Page 65 of Riot Rules
“Hey!”
I look to the right, and Dash is leaning against the curved archway that leads into the living room, holding a tumbler of whiskey in his hands. God, he’s so fucking handsome.
Mercy and Mara are arguing.
Pres has found a chair to sit herself down on, and is resting her head on the kitchen island, pillowed by her arm. She looks like she’s two seconds away from falling asleep.
“Hey, I’m just running to the restroom,” I tell Mara. She doesn’t even acknowledge that I’ve spoken, so I seize my opportunity and I go.
I feel my pulse all over my body as I walk past Dash. He follows me. I can feel his presence at my back, the way you feel heat rolling off an open flame. The closer he gets, as I push and jostle my way through the crowd dancing in the living room, the warmer my skin becomes. I’m burning up when his hand circles my wrist and he pulls me to the right, guiding me toward a tiny, narrow door, set back in a recessed alcove.
He doesn’t say anything as we disappear into the shadows. He hands me his drink, then takes a set of keys from his pocket and uses one of them to unlock the door. In the space of ten seconds, I’ve left my friends, charged across the ground floor, been swept through a door and now I’m standing in the dark. It’s amazing how well the door dulls thedum, dum, dumof the music.
“Give me your hand,Stella,” Dash whispers.
I do as I’m told. Dash’s grip is warm and reassuring in the dark. He winds his fingers through mine, and my whole body lights up. How can something so small make me feel so good. Being this close to him, alone, his strong arms closing around me, pulling me to him, when all that keeps us from being discovered by our friends is the width of a door.
“There are stairs,” he whispers. “Just to our right. I’ll go first. You just need to follow. Cool?”
I’m nodding before he even finishes speaking. “Yes.”
“Good. But there’s something I have to do first.” His hands cup my face, and his mouth catches me off guard. I’ve been catching glimpses of him all night, desperate to be close to him, wanting him to kiss me so badly, but I’m never prepared for the reality of it. It’s not something you ever get used to. The second his mouth meets mine, my blood becomes liquid fire. His tongue slips past my lips, probing and tasting, hot and sweet, tinged with the burn of the whiskey he was drinking, and I feel myself melting into him. One of his hands moves to rest at the back of my neck, the other sliding down my side until it comes to a stop on my hip. He pulls me to him, so that there’s no space between us at all anymore, and the firm, warm, solidness of his chest against mine makes my head spin.
And I’d be lying if the pressure of his hard-on, digging into my lower stomach, didn’t have a certain effect on me, too.
All it takes is one look. One kiss. One touch. The smallest, most meagre piece of Dashiell Lovett’s attention is capable of burning me to a pile of cinder and smoke. I want him. After denying that truth, even to myself, for so long, it feels even more amazing to be able to acknowledge it so readily now.
His breath turns ragged as his hands begin to roam again. He groans when he slides a hand up over my ribcage and then over my breasts, cupping and squeezing as he goes. A second later, he rips his mouth away from mine, panting, and takes a step back. “JesusChrist.” He sounds stunned. “What the hell have you done to me? I’m never this…this…” He pauses. Regroups. Then, he takes hold of my hand and places it over the center of his chest, so I can feel the erratic thrum of his heart. “I am neverthis.”
“Sure that’s not the drugs?” I ask quietly, disguising the question behind soft laughter.
“What? God no. I’m clean. I haven’t taken anything, and I’m not going to. I don’t need that shit anymore. I’ve had a couple of drinks, but that’s it, I swear.”
Relief sinks into my bones. I haven’t asked him to stop taking drugs. If I ask him to do that, he’ll want to know why it’s such a problem for me, and I can’t tell him what happened back in Grove Hill. It will ruin everything if he finds out what I did to Kevin. He’ll never want to speak to me again. By swearing off drugs of his own volition, he’s made things much easier for me, though.
His pulse sings to me. It matches my own, too fast, too reckless, and too wild. Everything feels like it’s coming together and falling apart at the same time. Dash’s fingers find my cheek in the dark; he strokes the tips of them along my cheekbone and then along the line of my jaw, sighing softly.
“We should just stay in here forever,” he says. “Fuck those guys. Who needs friends, anyway?”
“Seriously.”
His forehead rests against mine, and suddenly I’m filled with the burning need to see his face. I want to see the intensity in his eyes. I want to see what he looks like when he’s sharing a moment likethiswith me. It feels too important to miss. “Where do the stairs go, Dash?”
He lets out a long, tense breath. “Third floor,” he says.
“What’s on the third floor?”
“My bedroom.”
I don’t hesitate. “Take me there.”
The stairs are narrow and very steep. I follow behind him, a fist full of his t-shirt in my hand as he leads me up, up, and up some more. “The house is full of weird little hallways and stairways,” Dash explains. “The guy who owned this place before Wren bought it was a paranoid recluse. He thought the CIA were trying to kill him. He had all of these little escape routes built into the house in case he was ever raided and needed to make a quick escape.”
He opens the door and helps me through into what I quickly deduce to be a linen cupboard—the smell of laundry detergent lingers in the air. My suspicions are confirmed when a piercing point of light erupts in Dash’s hands. He’s turned the light on his cell phone on, illuminating the stacks and stacks of sheets and towels on the shelves around us. “I locked my door so none of these idiots could fuck on my bed. I’ll go unlock it. Give me ten seconds, then come out. Go along the landing and straight through the first door to your left. Okay?”
I nod.
Dash slips stealthily out of the linen closet and disappears, closing the door behind him. I wait in the blackness, counting slowly to ten in my head, and then I follow him out. I haven’t gone two steps before I walk straight into someone’s chest.
