Page 51 of Riot Rules
He pushes away from the telescope, sighing heavily as he makes his way toward me. I’m not ready to face those words just yet, though. I should be braver. I should be stronger, for fuck’s sake. This thing between us never even really got started. I shouldn’t be so upset about it ending, but I can’t help it. I am. I take a step back, and then another, until Dashiell’s walked me all the way to the observatory’s curved wall and my back is up against the ancient plasterwork. He braces his hands on either side of my head, a hungry, all-new light flashing in his eyes.
“No fucking way, Mendoza. Your fate’s sealed. You belong to me now. You’re just gonna have to learn to live behind a few locked doors is all.”
My heart’s a rabbit, kicking at my breastbone. “And what if I don’t like hiding behind locked doors?”
“Oh, you will.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because you’ll be locked behind them with me.”
* * *
DASHIELL
This is a compromise. A shitty one, but one I’ll willingly make. If we keep this thing a secret, then Carina stays safe, there’ll be no contention at home with my brothers, and we still get to havethis.
She’s so fucking beautiful it hurts. Her eyes are like chocolate. Not sweet milk chocolate, but dark, like the bitter, acerbic cocoa that makes your mouth ache. Her lips are full and so fucking soft that my mouth is still buzzing from the memory of them on my skin last night. I’m a stupid, sick son of a bitch. I knew the moment I gave in and pulled that glove off with my fucking teeth that I was getting myself into a world of hurt here, but I was so amped from running around the academy, and I was so sick of feeling like my hands were tied…and I figured fuck it.
I’ve been waiting for the regret to arrive and kick my ass, but I realized around lunchtime that Idon’tregret it. I don’t regret any of it. Even though my hands are still theoretically bound, I now have them on Carina Mendoza’s face, and I can feel the wetness of her hair, and I can smell the sweet, floral scent of her skin, and I can’t stop feeling like this isright.
She blinks up at me, a frightened wild animal slowly learning to trust, and fuck me if my dick isn’t instantly hard. I switched on a couple of small floor lamps when I arrived at the observatory. I drew the black-out curtains at the two small windows. The cavernous space is dimly lit, but the lamps cast a lovely cool glow across her skin. She’s luminous, pale and beautiful as the moon.
“If you’d rather shut this thing down, then say the word and I’ll go,” I tell her. “But you and I both know you don’t want me to go. You want my hands on you. You want me stripping you out of these wet clothes, and you want my fingers inside you, don’t you, love?”
She blinks, flustering a little.Oh, my, my. Pretty, fiery Carina. You talk a big game. You want people to think you’re so in control, so wise to the world, when really you’re as sweet and innocent as they come.“I—” She ducks her head, but it’s no good. I’m still cupping her face in my hands and I’m not letting her off that easy. I hold her in place, silently asking her to give me what I need. She flushes, and the delicate pink burn to her cheeks makes my heart slam like a piston.
I see her resolve forming. She takes a deep breath and nods. “Yes. I want that.”
Brave, brave, Carrie. No tremor in her voice. No hesitation now. I could growl, I’m so fucking pleased with her, but she speaks again, and my attention is drawn to her mouth. “I want more than that. I want your sweat and your come. I want your body. I want it all. But I want the rest of you, too, Dash. I want your mind. I want your thoughts, and your feelings, and your music, and…and…all of you. If I can’t have that, too, then I don’t want any of it. What would be the point?”
Well, fuck. I’m not prepared for this. I’ve been greedy, ticking off in my head all of the things I want from her. I don’t just want her body, either. I want anything and everything that makes her Carrie. I want her smile. Her laughter. I want the way she frowns when she’s staring off into the distance, thinking about something. I want her intelligence, and her sharpness, and the way she hums under her breath when she’s working in the library and she thinks there’s no one around to hear. I have not, for even one second, contemplated that she might want more frommein return. I haven’t considered that there would be a cost, and thisisa cost.
If I hand all of those parts of myself over to her, I’m leaving myself wide open and vulnerable. I’d have to let down walls that were built years ago if I’m even going totryand let her in, and who knows if that’s even possible? The walls are so much a part of me that there might not be much left over once they’re gone.
“I’m not in the business of making promises I can’t keep.” The change in Carrie is small. I see when her disappointment hits her, and it affects me more than it should. “That said, I’ve never been a defeatist, Mendoza. I’ll give whatever I have to give. Will that be enough?”
I am a beggar trying to buy the moon with a dollar. This is the worst trade in the history of bartering; there’s no chance that she’ll accept. Only she does. Undeserving though I am, Carrie nods her head and holds out her hand. “Whatever you have to give is plenty.”
I need to keep my traitorous mouth shut, but this feels wrong, like I’m cheating her out of something. I’ve walked out of restaurants with too much change in my pocket, and lied through my teeth to score a better grade, but I can’t let Carrie enter into this agreement without being sure she knows what she’s doing. I could never live with myself. “How can you be so sure?”
She looks at me, somber as a judge, and speaks slowly. “Whatever you give light to will grow, Dash. Feed something and it’ll flourish. Care enough and the fragile thing in your hands will strengthen. I have faith that you’ll give me what you can until there’s more of it to give. That’s all.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I’m in way over my head here, and I have not been good enough in this life to have earned a second of this girl’s attention, but I’m going to take it, because an opportunity like this doesn’t come around twice. I’m lucky that I’m here experiencing it now, for fuck’s sake, and not stuck back in England, already promised to some dull thoroughbred filly that my father set me up with.
So, I kiss her, and I mean it more than I’ve ever fucking meant anything in my life. Her mouth is sweet and tentative, but not for long. One sweep of my tongue and the girl goes up like she’s a tinderbox and I’m the match. She threads her fingers through my hair, fisting her hands around the strands and I’m caught off guard as she tugs my head back. I meet her gaze, my mouth slightly open, fighting back a smile at her audacity, and she does something that sets a blaze burning in the pit of my belly: she stands on her tiptoes and she flicks my top lip with the tip of her tongue, licking at me like I’m the foam on top of a fucking chai latte.
“Oh, you did not just do that,” I tell her. “You didnot.” I grab her by the waist and lift her, and she cries out in surprise. God, I could get used to that sound. I’d gladly coax that startled little yelp out of her every damn fucking day and still want to hear it all over again. Her legs wrap around my waist. I carry her around the other side of the telescope, too pleased for words when she sees the nest of blankets I arranged there for us before she arrived and she smiles.
“Presumptuous,” she whispers.
“Prepared,” I fire back. “It was raining. I didn’t want you catching a cold in the middle of summer when I stripped you bare.” I figured after what went down between us last night that there was achanceI’d get to have her again, but I wasn’t banking on it. I was telling the truth when I said I just wanted to make sure she was warm. I knew, the second I opened that door and saw her standing there in the rain, hair dripping wet, her big brown eyes full of surprise and relief, that I wasn’t going to be able to keep my hands to myself, though.
Fuck, she is pure perfection. I set her down on the blankets, brushing her hair away from her face, and the vision of her lying there beneath me, her nipples stiff and poking through the thin material of her t-shirt, pulls the air right out of my lungs.
I’m not supposed to have this. I’m not supposed tofeelthis way. I’ve become so accustomed to the knowledge that I’ll be bargained off like a poker chip by my father at some point that I haven’t let myself imagine what it would be like to actually care about someone. It seemed like a futile exercise. And now here I am, kneeling over a goddess, about to feast on her, and my stupid heart’s doing all kinds of unexpected gymnastics. The thing about gymnastics is that you need training to land the moves correctly, and I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I’m probably going to wind up breaking something far more painful than a bone.
I try to be careful when I tug up her t-shirt, but I’m not very good at careful. My hands weren’t built for it. She gasps as I rip the damp fabric from her body. I have my own shirt unbuttoned and discarded in a heap on the floor in no time. Shoes toed off. Pants kicked aside. Carina already took her shoes and socks off, soaking as they were, so only her jeans and her underwear remain. She hikes her hips up for me so I can peel the sodden denim from her beautiful fucking legs, and then—
