Read Online One Night with Sole Regret 05 Tie Me by Olivia Cunning - Free Book Online Page A

how glad I am that I don’t have to try to squeeze into Chad’s old clothes anymore’ and ‘I can’t believe my mom gave you socks and underwear for your birthday. The woman is so embarrassing.’ The woman is a saint, is what she is. I hit my growth spurt in eighth grade and if it hadn’t been for Janine, I’d have been wearing high-waters and ripping the seams out of my Spiderman T-shirt.”
    “Did Owen realize that his mom was helping you?”
    “He never said anything, but he had to have known. Everyone knew that I’d never met my father and that my mom took a welfare check because it’s hard for a drunk to hold down a job. She’d given up hope for a better life long before I was born. Our lack of money was what defined me. But not to the Mitchell family. I was Owen’s friend, so I was their surrogate son. His mother is a true treasure. Best woman I’ve ever known.”
    “So there’s another woman in your life that I’ll never measure up to,” Dawn said.
    Kellen chuckled. “No other woman can measure up to you either, Dawn. You are the only woman who sexually excites me with a mere song.”
    She leaned in and whispered close to his ear, “I’ll take what I can get.”
    It wasn’t only her song that sexually excited him. The tickle of her breath against his skin drew a soft moan of longing from the back of his throat.
    “Kellen?”
    He loved the way his name sounded when she spoke it. “Dawn?”
    “How long has it been since you last had sex?”
    He sat stunned that she would ask him something so forward.
    “Uh, why?” he said after a moment.
    “I don’t usually have sex with men I’ve just meet, but I want to with you.”
    He closed his eyes and swallowed. How could he turn down her offer? It wasn’t that women never propositioned him. They did it all the time—rubbed up against him, shoved their hands down his pants, whispered suggestions into his ear—but he hadn’t been interested. Sara’s memory had given him the strength to say no. Hell, when he was alone with a woman, he found forwardness downright repulsive, but he was alone with Dawn and her words didn’t have the usual effect on him. He wanted her. God, he fucking wanted her.
    Promise you’ll never make love to another woman, Kellen . Sara’s words echoed through his head. They were like a slap to the face.
    “It’s been five years,” he said.
    “You haven’t done anything in five years?”
    “I didn’t say I hadn’t done anything . I just haven’t been inside a woman in that long.”
    “Oh,” she said.
    He could hear the disappointment in her voice. This time he was glad it was dark so he didn’t have to see it on her face.
    “What kinds of things have you done?” she asked unexpectedly.
    “Alone or with Owen?”
    She gasped. “With Owen ? Are you gay?”
    “I’m not gay, Dawn. A bit confused maybe.” He rubbed at his eyebrow with two fingertips while he gathered his thoughts. “Can I talk to you about something? Something I haven’t even talked to Owen about? Something I need to tell him but am so worried about how he’ll react that every time I try to bring it up, I can’t form the words.”
    What was it about the darkness that allowed him to open up? Or maybe it wasn’t the darkness at all. Maybe it was the kindred spirit within the woman beside him that made him feel he could tell Dawn anything.
    “I’ll listen,” she said. “I probably won’t say the right thing though.”
    He doubted there was a right thing to say. “Soon after Sara died, Owen started going to sex clubs and guilting me into going with him.”
    “What’s a sex club? Is it like a whorehouse?”
    He smiled and couldn’t resist running a hand along the base of her spine. Oh the naughty things he could introduce her to, Miss Sweet and Vanilla.
    “No, you pay for a certain service at a whorehouse and that’s what you get. Sex clubs are where people of certain sexual tastes congregate and hook up.” He turned his face to