“I didn’t know you had a phobia of clowns,” I murmured after we had been sitting there for a while.

Dallas let out a long breath, letting go of some of the panic that still gripped her. “It’s not something I share with most people. Being scared of clowns is the stupidest fear known to man…”

“What happened? What made you so scared of them?”

She scowled. “You would laugh if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Ax.” She pushed back from me slightly and my arms tightened instinctively. I wasn’t ready to let her go yet.

“Everyone has stupid fears, baby,” I told her. Mine were crazy and childish. I saw a shrink once and only once, because she had told me I had mommy issues. What the fuck did that mean? I was scared to tell people I loved them because my mother had refused to tell me she loved me? What-the-fuck-ever!

“Like what?” She raised a brow at me, daring me to tell her what my fears were.

“I have a fear of falling,” I told her.

“No way!” She shook her head, causing her ponytail to brush against my hand still stroking across her shoulders. “Falling?”

Falling in love… But I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Crazy, huh?”

“Have you ever faced your fear?” she asked, tilting her head to the side to study me in the dim lighting from a nearby street lamp and the glow sticks from a group of teenagers walking by.

“Once,” I nodded. But before I could tell you how I felt, you decided I wasn’t worth your time. I didn’t say it aloud. I should have. I should have told her right then that she was the only girl I had ever really been in love with. “Dallas…”

“There you two are!” Harper exclaimed as she came around the side of the building with Shane and the others right behind her. “Where did you two go? One minute you were behind me and the next you disappeared.”

Dallas’s nails bit into my arm, and I glanced down at her. She had a pleading look in her blue eyes and I knew she didn’t want me to tell them the truth. That surprised me. Didn’t Harper and Linc know about her fear? Did they know the reasons behind it?

“We decided to bail and talk.”

Chapter 5

Dallas

The thumping on the door woke me. Startled, I sat straight up in bed…

A king sized bed.

What the fuck?

It took me exactly five seconds to remember where I was and how I had ended up there. This wasn’t the room I had seen yesterday, the one I was supposed to be sharing with Natalie. This room was bigger, though only slightly. The window facing west instead of north.

The thumping on the door came again. “Get your lazy ass up!” I thought it was Shane who was yelling through the locked door, but it could have just as easily been Drake. “The girls are already packed and starting to head out.”

Beside me Axton grunted and pushed himself into a sitting position. “Dude! I’m going to murder you.”

A deep, sexy laugh drifted to me. “Nothing I haven’t heard before. Get up, throw your shit in your case and let’s go… Oh, and tell Dallas that Harper has been looking for her.”

My still half-foggy mind cleared and I felt my face heat with a mixture of embarrassment and shame. I lowered my head, letting my long blonde hair hide my face from the man sitting very close—and very much naked—beside me.

“I’ll be out in a few,” Axton called back and I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard Shane’s heavy footsteps fade away as he left.

I didn’t lift my head. I couldn’t face him, couldn’t face what I had done. Damn my weakness for this man, and damn him for exploiting it. He had seduced me with every innocent brush of his fingers against my skin, his every murmured word as we had walked through Universal Studios last night. From the moment he started massaging my aching shoulders, I had weakened. The moment he lifted me into his arms and I had found my salvation from one of my worst nightmares, I was done for.

After Harper had found us, I had tried to be strong. I really had. But it was impossible not to feel his eyes on me, to feel the heat from his body as he had walked behind me through the other haunted houses. So it had been all too easy to cuddle into him when he had put his arm around me as we got onto the Transformers ride. While Harper had been transfixed by the movie ride experience, I had been making out with Mister Rock God.

Of course I was going to blame it on all the beer I had drunk last night. As well as the fact that I hadn’t drunk anything in two years. Maybe I would get away with saying it was because I had been so fucking horny and had gone without for just as long as I had alcohol.

Harper and Linc would see right through that half-truth in a heartbeat. I had gone a lot longer without sex than just two years. As much as some people liked to think I was a slut, I could count every man I had ever been with on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. The man beside me had been the one to ruin me for any other man, though. The one who had stolen my heart without much trouble, then shredded it in two when his feelings for his ex-girlfriend had reared their ugly head.

“We need to talk,” he finally said after I had been sitting there staring at the sheets for a few minutes.

I snorted and raised my gaze from the sheets to meet his hazel eyes. Right now they were a mixture of brown and green, but last night they had switched several times from brown to green and back again. When he was thrusting into me, forcing me to keep my eyes on him, his eyes had been green. As soon as he found his release, those crazy eyes switched almost instantly back to brown, until he started fucking me all over again.

“That was what you said last night when you asked me to come back to your room with you. The only words to ever leave your mouth were, ‘Fuck, you’re wet for me, baby’ and a few ‘I can’t wait to taste your scorching pussy’.” I pushed my hair back from my face, wishing I still had my ponytail holder so I could get it out of my way. “That’s the way it always was with us, Axton. Every time we should have been talking we were fuckin’ instead.”

He grimaced, making the lip ring in his bottom lip pout out. “Yeah, I know. It’s one of the many mistakes I made with you.”

“Wow.” My eyes widened and I knew I was being a total bitch, but I didn’t really care. “I never thought you would actually admit that you made mistakes. Are you sick?” I touched a hand to his forehead.