Dare Me Read online

  DARE ME

  Stella Rhys

  Copyright © 2015 by Stella Rhys

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue: Callum

  Epilogue: Lake

  Playlist

  Prologue

  Let me start by saying that Lake and my relationship never had a chance at normal. I blame my mother’s generosity. Growing up, she let Lake stay at our place while her grandmother cleaned, so for as long as I can remember, she was at my house Monday through Friday, from after school till Elena went home at night. I didn’t care when were little. I could ignore her if I wanted to. But as we got older and Lake grew beautiful, my mother’s fondness multiplied. She paid for her ballet lessons. She brought her on family vacations with us to Paris, the Hamptons, St. Barts. She went out of her way to hunt down anything Lake ever mentioned she wanted or liked or so much as fucking looked at. Maybe it wasn’t my mother’s generosity so much as her undying need for a daughter.

  A stunning one at that. Lake’s honey brown waves were just a shade darker than her smooth skin and she had a raspy voice that lilted out between perfect heart-shaped lips. I probably hit puberty early because of her. Sprung countless hard-ons that had her name written all over them. So for the height, build and sexual appetite that landed me all those older girls in high school, I should’ve probably thanked her but I vacillated between lust and cold, hard resentment my entire adolescence.

  Because everything I worked hard for, Lake was simply given.

  It was like that from the start but got to its worst in high school. I’d spent three hours a night for half a year applying to The Mercer School but when Lake was sixteen, she said she liked our uniforms, so my mother bought her way in. She had Lake’s casual stays at our house turn into something permanent when Elena got sick. She tore down a wall so Lake’s new bedroom could fit a walk-in closet, because every drop-dead gorgeous sixteen-year-old girl deserved a walk-in closet the size of a railroad apartment. She had me look after Lake at school and report back on how she was doing. I forced myself to lie and pretend that she was just being the perfect girl my mother dreamt of instead of telling her that Lake had every boy in school and half the teachers lusting after her with the way she walked around, back arched and tits pushed halfway out her uniform. All verbal warnings with that girl. I got written up for taking a piss without permission but Lake walked around Mercer with her nipples an inch from showing and the teachers only smiled and motioned for her to pull her shirt up.

  I fucking hated going to school with that girl.

  She’d already infiltrated my home life and I’d known from day one that it was only a matter of time before she wormed her way into my social circle. It took barely a week before she was a fucking staple, despite the fact that she played no sports and was a “proud Christian virgin” for Christ’s sake. She had nothing in common with any of us. But she did have a tight little body and the face of an angel hiding a dirty secret. Whenever she felt mischievous or had some sort of impish thought – basically every fifteen seconds – those big hazel eyes would narrow into this cat-like bedroom gaze that was what my dad wound up blaming when he confessed to my mom before the divorce. But that’s a whole other story.

  Plain and simple, I hated her. I hated that she dated my best friend and formed an unbreakable bond with my girlfriend. I hated that she heard things about me that I didn’t want her to know. I hated that my friends hit on her every chance they got and became horny, bumbling idiots if she was home when they came over. I hated that I eventually lost my best friend because I had to kick his ass for pressuring her for sex. Because of my mom, this random girl became my damned responsibility, and I wound up hating her as much as I fucking loved every inch of her skin and every goddamned word that she spoke.

  Like I said, we had no chance at normal with the way we grew up. While she worshipped my mom like a goddess, Lake was smug and cheeky to me. She was a teenage girl and all too pleased with the fact that she was beautiful enough to control people – with the fact that she got a yes for every request of mine that was met with no. So I grew to enjoy tormenting her as payback. I liked how her cheeks looked flushed pink. I told our friends all the stupid, self-conscious things she said after ripping from my bong. In class, I picked her for every question on the book that I knew she couldn’t answer. Since she loved to tease, I locked her out of her room in just her towel. I did anything I could to piss her off.

  In return, she worked her charm harder. She customized the way she behaved around everyone in my life so they were thoroughly enchanted, catering to her every whim. She acted like a sweet, innocent angel to them but to me, she was a smirking, lilting, devil.

  And till the day she shattered me to pieces, we kept at our game. It started when Elena got sick and Lake’s Aunt Paula, came to take over cleaning. Unlike fiery Elena, she was boring. Presented no challenges. She did whatever we asked, gave us whatever we wanted. She was so dim she reached right up to hand us whatever we pointed to, too absent to realize she was giving say, a full bottle of Ketel to a pair of fifth graders.

  So we started the game of truth or dare.

  What naughty little thing would finally get Paula’s attention? Stealing the joint from her purse? Lake dared me to swipe it and I dared her to take the first hit. The next year, our dares graduated to sneaking out of the townhouse with Paula’s cash, running down the street to buy soda and candy and condoms just to see what they looked like. Years later, I’d let her watch me put one on. I dared her to give me something to look at, to get me hard enough to show her how a rubber worked. And Jesus fuck, did she come through.

  The challenge had most definitely taken a turn by high school. It had nothing to do with getting in trouble anymore, but pushing each other past our furthest physical, emotional and sexual boundaries, the lines of which grew fainter with every minute we spent together. It helped that we always picked dare.

  Because for every “truth” you uttered, the other person could pass a turn for free, and that made for a boring day with no scandal or shame, which was everything Lake and I grew to fear. We needed those things. Thanks to each other, we grew up fucked in the head, living off the daily adrenaline of shocking, arousing and one-upping each other. I dared her to streak down Sixty-First Street in just her school skirt. She dared me to jerk off in front of the window. I dared her to flash Mr. Price her tits. She dared me to start an affair with Miss Kane. I said she couldn’t seduce my girlfriend. She proved me more than wrong. By mid-college, we had a handful of threesomes under our belt. But I always favored having Lake to myself because that was how it was meant to b
e. I was the first to see her body naked, the first to touch it, the first to show it pleasure. I was the one who took her virginity when she was finally ready and the one who knew every part of her, inside and out. That body belonged to me.

  Growing up, that was my truth.

  By the time we turned twenty-one, I’d fallen in and out of love with Lake at least a thousand times. And she knew it. But she still chose to disappear one day, without a word to me or my mother, who took only a couple months to turn grey and spiral into depression. She had invested love and time into Lake, chosen this exceptional girl over her husband. Over me. And Lake had shown her gratitude by vanishing into thin air one rainy Sunday morning. She had taken several things of ours with her – things worth a small fortune – but we didn’t blink twice over that shit. All we wanted was to find her but after she sent that one message asking us to stop, we did.

  And I went back to hating her, with a passion a million times deeper than any one I’d ever loved her with. On top of that, I went on to accomplish every last goal that, depending on her mood, she said I would or would never achieve. I broke all the hearts she claimed I was going to and I became the cruel, powerful man she declared I’d be when we were only thirteen. And I managed to do it all without missing her once. I wouldn’t let myself so much as think of her. Lake was a bad lifestyle choice. An addiction. And I had to stay sober to build my empire, make my fortune and care for my mom. Which is exactly what I did. I found a way to love my life stripped of the twisted girl who made me, who I made.

  But as of this morning, she’s back in Manhattan.

  And despite the war I went through to forget her, I have to have her.

  In every way that exists.

  Chapter One

  Callum

  I probably looked like an asshole just standing there outside the restaurant. I was at the greenhouse at the top of The Victorian Hotel. It was bursting with her favorite blue flowers and all these other bright colors that mocked my shitty mood.

  My mother had rented out the garden because there was apparently no better place to host what she’d nicknamed her “No Questions Asked” dinner. “Flowers represent a new start and that’s exactly what she’s come back for. Which is why we are all going to be respectful. No questions asked tonight. We don’t care why she left, we only care that she’s home. Correct?” She didn’t wait for an answer because she knew mine would be along the lines of a flat “no.” I had questions. I had tons of them. I’d spent years of my life beating them to death so I could finally move on but now they were wrestling their way back to the front of my spinning head because it was really happening.

  Lake was back.

  My Lake. The Lake I fought tooth and nail to push out of my brain because once upon a time, I’d been dependent on whatever toxic brand of pleasure she breathed into my lungs. We’d grown up together and our minds had grown fucked up together. We worshipped and loathed one another. She pissed me off to no end but I started to like how she drove me insane. The more she worked me up the better it felt when she brought me back down and I fucking loved the way she brought me back down. It felt like I was rolling on ecstasy. My skin would still be burning hot and tingling when she’d murmur an inch from my face and tease me for getting so mad. The sound of my name drifting out from those pretty lips was always enough to get me hard as a rock.

  “Take your time, man.”

  Coming out the doors was Logan. I turned away when I caught the smirk on his face. I had two best friends in high school and he was the one I didn’t end up nearly killing. After twelve years, I was pretty familiar with his smug looks and I knew exactly what this one was about.

  “You’re gonna need all the time you can get.”

  My eyes told him that I was already tired of his shit. “I know she has to look good, Logan.”

  “Better than good. It’s kind of fucked up how good she looks right now. I mean she had to have beat like, fifty, sixty guys away with a stick just to get here. She probably has a collapsible baseball bat in her purse.”

  “This is your idea of a pep talk?”

  He grinned. “You know you can’t wait to see her.”

  “I haven’t thought about her once since she left.”

  “Yeah. Minus the dreams.”

  “I don’t really count things that happen in my sleep.”

  “It’s only your subconscious reflecting your thoughts.”

  I gave him a look. “I can’t remember if you’re here to help or annoy the shit out of me.”

  He laughed. “When have those two things ever been mutually exclusive?” Fair. He’d always been the one to slap joints out of my hand back in school because of the random drug tests from our AAU wrestling team. “Alright, alright, I’ll leave you alone,” Logan surrendered. “Just thought I’d give you a heads up.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  I spent another few minutes outside after he went back in. Five, maybe ten. I couldn’t get this one memory of Lake out of my head because it was the epitome of our love and hate. It was ages ago – the first summer back from college – but I still remembered the day in my old bedroom. Rolling my eyes, clenching my teeth and cursing her out while I jerked myself off.

  I’d told her to stop. That I’d catch her if she stole from my old room again. The first time had been with cufflinks I didn’t care about but I couldn’t overlook it when nights later, the Rolex Submariner disappeared from my dresser.

  I knew it was Lake but my suspicions were shot down.

  “You’ve always had a habit of misplacing things.” My mother said it as quick as she could because we both knew the opposite was true. I needed things neat, uncluttered. I had a system for everything and a habit of cleaning during shitty moods. Elena used to joke that she should piss me off if she ever wanted me to do her job. She dubbed me a neat freak and my mother agreed but if it supported her image of Lake, she was happy to flip-flop on her opinion. “She would never steal, Callum. She has her own credit card.” A quick summary of how blindly she loved and spoiled that girl.

  I was pissed. And Lake faked innocence, as usual so I installed a camera in my room and genuinely hoped that she’d try to steal from me again.

  A week went by before the third strike. A tie. Ivory satin Brioni. I never wore it but it was the first one in my pull out rack and I’d seen it the night before so I practically fucking salivated when I noticed that it was gone. I knew it had to be Lake so I dialed back the footage from my camera and practically sprung wood when I found the exact moment she snuck in my room and took it from my drawer. I had her. I had everything I needed to prove that she was behind that string of missing shit in the house. I could expose her, invalidate every other time she’d pinned the blame on me.

  But instead of sneaking my tie out of the room, Lake took it onto my bed.

  I watched her lay it down, put her hands on her hips and narrow playful eyes at every corner of the ceiling till she guessed the spot where I hid the camera. I sneered when she blew a kiss. Kneeling on the bed, she tossed her hair behind her shoulders and hooked her finger into her V-neck. I stared. I stopped blinking as she started pulling down, down, slowly, till the V was just above her navel, the cotton straining thin against the shape of her perfect tits. They were threatening to burst out and pissed as I was, I prayed to see them spill. Fuckin’ Lake. I had my face inches from my screen now, my lip curled but my dick hard. I couldn’t remember when I’d whipped it out and started stroking. All I knew was that I couldn’t stop. A minute ago, I was seething, waiting to humiliate and expose Lake as a liar. But suddenly, I was living for her little striptease. Every hot second of it. I breathed heavy when she turned around and got on all fours. She lowered herself slowly, her stretched out T-shirt sliding up her gorgeous, toned back. I stroked faster when she pressed her cheek to my mattress and stuck her ass in the air, using two hands to wiggle slowly out of her terry cloth shorts, till they were down her thighs and around her knees. Her wavy hair fanned out in a dozen heart s
hapes over my sheets. I wanted to feel them entwined in my fingers. I wanted so bad to suck on her bottom lip. The whole time, she peered over her shoulder at the camera, biting it back and looking at me with such wicked fucking mischief that my muscles flexed with the physical need to find her, grab her and pin her to the bed. “See, asshole? You like it.” Her eyes had such an uncanny way of expressing her thoughts it was irritating. I could practically hear Lake saying those words and I hated how vividly I could picture her voice. Of course at the same time, I loved it. “Come for me, Callum. All over me.” I imagined Lake saying it, her full lips wrapping tight around every lusty “m” and adding a “please” since I so rarely heard that word coming out of her mouth.

  Once she was down to her panties, she reached into them. I gripped the edge of my desk. I watched her touch herself, her eyes squeezing tighter shut with every stroke. I knew she was close when her jaw dropped wide open. I could see the bliss twisting in her face and I was fucking high on it. I loved the way she looked. Every expression she made. I loved how deep her fingers dug into my mattress, how tight her toes flexed as she got closer. She was almost there and I was just waiting for it with the purest, hottest lust in the world.

  The second her knees clamped shut, I came like an animal, pleasure churning through me as I grunted a string of profanity dedicated solely to her.

  And the next day, the white tie was back on the rack.

  I had to give it to her for that one.

  Because Lake could fuck with my head in ways I never knew possible and it wasn’t even like she was trying. It was just instinct, the way she naturally was. Thanks to her, I’d found out early on that some women were just designed to drive men up the wall and leave them standing around clueless, angry and hornier than hell.