Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
ADAM
I wish that my words could actually fix everything for Austin. I know that they can’t, but I want them to. Lifting my forehead from hers, I lean back slightly. My words might not be able to fix things, but money can, and I’m going to take care of her.
I’ve claimed this woman, and I haven’t even fucked her. What a wild twenty-four-fucking-hours. I regret nothing, though, at least not yet. There is something about Austin. I don’t have to fuck her to know she’s mine, but I will, and I’m down to do just that… soon.
“Get dressed, we’ll go for lunch.”
Lunch is lunch, but it’s also a way to get her on the back of my bike. I also want to know where this loan is so that I can pay that shit off. Then I’m going to fuck her. After all that shit is said and done.
“Lunch?” Austin asks.
“Lunch,” I confirm.
She looks at me for a moment, then clears her throat. Her brows snap together, and I can tell that she’s thinking. What about, I’m not sure. Leaning forward, I touch my mouth to hers.
“Baby, get dressed, put on some jeans and closed-toe shoes, and let’s go to lunch,” I murmur against her lips.
I don’t know why it turns me on so much, calling her baby, but it fucking does. I can’t stop myself from saying it, and I don’t think that I want to, either. I fucking love the way that her eyes light up when I do.
Sliding my tongue along her bottom lip, I shift backward and stand. She tilts her head to the side, her eyes searching mine. I don’t know if she’s going to ask me a question or what, but she doesn’t. Instead, she presses her lips together and rolls them a few times.
“Like a date?” she asks.
Chuckling, I jerk my chin slightly in the air. “Exactly like a date.”
Her eyes sparkle. All haunted memories of her mother have vanished for a moment, and she’s now filled with excited anticipation. I want to keep her that way. My goal is to keep her from ever digging into those memories again. I’m going to take care of it and her.
Austin jumps up and runs to the back of the apartment. I hear a bedroom door close and then another before the water is turned on in the shower. My lips twitch into a smirk right before my phone rings.
Digging my cell out of my back pocket, I glance at the name on the caller ID and snort. Sliding my thumb across the screen, I bring it to my lips. “Dad,” I murmur.
“My son, who is supposed to be pushing paperwork at a strip club, has done a background check, a deep one, on a twenty-three-year-old ballerina turned stripper after only being in town for one full day, want to tell me what the fuck is going on?” he demands.
I could lie to him, but what’s the point? He would just find out. It seems as if he has me all figured out anyway. “Saw something I liked, decided to explore that.”
“Fuck,” he hisses. “Old Lady?”
“Looking like that’s how it’s going to go,” I mutter.
Pinching my eyes closed, I let out a heavy sigh as I wait for his response. He’s going to have some shit to say. I know that he is because he always does. Usually, I think it’s funny, but I sometimes find it educational as well.
Right now, I want him to get on with it because I have a ballerina to continue to seduce.
“Just be careful. Make sure when you stake your claim that you’re thinking with the head that’s three feet above your ass and not the one in your pants,” he grunts before he ends the call.
I would laugh, but my dad knows exactly what he’s talking about, and he’s not wrong. I’ve never really been with any one woman for very long, never needed to. I’m pretty sure that it’s not my dick doing the thinking here since I haven’t even seen her naked, let alone been inside of her… yet.
AUSTIN
Tugging on my white Adidas shoes, I hurry out of the bedroom and toward the living room. His back is to me. Adam is staring out of the window, although I’m not sure why he’d be staring out at a parking lot.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
He turns his head, looking over his shoulder at me. His lips twitch into a smirk as his gaze slides down my body, then lifts, and his eyes connect with my own. “Everything is fucking amazing, baby.”
I watch as he slowly turns to face me. I’m not sure how this happened, but I want his eyes on me. I want him to touch me, kiss me, and slide inside of me. I’ve never wanted anything more in this moment. It’s been so long since I’ve had sex I can’t even remember how to do it.
In all honesty, I’ve only done it a couple of times with this guy I dated right after high school.
All of the girls in my ballet company had been in relationships and had had sex before.
I was the odd man out, so when the brother of one of the company dancers was in town from college, we hit it off and had a summer fling.
Since then, I’ve been too busy and stressed out to date. Plus, there hasn’t been anyone that I’ve been interested in.
So I feel like a fish out of water.
I know that I’m not sexy. I don’t ooze raw femininity or anything like that. The only reason men pay to see me take my clothes off is because I’m thin from ballet training, and I am graceful, at least on stage.
“Why are you at the strip club?” I ask before we go out on this date.
He smirks. “My story won’t change because it’s the truth. I’m helping out Bugsy and Rev, both of whom are a fucking medical mess.”
“And you’re going to leave,” I whisper.
Nodding once, I clear my throat. “We’re going to leave,” he states.
God, he’s so damn sexy.
“Then let’s do lunch,” I say with a smile.
He won’t want to have much more to do with me when he leaves. I’m his good time until he moves on. This means I need to figure my shit out because even if he helps me out for a little bit, that shit is going to get really fucking old, really quickly.
Being a burden to him is going to get old as hell. I can’t drain him like that, financially or in any other way. But I want to, so freaking badly. I wish that I was someone who could just do whatever, whenever, and not care how anyone feels about it, especially the person I’m doing it to and with.
“Let’s do lunch, baby.”