The Allure of Dean Harper

  Of course you do, Lily. You told me yourself, you’ve never been fucked by someone who knew what he was doing.

  I slipped my hand beneath the waistband of her tights and then lower, trailing my finger along the outside of her panties. I had her in my hands, so completely open for me. She sighed against me, keeping her focus on my shoulder.

  Shy.

  She couldn’t look me in the eye as I slid my finger past the hem of her panties. She bit down harder on my shoulder, and I held up her weight. She was putty and if I let go, she’d fall to a heap on the floor. I backed us up to the wall, right between my framed photos. I slipped my hand out of her pants and tugged them down, taking in the sight of her naked body. She was tiny, with perky breasts and slim lines, and those hipbones that shouldn’t have been visible. She looked so young standing there that I took a step back, thrown for a loop.

  I scanned across her tan skin, memorizing the freckle that sat two inches above her left nipple. Now it was my freckle. A secret patch of skin that I hadn’t had the time to notice on the yacht.

  “Dean?” She spoke with a shaky voice. “I’m on the pill. If that’s what you’re worried about…”

  She thought I didn’t want her. She thought I was stepping away for good.

  “How old are you Lily.” It was part question, part statement.

  “Twenty-three.”

  Ten years difference.

  “How many men have you been with?”

  She reached out and grabbed my pants, using them to yank me toward her. She was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  “Enough to know how this goes. You’re going to take off those pants and push me back against this wall. Maybe you’ll hold my hands above my head or maybe you’ll grip my chest. I know you want me, Dean.”

  She slipped her hand beneath the waistband of my pants and gripped me, hard.

  “Stop making me wait.”

  Fuck her.

  I had planned on pinning her to the wall, but not any more. She wasn’t in control; she might be a feisty young lioness, but I was a lion. I pushed off my pants, gripped her hand, and yanked it off me. Her mouth fell open in shock, but there wasn’t time for her to question my actions. I was already lifting her up, forcing her legs around my hips. I had to fight the urge to groan. She felt like heaven and I wasn’t even inside her yet.

  I walked us up the stairs, toward my bedroom, but it wasn’t for romantic reasons. I needed leverage. I needed her on my bed so I could hold my body up over her and angle inside her so deep that her head rolled back and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming.

  The last coherent thought I had that night was when I stood at the end of my bed, staring down at Lily spread across my navy sheets. She was a sea of blonde hair and full, pink lips. I was going to lose myself in her, more than I’d lost myself in anyone before.

  She smirked and arched a brow. “Do you need help with that?”

  I was holding the condom in my hand, staring at her.

  I shook my head.

  They say if you aren’t sure if a berry is poisonous, you’re supposed to touch it first, rub it on your skin, and see if you have a physical reaction. After that, you take a lick and wait a day. Still breathing? Take a small bite. If you’re not dead, then the berry is probably safe to eat.

  I feared Lily was poisonous. I feared she’d make my heart stop, but instead of testing her touch and tasting her slowly, I slipped into her until her nails dug into my back. I bit down on her lip so hard as she came that I tasted her blood in my mouth.

  For all I knew, I had hours to live. For all I knew, Lily would be the death of me.

  I smiled at the thought.

  What a way to go…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Lily

  I woke up with a start in a dark room, lying on the softest sheets I’d ever felt in my life. Am I dead? Is this a cloud? I inhaled a deep breath and glanced to my right. Dean was lying next to me on his chest. His face was angled toward me and half smashed into his pillow, but he was still the most picturesque thing I’d ever seen. The moonlight illuminated a fading set of teeth marks on his shoulder. Mine. I smiled at the memory as I slipped the sheet off my legs and pressed up out of his bed.

  A quick glance at his bedside clock announced the time in bright red numbers: 4:30 AM.

  I tiptoed across his room, wholeheartedly aware of my nakedness. My thighs ached and there was a light bruise on the left side of my ribcage. Dean had been rough at times, just enough to thrill me, but even then, I’d known I’d be feeling the aftereffects in the morning. I flushed just thinking about it.

  I pulled open his door as quietly as possible and didn’t bother looking back. I’d see him at the airport in a few hours anyway.

  My leggings and tank top were still on the marble floor of the entryway, passing judgment on me as I descended the staircase. I’d had casual sex before, but nothing about last night had been casual.

  I slipped into my clothes, listening for any sign of Dean. It’s not that I didn’t want to see him, I just needed five minutes to collect my thoughts. I’d come to his house on a whim, assuming I’d have really good sex and then be on my way. Instead, Dean had reached inside and scattered pieces of me across his house. My sanity sat on his front stoop, my self-control was splattered across his entryway, and my heart was up there on his bed, too tangled in scattered sheets to find.

  Walking through the streets of New York at 4:30 AM wasn’t on my bucket list, but I didn’t have a choice. There were no cabs roaming the streets of the Upper West Side and I was too scared to go down into the subway stations. I’d already walked two miles south before I remembered Uber. Fucking Uber. I requested a ride on the app and a few minutes later a small Romanian woman with a head-wrap pulled up in front of me in a white Buick.

  “You Lily?” she asked with a thick accent.

  I nodded, slipped into her backseat, and typed in my address.

  She peered back and scanned over my outfit. “You always run this early?”

  “No.”

  She veered out into traffic without looking—which was fine since we were the only car on the road—and then glared back at me. “Good. Bad for your knees. Running.”

  I stared out the window. You know what else is bad for your knees? Wrapping them around Dean Harper’s hips.

  By the time I arrived back at my apartment, I was ready for a full night of sleep. I wanted to crawl onto my futon and burrow myself under the covers so far that I would never wake up again. Unfortunately, when I pushed the door open, I was greeted by a wide-awake and frantic Josephine.

  “You idiot! You stupid idiot!” she said, waving a spatula in the air like she was going to hit me with it. Had she even slept? Or had she been awake the whole night stewing because I wouldn’t answer her phone calls?

  I dropped my purse on the table near the door and shook my head. “You’re not allowed to be mad at me for sleeping with Dean.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’m not mad about that! I’m mad because you just walked home by yourself at 4:30 AM. Dean called me twenty minutes ago demanding to know where you were.”

  My heart stopped. “He called you? This morning?”

  She narrowed her eyes and studied me. “Of course. You left and he had no clue where you went. That was really stupid, Lily.”

  Knowing he’d woken up, knowing he cared that I was out by myself did a weird thing to my heart. The sick, selfish part of me wanted him to be up, worried about me.

  Josephine huffed and turned back toward the kitchen, and finally, I registered the smell of fresh pancakes. That explains the spatula.

  “It’s not like I could go out looking for you,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “So I decided to make breakfast for when you got here.”

  I smirked and walked closer to the kitchen. “I could have been dead out on the streets, and you’d be here, enjoying your fluffy pancakes.”

  She glared at me, still pissed. “Pancakes soothe me.”
>
  I edged around the counter, dropped my head on her shoulder, and flashed her my best attempt at puppy dog eyes. “Remember when I babysat you that night you got super drunk last month? When you fell into the ditch and couldn’t get out?”

  She groaned. “Please don’t ever remind me of that.”

  “Well, now we’re even, okay?”

  She pointed to the plate of warm pancakes sitting beside the stove. “Fine. Eat up and let Dean know that you’re home safe.”

  My stomach clenched at the reminder of Dean. I knew I had to text him; only a true psychopath would let him worry for nothing. I went to retrieve my phone from my purse and found the evidence of his worry: two missed calls and three texts messages.

  Dean: Did you leave?

  Dean: I just searched my entire house looking for you.

  Dean: Call me when you get home.

  I skipped the call and instead shot him a quick text.

  Lily: Home.

  One word. One word that would guard my heart and make it impossible for him to know how affected I was by the last twelve hours.

  “Anyway, how was it? Last night?” Jo asked behind me. I swallowed and stared down at my phone.

  The pretend answer, the answer I fed to Josephine and kept repeating to myself, was that the night was fun, simple, “nothing serious”.

  The real answer, the answer that I would never utter aloud, was that it had been life-changing. I’d laid on Dean’s bed, staring up at the ceiling with his head between my legs, and I’d begged the universe to freeze. I’d gripped his hand in mine and pleaded for one more second, one more hour, one more night.

  But then I’d woken with a start a few hours later, sad to find that the universe didn’t pause…not even for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lily

  The suitcase I’d borrowed from Jo had a wheel that rattled nonstop. I would have checked it at the entrance had Dean not explicitly forbidden us from doing so. “We don’t have time to wait for bags when we get to Vegas. Pack light.” I cursed him in my head as the wheel got stuck for the fifth time since entering the airport. I kicked it back into alignment and then locked eyes with the girl standing in front of me in line at the airport Starbucks.

  She was wearing Uggs and jean shorts, and rolled her eyes at the audacity of my squeaky wheel. She turned back to her friend and leaned in. “Soo ratchet.”

  Did she think she was whispering? I could hear every word she said and I desperately wanted to tell her that “ratchet” wasn’t a real word—not unless she was working from the Kardashian-Webster Dictionary.

  “Oh my god, she’s so basic,” her friend said, angling back to get a good look at me. I tilted my head and smirked. I knew these girls. They were the type to sit behind their iPhones and tweet mean shit out into the world.

  When they made it to the front of the line, I listened as they ordered two caramel macchiatos with skim milk and warned the barista behind the counter, “Don’t be stingy with the caramel sauce.”

  He nodded and accepted their cash, all the while probably cursing them to hell alongside me. When it was my turn to order, I got a coffee and then leaned closer. “If I pay you five bucks, will you make their macchiatos with whole milk instead of skim?”

  He smirked. “Lady, you don’t even have to pay me. I already did it.”

  I laughed, left five dollars in his tip jar, and felt much better about the world as I walked away, squeaky wheel and all.

  When I arrived at our gate—five minutes behind schedule—the rest of the team was already seated with their laptops and iPads on their laps. Hunter and Zoe were on one side of the aisle and Julian and Dean sat across from them. Hunter shot me a narrowed glance when he caught sight of me, but I didn’t care. Narrowed eyes beats flirty comments any day. Julian was busy on his phone, so I just smiled and rolled past.

  When I registered Dean’s outfit, I knew I’d made a mistake. I’d slipped on a sundress and Converse before heading to the airport. Dean was wearing a navy suit, shined shoes, and an expression that warned me away.

  The only evidence that he was less prepared than normal was the short stubble across his jaw. I liked it.

  “Good of you to join us,” he said. His deep voice reminded me of what he’d sounded like the night before, when he’d pulled my hair back and whispered dirty thoughts in my ear.

  Zoe patted the leather seat beside her and I jumped slightly. “Lily, come sit and tell me if you like these shoes. I’ve been eyeing them for the last few weeks.”

  I glanced back at Dean to see if maybe he’d rather I sit by him, but he was focused on his laptop. I’d been in his bed less than twelve hours before and he was already ignoring me. I wheeled my suitcase toward Zoe and sat. The leather was cold on the backs of my thighs and I couldn’t concentrate on anything she said. She was talking about shoes and pointing out different color combinations. The entire time, I was acutely aware of Dean. Every time he moved, my gaze flicked over to him. When he took a phone call, I listened with attentive ears. When he tilted his head from side to side, stretching out his neck, I wondered if he was sore from our night.

  When we boarded the plane, Zoe slid into the vacant seat beside mine, and Dean and Julian took the seats diagonally across the aisle from us. I couldn’t see him without sitting on my heels.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I flicked my gaze away from the sliver of his head that I could see and sat lower in my seat.

  “Nothing,” I said, reaching into my purse for…what? Grab something, you idiot.

  I pulled out my wallet, pretended like I was counting my bills, and then shoved it back inside my purse. The entire time, Zoe stared at me like I was a crazy person. “Got everything you need?”

  I laughed nervously. “Good to go.”

  She arched a brow. “I think you need to relax.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but she was already turning toward the aisle in pursuit of the flight attendant. Too bad for her, the attendant—a pretty brunette with a cute little pair of wings positioned directly beside her cleavage—was already leaning down and flirting with Dean.

  “Nah, I’m good. I think I’ll go with a water,” he said, smiling up at her.

  He never smiled at me.

  “Are you sure?” She winked. “You are headed to Vegas after all.”

  He shook his head.

  “How about I bring you a water and something else?” she insisted. “On me?”

  What, like your vagina in a cup? Jesus.

  “Yoohoo,” Zoe said, waving her hand in the air and cutting off the flight attendant’s flirting. She turned toward us and I saw the nametag pinned to her top: Beatrice. “Yes, hi Beatrice. Sorry to interrupt, but I think Dean is good with water, and my friend and I would really love vodka cranberries.”

  I sank lower in my seat and tried to hide my blush.

  “Zoe, behave. This is a work trip,” Dean said, condemning her drink choice. I rolled my eyes, though he couldn’t see behind the headrest.

  “I don’t have any meetings today. I can drink one vodka cranberry.”

  “You may not have any meetings, but Lily and I have one as soon as we land.”

  I jumped out of my chair. “What?”

  The last itinerary I’d seen listed events starting the following day.

  Dean’s gaze sliced up to me. That jaw was set and his piercing brown eyes had no room for love in them when they were so filled with hate.

  “I would have told you had you given me the chance.”

  I swallowed and glanced away. We could have easily been referencing a different topic all together, but with Dean, I could never tell.

  “Just email me the new itinerary so we’re all on the same page.”

  “Already did,” he said, turning around in his seat and effectively dismissing me. “Check your inbox.”

  I turned to my phone and pulled up my inbox, curious to see what he’d written.

  From: Zoe Davis


  To: Lily Black

  Subject: FWD: LVRW Itinerary Update

  Begin forwarded message:

  From: Dean Harper

  To: Zoe Davis

  Subject: LVRW Itinerary Update

  I’ve attached an updated Itinerary for Lily. Make sure she gets it.

  D. Harper

  The asshole hadn’t even emailed it to me himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dean

  Lily was poison, just as I’d feared she would be. I’d woken up in my bed to find her gone, no sign of her anywhere except for the lingering scent of her hair on my pillow. I’d felt like a fool chasing a ghost around my house at 4:30 AM. She could have at least had the decency to leave me a note, but instead she disappeared, ignored my calls, and shot me a one-word text: “Home.”

  When I first spotted her at the airport, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. Lily in a sundress, tan and glowing, was a sight that didn’t belong on a business trip. Whereas I felt like shit from my lack of sleep, Lily was radiant. Her blonde hair was twisted up in a bun, revealing the slender slope of her neck and collar bone.

  Had she not snuck out of my house in the middle of the night, maybe I would have given her a warmer welcome, but I was pissed. My patience with her was shot and it was only the first day of our Vegas convention.