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prologue
“You’re mine now. And I’m yours.”
“Promise?”
“I swear it.”
He kissed me again, a fierce claiming kiss that rocked me to my core. There was so much more to come.
But this right now…this was enough. He gave me everything he had. And when he came, he whispered it over and over.
“You’re mine.”
one
“You don’t haveto be such an asshole all the time.”
I shrugged and sent an obnoxiously caustic smile to my friend, Dane. He was sick of my shit, but too good of a guy to drop me. “It’s just my default.”
He rolled his eyes and took another swig of the brown-bottled local craft brew.
“And I’m just saying, that girl was trying to be nice. You didn’t have to scare her away.” Dane looked over wistfully at the retreating woman.
‘Scare her away’ was a bit of a stretch, but it was true, I’d been a dick. A perfectly pretty girl with a care-free smile and big brown eyes had stopped by our table at O’Reilly’s Pub to ask if she could use our salt shaker, and while Dane jumped at the chance to have a conversation with her, I’d been cold and standoffish. The way I liked it.
Now it was my turn to take a sip while I tried to think with a witty retort, but I came up empty, so I went with the truth.
“I wasn’t interested.”
“You don’t have to be interested in dating her to be polite, man.”
He had a point, but my bullheadedness refused to concede to it. So I doubled down.
“Why? I have enough friends, and I’m seriously considering why that’s the case,” I said, eyeing him. “I don’t need any more of them.”
“Yeah, you’re a big brutish bastard, we get it. Maybe I was interested in her. Did you think of that?”
Ah shit. Ihadn’tthought of that. Dane never seemed to take much notice of the women around town, so I didn’t even consider it. And while IknewI was a dick, at this moment, I especiallyfeltlike one. I looked around at the other tables full of people talking, laughing, enjoying the evening. It looked like I was the only person in the entire place with a chip on his shoulder, and while I normally didn’t give a shit about that, I wondered how Dane felt being the one sitting with me.
“Alright, I’m sorry.” The word felt acidic on my tongue. “I didn’t know you were interested.”
Dane slapped his hand on my back. “I wasn’t, she’s not my type. I was just saying. I could have been.”
“Now who’s the asshole?”
That made him laugh, and I even felt the corner of my mouth tip upward in what was an honest smile. The truth was, I didn’t deserve Dane, or any of my other friends. And I knew it. But I was too stubborn to get out of my own way.
“She was pretty, though,” Dane said, eyeing me.
“Yeah, I guess. Not interested, though.”
Dane sat forward and leaned his arms on the table.
“You know, after Christmas—”
“Come on, I don’t want to hear it,” I said, cutting him off.
“Too bad, you’re gonna hear it. After Christmas,” he repeated, “you were like a whole other person, Drew. You actually seemed happy. And nice for a change.”
