Chapter 4
FOUR
Watching Little Miss Stick-in-the-Mud abandon her wineglass and our conversation, I have to fight the urge to call after her.
Ask her to wait. Give me fifteen minutes to do my job because that’s all it’ll take before they get bored with flirting and move on to dancing and taking selfies by the pool.
Pull your head out of your ass, Dean. That woman is not interested in you.
Hell, she’s even less interested in you than the women in front of you.
At least with one of them, you have a chance at a one-night stand.
Stick to what you know—drunk debs who want to bang the hot bartender—and leave well enough alone.
“What crawled up her ass,” one of them mutters, staring after Millie while she walks across the living room and disappears from sight.
“A very large stick,” the bride-to-be answers on an irritated eye roll. “Millie’s always been uptight. It’s like she’s allergic to fun.”
Grinding my teeth together to keep myself from pointing out that maybe if they weren’t such assholes to her and try including her instead of making fun of her, she’d loosen up, I focus on smiling while pouring their shots, telling myself that it’s none of my business.
I get enough rich girl drama at Level. I don’t need to get involved in whatever the hell kind of weird dynamic is going on between Millie and her sister.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me.
After their round of slippery nipples, it was a round of blowjob shots, followed by a round of dick suckers and killer pussies.
When one of them asked me for a cum in my panties, I decided I’d had enough.
“Actually, those are Angel’s specialty,” I told her with a killer grin to hide the fact that I’m trying desperately to get rid of them.
“I bet if you ask nicely, he’ll make it a double. ”
Smelling fresh blood, they herd themselves toward the pool house, laughing and shrieking. As soon as they’re gone, I decide leaving well enough alone has never been something I’ve been able to do. Snagging Millie’s abandoned bottle of wine and a fresh glass, I follow after her.
Remembering that she came from somewhere behind the foyer when her cousin dragged her out of hiding to introduce us, I follow a short hallway until I find a set of closed double doors.
Even though this house probably has no less than a dozen bedrooms and I have practically zero chance of actually finding her room, I stop in front of the doors.
After a few seconds of debate, I reach back and tug the polo shirt hanging out of the back pocket of my jeans like a tail and pull it on. Covered, I lift my hand and knock.
And then I wait.
And I wait some more.
Even though I can’t hear anyone, I’m distinctly aware that someone is standing on the other side of the door, just inches from where I’m waiting. Taking a chance, I lean in to press my forehead against the smooth wood on a laugh. “I’m not leaving until you open the door, Maleficent.”
The door flies open before I have a chance to pull back.
“Maleficent?” Millie stares up at me, her wide hazel eyes rimmed red, hand still anchored to the knob, arm stretched across the open doorway to keep me from barging, uninvited, into the dimly lit room behind her. “Seriously? Did you just call me Maleficent?”
Ignoring the fact that she’s obviously been crying and knowing that makes me a little sick to my stomach, I give her the same killer grin I’ve been handing out all night. “Sorry—still trying to guess your name.”
“You wouldn’t have to guess if you’d just let me tell you—or better yet, just Google it,” she grumbles at me, clearly irritated that I’m bothering her.
“Well, that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?” I ask, brow furrowed.
“And cheating is beyond your moral compass?” she asks back, her tone making it obvious she thinks I’m full of shit.
Shrugging my shoulders, I shake my head. “If I have to cheat to get what I want, I don’t really deserve it, do I, Melissa?”
Giving me a quiet sigh, she shakes her head. “What do you want?”
“Dean.”
Her brow crumples in confusion. “What?”
“What do you want, Dean,” I tell her. “That’s my name, since you haven’t asked.”
“Okay...” Her expression softens just a bit, like she’s suddenly worried that she’s offended me somehow. She should be worried because, for whatever reason, I can’t seem to get enough of her. The snottier she is, the harder I get. “What do you want, Dean?”
Holding up her abandoned bottle of wine, I show it to her. “You forgot this.”
“I didn’t forget it,” she tells me, her full mouth twisting to the side for a moment. “I just decided that I’d had enough for the night.”
“Well now...” Leaning my shoulder against the doorframe, I look down to tip the bottle over the rim of the glass in my hand to pour out the last of it. “We both know that’s a lie.”
That lush mouth of hers falls open for a moment, giving me another glimpse of her pretty pink tongue before it snaps shut on a huff. “Excuse me?”
Definitely not used to being talked to like she’s just another woman.
“We were in the middle of a pretty interesting conversation before we were interrupted,” I remind her before offering her the glass in my hand. “I’d like to finish it, Amelia.”
“I think the only reason you found our conversation so stimulating is because it was about you,” she tells me, her tone cooling considerably, the ice in it telling me she has no idea how close I am to tossing the wine and tackling her onto the bed. “And my name isn’t Amelia.”
I feel the corner of my mouth tilt upward. “And I think you just don’t want to answer the question.”
When I say it, her gaze narrows slightly, and her chin stiffens just enough to tell me that I’m annoying her. “Maybe I would if you asked me an actual question.”
Jesus, I’m suddenly so hard my ears are ringing.
“Okay…” Praying to God she doesn’t look down and get a load of the massive hard-on she’s giving me, I give her my hot bartender grin. “Are you going to invite me in, Millie?”
That arm strung between us, still tethered to the door, tenses for a moment, and I’m sure she’s going to slam it in my face. Instead, she answers my question with another question. “Don’t you have a job to do?”
“Federal labor laws say I’m entitled to two, fifteen-minute breaks and a thirty-minute lunch in an eight-hour work shift.
I’ve been behind that bar for almost six.
” If she slams the door in my face, I’m going to have to find an unoccupied bedroom so I can spend my thirty-minute lunch break jerking off.
That’s how hard I am. How much I want this woman.
“That means I have approximately an hour of downtime, and I’d like to spend it finishing our conversation. ”
She arches one of those brows at me and I damn near come all over myself. “Our conversation about you?”
The only talking I want to do is talking her into fucking my face after I strip her naked.
Instead of telling her that and messing up any chance I have of getting inside, I shrug.
“We can talk about whatever you want, Maximillian.” If talking is all I get out of her, then I’ll gladly take it. “Invite me in.”
“Maximillian? Wow—that’s even worse than Maleficent,” she says, her words wrapped around a laugh.
Not the kind of laugh I’m used to hearing out of women like her.
A real laugh. The kind that hits me right between the shoulder blades.
Shoves me from behind and has me tumbling, headlong, into something that scares the absolute shit out of me but before I can figure out what the hell that something is, she drops her arm away from the door. “Do you promise to be a gentleman?”
I have no idea what being a gentleman entails.
My mother basically raised my little brother and me on her own while our dad worked as a crabber.
He was on a boat eight months out of the year and when he was home, teaching his sons the importance of gentlemanly behavior wasn’t exactly on his list of priorities.
So yeah, I have no fucking idea how to be a gentleman—but right now, if Millie asked me to perform brain surgery, I’d say a prayer and ask for a scalpel.
“Best behavior,” I tell her with a solemn nod. “I promise.”
For a very long moment, all she does is stand here and look at me. Finally she offers me a faint smile. “Okay, Dean,” she tells me while reaching out to take the glass of wine out of my hand. “Would you like to come in?”