Chapter 28
Dom
Getting Lilly’s call was not what I expected tonight, especially not to pick them up from the bar.
I was overthinking this whole thing with Riley, but seeing her all smiles and soft touches with the tatted bartender made my blood boil in a way it never has before.
Her in that tiny little white dress, in contrast with her glowing, dew-kissed skin, her cheeks flushed with a rose tint, the same one she has when I make her come undone under my touch, over and over…
But what killed me was how she didn’t take her eyes off his. When Riley is holding your gaze like that, you feel like the most important person in the world, a look I thought she reserved for me. Clearly not. I’m not more special than any other person she talks to.
She’s passionate and attentive, and when you have her attention, you feel like you’re on top of the world. And she was looking at him the same way. Maybe not with the same glow behind her eyes, but with the same smile.
It hurt, and it brought back memories of a time when I wasn’t enough to keep my ex happy, which says I’ll never be able to keep the brightest girl I’ve ever known entertained and content.
Even if I wanted nothing more than to throw her over my shoulder for everyone to see she doesn’t belong to him, but to me.
I had to check myself, though, since that isn’t true either. She doesn’t belong to anyone. She belongs to herself and this land, and I’m going to have to be okay with that, even if it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker when we stop whatever we have going on between us.
“This is me!” Lilly shouts as we pull up to her cabin. The whole ride here has been filled with the two of them talking and giggling. They needed this, and I’m glad I was able to help them get home safely.
I reach to open the door. “Don’t. I got her,” Riley says, stepping out of the truck and walking her sister to her cabin.
I can’t help but think that in a few moments, she’ll be back without Lilly acting as a buffer between us. Riley disappears behind the blue door, so I wait.
I wait for my heart to beat without aching again.
I wait for my brain to catch up with the fact that I’m not good enough for her.
I wait for my body to stop reacting like it’s seeing water after years of insatiable thirst that only Riley has been able to quench every time I look at her.
We shouldn’t, we can’t, and we won’t.
Riley tiptoes out of her sister’s cabin, her glittery cowgirl boots leading the way onto the walking path instead of toward me. I step out and jog to her. “What are you doing?” I hold her small but strong arm in my hand.
“What does it look like I’m doing? Walking home. It’s a beautiful night, and I didn’t get all my steps in today.” She touches her wrist where her watch would usually go, except nothing is there.
“Let me take you. I’m driving to the cabins either way.”
“Nope, I’m good!” she shouts, snatching her arm free and attempting to step forward, but I hold her hand this time.
“Riley, I will throw you over my shoulder again if I have to. I’m not going to let you walk back like this.”
“It’s a fifteen minute walk. I’ll be fine.”
“But why? I have a perfectly good truck right there. Let’s go.”
“No,” she replies, covering her chest with her arms and standing tall but not turning away from me.
“I’m trying really hard not to act like a spoiled brat, as you called me yesterday, but I’m also having a hard time understanding why you treat me so differently in front of people than when we’re alone. I thought we were friends.”
The word friend leaving her lips is more than bittersweet. It’s heartbreaking. Do I even have the right to call it that?
“Get in the truck, Riley.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she replies, stomping.
Her little bratty ass keeping me on my toes is a part of her I’ve come to like. “Please, get in the truck.”
She walks past me when I don’t reply, throwing the passenger side door open before I can. She slides in, slamming it shut, before I can get in myself.
She’s pissed, and I don’t blame her, but it feels like the coldest winter night in the middle of summer now that she’s shut me out. Like the sun disappeared, and now it’s all dark, gloomy, and sad.
Fuck.
She rolls the window down, propping her feet—boots and all—up and out, dropping her head back onto the seat.
She closes her eyes as she taps her feet to the beat, Raul Alejandro playing through my speaker.
She moves her hips on the seat, her dress climbing up, showing her toned thighs.
My dick grows hard in my pants at the sight.
I look away; I can’t go there again. It’s for her own good.
“You know, for someone who refuses to acknowledge me in public, your little friend down there surely has a different opinion.”
How did she even notice that?
“Also, whatever this song is, I love it. Play more.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply, setting the volume higher as my playlist continues.
Even if she has no clue what these songs say, she’s still bouncing and moving—one with the music.
It pulls at my heart, and I want more with her than I can let myself hope for.
Not because of her body or the way she makes me feel, but because of how much light she carries with her, how I feel like a better person when I’m around her, how I feel like I could spend a lifetime with her and never be bored, even if it’s just the two of us in a truck, driving for hours on end.
But how do I make myself into the man she needs when all I seem to know how to do is keep pretty things captive?
She deserves to have her wings and fly away.
So I shouldn’t.
I can’t.
I won’t.
“It’s not that I don’t want to acknowledge you in public, Firefly. I just don’t want to mess things up with your sister and the ranch.”
I park the truck in my driveway, keeping my head low so hopefully, she won’t see how conflicted I am. I like her. I want her. I don’t know how to do this.
“I wasn’t asking you to make out with me in front of my sister, but damn, you made me feel like you didn’t want to be near me.” She looks away from me, stabbing my heart in the process.
“I wanted nothing more than to be near you. I hated that I had to work all day when all I wanted to do was be near you.” This is the most honest I’ve ever been with anyone about my feelings, so even if it’s not enough, it might be a good start.
“Funny way of showing it…”
“Besides, watching you give that punk your smiles wasn’t easy to watch.”
She turns her face, smiling as she reads between the lines. “I give everyone smiles. Are you jealous?”
I shake my head.
“Dominic Diaz, you are!” she teases. “I mean, this is a sexy dress, I don’t blame you, but there’s nothing to be jealous about.”
I want to ask if it’s because she only wants me, or because I don’t have the right to be.
The fact that I’ve been second-guessing my every choice since the night I met her has me feeling all sorts of ways.
I’m a thirty-six year old man, and here I am, acting like a possessive asshole at the thought of Riley smiling at someone else.
She can read me like her favorite book, because she reaches over, caressing my cheek as she says, “All I could think about was you, even when I was dancing with two men who were not.”
She slides her hand over my thigh, climbing up until she reaches my dick, and I stiffen.
“Riley,” I grunt. I love that she enjoys sex and that she knows what she wants and goes for it, but right now, I want to know if she enjoys my company, if she thinks I'm worth being around, at least now, when I haven’t ruined who we are.
“Listen, I know. We’re friends, we are fooling around, yada, yada, and that’s fine with me.” She brushes it off. “But I wouldn’t be sleeping with someone else if I’m sleeping with you.” She perks up, sitting up straighter and daring me to look in her eyes. “I don’t want to either.”
I swallow hard and nod.
She palms my crotch and smiles, knowing damn well what she’s doing. “And you didn’t ask me this, but I do really like you, Dom.”
I groan with closed lips, trying my darndest to keep my shit together. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also don’t know what the fuck to do with all these feelings.
“And your dick,” she says.
I groan again.
“Or are you gonna tell me this—” she roams her body with her hands, making the dress stick to her every inch, her nipples hardening under my eyes, “didn’t do it for you? Because I think it did.”
She tries to bring her hand back to my dick, but I stop her, holding her wrist. “Riley.”
“And jealousy looks good on you.” She slides her hands through her cleavage, grabbing her breasts and moaning at the touch.
“Riley.” I continue saying her name as an Ave Maria that will save me. How did we go from we can’t be more to I don’t want her with anyone else to her thinking I didn’t want to be seen with her, to her touching herself in my truck?
I can’t say no to her, so I pull her onto my side, her legs straddling me as she moans, grinding her sex on me. I want to bottle up those sounds, this feeling, the way she looks all red and ready in front of me.
She holds my face, stopping her movements and looking me in the eyes with those crystal clear blues. “Is this too much? Am I too much? I’m all over the place, so you can say no, you know?”
“You are not, and this is not. I don’t want you to feel like I’m using you, though.”
She smiles, biting her lower lip. “Oh, baby, I think I’m willingly looking for it. Just let me down gently if I ever become too much, okay?”
“You won’t.” I tuck a strand of her golden hair behind her ear.
She swallows hard, blinking the sadness she hides behind her pretty smiles away. “Eventually, I will. It’s who I am. But enough about that. Why don’t you use some of that jealousy and remind my pussy who it belongs to?”
I file away the eventually, I will part for another time so I can assure her she’s not, but instead of having the conversation now, I crack a smile.
Gladly.