Page 5 of One Mistake

Right up to the minute he pulled back and slipped his fingers through mine. Then we were off. Across the dance floor. Out the door. To his car in the parking lot. Not a car. An SUV with a big backseat he helped me into then climbed in behind.

It all happened fast. Too fast. He unfastened the neck of my halter top and moved his lips down my throat to my left breast while his hand slid up the inside of my thigh. This wasn’t the story I waited twenty-two years for. Not one I wanted to see at the end when my life flashed before my eyes one final time. No way was I surrendering my v-card in the back of an Escalade. Neither did I want to pull the brakes. But there was a way to salvage this. I’d done it before with Robby Winstead in tenth grade. Then a couple of times after when I’d chickened out of sex.

Still bare from the waist up, I pushed his hands away so I could get to the area I needed to get to. I unfastened his belt, then his button-fly, concentrating on the scent of his car. It smelled like money, or more that he spent a lot of money to make it smell good.

I breathed in deep and took him into my mouth. He moaned and clenched his fists beside him, then shifted his hips. “Oh, God.” He dropped a hand to my shoulder and stroked my throat with his thumb and his grip tightened. And went tighter. And tighter until I moved him away. “Sorry.”

I pumped his dick a couple times with my hand before he groaned and came in my mouth. While he breathed out a few wobbly breaths, I moved to sit on the seat next to him and adjusted my top. “Wow.” He tucked his cock back into his jeans and fastened the buttons. “Can I see you again?”

I hadn’t even told him my name. “Oh, I don’t know.” Of course, I was going to say yes. I’d been fantasizing about Ryder Kennedy since we’d been partnered in Bio that first year. But I had to save some dignity since I’d just spent ten minutes sucking him off in the back of a car.

“I could cook for you.” Instead of answering, I reached for the door handle but didn’t climb out because he spoke again. “Hey. I’ll be at the marina tomorrow. Slip #19.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not going to beg, but I’m going to cook enough for two, so…” He shrugged and leaned in to kiss me softly. “I hope I’ll be sharing it with you.”

Wow. An invitation by Ryder Kennedy to the Alpha Alpha Phi yacht. Beth was never going to believe this. “I guess we’ll see tomorrow.” I never felt cooler before in my life than when I climbed out of that SUV.

2

Ryder

I had to piss. But my memory along with the feel of her pressed against me when she leaned in to whisper, gave me a hard-on. Plus, I was still tied and cuffed to the most Godawful bed in the history of discomfort.

Had to be a way out of this. Something I could say to make her let me go. She’d been in and out all day long. With her friends. Keaton’s and Finn’s girlfriends. Even though I wasn’t in the circle of friendship anymore, Glouster was a small enough town I knew who dated who.

I could hear the hum of electrical tools. Hum rather than growl. The fft fft of a nail gun. The occasional vibration of a compressor. When she walked into the bedroom again, a fine sheen of sweat and white dust coated her skin. “Building my cage?”

She ignored me and went to the attached bathroom for a glass of water. “Here. Drink this.” I sat up and sipped while she held the cup. “I need to move you.”

Move me? A chance to get the hell out of here. “Okay.” I smiled. Cop or not, I could overpower her. Slip out of here. But before I could formulate a get-out jail-free plan, she went for the button of my jeans. Flicked it open. Lowered the zipper. “What the fuck are you doing?” And why the fuck was my cock acting like it was into it?

“I don’t want to have to tase you again or drug you. Naked guy won’t run as fast as one wearing his Levis.” This was my girl who got away. The girl I could close my eyes and still feel pressed against me even after ten years. She still smelled like cinnamon apples, wholesome, sweet, a lie if ever there was one.

“Maybe you don’t remember me. But I’ve spent my fair share of time naked in public.” Before I became king of the Alphas, I’d been a pledge. A pledge who bubble-bathed naked in the fountain at the center of campus wearing only a shower cap and nipple clips. A pledge who streaked across the outfield on opening day of baseball season. A pledge who stood up in the middle of PSYCH101, ripped off my tear-away pants, and danced naked out of the room. Apparently, nudity was the theme of my pledge week. Good times.

“You’re not twenty years old anymore.”

Whatever that meant. I sighed. “Why are you doing this? Because the civil suit got dropped?” The judge kicked the case. Not me. He’d said the plaintiffs had already been paid restitution from the plea deal I took. Mom and Dad probably had something to do with it—a contribution to some legal fund or a pledge for the new courthouse being built—but even if they did, they would never tell me.

She wrinkled her forehead and sat on the bed beside me, letting her hand rest on my thigh. On. My. Thigh.

“I wasn’t part of the civil suit.” She didn’t have a right to be, anyway. The video of us together never made it online.

I shrugged as much as a guy with his arms cuffed over his head could shrug. “I thought maybe you were crusading on their behalf.”

“I’m not that noble.” She shook her head and another wave of cinnamon apple pie washed over me. My stomach growled. She lifted her hand and curled her finger as it hovered over my stomach before she pulled it back. “Once I move you, I’ll get you something to eat.”

Was I supposed to be grateful? “That’s big of you.” I shifted to look at her. Holy shit. Before, I would’ve never even glanced at a chick with that much ink, but now, close enough I could see the icy blue in her darker blue irises, the line of freckles that arched over her chin, the length of her heavily mascaraed lashes, my dick twitched. Again. Bad Ass Barbie was hot. As hot as she’d been when she’d been the poster girl for virginity.

“Where’s your cell phone?” She patted the pockets of my still unfastened jeans, and it was the most attention that area of my body had received in years, so I didn’t stop her. When her hands quit moving on their own, I smiled.

“I don’t have one.” It had been years since anyone wanted to talk to me. I barely had enough money for food and rent. A phone was a pipe dream.

“Really?” Obviously, we had a trust issue between us, but she went back to patting.

“Think about it, Reese. I live in a college town, work in a bar too far away from the college to make money and I’m Ryder Kennedy. Who the hell wants to talk to me?” God, the truth was pathetic. I was pathetic.

She stood. “That is a sad tale, Ryder. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” The bitterness was back. But so were the hands at the waistband of my jeans, tugging. And she leaned over, her long hair brushing across my crotch, over my zipper as she struggled, and I pushed my ass harder into the mattress. She pushed her hands under my ass, and I used my weight to hold her there, her hands inside my jeans, against my bare ass.

And somehow, the karma that had been punishing me for the last ten years shifted. “Fuck.” When she finally gave up, she tried to stand, but somehow, the zipper of my pants caught her hair and wasn’t letting go. She wrapped her hand around the hair stuck in my pants and pulled. But it was really stuck in there. Plus, all the jerking and tugging, the jeans rubbing, made the tip of my dick wet. Made me remember. And oh what a memory it was.