Chapter 3 DIEGO
Look, I took my meds that morning, but I still couldn’t fucking concentrate.
Looking at my backside in the mirror, the backs of my thighs out all the way up to the creases below my ass-cheeks, my favorite little skirt.
Imagining working in a plug so I could just flip the skirt up and show him I was ready to go.
Grab him by the balls right from the second he arrived, fuck him stupid before he had a chance to gain the upper hand, spend the rest of the date knowing he was cock-struck and even if I never saw him again, he’d wish I would.
Genuinely unhinged.
“What kind of slut are you?” I asked myself in the mirror.
I ripped off the skirt and grabbed a pair of underwear—cute ones, obviously, because there was no way I wasn’t gonna be gagging for it the second I saw Taran Kovacs.
Plaid pants with buckles on them, old school punk wear, super tight—still a little weird, a lot of my personality.
Cute tank top that barely covered my belly.
Yeah, okay. Sexy but untouchably cool. That was the vibe.
Not exactly hinged, but halfway there. Better.
A knock at my door, and bitch princess Strawberry Shortcake jumped six feet into the air before scurrying under the bed. “It’s okay, baby,” I told her, but it was for me too.
Jesus fuck, had I really been considering jumping on his dick the second he walked through my door? What kind of desperate little bitch had I become? Power play, my sad ass. Pathetic.
I checked my fit in the full-length mirror behind the door, took a deep breath, and opened.
There he stood in a simple, devastatingly well-fitting button-down and flat fronts, eyes bright behind those ridiculously hot glasses.
Taran smiled, deploying the dimple, and held out one hand—which had a single, long-stemmed red rose in it. “Hey.”
I’d had plenty of time to think about the last time I’d seen him before he left for college.
He’d apologized very prettily for it last night, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I owed him one too.
The more I had to remember it hadn’t been his dick that I’d missed, wanted, cried over.
Okay, that too. But mostly, it’d just been him. And now, like a teenage dream, he was standing on my doorstep with a flower in his hand.
“You’re fucking ridiculous,” I told him, grinning like a dumbass as I accepted the rose.
He just grinned right back. “Yeah, but you knew that.”
I snorted and turned, gesturing for him to follow me into the apartment. I needed a second to compose my face, which was probably all heart-eyes and bloody nose at this point.
He closed the door behind him. “Where’s your cat?”
“She’s hiding. If you come back a dozen times, she might grace you with her presence,” I told him, digging through a cupboard for something to put the rose in. God, he was so het-presenting, but in a stupidly sweet way. Ugh, this was such a bad idea.
Maybe I should fuck him right now after all?
No. No, that’s insane.
“Where do you wanna go for a drink?” he asked.
“The Warren has good cocktails.” And I couldn’t afford them, usually.
“I like that place. They have a barrel-aged Manhattan.”
I shot him a glance over my shoulder. The Warren was a weird little place on the corner beside the biggest theater in the Cultural District. I wasn’t sure who went there on a normal day, but on the day of a show, it was a lot of that crowd.
“Mom and I still go to shows,” he said, as if that should be obvious.
And it should’ve. One of the first times I’d ever talked to him, I found him lingering outside the music department after a school musical, waiting for his friends. When I sarcastically asked him if he was lost, he told me I had good stage presence.
I smiled at the memory and found a glass big enough to keep the rose upright. As I filled it with water, I said, “Right. How could I forget? Thanks for this. Seriously.”
He shrugged. “It’s cheesy, I know. But I have no pride.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“If you’re trying to freak me out with that, you’re barking up the wrong tree.” He grinned lopsidedly.
“Yeah?” I set the glass next to the sink and started toward him, where he stood beside the door still. “So there’s nothing for me to break down, is that what you’re saying?”
“Guess it depends on if you want to break something down. I could pull something together,” he said easily.
“Uh-huh.” I stopped just a foot in front of him, eyes narrowed, arms crossed over my chest. Was he really that accommodating, or was it just to make me think he was? Get my guard down, that kind of thing? Either way, “You look hot.”
“And you’re on fire.” He looked me over, head to toe.
I flushed with pleasure. And maybe a little embarrassment, mostly at how much I liked it. “Not too informal?”
“No one dresses up for the matinee.” Then a slight hesitation as his gaze snagged on my lips. He licked his. “Um, can I…?”
I moved in and put an arm around his neck, pressing myself against his warm, hard front. The clean scent of him, just shampoo and soap, wrapped me up and made me wanna bury my face in his chest.
I’d remembered that too, last night; how I used to pretend I was in a hurry to get home when all I wanted was to curl up on top of him like a cat in winter.
But I had self-control, goddammit. So I just tilted my face upward and said, “Go ahead.”
He wrapped an arm around my waist and kissed me—but not so fast I didn’t catch the smile on his lips just before they found mine.
We slid into it easily, opening up for each other, a taste that sent electric shocks through my body and straight into my balls.
I swallowed a happy, hungry sound; his arm tightened around me.
I was reconsidering my options just like that. Maybe we could just stay here for a quickie instead of going for drinks? Getting this tension out of the way first thing could be good—
He closed off the kiss and pressed his forehead into mine, still smiling. “Heh. I thought about that a lot. Last night.”
“Yeah?” So had I, but like fuck I was gonna admit it out loud.
“Mmm,” he hummed, a definite affirmative response. Then he cleared his throat and let me go. “Right. We should go. Don’t wanna miss the curtain.”
I made sure not to show my full-body disappointment. Which was good, because within seconds, it shifted into appreciation. His face was flushed, his pants tight across the front, and he gave me another up-and-down look that said stepping away from that kiss was physically painful.
Not that I ever thought I wasn’t hot. Not to most people, and definitely not to him. But that wasn’t what got to me in his reaction.
It was that he probably knew he could have me. Right here, right now, on my kitchen counter, on my little sofa, on my bed stashed into the corner behind the bookshelf. If he went for it, I’d go for it.
But he’d promised me a date.
He drove us downtown, paid for crazy Theater Square parking, walked the half block to The Warren with his shoulder bumping mine and his attention so fixated on me, he almost tripped on the sidewalk.
We snacked on French fries with our cocktails and talked about the wedding, his mother, my father, and of course, my sisters.
He’d been drinking 7-and-7 at the wedding. The Stanley County equivalent. But he looked more at home with a barrel-aged Manhattan and city traffic in the window behind him.
I must’ve been staring because he turned to look over his shoulder, like he thought I’d spotted something. “What?”
I smiled. “Nothing. I was just thinking you look at home here.”
“Well, it is home,” he said easily. But then he narrowed his eyes. “Yours too.”
“I guess I still imagine you as the big fish in the little pond. Didn’t know you hated it until last night,” I said with a little shrug. In our hometown, Taran had been the best looking, the most popular, the most famous. Here, he was just… a guy. A hot guy, but a guy. Like me.
“What about you?”
I frowned. “What about me?”
“You’re no little fish. The second we walked in, all eyes were on you.”
Again, no false modesty in me, but, “You’re dreaming.”
He shook his head, dimple flashing. “I always imagined you were famous and I just missed it somehow. Now I realize you never needed to be famous to turn heads.”
I snorted, cheeks blazing. Once upon a time, I’d been young and romantic about acting, yeah. Now it was a little embarrassing, remembering how convinced I’d been that I’d make it. “You don’t have to lay it on so thick. I’m not that hard to get into bed, and you know it.”
“I’m not.” He shook his head. Hesitated, brow furrowing. Then he said, “Actually, I was thinking… even if things do go well, and you do decide you wanna see me again…”
“You already know you wanna see me? We just got here.” But I was relieved he’d changed the subject. Why that had gotten to me, I wasn’t even sure; people who wanted to fuck me always told me I was hot. So what?
“Yeah, I do,” he replied, smile returning, just a little crooked. “Even if it’s not—I don’t know. Romantic or whatever. That’s what I want, but even if you just wanted to hang out and be friends, I’d want to know you better.”
That… made perfect sense and yet was not at all what I’d been expecting. “Oh,” I said stupidly.
“But I was thinking, maybe we shouldn’t hook up today. For once.” He bit at his bottom lip, as if he was afraid of what I’d say next.
And admittedly, my first reaction was are you fucking joking?
But then, like before, I realized what he was doing and a warm rush of appreciation flooded my body. “Have we ever been alone and not hooked up?” I wondered.
He shook his head. “Including yesterday.”
I tilted my chin upward, looking at him anew. “Are you trying to prove something to me, Taran?”
He nodded. “One-hundred percent, absolutely, yes.”
I laughed even though I knew he was serious. Cheerfully serious, but serious anyhow. Which… felt… good but also not? Somehow? “It wasn’t the sex that bothered me.”