Chapter 19
Savannah
The shed was supposed to be my escape, not a cage.
But with Dante leaning against my workbench, arms crossed, shoulders broad enough to block the light from the single window, it felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen left in the place.
“So this is your top-secret lair,” he said, scanning the shelves stacked with broken glass, twisted steel, and the covered unfinished skeleton of a sculpture I’d been working on for weeks. His voice was too casual, but his eyes weren’t.
“It is,” I said carefully, feeling incredibly exposed. I wanted to reach for my gloves and do something with my hands. “Which makes you the intruder. Don’t touch anything.”
He smirked.
“I mean it, Dante,” I said, my voice slightly firmer. “There are rules in here.”
His smile was slow, deliberate. “Rules. Between us?”
I gave him my best imitation of my dad’s flat administrator glare.
“Relax. I know better than to mess with sharp edges.” He dropped his backpack and circled the room slowly, taking it all in, and I watched every movement like he was about to disappear.
“You hide out here a lot?” he asked when he had come full circle.
I didn’t look at him, averting my eyes to his backpack, sitting there like it had a right to, but it also looked like it was going to fall over at any moment. “I don’t classify it as hiding.”
“Interesting.” He moved again, like a predator checking boundaries. “Just seems like a lot of secrecy for someone who says she isn’t hiding.”
My jaw tightened. “Not everything needs to be broadcast for the world to see, Ten. Not everyone wants their own spotlight.”
“Funny,” he said, voice low. He inched closer to my sculpture. “Can I see?”
“Absolutely not.” My voice cracked like a whip. “Rules, remember!”
He grinned, but nodded and stepped back. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “So . . . is it me?” he teased, and I laughed loudly.
“Why would it be you?” I couldn’t help but smile at his nonsense.
Dante frowned. “Why would it not be me?”
I shook my head, pretty sure he was joking, not one hundred percent sure he wasn’t. “Your ego is truly ridiculous.”
He gave me that smile and rocked back on his heels. I took a quick inventory of his bruises, noticing when he rolled his shoulder one too many times to be mere habit.
“I heard you lost some privileges?” I murmured, freezing a little when he shot me a hard stare. “What happened, Spence? Did the star QB get knocked down to the same level as the little people again?” I’d only been teasing, but I saw his mask drop into place. “I was just being funny,” I murmured.
His eyebrows lifted, but he said nothing for a while, surprising me when he did speak.
“I almost got Noah kicked out,” he told me softly, frowning while staring at the floor.
Wow. “Really? I’m sorry.”
He looked over at me, frowning. “Why would you be sorry? You didn’t start a fight in a bar.” His eyebrow arched in amusement. “That I know of.”
I shook my head at his playfulness, his effort to lighten the mood.
Leaning against my workbench, I watched him.
“No, I have never been in a fight in a bar. I’ve never been in a fight at all.
” The silence after that was sharp. Heavy.
I felt like there was more than glass in this shed that was breakable.
“Are you okay? You don’t look better, but I can tell you’re not as hurt. ”
He shrugged. “Been flattened by enough defensive ends and linebackers to be able to bounce back.”
“That’s kinda sad.”
“That’s football, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. It rolled off his tongue too easily. Too glib. I didn’t like it, knew he was deflecting.
“Don’t do that.” He didn’t look my way. “Don’t give me your cookie-cutter press persona, not now.” That did make him look back at me, and his stare stuck on me. “Was Saturday night about football?” I asked tentatively. “Or something else?”
Dante tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I no longer know what Saturday was.”
I wasn’t expecting his honesty. But then, that’s what he was, wasn’t it? Unapologetically honest.
When he wasn’t being a dick.
The sound of his backpack toppling over made me jump forward to grab what looked like a pill bottle, and I stooped to pick it up as it rolled across the floor.
When I looked up, he was standing over me, his face unreadable.
“Here you go.” I went to hand them over to him, but my grip tightened when I saw the name of the medication on the cylinder. “Hydrocodone?” I swallowed hard. “Is this yours?” He took the bottle from me. “Pretty strong pills to be walking around with.”
“Mmhmm.” I watched him slip the pills into his backpack, securing the pocket tightly.
“Are you injured?” I studied his bruises more closely. “Did they hurt you?” I looked at his shoulder, remembering the way he flinched in the library. “Or are they for your shoulder?” I guessed.
“No, they didn’t hurt me.” He didn’t meet my eyes. “The bruises are all superficial, just like me, right?” He gave me the fakest of fake smiles, and it didn’t annoy me — it only made me more concerned for him.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked, toeing my boot against the floor. “Or whatever’s bothering you? Or what the pills are for?”
Dante looked back at me. His gaze lingered on me for a long, impossible second, and something unreadable passed through it. Then he shook his head once. Sharp. “No.” He looked me over slowly. “Ask me what I want.”
He came to stand in front of me, and my mouth was dry. “Wh-what do you want?”
He leaned down, our foreheads almost touching. “I want to fuck you.” He heard my gasp, and a dangerous smile appeared on his mouth. “I want to kiss you.” His fingers intertwined with mine. “I want to spread you wide, right here, and eat your pussy until you’re screaming for me.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I whispered. My voice didn’t sound like my own. Not with him this close.
“You sure?” he asked roughly.
His eyes dipped to my mouth, and I swore the whole shed tilted. The scent of him — soap, sweat, and winter rain — filled my lungs until there was no air left.
My pulse was thundering, my body felt hot. “Dante—”
He kissed me.
He didn’t just kiss me. He owned me with one kiss.
It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t sweet. It was a collision, a test, like he wanted to see if I’d shove him back or pull him closer. My brain screamed at me to shove. To prove him wrong, to prove I wasn’t the girl who got kissed by the golden-boy quarterback in her secret shed.
But my body wasn’t interested in what my brain wanted.
Heat lit every nerve ending, the world narrowing to the press of his lips and the taste of something I shouldn’t want.
Shouldn’t crave. My fingers curled against the workbench, gripping tightly, because if I touched him, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop.
His hands skimmed over my arms, one smoothed over my shoulder, down my back, pulling me in closer, while the other rested on my hip, sliding down, cupping my ass, pressing me against him, letting me feel the length of him, causing me to jerk back in surprise, but he anticipated it, and caught me to him, as he pressed me back against the workbench.
His lips trailed over my jaw, dipping into the crook of my neck, tasting me there, pulling my shirt aside as his teeth nipped at my collarbone.
“Dante . . .”
Cool hands inched under my shirt, the contrast to my flushed skin made my back arch and press against him more. The button on my jeans was popped open, and I bit back a gasp as his long fingers slipped under my panties and ran over the curve of my ass.
His mouth was back on mine, his tongue tasting, dueling with mine, and emboldened, I pressed my hand along the front of his jeans, feeling him, all of him, appreciating his reaction when his fingers dug into my flesh as I lightly stroked over the rigid outline of his cock.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, he broke away.
The shed was silent except for the ragged sound of my breathing. His forehead rested against mine for a heartbeat, his breath mixing with mine, and then he stepped back like the kiss and everything else hadn’t nearly unraveled me.
“You wanted rules,” he said, voice low, rough. “Rule one: don’t ever dare me like that again.”
I stared at him, stunned, furious, still trembling. “Y-you kissed me.”
His grin was infuriating, dangerous. “And you kissed me back.”
My lips still tingled, traitorous and hot, like they hadn’t gotten the memo that the kiss was over. I touched them without meaning to, fingertips grazing the place where he’d stolen every ounce of control I thought I had.
I couldn’t form words. Couldn’t form thoughts. Just heat and the echo of his mouth and the steady drum of my pulse that felt way too loud in the small shed.
He was watching me, expression unreadable now, not cocky, not smirking — just watching, like he was waiting to see which way I’d break.
“I . . .” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard and tried again. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Probably not,” he agreed, so casually it sent another shiver through me.
But there was nothing casual about the way he still lingered close, his fingers brushing the edge of the workbench, his gaze dragging over my face like he was memorizing it.
I shook my head, trying to clear it, trying to remind myself of all the reasons this was wrong, impossible, careless. “This doesn’t mean anything.”
The words sounded hollow even to me.
His smile was faint, too faint, but it hit me like a challenge anyway. “If you say so, Sav.”
I couldn’t hold his stare, not when my whole body was betraying me, still buzzing with the taste of him.
I took a step away from him, my hands itching to do something — anything that wasn’t six foot plus of trouble standing too close.
He read me perfectly. Sensed my confusion.
“I’m going to go,” he said, scooping his backpack up, getting ready to head out.
“Okay.”
Dante sighed loudly. “Don’t overthink it, Sav. It was just a kiss.”
I felt like he’d slapped me, and from the look in his eye, he knew it.