I ignore him and make my way around the bar and toward the corner booth. Nicola sees me first and her eyes nearly bulge out of her. Kayla just looks venomous.
And then Steph turns her head and it’s true what James said, she does look like she’s going to grab a fork off the table and hurl it at me, right between the eyes. I know I deserve all the wrath about to come my way but I also hope she takes a moment to hear me out.
Damn it though if she isn’t sexy as hell when she wants to kill me.
“You need to leave,” Nicola says, pointing to the door.
“And never come back,” Kayla adds. “Asshole.”
“Wait a minute,” I say, standing at the end of the table with arms folded. I notice Steph’s eyes briefly going to my biceps and I feel like that just in itself is a tiny little victory. “Why are you all upset with me?”
They both look at Stephanie. I look at Stephanie.
She sighs and then says, “Guys, can you give us a minute?”
Kayla and Nicola exchange a long look and they don’t budge.
“Please,” Steph says, her voice tired. “It’s fine.”
“No it isn’t,” Kayla says and then glares at me. She’s remembering the times I loved her and left her, I know it.
“I just want to talk to her,” I say to her guard dog friends. “Honestly.”
Finally they both move and, as Nicola brushes past me, I say to her, “Maybe you want to take away any sharp objects,” but she just laughs.
Now that we’re alone, I don’t want to screw up. “Is it okay that I’m here?” I ask Steph, still standing there.
She shakes her head. “You’re the last person I want to see.”
“Can I at least explain what happened?”
She takes a defeated sip of her drink. “What difference would it make?”
I quickly sit down and reach out and grab her hand. She tries to pull it away but I hang on, squeezing it tight, relishing the feel if her warm, soft skin between my fingers. “It’s over,” I tell her. “I broke up with her. She moved out. It’s over.”
She swallows uneasily and looks away, at the old-fashioned paintings of fox hounds on the wall, all part of The Burgundy Lion’s original décor. Her mouth turns down in this sad, pronounced kind of way when she gets upset and I have to fight the urge to kiss that same mouth and make it sing. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” I implore, the desperation sneaking up on me, “I want you to know that everything I told you, I meant. I want you and I’ve always wanted you. Not anyone else.”
She stiffens at that and then shoots me a furtive glance. “I broke up with Aaron.”
I nod and hope it comes across as sympathetic, not eager. “I know. Penny told me. I was going to end it with Nadine when I got home but then I found out she was evicted. She had nowhere to go. I didn’t know what to do. I just couldn’t do it then.”
“But you did it now…”
I grimace. “Yes. I did. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t pretend.”
“Pretend what?” she asks and I can barely hear her soft voice above the noise of the bar.
“That I want nothing more than to put you on your back, on this table, and show you what it’s like to really get fucked.”
Her mouth drops open and she nearly laughs. I’ve caught her by surprise but she better get used to it.
“Linden,” she scolds.
“Kiss me.” I tell her. I’m all impulse now, feeling coiled up like a snake and ready to strike. I want her so damn bad.
Troubled, she yanks her hand out of mine and scooches back along the bench, further away from me. “Hold on, this is getting out of line.”
“This is getting where it needs to go,” I tell her, getting up and sitting right next to her. I bury my face in her hair and inhale her fresh, heady scent before I whisper, “Don’t act like you haven’t been thinking about that kiss every single day since it happened. Don’t pretend you haven’t thought once about what it would be like to do it again. To do more.”
I put my palm on her thigh and slowly trail it up but her hands are on my chest, pushing me back.
“We can’t,” she says.
“Oh yes we fucking can,” I tell her. I take her delicate earlobe between my teeth and tug until she lets out a small gasp.
“Not now, not here,” she says and there is a tone of panic in her voice.
She’s right. Not here. I sit up and move away from her a few inches before I look around the bar. She seems to be talking about Kayla and Nicola, but now I’m thinking about James.
Whatever happens between us, it would be best if James didn’t know. At least not at first, anyway. If I entertained the thought that he could possibly have feelings for her, then I wouldn’t be able to be with her at all, so I push that out of my head and make sure that whatever happens between us is only between us.
“Can this be our secret?” I whisper.
“There is no secret to tell,” she answers smartly.
“Not yet,” I say, holding her gaze. “But by the end of this night, there will be.”
Then she looks up and past me and I know that someone is coming. I quickly yet casually get to my feet and turn around just in time to see Nicola and Kayla approaching us with bottles of cider.
“I see you’re still alive,” Nicola says before she looks over the table. “And the cutlery doesn’t have blood on it.”
“It’s cool,” Steph says with a lopsided smile. She meets my eyes for a second before looking to the others. “We’re best friends again.”
“Just best friends?” Kayla asks suspiciously.
Before Stephanie can answer, I say, “Just the best.”
Then I give Steph a nod and head back to the other side of the bar.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STEPHANIE
“What the hell was that all about?” Kayla asks.
“He better have had a great excuse for being such a douchepilot,” Nicola adds before she slams back her drink. Man, single moms sure know how to party hard.
“He kind of did,” I tell them. And it’s true. Actually after I had seen Nadine’s status update and sent him the ‘fuck you’ text, I talked to Penny and she filled me in on the entire situation. I understood it, I really did, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Even though Linden was stepping up to the plate and being a good man about the whole thing, I was suddenly so afraid that this was the end. There would be no more chances. She would live with him forever, he’d fall back in love and whatever things he told me would be completely forgotten about.
I spent the whole week alternating between feeling sorry for myself and cursing God and fate and then Nadine for living in such a shithole that it had to be condemned.
Of course, because I was such a wreck and relegated to my eating ice cream in my underwear stage, I had to fill Nicola and Kayla in on what was happening. I didn’t really want to tell yet another person that I have a thing for Linden, especially since Kayla got to sample the goods already but it was nice to have a little woman support group in place. Actually Kayla had just broken off her engagement a month ago, so she was in a place where she really wanted to hate on all men and especially Linden who fucked her a few times and never called her again.
Saturday was our let’s-get-drunk-and-find-a-good-lay night, so I suggested the Lion thinking that there was no way Nadine would want to be there among Linden’s friends again, especially after last weekend. We’d only been there and hour and were nicely buzzed and gossiping about who knows what when I knew Linden was in the room. Seeing Kayla and Nicola’s faces only cemented the truth.
Linden walked toward me like someone out of a dream. He was wearing a tight grey t-shirt that showed off his big, sculpted arms and broad shoulders, dark jeans that fit in all the right places, had his leather jacket – the very one I gave him – slung over one shoulder like some wannabe Brando. And it worked. He even had on black leather combat boots for once, giving his already six foot som
ething frame some extra height.
I cursed internally, rapidly, using every single swear word I could think of. I was angry that he was here and even angrier that I was just so fucking attracted to him that it was taking a lot of restraint to keep my eyes glued to anywhere else but his hard body.
But even though I wanted to hold a grudge, to be angry, I just couldn’t. He was still Linden. He was still the man who knew me better than everyone else did. I could never say no to him and apparently I couldn’t hold a grudge.
So Nicola and Kayla left us alone and I was immediately swept up into the force of nature that he is.
He grabbed my hand and it felt like parts of me were coming back together. He breathed hot air on my neck and I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust.
He said things that I never thought I’d hear him say and things I couldn’t wait to hear again.
Then he told me this was all a secret, Kayla and Nicola came back, and he fucked off to the other side of the bar.
That’s where he is now. That’s where I want to be.
No, more than that. I want to be beneath him on this table, just like he said.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nicola asks me for the hundredth time. “I can’t figure out what’s going on with your face?”
“What’s wrong with my face?”
“Well, it looks a bit bitchier than normal,” Kayla says thoughtfully and reaches across the table to smooth out the deep crease between my brows. “You’re too frowny. You also look a bit scared.”
“She’s scared of Linden,” Nicola whispers – loudly – to her.
“We’ll protect you sweetie,” Kayla says and displays her biceps, which are surprisingly well-defined. “I owe Linden several kicks to the nuts as it is.”
“No one is kicking anyone,” I tell them. I might need those nuts in the near future. “You’re both drunk.”
“You’re right,” Kayla says with a sigh, leaning back dramatically in her seat. “You know it only takes me two drinks before I’m on my knees. Damn Asian genes.”
I laugh. “Then maybe you oughta head home.”
Nicole fixes her eyes on me. “I have the feeling you’re trying to get rid of us.”
I open my mouth to protest but no words come out.
Nicola sighs and throws down some bills before she nudges Kayla out of the booth. “Come on chicky, you won’t find any men here to get on your knees for anyway.” Then she stifles a giggle. “Well, maybe one but I bet you’ve been on your knees for him already.”
“Not funny!” I yell and Kayla turns an even angrier shade of crimson.
Then they’re gone and I’m sitting in the booth alone, nursing a cider that’s warm, flat and tasteless and I know who is waiting on the other side of that bar.
I scoop up the bills and stick them in the tip jar closest to me, where Dan gives me the thumbs up. Kayla and Nicola never have to pay for anything because they’re with me but they always do and I always put their money in the tip jar. It at least ensures the staff is happy every time we come into the bar.
“Hey Steph,” James says to me as I round the corner to the other side. He’s pouring Linden a pint who is sitting across from him in his usual spot.
In our usual spot.
For a moment I’m thrown back in time to our twenty-fifth birthday where we both sat there at the bar and made a drunken pact that we would marry each other one day if there was no one else for us.
Linden’s stormy eyes meet mine and he gives me a slow, carnal smile as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. All at once I’m completely terrified to keep moving but my feet don’t know any different. They walk over to him and I sit down on the stool beside him, my shoulders bumping against his.
“You like him again?” James says as he hands me an Angry Orchard without even asking.
“I get moody sometimes,” I say with a smile before I take a long swig.
“No shit,” he says and then heads down the length of the bar to attend to someone who is snapping their fingers like a madman.
And now, despite the bar and the people around us, I am alone with Linden. It feels like there isn’t another soul around for miles. The heat coming off his body is intoxicating and I am so conscious that if I adjust my seat even slightly, my bare arm will brush against his.
I already have goose bumps just thinking about it.
Linden leans in a bit closer, his hot mouth just inches from my ear. “Your place or mine?”
My eyes grow wide. This is already moving way too fast. I don’t even know what this is yet.
“Let me have a drink and think about it,” I tell him and my words come out all crumbled and hoarse, like I’ve swallowed a bucket of sawdust. I angle back slightly so I can look him in the eye. “Don’t you think this is all kind of…weird?”
He gives me a lazy smile. “Baby blue.” The slow way he says it makes me focus on his lips, the hint of tongue that peeks out. “This will be the opposite of weird.”
I’m not so sure about that.
He goes on, leaning in again. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
I can feel my face go red. “Now you’re just being cheesy. You don’t need to be cheesy with me.”
“Aye,” he says, “I know I don’t. But it’s the truth. Do you know how long I’ve waited to tell you the truth? I’ve jacked off every day this week thinking about your perfect lips around my cock.”
And somehow my eyes go wider still.
Oh my god.
What the hell?
“Speechless?” he asks after a beat. “I like that.”
I turn my head and see if anyone else is in earshot of this. It may feel like we’re alone but I know we’re not. James is at the other end of the bar still and I sense from Linden that this is the main reason we’re to keep it all secret. Again, whatever this all is.
I have no idea.
But I feel like Linden’s going to show me and do so without mercy.
I swallow hard, my stomach fluttering with nerves and bubbles that make me want to laugh or cry or do something. Scream, even.
“What about the pact?” I ask him.
“What about it? We could just call this stage one.”
He leans in closer now and I know if anyone is watching us it’s going to look like it’s more than just a harmless whisper.
“Sort of like a try before you buy type of deal?” I joke weakly.
“Oh, we’ll be trying,” he murmurs, his breath coating my neck and making my hairs stand straight up. I close my eyes as he quickly kisses me beneath the ear. “We’ll be trying multiple.” He kisses a spot lower. “Multiple.” And lower. “Multiple times.”
Oh dear lord. I want nothing more for him to continue but I flinch away, trying one last minute attempt at self-preservation or at least clean panties.
I put my hand on his forearm, wrapping my fingers tightly around his muscle so he knows I’m being serious. He finally pulls back and looks at me. A soft look comes over his eyes. “Am I being creepy?” he asks.
I can’t help but let out a relieved laugh. There is the Linden I know.
“Kind of,” I tell him. His face falls slightly so I quickly add, “But it’s just because this is just so…this is so huge. This is huge, isn’t it?”
He cocks his head and grins, nodding his head. “Well, the ladies seem to think so.”
I roll my eyes, even though I know he is huge. He has to be. I can still feel it pressed against me.
“I’m serious,” I tell him. “One minute we’re just friends and the next…”
“The next I’m kissing you. And I realize I’ve been a fool for not doing it sooner.”
I nod, knowing just how he feels, and say, “I just don’t know what you want from me. From us.”
He frowns. “What do you want from me?”
What do I want from him? Really?
“I want,” I say slowly, thinking. I take a sip of my drink and let it roll around on m
y tongue. I have no choice but to be honest. “I want to know why that kiss felt so good. I want to know what else I’ve been missing.”
“That’s all I want too,” he says.
“And it’s worth risking our friendship over?”
A grave expression comes across his face and he briefly looks down the bar. “I think we’ve already risked it, baby blue. The minute we kissed and it became more than a kiss, that’s when our friendship, as we’ve known it, ended. Now we just explore the next step.” He reaches over and brushes a strand of my hair behind my ears, his touch both firm and gentle. “All of this, you and me, is brand new, you’re right. Let’s just take this one small step at a time.”
“These small steps include sex, right?” I joke and then blush even more because I can’t believe I’ve said that. I mean, I’ve joked about stuff like that before with him but now that it’s about him, about us, and it’s real, there is a potency to everything I’m saying.
He scrapes his teeth along his bottom lip and says, “I’d kiss you right now if I could, if the whole world wasn’t watching. Right on the lips. So hot and sweet you’d think I was honey. I’d make you want to drown in it.”
I have to say, I’ve never really been with a vocal man before but I’m starting to like it. A lot.
“Yeah?” I answer rather dumbly. Two cannot play at this game. I completely concede to him and decide to let him do all the talking from now on.
He leans in as if to tell me a secret. “I want nothing more than to get you out of here and bring you back to my place,” he murmurs, his voice so rough and dangerously low. “I’m going to take my time, slowly peeling off your shirt, your bra, kiss your nipples until they are so hard that you’re begging me to bite them. Then I’ll take off your jeans, inch by torturous inch, enjoying the show of your thighs before I reach your panties. I bet they’re ridiculously wet. Even right now, I bet they are soaked. I bet they’d taste good too. Then I’m going to fuck your wet pussy so good that you’ll wonder how you survived this long without me.”
Speechless.
Turned on as fucking hell.