Chapter 5
MARTY
Noah is mid-sentence when the door opens and Poppy Briggs walks into the Foundry in a pale blue summer dress.
My brain freezes.
The neckline cuts a V between her collarbones and follows the curve of her tits, and the fabric skims her waist and hips the way her work shirts do, except there’s nothing between this dress and her skin.
I grip my beer hard enough that my knuckles ache.
Her shoulders are bare and freckled, and her dark hair is loose and falling past her shoulders.
She’s laughing at whatever the woman next to her just said, head tipped back, the whole line of her throat exposed.
My cock strains against my jeans, and right now, she’s the only person in this place that matters.
Days of watching her across the records trailer, of her voice in my head after I leave the site, and none of it prepared me for the way the sight of her in that dress makes everything else in the room stop mattering. She hasn’t even seen me yet.
“…right, so—” Noah stops and shoves my shoulder. “Dude. Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere.” My eyes are still on her. The dress moves when she moves, and I’m helpless, watching the fabric follow her hips and fighting the surge of caveman in me that wants to drag her out of here and peel that dress off her, and then keep her in my bed all night long and then some.
“You’re not blinking.” He follows my sightline. “Oh. Shit, man. I get why you’re ignoring me. Is that Dale’s granddaughter?”
She’s heading for the bar, and I watch her go, every step. “Yeah.”
“She’s fucking hot.” He leans forward, grinning so wide that I can see his fillings. “Go talk to her. Or I will.”
“Don’t even think about it,” I growl. I like Noah, but not enough to forgive him if he tries picking up Poppy.
Poppy leans against the bar rail to order, and the back of her dress rides up her thighs. All I can think about is her thighs over my shoulders while I eat her pussy until she’s moaning my name and coming on my tongue.
Then a guy steps up next to her.
Polo shirt. Clean haircut. He leans close to her ear and says something. She tilts her head, and something hot and ugly tears through my chest so fast that I’m already off the stool before I’ve decided to stand.
I cut through the crowd. The jukebox is playing something I can’t hear because my pulse is drowning it out. The only plan I have is to get Poppy away from the douchebag wearing a damn polo shirt. Only douchebags wear polo shirts.
“Poppy.”
She turns. Her eyes hit mine, and the smile that breaks across her face is a fucking knockout.
Her gaze travels down my throat, my chest, and I feel every inch of it.
I shove my hands in my pockets, try to hide how badly they’re shaking.
She makes me so nervous and turned on that it’s a struggle to keep control.
“Hey.” She takes a sip of her drink, casual, smiling like she’s pleased. “Glad you made it. This is my friend Maggie,” she says, nodding to the woman on the other side of her.
“Hey. I’m Marty.”
“Maggie,” she says, clearly checking me out. Good friend.
“Said I would,” I say, turning back to Poppy. Up close, the dress is worse. The freckles on her collarbones are close enough to count and her skin is flushed underneath the neckline and I want to put my mouth on her skin and work my way down until she has her legs over my shoulders.
“Did you come over here to tell me that, or is there a work emergency?” She smiles, her voice teasing and light.
“The intake logs,” I blurt out, then immediately hate myself. When did I lose the ability to talk to a pretty woman? “Wanted to ask you about the intake logs.”
“The intake logs.” She tilts her head back and laughs. “At a bar.”
My stomach drops. “They need reviewing.”
“Which intake logs, specifically?”
“The…All of them.” My face is on fire.
“All the intake logs. That’s what was so urgent you crossed a crowded bar to talk to me.” Her eyes are bright, and the laugh is right there in the lines around her mouth and I want to kiss every one of them.
“I walked. Casually.”
“I saw you. You walked like a man on a mission. I watched you dodge three people and a waitress.” She’s grinning now, full and open, and it lands between my ribs because I’ve been chasing this expression since the day she walked into that trailer.
“You scared him off,” she says, nodding in the direction the polo shirt guy went. She looks back at me, and the grin goes warm in a way that makes it hard to breathe.
“He left on his own.” Her bare shoulder is six inches from my hand. I can feel the heat coming off her skin from here, and my body is vibrating with a primitive need to pull her body against mine and feel her luscious curves pressing against my body.
“So serious. You look like a bouncer who spotted a fake ID,” she laughs, then squares her own shoulders and puffs her chest, dropping her chin.
“I do not look like a bouncer.” But I’m grinning now too because she throws her whole body into it and it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen and also making it very difficult to think.
“A bouncer who’s also mad about intake logs.” The laughter shifts. Underneath it, her eyes on mine, daring me. “Then why are you over here?”
“Because some guy was talking to you, and I didn’t like it.”
She inhales sharply. Color floods up her neck into her face.
“That’s honest.” Her voice is rougher now, and the sound of it runs down my spine and pools at the base of it and I have to shift my weight so my boner isn’t visible from space.
“You asked.”
“I did.” She holds my gaze. Her chest is rising faster, and she’s close enough that the heat emanating from her bare arms hits my skin. “For the record, I saw you the second I walked in.”
My pulse hammers in my throat, and my hands are fists in my pockets. She was looking for me when she arrived, and the ground under my feet feels less solid than it did five seconds ago.
“Stay,” she says. “Karaoke’s about to start.”
“I can’t sing.”
“Neither can I.” She bumps her shoulder against my arm and the warmth of her bare skin prints itself onto me through my shirt and stays there, pulsing, long after she pulls away. “But that’s not going to stop me.”
I’ll do anything she asks.
A little while later, Poppy comes and sits down next to me. “I did something.”
“What did you do?” I ask carefully, looking at her and wondering if I should be worried or not.
“I signed up.” She nods toward the karaoke screen. “Both of us.”
It takes my mind a moment to catch up with what she said. She said us. “You did what? When?”
“When I ordered my drink.” Her grin is wide and inviting.
“Poppy, I can’t sing.”
“Neither can I.” She grabs my wrist and pulls, her fingers are warm and sure around my wrist, and my feet follow her before my brain has a vote. “But we’re going to!”
The stage is small. Scuffed plywood, duct-taped speakers, the karaoke screen bathing us in blue light. The song title appears on the monitor: “Stayin’ Alive.” Bee Gees.
She looks at me and grins. She’s so fucking beautiful and unexpected.
“If you sing as badly as I think you’re about to, I’m going to pretend I don’t know you.”
“You asked for it,” I grin. Her eyes drop to my mouth when it happens and she bites her lip and my cock throbs against my jeans. Game. Fucking. On. “You’re welcome to try.”
The bass line kicks in.
I commit. For the first time since I was seventeen and stupid at a high school talent show, I commit.
I don’t even remember moving, but I’m doing my best imitation of the Travolta strut—full hip roll, full shoulder, one hand pointing at the ceiling.
The crowd whistles, a table near the back banging in rhythm.
Noah is on his chair with both fists in the air, screaming my name like I just scored the winning touchdown.
Then Poppy moves.
She catches the beat on the second measure, and her hips roll to match mine.
I almost miss my next line because she’s not just keeping up, she’s matching me exactly.
She points her finger and shimmies and the crowd goes nuts.
A woman near the front cups her hands around her mouth and screams. Poppy doesn’t flinch.
She adds a spin that whips her hair around her shoulders and flares the dress at her thighs and sticks the landing, fires the finger point straight at me, and grins at me under stage light with her hair wild.
The air empties from my lungs.
The whole bar is clapping in rhythm. I should be watching the screen for my next line. I’m watching her. We’re moving to the same beat and her body is six inches from mine and I can feel her like she’s already touching me.
She knows every word. She belts the chorus with an unbridled enthusiasm that’s impressive on its own.
Her voice is off-key, but she gives everything to her performance.
She’s fearless and fun. Poppy isn’t holding anything back, and I’ve never been so attracted to a woman in my fucking life.
My hands need to know what her waist feels like under that dress, and my mouth knows exactly where it wants to be.
But watching her throw herself at something with her whole body and zero skill and that grin that won’t quit?
This goes deeper than wanting to fuck her.
This is deeper than her sexy sundress, deeper than the way she looks at me across the records trailer when she thinks I’m not paying attention.
I’m so fucking head over heels for this woman.
The song ends. The crowd is stamping, whistling, giving us a standing ovation. Poppy grabs my arm to stay upright, flushed and gasping, and the laugh that tears out of her makes my hands clench at my sides because what I want to do with them would not be appropriate on a stage.
“Oh my god.” She’s bent forward, one hand on my bicep, fighting for breath. “You were amazing. I thought for sure you’d run off stage.”
“I’m committed.” My lungs are burning. Her hand is on my arm and every nerve under it is lit up and my skin wants more of her, all of her, every part of her that isn’t touching me yet.
She shoves my shoulder and her hip bumps mine and the contact jolts through me. We’re still at the edge of the stage, the next act taking the mic behind us, and her face is tipped up toward mine, color high in her cheeks, and her eyes haven’t left mine.
I put my hand on her waist.
The fabric is thin. Underneath it, her body is warm and solid and soft, and my fingers curve around the shape of her and I stop hearing the bar.
Her eyes go dark and her weight leans into my palm and I can feel her ribs expanding with every breath, her body moving under my hand, and her heart is hammering just as much as mine is.
Her fingers tighten on my bicep instead of letting go, and her laugh fades, but her mouth stays open, her breathing rough. There’s nothing left between us—no joke, no pretense, no flimsy excuse about intake logs. Just her hand on my arm and both of us breathing too hard for standing still.
I lean close. My lips brush her hair. She shivers under my hand, a tremor I feel all the way up my arm and into my chest.
“You’re incredible and beautiful.” My voice is rough and low.
She turns her head. Her mouth is close enough that her breath is hot on my lips. My hand tightens on her waist. I can hear my own breathing, and it’s not steady.
“I know,” she says, raising her hand and stroking my cheek.
The night blurs after that. And then we’re outside in the warm evening, our arms brushing with every step because neither of us is trying to walk straight.
She swings her shoulder into mine and leaves it there. “You were truly amazing, Marty. I didn’t think you had that in you.”
“No regrets.” Her shoulder is warm against my arm, and I don’t want her to move it. I don’t want her to move any part of herself away from any part of me, and that want is so big that it’s crowding out everything else in my head.
She laughs, and I put my hand on the small of her back because I’m done restraining myself with her. The fabric is thin enough that I can feel the ridge of her spine, the heat of her skin through the cotton, and she leans into my side like she’s been waiting for me to make a move all night.
She glances up at me, and her face is open in a way I haven’t seen—all the sharp edges put away. “My friend came to check you out.”
“Did I pass?”
“She’ll tell me tomorrow.” Her fingers find the hem of my jacket sleeve and hold on. Just the fabric, but I feel it everywhere.
“And what about me?”
She stops walking. Turns under a streetlamp, half in light and half out of it, her chest rising and falling, her nipples tightly pushing through the cotton of her dress.
“You passed the second you walked in.”
I’m done fucking waiting. I pull Poppy into my arms and kiss her.