Free Sweetened With a Kiss by Lexxi Callahan

could do not to run back upstairs and cry.
    He was just shaking his head. “That dress looked like cotton candy. I wanted to lick it off of you.”
    “You looked like you wanted to choke me,” she shot back.
    “I did. You should have asked me to the prom. I wanted to strangle that boy.”
    “Really?” she interrupted him. “I should have asked you to the prom? You would have laughed in my…wait, licked it off?” Her breath caught.
    He nodded, his eyes bleak. “I still dream about that dress. Bad dreams. You have no idea how that dress has tortured me, all that pink floating around you and it shimmered...”
    “I was sixteen!” She was shocked. He’d been home that weekend but had been anything but nice to her. She and Lizzie had walked downstairs so excited about their Junior Prom. Stefan had walked out of the living room and stopped dead. The murderous look on his face was branded onto her brain. He’d never been anything but easygoing and fun until that point and she just hadn’t been able to cope with the brunt of his anger.
    “You were jail bait,” he agreed, jerking her back to the present again. “But you aren’t anymore.” His smile turned sly.
    Her eyes narrowed as she remembered all that dark intensity on his face and the tension rolling off him that night. He hadn’t been thinking about murder at all. Something dark and sweet bloomed deep inside her now. She slanted her eyes up at him, lightly licking her bottom lip. “You know, I still have that dress.”
    His eyes closed and Jen would have sworn that he shivered. “Don’t tell me that. I really have to go to the office,” he grumbled.
    “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said. The rest of the conversation was forgotten now. “You wanted me when I was sixteen?” Something curled up her spine and around to pool low in her chest. It was warm and sweet and felt almost like hope.
    “In the worst way imaginable,” he admitted. “Not much gets past Mac. He pulled me into his study that night and told me in no uncertain terms that you were off limits.”
    Hot color streaked her face. She’d had no idea. Mac knowing was too embarrassing to contemplate. “He didn’t.”
    “Yes, he did. He handed over your trust fund to me that night and told me to see how fast I could double the principal. And when you turned eighteen, he might let me take you out. Why do you think I wasn’t around much after that night?”
    “You were in training.”
    “I needed somewhere to focus my energy.”
    “This isn’t funny,” she said. “You focused your energy on plenty of girls before we got engaged. Very tall, very pretty girls.” Until Rogan had married Angie, Stefan and Rogan had gone through girls like crazy. Jen had lost count of the  movies, football games, and dinners she’d sat through with some chick on Stefan’s arm darting nasty looks at her every chance she got. Now Stefan was telling her that he’d wanted her when she was sixteen. Well, he must not have wanted her too badly because it certainly hadn’t curtailed his social life.
    “Never said I was a monk,” he teased.
    “Just stop, Stefan.”
    “What? You don’t believe me? Then how do you explain that absolutely no one was surprised when I gave you that ring?”
    “I was.”
    “Well, you were the only one.”
    They’d had a twenty-first birthday party for her. Jared’s band, Sugar Coma, had played. Elliot Carter had catered it. There were floating candles in the pool. Stefan had walked her out on the pier behind his parents’ house, pulled the incredible ring out of his pocket, and slid it on her finger before she realized what it was.
    “We’ll get married at Christmas. You can decorate as many Christmas trees as you want. Just no construction paper, please,” he had told her, kissing her then, and she had just stood there like an idiot thinking all her dreams had come true. Looking back, she now knew the kiss had been restrained. And he’d been way too quick to