Chapter 24
JOHN
I’m glad I waited until tonight to have sex in the back of a limo for the first time ever.
Although it’s not so much that I waited until tonight, as with other women, I could always wait until later to have sex.
But tonight, I needed to be inside Olivia as soon as we had the slightest semblance of privacy.
She’s always beautiful, but she is a goddess in that blue gown. As soon as I saw her in it, I wanted to stick my head under the long, flowy fabric, feel her thighs squeeze against my ears, and cunnilinguate her until I made her scream. So now I can check that off my to-do list.
I hope the indentations her feet left on the ceiling above the back seat disappear before the next clients get in.
Zipping up my pants, I tap on the tinted divider window, telling the driver that he can take us home. It looks like he drove all the way around Central Park a few times after I’d told him to “just drive around for a while.” Which is limo speak for We’re going to fuck in your car now.
Olivia’s silky straightened hair is wildly tousled, and she is using my handkerchief to wipe the lipstick off her very satisfied, gorgeous face.
She licks the handkerchief, says, “Come here,” and then wipes around my mouth too.
I don’t even think it’s gross. She looks so hot that I’m thinking about asking the driver to go twice more around the park, but there’s a lot more surface area to use back at the condo.
After giving the driver a hundred-dollar tip—on top of the tip that was included in the booking fee—I help Olivia out of the limo and onto the sidewalk in front of my building. She frowns as she stares past me.
“Julian?” she says. She doesn’t let go of my hand, but I loosen my grip on hers.
The infamous Julian fucking Bartlett struts over toward us, in the same leather jacket he was wearing two years ago.
But instead of synthetic musk, he reeks of whiskey.
What a delightful surprise. His hair is longer and stragglier than it was two years ago, and how unique—is that a tattoo of an Asian character on his neck? I’m pretty sure it’s Chinese for tool.
Olivia looks back at me. “I didn’t tell him to come here,” she says in a hushed voice.
I believe her.
“Yo, O! I was just at the bar down the street. Come on.” He holds up his arm, like she’s supposed to rush over to his side and position herself under it.
“Actually, we were just going home,” she says.
And I absolutely love that she said that.
He doesn’t even look at me. He just stares at Olivia’s tits and holds his arms out for a hug as he stumbles over to her, drunk eye-fucking her, not using protection, not caring if she comes or not.
Fucking prick. “It’s good to see you,” he says as he grabs her and pulls her in. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
I let go of her hand to give her a minute to deal with him…and also to keep my punching hand free, just in case.
“Julian, I’d like you to meet John,” she says.
He doesn’t release her. His hands slide down to her ass.
“Hey!” She shoves him away.
“Did I not squeeze hard enough?”
I start to move in closer to them.
“You need to leave, Julian,” Olivia says, sounding really upset.
“You need to respond to my texts. Don’t you think?” He is belligerent.
I step between them and get up in his face. “I don’t think Olivia needs to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”
The limo driver steps out of the car and asks if I need help. The doorman pokes his head out.
“Let’s just go in, John,” Olivia mutters.
I stay in Julian’s face while holding up a hand to let her and the doorman and the driver know that I’m good here. I am only a couple of inches taller than Julian Bartlett is, but I stare him down hard.
“Who the fuck are you?” Julian says.
What a great question.
“I’m Olivia’s boyfriend.” I position my feet and hips in the best Bruce Lee stance I can manage and raise my hand up one inch from his pretentious face, keeping my wrist straight.
“And I’m the nerd who’s going to calmly explain exactly what’s going to happen to the bridge of your nose if and when my fist hits it. You ready?”
He blinks and doesn’t move. It’s an arrogant blink. His eyelashes are so fucking arrogant.
I continue. “Because of the highly developed supplementary motor cortex part of my brain, which handles the coordination of the muscles in my limbs, and because the shortest distance between two objects is a straight line, the kinetic energy that will be transferred from my fist to your face imparts undissipated shock energy. You’re a trained dancer—surely you understand kinematic chains? ”
Blank stare.
“No? Would you like me to explain it to you? Because when I’m done explaining why I’ll be punching you with more than just the velocity and force of my fist, I am going to actually do it, because I’m already sick of looking at your shitty arrogant face, and I am really, really pissed that you just treated my girl that way, you unsophisticated, moronic dick. ”
One more blink, and he steps back, his shoulders slumping. He holds his hands up in surrender. I remain in the same stance.
“Sorry, O. Just pissed that you didn’t want to see me, but whatever.”
She nods at him and then reaches for me. I lower my fist.
“Would you like me to have my driver drop you off at home?” I offer.
He shakes his head and walks off. “Fuck you, nerd.”
“Guess not,” I mutter. I salute the limo driver. “Enjoy the rest of your night, sir.”
Olivia doesn’t say anything until we get into the elevator.
Finally, she turns to me and says, “Okay, three things: I am so sorry that happened. I’m so embarrassed that he was acting like that—please believe me when I tell you that he’s never been like that before.
Also, what you did was so badass, I apologize for ever making fun of you and my brother. ”
“For everything,” I ask, “or just the way we protected you from other guys?”
“Just that. I have no regrets about making fun of you for anything else.”
“That’s three? Those are the three things you wanted to say?”
“Yes. Those are the three,” she says.
“Okay, three things: You don’t have to apologize for that happening, and you definitely shouldn’t be embarrassed about his behavior.”
“I just—I don’t want you to think I was into such a gross asshat. I’d never go out with someone who says, ‘Yo, O.’” She shudders.
“It doesn’t reflect badly on you—only on him. I mean, it reflects really badly on him. Seriously. What a gross asshat.”
“So gross!” she agrees. “What’s the third thing?”
“The third thing is that I was counting on him getting bored with my nerd speech and leaving, because the truth is without training and practice, it’s pretty much impossible to do martial arts moves with an understanding of physics alone.”
“Well, you sure fooled me.”
We’re in our pajamas in bed after another impossibly expensive delivery order because we barely ate the gala food.
I’m messaging Sanjay, Olivia’s editing videos for her YouTube channel, and I know I would be happy finishing off every day like this for the rest of my life.
When she looks over at me, I let Sanjay know that I’m done for the night and slide my laptop onto the floor, under the bed.
When I turn to her, you’d think from the expression on her face that I just lassoed the moon and handed it to her on a silver platter.
“Thanks,” she says.
“Pleasure. Hey, who is @KennedyOnPointe? Is she a friend of yours?”
Her eyes go wide. “Why?”
“She keeps mentioning and messaging me on Instagram. I think she wants me to repost pictures of her. She’s in your corps, right?”
“Yes,” Olivia says. “But no, she’s not a friend of mine.”
“I’ll block her, then.”
She is trying to suppress a smile. “You don’t have to block her.”
“I’m going to block her. She’s annoying.”
She is no longer trying not to smile. “Yes, she is. She’s the worst!”
“Last thing I need is another annoying ballerina in my life.”
She frowns all of a sudden, leaning in a little closer. “Do you need a Pepper Potts, though?”
“A what? …Oh. Did you talk to Montana?” I ask.
“In the ladies’. She’s a wee bit nuts, would you say?”
“A wee bit. She wasn’t nuts before we started dating.”
“I one thousand percent believe that. I’m significantly less sane now than I was just over a week ago.”
“I have no idea why she thought of me as Tony Stark, though… Because I’m Batman.”
Olivia laughs and rests her chin on my chest as she slides one arm under the pillows that are beneath my head.
Her other hand rests on my abs. It’s funny how she started sleeping in the same bed as me here without any discussion.
It feels right, though. She’s still wearing the diamond bracelet I gave her, and it’s cold against my skin, but I would buy her enough to cover her entire arm if she asked me to.
“Batman was an orphan…” she says carefully.
“No, Bruce Wayne was orphaned.”
She sighs. Superhero movies were a source of conflict growing up because they were often the ones her brother and I would watch when she wanted to watch dance-competition shows.
She always got out-voted when I was there, even though she didn’t think I deserved a vote.
She’s studying my face with so much compassion.
“You want me to talk about my parents, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because…in all that time you spent at our house, I never met them,” she says. “I waved to your mom once or twice when she picked you up. Same with your dad. I’m not saying you should resent them, but it seems like you don’t, and I’m just curious about them.”
I never say much when asked about my parents. There’s not that much to say. They didn’t abuse me. They did neglect me to a degree, but it was never all that bad.