Fearless Read online

  “My dad?” I offer, blaming the world instead of acknowledging my own issues yet again. “And people look at us funny, and I’m just not sure I’m equipped to deal with this.”

  “Jesus, Ri, this isn’t the revolutionary era,” Paris chuckles. “Let people look at you funny. People look at me all the time—normal people don’t know how to deal with unicorns.”

  “When did you get all activist?” Cheyenne grumbles.

  Paris curls her lip. “When did dating black dudes become an ‘activist’ stance?”

  “I’m just saying,” Cheyenne mutters. “Saving the world is really not our problem.”

  Paris rolls her eyes so hard I’m pretty sure her whole head spins around. When she looks back at me, she’s soft again. “Do you love him?”

  The whole world stops when she asks me that question. I can vaguely hear Carly’s scoff, and Cheyenne’s outright laughter, but it’s like they’re far away, humored by something else. Nothing to do with me.

  Is that what love is? This unending fear of falling apart, of knowing you could lose everything in your life just for one more embrace from them? Lincoln wasn’t like all the storybooks, all the fairytales I grew up with. He felt like home, but a home I wasn’t allowed to have. A home I didn’t deserve, and if I wanted to stay, I had to prove I belonged there.

  Love is wanting to put in that effort.

  I nod.

  The silence continues, but this time it was real, and deafening. Carly and Cheyenne both stare at me like I’ve grown another head, but I don’t meet their eyes. I focus on Paris, smiling at me, proud and sure. “It’ll work out, then,” she says easily.

  I can only hope she’s right.

  Once the realization hit me, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I’m in love with him, and I want him to know. I want the whole world to know, too, but I’m not brave enough for that yet. I figure we’ll work up to it.

  For now, I’d make a gesture. Unease radiated off of him whenever we were in public, his hands shook when mine got close. It was my own fault, having pulled away too many times. So I had a plan. Somewhere nice and public where anyone could see, yet far enough away from checkpoints that my father and his pets wouldn’t pull up and see us, under an old fashioned streetlight, near a walkway with pizza and ice cream for after.

  What I didn’t count on was the rain.

  “You could just tell me in the car,” Lincoln laughs.

  “It’s Colorado,” I grumble. “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”

  He glances at the dashboard. “It’s been over twenty of you stonewalling me.”

  “Exactly,” I hiss. “It’s got to let up any minute now.”

  He huffs at me. “You’re killing me.”

  I nod so he knows I heard him, but when I don’t say anything, he grunts his irritation. He does a quick glance around us for witnesses, then leans into me, his mouth hot against the side of my neck while his hand creeps over my thigh. “Do I have to force it out of you?”

  “You are distracting me,” I grit out, barely forcing down a moan. “It’s not cute.”

  His touch moves between my legs, rubbing a slow trail against me over my leggings. I cave and tilt my head to the side, my whole body shaking under his ministrations. “The last thing I’m trying to be is cute, Trouble.”

  A particularly large raindrop splats against the windshield and makes me jump, bringing a minuscule drop of clarity back to my head. Focus. “I have a mission,” I say aloud, mostly to myself, but it doesn’t stop Linc from laughing at me.

  “As do I,” he murmurs against my ear. His tongue wraps around the shell, slowly working from top to bottom until he can pinch the lobe between his teeth. “I feel like mine is the one that will get fulfilled.”

  My breathing is short and ragged, but I still turn my face away when he tries to bring my mouth to his. If he kisses me, this is a million different types of over. “You know what?” I ask.

  “Hm?”

  “You’re right.”

  He pulls back with a start, dark eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. “I’m sorry, what?”

  I smirk at him. “Back seat?”

  “Are you serious?” he asks. I only nod coyly. He looks at the tiny opening between the front seats that neither of us can cram through, then outside. “We’ll get wet.”

  I wrap my fingers around the collar of his tee and pull him closer still. I rock my hips against his hand and kiss over his cheekbone until I can whisper in his ear, “I already am.”

  He shudders, and a low groan rumbles from deep in his chest. Before he can take my mouth, I throw myself out of the car and into the pouring rain. It pelts down aggressively and freezes me to the bone in a matter of seconds. I crack the door open and peek inside as Linc hops in the back.

  “What are you doing?” he laughs. “Get in here before you melt.”

  I wait a moment longer, then smile and blow him a kiss. “You’ll have to catch me first.”

  I sprint as far and as fast as I can until I’m under the lamppost, grabbing the cool, slick metal and swinging around the structure. Linc catches up fast, grabbing for me and missing over a dozen times before his strong arms are around my waist, lifting me in the air from behind. I’m giggling like a fiend and, to my relief, so is he.

  “You are out of your goddamn mind!” he chides, but there’s nothing but humor in his tone.

  I grab for the lamp post and haul myself back against it, turning to lean my back on it and face him. He huddles over me, trying futilely to shield me from the onslaught, his face split with a breathtaking smile.

  “I love you,” I say.

  His breath catches and for one earth stopping moment, he just looks at me. His face is flushed, and his eyes are wide, unreadable, his body sure and solid pressed against me. I trail my fingertips up his chest until I can rest them under his chin. He’s smooth today, I notice absently, clean shaven and fresh for our date.

  “Say something,” I prompt.

  “You’re out of your mind,” he says again, but it’s softer now. The corners of his mouth twitch like they’re being pulled by invisible strings, like he’s fighting himself so hard not to give in to my confession.

  I smile, my most bold and brilliant, and push up on my toes. “I love you,” I say again.

  In true Denver fashion, the rain slows to a drizzle, and the sun peeks out for a fraction of a second. He winces against it, and while I’m draped in his shadow, so do I. Looking at him like this, vulnerable and sweet, mahogany skin drenched and shimmering in the sunlight, he’s brighter than any star could ever dream of being.

  “I love you,” he says, the words heavy on his tongue. He nods after a moment and finally the restraints break, the smile cracks through, and he’s pulling me into his arms. “I love you, too.”

  When he kisses me this time, I’m sure.

  He’s mine, no matter what color, no matter what everyone or anyone else might think of it.

  And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me.

  Six months.

  Six months go by since the night Riley told me she loved me, and not a damn thing is different.

  Well, that might be a stretch. She turned eighteen in those months, graduated from high school, and she’s working diligently to get out of her living arrangements with her father. Supposedly, she’s working on moving in with her friend, the redhead from the party who called me slick, Carly. But that keeps turning into a three-way living arrangement, with both girls, and apparently, Cheyenne is a real cunt.

  In six months, she’s weaseled her way into every little bit of my life. The I-love-you’s became more frequent and more real with every passing hour, with every gentle, stolen kiss we got in the shadows. There were even a few times she kissed me like no one was watching, out in the real world, surrounded by strangers and it didn’t fucking matter.

  In front of strangers.

  Her dad still didn’t know, and for all I knew, neither did her friends. She’d grow
n strong enough to be seen with me in public, but only in places where wind wouldn’t get back to her dad.

  She said it was to protect me. But how much of that was true, and how much was only meant to protect her, I wasn’t sure.

  I want to trust her. I want to believe her when she says she’ll tell everyone about us as soon as she’s not under his roof. But if it’s been this long and she still throws up a hood and drops her seat back whenever a cop goes by, is it stupid for me to hope? How long of a wait is too long?

  “Would you relax?” she says. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I’m in her house for the first time ever, and I want to throw up just walking around here. “Your dad could walk in the door any second.”

  “No he couldn’t,” she says. “He’s out patrolling, and it’s after his lunch break. He won’t even get the chance to come home for another three hours, and that’s not even halfway to the end of his shift. We’re fine.”

  Easy for her to say. “Just get what you came for and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She rifles through the drawers, on the hunt for an ‘emergency credit card’ her dad has stashed. Riley has access to the bill pay for it, something her dad never learned how to do, and he won’t notice if a couple hundred dollars go missing for a hotel room in the mountains for our half-year anniversary.

  I don’t exactly relish the thought of stealing from an officer, but it’s not like I can afford such a luxury. And if I pretend it’s just her racist, dirtbag father we’re borrowing from, I can handle the guilt just fine.

  “Hmm.” Riley suddenly looks wicked, two pink patches of color on her freckled cheeks as she fiddles in the drawer. “What have we here...

  “A gun?” I ask, paranoid. “Maybe even the one your dad would shoot me with if he knew I was in his house?”

  “For a tough guy, you really can be a baby,” she says.

  “I don’t like guns.”

  She raises her hand to show me what caught her interest. Handcuffs dangle off her pointer finger, bright and silver and clearly never used.

  “Oh, even better,” I quip. “Instead of bullets, back to a cell. I can’t wait. Should I get a teardrop tattoo before I go back in? Might get beat up less that way.”

  She rolls eyes at me, her lips curled into a smirk. “I’m ignoring your paranoia starting in three...two...ah, now.”

  “Just ‘cause I’m paranoid, doesn’t me they’re not after me,” I say.

  She giggles and returns her attention to the cuffs, opening and closing them like it’s the first she’s ever seen a pair. “I wonder what we could get up to with these,” she muses. Her emerald eyes meet mine, dancing with mirth as she smacks the cuff over her own wrist and twists until it locks.

  I feel a bit dense for maybe half a second as I realize what thought crossed her mind when she found those fuckers. She’s not as dark in the head as I am, doesn’t have a tainted view of law and order like I do.

  Nah, she sees cuffs and goes straight to kinky town.

  “God, you are trouble,” I mutter.

  “Six months together and you still sound surprised about it.” Her face splits into a Cheshire kind of grin. “Keep talking. I like when your voice gets all gravelly like that.”

  She walks towards me on the very tips of her toes, her fingertips ghosting across my stomach as she passes me by. The cuff hanging from her wrist clinks against my belt buckle as she makes her way around me and I bite my tongue to hold back a groan.

  “I’m not fucking you in your father’s house,” I say. Damn. Even I can hear the lack of resolve in my voice.

  She whines quietly behind me as her hands settle on my waist, her long nails scratching at my skin through my tee shirt. Her breasts press against my ribcage as she leans into my back, and as if she can read my mind, like she knows how close I am to bending her over the fucking kitchen table, she rocks her hips against my ass. “Not even if I say please?”

  I can’t swallow the groan this time. “Trouble.”

  She giggles again, the little minx, and moves away from me. I clench my hands into fists and shove them deep into my pockets, but it doesn’t stop me from following after her all the way to her bedroom. She’s still toying with the loose cuff as she sits on her bed, maintaining this angelic innocent facial expression like she doesn’t know what she’s doing to me. “I hope I know where the keys to these are.”

  “You know where the keys are,” I say. “Get your card and let’s go. We can play with those somewhere else—like, I dunno, anywhere but your dad’s place.”

  Continuing to ignore the piss out of me, she lies back across the mattress. She bends her knees lazily, kicking through the air like she’s treading deep waters, and arches her back seductively. Her shirt edges up just enough to show the soft curve of her stomach, and my breath gets stuck low in my chest.

  “Riley...” I growl, low.

  Click.

  She tilts her head back now, exposing her long neck between her arms before turning her green eyes back on me. She rattles the cuff, now restraining her wrist to the headboard, and slowly drags her tongue over her lower lip. “Oops.”

  “Damn it,” I force out. I clear my throat, trying to sound frustrated, startled, anything other than as turned on as she’s gotten me, but her wicked grin tells me I’m failing. Hard. “Where’s the key?”

  She shrugs, raising one leg straight in the air, while the other comes for me. Her pointed toe slides from my chest down my ribs, trying to hook around my waist and pull me against her. “I dunno.”

  “Riley.”

  She smiles at me. “I could be coerced into telling you,” she says. “For a price.”

  I force a deep, steadying breath out. The pounding in my chest is suffocating, but I choose to focus on that rather than the brutal ache in my crotch. She’s practicing her tease routine, barely touched me at all, and yet, my cock would burst free of my fly in an instant if I only gave it a little room.

  “What’s that?” I ask breathily.

  She shrugs again, tilting her head back to rest in the pillows. Slowly she brings her legs back in close, dropping her knees to rest wide on the sheets. Her free hand glides from her throat, between her breasts, dancing around her navel before she tugs the hem of her skirt up to pool around her hips. The fake emeralds accenting the hemline of her thong glitter ruefully, matching her eyes to a T, and it nearly does me in.

  “I could think of a few things,” she says. Her fingers move down slowly, a gentle tremor running up her body as she teases herself over the black lace.

  “I should leave you there,” I grumble.

  She looks at me again, smirking confidently. “But you won’t.”

  Torture. This is actual torture. There she is, this girl I’m desperately in love with, sprawled out and restrained, all but begging me to fuck her senseless.

  I can’t tell if Riley doesn’t comprehend my fear, or if she just doesn’t give a fuck, but either way, I want to tamp it down. Now is not the time to act like a douchebag—all she wants is to have sex with her boyfriend. And I’m so stuck on her father I don’t think I’d ever get off if I tried.

  That doesn’t mean the cuffs couldn’t follow us to the hotel, if I can find the keys.

  “You’re not wrong.” I take a small step backward, perusing her bookshelves as a form of distraction. Much like her social media, it’s decked out with books about guns, hunting, true crime, America. A few romances scatter the collection, classic forbidden and taboo tales. Seems to be a guilty pleasure of hers. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna do anything about your little situation.”

  My attitude comes out in my voice and I keep my back to her so she doesn’t catch me wincing. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but the pitch in her voice proves that ship’s sailed. “Lincoln?”

  The sun is dipping below the horizon by now, orange and pink light creeping through her bedroom window. If I was anxious when we first got here, I’m on the brink of a heart attack now,
and nothing is going to help that besides getting the fuck out of this house.

  “You said three hours, right?” I ask.

  “Seriously?” I hear a clicking of metal behind me and finally turn around. She had the key on her somewhere, probably hidden in a naughty place for me to find, and she’s unclasping the cuff from her wrist with a furious expression marring her pretty face. “Babe, I told you, he’s not gonna be here—”

  I walk away while she’s talking, escaping into the bathroom. I’m acting like a tool and I know it. I’m scared, and she’s officially hurt, and one of us needs to tone it down to get out of here together. Icy water fills my cupped hands and I splash it in my face, trying to come back to the present. Not cops, not guns, just here. A big, empty house with my girl.

  It doesn’t work.

  Leaning forward in the bathroom sink, I lace my hands together and rest my forehead against them, trying to steady my breathing. Riley slips in behind me and leans in the doorframe, her eyes hard and her mouth set in a thin, disgruntled line. “You ready to head out?”

  “Since we got here,” I admit, more bitingly than I need to.

  She rolls her eyes and mutters, “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought he’d catch us. You could’ve waited in the car, or met me at the hotel, or—”

  “Or you could’ve told your dad about me after you decided you could handle this, and there wouldn’t be any problem at all,” I snap.

  Her face flushes crimson, and I see a flicker of shame dance in her eyes before they turn cold and stormy. A hurricane of emerald, and I’m in the eye of it. “You are never going to understand,” she hisses and walks away, back toward her bedroom.

  “You’re right, I’m not,” I say. “I don’t understand how you can lie to my face and tell me you love me, be desperate for a fuck, but any of your slutty friends or your racist bastard father come up and you pretend I don’t exist. I don’t understand why I have to be your dirty little secret.”

  She whirls around so fast she nearly falls over her own feet, and instinctively I reach out for her only to be smacked away. I can’t even blame her. The words that just fell out of my mouth don’t even feel like my own, yet here I stand, facing the consequences. “Riley, I didn’t mean—”