First Date Part 2 Late Night Confessions （Or What Happens After Club Business）
Except that’s exactly what I did.
I’d spent the hours after Jake left alternating between reliving every moment of our time together and trying not to check my phone like a lovesick teenager. My texts with Megan didn’t help:
Me
He had to leave for club business.
Me
Right after he kissed me.
Megan
Describe the kiss.
Me
osndgweriuvmslf
Me
I think I might be dying.
Megan
From sexual frustration or feelings?
Me
Yes.
I’d finally fallen into a restless sleep around 2 a.m., which is why I wasn’t exactly looking my best when I heard his Harley rumble into the car park.
As I stepped onto my balcony, he switched off the engine, removed his helmet,and sat there for a moment, head bowed.Even exhausted and withtension in his shoulders, he still looked like every fantasy I’d ever had.
I was watching him intently when his head lifted and his eyes found me. He just sat there for a long moment taking me in. Then, he was off the bike and walking towards the front door of the building. He jerked his chin at me, and I took that to mean he was coming up.
Oh, god.
He was coming up.
This was not a drill. It was a full-blown emergency protocol failure. I was in very unsexy sleep shorts and a T-shirt from a dev conference, and my hair looked like I’d just lost a wrestling match. Also, I may have drooled on myself in my last REM cycle.
I needed at least five minutes to reboot my face. MINIMUM.
Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, he’d think he hallucinated me.
Maybe he wasn’t actually coming to my apartment.
But no. He’d jerked his chin. That was the universal hot-guy sign for coming up to emotionally destabilise you in person.
WHY DID I PICK THIS SHIRT?
WHY WERE ALL MY NICE SHIRTS DIRTY?
WHY DIDN’T I DO LAUNDRY YESTERDAY INSTEAD OF PRACTICING CASUAL RESPONSES TO EVERY POSSIBLE THING JAKE MIGHT SAY ON OUR DATE?
I decided to pretend this was a deliberate look.
Oversized conference T-shirt from years ago? Ironically sexy.
Sleep shorts that had never once in their life been sexy? Effortless “I didn’t plan this” thirst trap vibes. Totally intentional.
A hair situation that could qualify as a cry for help? Strategically engineered to trigger the part of the male brain that thinks bed hair is hot.
When I answered the door, his eyes met mine, burning straight through me like I was the only thing on his radar. His hair was a little windswept. His jaw was shadowed and tense.
“Sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t.” Lie. Bald-faced. Worth it for the flicker of amusement in his eyes.
“Liar.” He looked me over. “You’ve got pillow creases on your cheek, darlin’.”
I slapped a hand to my face. “Oh my god?—”
“Don’t.” He reached out, caught my wrist, and gently pulled my hand away. “I like you like this. All soft and sleepy.” His other hand slid into my hair, fingers threading through like he was learning it. “Makes me think about how you’d look in my bed.”
My brain crashed like a Windows update. “Jake?—”
“Been thinking about you all night,” he murmured, letting me go and stepping inside. “That kiss. Your mouth. The way you looked at me after.”
I stood there staring at him, fully forgetting how to human. Somehow, I figured out how to open my mouth and ask, “Is everything okay? With the club?”
A look passed behind his eyes, dark and heavy. “Nothing you need to worry about.” He used his boot to close the door behind him. “Club business is club business.”
Ah.
Club business.
There it was. The phrase that had been haunting my Google search history and my nervous system. The phrase that could mean anything from “went to Bunnings with the boys” to “helped bury a body in a shallow grave behind the servo.”
My brain took that sentence, lovingly wrapped it in panic, and then launched it into a 40-tab mental browser session.
What is club business?
Is it drugs? Arms dealing? A group therapy session where they all share their feelings in leather vests and sunglasses?
I imagined Jake in a dimly lit warehouse surrounded by other men who looked equally capable of murder and/or carpentry. Were they voting on crimes? Discussing turf wars? Planning a charity ride that also involved strategic intimidation?
Maybe he had blood on his hands. Maybe he didn’t. I DIDN’T KNOW. And somehow, the not-knowing was worse.
Because what if this was the moment in my life where I should walk away? What if this was the romantic red-flag test they put in women’s magazines, and I was failing it in real time?
Question 7: He shows up at your apartment at 3 a.m. after vague “club business.” Do you:
A) Call the police
B) Tell him it’s over
C) Let him in because he smells like danger, and your common sense is duct-taped in the boot of the car
I was a C.
I was such a C.
I was already writing fanfiction about this man in my head, and I didn’t even know if he had an alibi.
And right as I was about to launch myself fully into a mental montage of wedding dresses, court depositions, and witness protection name options?—
He kissed me.
And suddenly there were no thoughts. No tabs. No spirals.
Just his mouth on mine and my last remaining brain cell waving a tiny white flag and whispering, we tried.
His kiss wasn’t soft. It was full tilt, no restraint, kissing-you-like-you’re-the-only-thing-that-matters kind of hunger.
His hands were in my hair, holding me in the way that said I wasn’t lying when I told you I’ve been thinking about you. His tongue swept in like he had unfinished business, and I let him. I wanted this. All of it.
This kiss was the kind that packed all my thoughts up and made them peace out. Even my girl math stopped mathing. And it forced all my survival instincts to sit politely in the corner like we’ll just see ourselves out .
Jake touched me like he was two seconds away from pinning me to the wall and three seconds away from not apologising for it.
His hands weren’t asking. They were taking.
Rough and possessive. But I felt his restraint, even in his I-want-to-ruin-you grip.
I knew he wanted to devour me and was only barely holding back.
When his phone buzzed, the sound he made was so obscene that my entire body stood to attention like yes sir, we are now officially in heat .
We broke apart, both of us breathing hard.
The muscle in Jake’s jaw ticked as he checked the message, but he simply slid the phone back into his pocket and looked at me with an expression that told me nothing was more important than this moment, not even the club.
And me?
I was just over here trying to catch my breath while my ovaries were trying to figure out what life even was anymore.
“Okay, well,” I blurted, unable to stop my mouth from taking action all on its own. “I think you’ve ruined me for other men tonight. So. That’s your fault now.”
His lips immediately lifted into a grin. A smug, sinful grin that made it worse. Way worse.
You’d think I would have stopped after that, wouldn’t you? No. Not me. When I’m on a roll, I just keep rolling.
“Also, I’m pretty sure you’ve become my default setting for everything now.” I gestured helplessly like that would somehow help my dignity regroup. “Like, somewhere in my brain, there’s probably a dropdown menu, and you’re the only option that shows up.”
STOP TALKING, EDEN.
STOP IT.
I was also now pretty sure Jake was about to run as fast as he could from me, and that I would never find love. That I’d live alone for the rest of my life and die a lonely cat lady since HE’D RUINED ME FOR ALL MEN WITH HIS KISSES.
He didn’t run.
He just stared at me for half a second, still with that smug grin on his face, and then he laughed. Full-on, highly amused, like I was the best thing he’d ever seen.
“Fuck,” he said, reaching for my waist to pull me back to him. “Never met anyone like you.”
He dropped his mouth to mine and kissed me again. This one wasn’t as soul rearranging as the last, but still enough to break the top five on my personal make-out metric chart, well above every other man I’d ever kissed who’d I’d now sorted under “meh.”
When he pulled back, I looked up into his eyes and said, “Was that normal? Like, do you kiss all women like that? Because I need to recalibrate my standards immediately.”
“No.” His eyes were dark. “And if you so much as think about testing those recalibrated standards on another man, we’re gonna have a problem.”
His hand came to my jaw, thumb dragging across my lip like he was re-marking territory. “You think I’d kiss you like that and let you walk away?” He shook his head. “That was a claim, darlin’. Not a test drive.”
It should be noted that the next time Jake says something like that to me, I’m going to need a warning. Like a biker growl advisory.
Did he actually just claim me?
Like officially?
I’d never been with a man like Jake and was so far out of my depth.
Was it even legal for a man to claim a woman like that?
Did I need to update my licence?
“Hi, I’m Eden, recently claimed by Jake ______, will never recover, please forward all mail to under his motorcycle.”
I DON’T EVEN KNOW HIS SURNAME.
“Let me stay tonight,” he said, cutting into my spiral.
“What?” I blinked at him, trying to gather my thoughts, my feelings, my good sense.
“Just to sleep.” His thumb swept over my cheek. “I need to hold you.”
My brain finally threw up some warnings. Too fast. Too soon. Emotionally inadvisable. Possibly dangerous. Definitely addictive. And just hours ago, he’d left our first date for mysterious “club business.”
But all I could think was: he didn’t want sex. He wanted me.
“Mrs Primrose will have a field day with this,” I said, then immediately wanted to die, because who mentions their nosy neighbour at a moment like this? “I mean, she runs this wine club that’s convinced we’re research for a romance novel, which is ridiculous, and I should stop talking now.”
He took a moment, assessing me. “You always this nervous when a man asks to spend the night?” He was amused, but I could tell he was checking in on me. Caring about me.