Dom shit Dare said in the text messages.
Getting away with it only makes him cooler, though. The kids at our school are idiots and don’t realize actual danger lurks in their midst.
I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on them. I was one of them, once.
Now I know he’s dangerous, but he’s the danger that spends every night in my bed. My guard dog unless I give him a reason to bite me, too.
There’s something comforting about it, but it’s scary at the same time.
For the first few days after the run-in with Hannah, I have a hard time fully shaking the lucidity of our situation even though I don’t talk to her again. The popcorn message is left on read, our date never to be.
Dare ups his efforts, giving me pretty pink flowers, and presents, and the kind of sex I prefer. He makes love to me rather than being so rough, making me come multiple times every night to try to fog my mind again.
By Wednesday, it starts to work.
He tells me we’re hanging out on Thursday and takes me to his place. We have another swim lesson, then he takes me up to his bedroom.
At first, he’s gentle with me like he has been. He lets me climb on top of him, smiling in a softer, unguarded way that lulls me. He wraps his hand around my neck as I straddle his hips and lean in to kiss him. My pretty new hair falls in his face and he grabs a lock, rubbing it between his fingers.
“Tell me you love me,” he rumbles.
I feel a thrill in my tummy. “I love you,” I say softly, bending to kiss my way along his hard jaw.
“No matter what.”
My tummy drops. With anyone else, that would mean something entirely different. With him…
I swallow, knowing non-compliance isn’t an option unless I want to set him off. “No matter what,” I say, the words feeling like poison in my mouth.
He grabs me, switching our positions and throwing me back on the bed. I gasp at the impact, then he’s on top of me, between my thighs, looking down at me.
My heart pounds in my throat. He watches me for a moment, then he grabs a condom.
I’m relieved.
The night he took me in my bedroom after all the Hannah stuff, he came in me. He knows I’m not on birth control, and I was afraid that was going to be a thing he started doing, but it was the only time.
I don’t know if he wanted to mark me that night, or scare me a little. I do know it was risky, and as I’m in no way ready to be tied to him with a baby, not something I want to happen again anytime soon.
The crinkling of the foil packet reassures me that he hasn’t completely lost his mind.
I think he just wanted to see if I would let him come inside me that night because he could feel me slipping away. I didn’t want him to, but I knew if I told him no, he would do it anyway, and I would just lose a chance to reassure him.
Once the condom is rolled over his dick, he pushes it into me. He closes his eyes, leaning over me and bracing his weight on the bed. I gaze up at him, still grimly aware of his beauty as his muscles flex while he fucks me.