Nine
Than
I’d expected Montana to take a lot more time getting the things on her list. But she chose things rather quickly, and we were at the checkout counter within thirty minutes. It had been a silent event. My mood was shitty, and my eyes had a hard time looking somewhere other than at her, which continued to darken my temper.
The guy ringing up her stuff kept taking peeks at her face, then her tits. When he finally gave her the total, she opened her purse. I held out the credit card, which Linc had given me to cover her expenses, to the guy. He took it, giving me a nervous smile as he paled slightly from the scowl on my face.
Montana spun around and glared up at me. “What are you doing?” she asked accusingly, as if I’d wronged her by paying for her school shit.
“Paying so we can leave,” I drawled.
She put a hand on her hip and straightened her shoulders even more as she narrowed her eyes. “I have money.”
From the texts I’d read, she didn’t have much, and what she did have, she needed to save.
“Congratulations,” I replied, reaching to take the card back from the guy. “Now move so I can grab the bags.”
She sighed heavily and turned to attempt to grab all the bags herself but failed. I picked up the two she couldn’t get, then held out my hand for the other. Spinning on her heel, she gave me her back and strutted toward the exit. As if she needed to draw any more attention to her ass and legs.
She was going to kill me. Unable not to watch her and enjoy the view, I went behind her, but when she stopped to adjust the bags and try to keep from dropping them, I caught up to her.
“Give them to me.” My voice sounded annoyed, but only because my cock was so fucking hard that my zipper was cutting into it. I snatched the bags out of her hands, ignoring her angry gasp, and headed for my truck.
While I was putting them in the backseat, the passenger door opened, and she climbed inside. I looked at her as I did the same. She had her arms crossed under her tits, pushing them up, and she was glaring straight ahead. I grinned. I had her fucking fired up while my earlier anger had diminished.
Closing my door, I started the engine but kept watching her. Finally, she snapped her head around and leveled me with her pissed-off stare.
“Why are you looking at me?” she demanded.
My eyes dropped to her cleavage. I wondered if her nipples were dark or pink. My cock twitched at the thought of having her straddling my lap, topless, so that I could suck and lick on them. When I lifted my gaze back up, I stopped at her mouth to find it slightly open. Her tongue darted out, licking her lips, and I bit back a groan. Forcing the image of them wrapped around my cock, I finally met her glare again, except it wasn’t a glare.
There was heat in her sea-glass pools, but it wasn’t the angry kind.
Fuck! My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I tore my eyes off her.
It was easier if she hated me. Seeing her look at me like she wanted to straddle my lap did not help things. This was day fucking two, and I had three months of it. My truck was going to smell like her vanilla-and-cinnamon scent permanently by the time this was over. The fact that she smelled like my favorite cookie wasn’t helping matters.
Backing out of the parking space, I kept my eyes on what I was doing and off the female beside me. By the time I got out of the parking lot and onto the road, she had crossed and uncrossed her legs twice. It was impossible not to see it out of my peripheral vision. She needed to fucking stop that.
“Do you eat burgers?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Great. Her tone was all thick and sultry now. Just fan-fucking-tastic. We had to get out of this truck and into a public place. I went down two more stoplights and turned into a place that was known for its burgers. That was basically all they had, but there was an entire five-page menu on all the different options.
I tried to think about food instead.
In order to do that, I couldn’t look at her.
When I was parked, I got out without saying a word and waited for her to do the same before I started toward the entrance. I inhaled deeply, trying to get her scent out of my head. The smell of burgers grilling and fried potatoes did the job.
I stopped before going in and stared out at the street while I waited for her. I was going to need to fuck Monday while she was at school. A couple of times. Get some of this shit out of my system so I’d stop reacting to her like this.
When she was close enough, I opened the door and started to step back and hold it for her, like I always did for a female. But decided that might give off the wrong idea and went inside, letting the door go, only for her to catch it behind me. The hostess looked up, and her eyes lit up with interest. I dropped my gaze to her tits. They were okay. She was cute. I might get her into the restroom and bend her over the sink.
“How many?” she asked me.
“Two,” I replied, continuing to eye-fuck her while her breathing hitched.
Yeah, she was going to be easy. The ride back to the cabin would be less irritating if I got off.
I ran the pad of my thumb over my bottom lip, and she watched, mesmerized.
“Okay,” she breathed. “Uh, um, right this way.”
I smirked as she turned around and added an extra sway to her hips as she led us to a table in the middle of the dining room.
“Could we have a booth, darlin’?” I asked her.
She looked up at me again, and then her gaze went to Montana standing behind me. The disappointment was obvious. Montana was on a level that far exceeded hers. With the scale being ten, the hostess was a solid seven, maybe eight if she fixed herself up. Montana was a twenty when she woke up in the morning.
“Oh, okay,” she said, not looking happy about putting us together in a booth.
She walked over to the nearest one. “Will this be all right?”
“It’s perfect,” I told her, then winked.
Her cheeks pinkened as she flushed.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied. “If I can get you anything, just let me know. Your server will be here in a few minutes.”
Montana moved to scoot into the booth, but I stayed in front of the hostess.
I checked her name tag, then slowly let my eyes move back up to her face. “Anything?” I asked in a low, husky tone.
She nodded, her eyes wide with excitement.
Leaning down to her ear, I touched her waist and whispered, “You strutted that sweet little ass in front of me.”
She shivered.
“If it was an invitation, then it’s accepted.”
She let out a shaky breath as I straightened back up, and she stared up at me with lust-filled eyes, then nodded.
Yep. Easy. Thank fuck I had a condom.
I slid into the booth then and picked up the menu. I could feel Montana’s eyes on me, and I tried to fight it, but my gaze met hers anyway. She was studying me as if I were some odd species she’d never seen.
“What?” I asked.
She placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward. Fucking hell, she didn’t need to do that. It just shoved her tits up and displayed them. I tried to keep my focus on her face. Although the swell of her chest was still in my line of vision.
“Did you just proposition the hostess?” she whispered.
I smirked. She’d picked up on that. “It wasn’t exactly difficult. She got wet the moment I walked in the door.”
Montana’s eyes widened. “Wow. That’s cocky.”
I licked my bottom lip. “I’m not cocky. I just know when a female wants my dick.”
She let out a short, surprised laugh. “Oh my God. I can’t believe you said that.”
I shrugged. “It’s the truth. I can read it well, and if they’re close enough to an eight, I’ll give them what they want. At least once. Depends on how good they are if there will be a second time. If they swallow, then a second time is a given.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Did you just rate looks by a number?” she asked me incredulously.
I nodded. “All guys do it. They might not admit it, but they think it.”
She leaned back against the seat, and her tits bounced. Shit. I reached down to adjust my cock.
“Guys are horrible. I wish I liked girls.”
I winced. Jesus, she needed to shut up.
“Don’t act like girls don’t do it too,” I said, jerking my eyes off her to study the menu, although I knew what I was going to order.
“I don’t,” she shot back immediately. “So, do you do this with all girls or just the ones you want to…you know?”
She was a stripper’s daughter, for God’s sake. Say the word fuck .
“If they’re at least a high seven and they have a cunt, then I’m gonna think about fucking them.” I didn’t look at her as I said it, but, damn, I was curious as to what her expression was now.
“Huh,” she said, and then there was a pause. “I guess I know what number I am then.”
Unable to help myself, I looked from the menu to her. “Is that so?”
She shrugged a shoulder, and one of her eyebrows slightly lifted. “You hate me. I disgust you. Not that I care if you want to have sex with me. I was just pointing it out. That means I’m not a seven. I’m a six or under. Anyway”—she opened the menu—“what’s good? This is overwhelming.”
I battled with clearing that assumption up for a moment, then said nothing and went back to staring blindly at my menu. She’d looked in a mirror. She didn’t need me to reassure her she was a walking wet dream. Most of the men in this restaurant were going to beat off with thoughts of her when they got alone. And she did care. The way her cheeks had turned a light pink gave her away.
“I almost always get the sweet bourbon burger,” I told her. “The mac ’n’ cheese bacon burger is good too. I’ve had it once or twice.”
I stopped staring at the damn menu like I needed to and gave in to looking at her. She had that plump bottom lip between her straight white teeth as she studied the options. I wanted to ask her about shit I’d read on her phone, but then she’d question how I knew about those things.
Leaning back, I stretched my arm along the back of the bench, then scanned the room for the hostess. When I found her, she was looking directly at me. After staring at Montana, the hostess had dropped to a six. Yeah, I wasn’t going there. She had that too easy, stalkerish feel to her.
Not giving her any more encouragement, I turned my attention back to Montana.
A guy showed up beside the table, and I cut my eyes at him to see he was the waiter.
He placed two glasses of water in front of us. “I’m Kevin. I’ll be your waiter. Can I get you anything else to drink?”
Montana looked from him to me. I nodded my head at her to order first. She swung her eyes back to the waiter, who I realized hadn’t taken his eyes off her. Fucker. I was sitting right here. Sure, I wasn’t her date, but he didn’t know that.
“Sweet tea, please,” she replied with a smile.
She was going to give the guy a boner.
It looked as if he had to tear his gaze off her.
“And for you?” he finally asked me.
“Same.”
“All right, I’ll get those and give you a few more minutes with the menus.”
He was staring at Montana as if he wanted her to say something more, but she wasn’t paying any attention. Her focus was back on deciding what hamburger she wanted.
“What year did you fail in school? Or was it two years?” I asked, knowing it was going to piss her off.
Her expression hardened, but she didn’t look up at me from the menu she was studying. “Third.”
“Damn,” I muttered. I hadn’t expected elementary school. “Addition and subtraction too much for you?”
That got those eyes on me instead of the menu. Her glacial expression as she glared at me was hot.
“No. Math is one of my best subjects,” she said, clenching her teeth.
I was finding that I enjoyed getting her all worked up. It was better than fucking her. Since Linc would likely beat the shit out of me if I did.
“Cursive writing then? It’s a bitch.”
She gave her eyes a hard roll, then closed the menu with more force than necessary and set it down. “I was absent too many days.”
Oh. I hadn’t considered that. My parents had rarely let me miss school. If I’d stayed home, it had better be a sickness worthy of an ER visit.
“Sickly kid?”
She shook her head and dropped her gaze back to the menu. “No. Mom…” She paused. “Mom struggled with getting up early. She worked late nights. When she did wake up, she wanted to spend time with me.”
I’d fucked a lot of strippers. And I couldn’t imagine one of them being a mom. What kind of life had that been?
“You stayed home at night, alone, when you were young?”
She shook her head, but didn’t look at me. “No.” The word sounded as if I’d asked a stupid question. “Ms. Bartheson, a retired lunchroom lady who lived across the street, stayed the nights when Mom worked.”
“Why didn’t she get you up in the mornings and get you to school?”
Montana sighed and closed the menu before giving me those green eyes again. “Because when Mom got home around four or five, she was already up, having her coffee, and would go home. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
I shrugged. “Making conversation.”
Kevin was back with our sweet teas and placed them on the table. “Ready to order?” he asked, and Montana might as well have been the only person at the table as far as he was concerned.
Did she flash that smile on purpose? Because the dude was already salivating.
“I’ll have the bar burger, please. Medium,” she told him. “With fries.”
I picked up her menu and held out both to Kevin, causing him to have to look my way. “Sweet bourbon, medium rare, fries.”
He nodded and put the order into his iPad, then lifted his head to ogle Montana again. “Can I get you anything else?”
She shook her head since she was the one he seemed to be asking.
“That will be all,” I told him.
He barely glanced my way, then hurried off.
“Do you do that shit on purpose?”
She frowned. “What?”
I chuckled. She had the innocent look down. That was for damn sure.
“Kevin is sporting a fucking boner.”
Her eyes widened, but only briefly. She leaned back and raised her eyebrows as she gave me a pointed look. “It can’t be because of me. I’m a…what, six, or is it lower?”
That was bothering her. I smirked. She knew she wasn’t a fucking six. But if she was fishing for a compliment, she wasn’t getting it from me.
“Eh, maybe if you fixed yourself up.”
The briefest glint of disappointment in her eyes was masked immediately by a bright smile. “See, not my fault. It must have been you who gave him the boner.”