The Hierarchy of Needs (The Portland Rebels #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

night. He came home one day the summer before high school started to find them waiting for him at the kitchen table, solemn expressions on their faces.
    Now his mother lived with her new husband in a nice house on the Cape. Dean saw her at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
    He had the option of going with her when she left, but he’d wanted to stay in Portland. At the time, he’d been stoked to have a future filled with nothing more than blasting music in the garage and playing with gears and carburetors. It wasn’t until he realized he was good at photography that he’d started to think about any other life.
    And that, of course, was Jamie’s influence.
    She never ended up back in detention, so he hadn’t seen her again until he’d reluctantly walked into the beginner’s art class he’d agreed to take the following semester, a pre-req for photography. Her smile was the only thing cooling his temper when he’d lumbered sullenly into the classroom, ready to bolt or punch someone as soon as the first snicker was thrown his way.
    No one laughed. Or if they had, he’d been too busy with Jamie once he sat down with her to notice. Too fascinated with her skill with a charcoal pencil and the human form. What the hell she was doing wasting her time in a pool, he’d had no idea, because her drawings were pretty damn good.
    She’d encouraged him too. Her smile pushed him to want to stay there, to actually concentrate for once. Soon he was enjoying the class, learning concepts he’d never spent time with before: color, form, space, texture. Studying the works of Dali, Warhol and Van Gogh. A semester later, he was spending his time in a darkroom instead of detention and showing up late to the garage because he was on the side of the road, caught up by some moment he absolutely had to get on film. And that night senior year when he’d found her without a ride home after practice, he’d parked them by the cove and told her he put a portfolio together. That he’d played with the idea of applying to college after all.
    Her squeal of approval had been infectious, and a world of possibilities suddenly opened up to him.
    The possibilities had seemed endless that night.
    He hadn’t realized how badly he wanted her support until he said it, and turned the tables on her then, wanting to know where she was going after graduation. He knew the world she came from—one where going to college was a guarantee. But he’d wondered if there was a chance she’d be sticking around in Portland.
    If he had an actual shot with her.
    She’d looked up at the sky and said she’d been offered a swimming scholarship, but didn’t know if she wanted it. That she had no idea what she wanted at all.
    It didn’t make sense. She came from a life of privilege, countless choices lined up in front of her, and yet she seemed unable to make one. So he’d tugged on her hair to get her attention. To make her talk. To look at him.
    She had, breath catching, her big brown eyes going wide.
    Jesus, those eyes of hers. Almond shaped and framed with dark lashes, almost amber when the light hit them right.
    He remembered the way they’d pinched shut in pleasured agony when he’d stroked her to her release. How they’d stayed closed for a few breathless moments, and he’d licked her flavor off his fingers, desperate to know what she tasted like. The drowsy way she’d opened them, low-lidded with syrupy satisfaction when she ran a tentative palm over his jeans and asked him to show her what he liked.
    She’d been so unsure of herself, her grip under his fingers’ direction tentative and slow. Then she’d kissed his neck, scraped her teeth over his skin in a bite just shy of rough, and he’d gone from showing her the ropes to two seconds away from coming in her hand.
    Dean was hard again, pulse thundering in his cock.
    That shit needed to stop, right the fuck now. Because no matter how badly he’d wanted to follow through and ask her out again, once he’d