Strung Tight (The Road To Rocktoberfest #1) - Ann Lister Page 0,22

one deep hit off the palm-sized pipe before he passed it over to me. I inhaled from the end of the bowl, then held the smoke in my lungs for a moment and slowly exhaled. I waited while I felt the floaty feeling take over my senses and all my coiled muscles loosened.

“Better?” Dallas asked.

“So much better,” I said and grinned like a complete stoner as I closed my eyes.

“Let's go sit on the beach,” Dallas suggested. “We can finish the bowl there.”

I watched Dallas get out of the truck as if he were moving in slow motion. I rarely got high this often, but smoking with him was far different than when I got stoned with the guys in my band. With Dallas, the weed was a way to quiet my thoughts and just feel. Smoking with my band was a way for us to unleash our creativity. At least that's what I told myself. I wasn't entirely sure why that was the case, except for the way I occasionally found myself staring at Dallas, just like I was right now. I knew enough to realize I was fighting an attraction to him that I couldn't explain no matter how I tried to spin it in my mind. I didn't look at my band members the way I did Dallas, and the fact I was looking at a dude this way at all had my head turned inside out.

Dallas reached into the bed of the truck and grabbed what looked like a blanket or a sleeping bag, then came around to my side of the truck.

“Care to join me?” he asked with a crooked smile.

My fuzzy brain knew this decision was a turning point for me, but I didn't have a reason or the willpower to say no to him, and I wasn’t simply talking about smoking weed. Dallas made me want things I'd never given much thought or consideration to before. Lines were blurring where I hadn't realized there were any drawn to begin with. It was a weird place to be at this age and made me realize that I didn't know myself as well as I once thought.

I opened the door and slid like liquid from my seat. Dallas caught me with an arm around my waist. I managed to steady myself on the edge of the truck bed until I was balanced enough, but he never removed his arm, and I didn’t ask him to either.

“Hey, you okay?” His head was tipped and lowered, which put him really close to my face, and more importantly, to my lips.

My eyes were leveled with his, and as I felt that odd and wonderful magnetic pull to him again, I found myself leaning closer. Apparently, my subtle movement was the green light that Dallas was hoping for, and he met my lips with his own. In that moment, I wasn't worrying about people walking by who could possibly see us. I wasn't worried about anything at all. My one and only thought was how much I wanted to feel his tongue swirling around mine again. A second later, I got my wish.

Jesus fuck, he knew how to kiss. I should call them mind erasers like Spumoni’s dope because that's what they did to me. His probing tongue deleted every last thought in my head yet seemed to heighten my ability to feel things because, right now, I was drowning in a sea of erotic bliss. My entire body reacted to his closeness and touch. The scrape of his beard stubble, the sound it made when he dragged his chin over mine—it had me buzzing with need—a level of need I was completely unfamiliar with until Dallas.

I was hard as steel—from kissing a dude.

“Let’s take a walk on the beach,” Dallas suggested and his fingers dug into my side to nudge me in the direction of the water. After a few steps, his hand dropped from my waist, and I briefly thought of asking him to put it back where it was. I liked the feeling that came with him holding me. It somehow grounded the things racing around inside my head. Sometimes my brain was a mishmash of chaotic thoughts, and I’d struggle to keep myself focused on any one thing at a time. I had the desire to multi-task, but my brain was too jumbled to pull it off, and I’d end up with ten different things half done. It wasn’t easy being me, but in the