3
Trevor needs to let loose.
“I’m not hungry,” I try to tell him, stumbling over my shoes, “and I still have to pick out a tie for Monday.”
“We’re not going out for dinner, cupcake,” Elijah teases me, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “You, Trevor, need to loosen the hell up. I promise, you can plan your week’s wardrobe when we get back, down to your matching underwear.”
On a Friday night like this, the streets are crowded with partygoers, friends meeting up, and drunken laughter. The city is alive, and its inhabitants never sleep. Elijah has been one of these inhabitants for two years now. Amidst the city noise, he’s totally at home.
And then there’s me, obsessing over whether a red tie will indicate a sense of desperation over a mauve tie.
Listen to me. Using words like “mauve”. I lean into Elijah with a heavy sigh, my safety net. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
When we finally arrive, I do a hell of a lot more than seeing. I do some coughing, some gagging, and a bit of squinty-eyed ear-covering. Elijah’s brilliant idea of how to loosen me up is visiting a nightclub we’ve passed every morning on our way to the office and every evening on our way home. I’ve never been to a bar, let alone a seedy downtown hangout with thumping music and throngs of sweaty, half-clothed people everywhere you turn.
Making our way to the bar, I witness a woman grinding her body against a shirtless hunk, whose eyes are glued to her breasts. I witness another guy gyrating his hips against a girl who grasps his hair in a fist as she hungrily pulls his mouth to hers.
This place is a den of sex, sweat, and slippery skin.
And then there’s Elijah and I ordering a pair of Cokes. Neither of us will be twenty-one for three more weeks. Did I mention our birthdays are just four days apart? We’re so stinking cute.
Shoot me now. I grab Elijah’s sleeve. “Over it already.”
“This place is exactly what you need. Just let it happen.”
“Yeah. A loud nightclub where I get to watch a bunch of men and women grope each other drunkenly.”
“Hey, there are gay people here, too,” Elijah assures me. “You aren’t all alone. In fact, that’s sort of the point.”
“The point?”
“Yeah. I want you to get laid.”
I blink at him—and not just due to the eye-watering smoke drifting through the air I’m desperately trying to breathe. Also, I’m trying not to notice a bearded guy getting what I presume to be a lap dance from a woman in a miniskirt halfway down the bar. The sight is very distracting and not in the spank bank way.
“Don’t give me that face, Trevor. You are too uptight, and this internship is going to break you unless you untie those panties—”
“We’re going home. Now.”
“Nope. Denied.”
“Then I’m going home.”
“Half an hour,” he begs me. “Give me just half an hour, and if Trevor’s not having even a tiny bit of fun by then, we’ll go home and order a large pizza with lemon garlic wings.”
“Ten minutes. Teriyaki wings.”
“Fifteen. Half-and-half.”
“Deal.” I cross my arms and sit on the stool next to him.
This is a little game he won’t win, and my unfinished planner waiting for me on my desk at home is proof of that. Even sitting here at this bar where we each nurse a totally-innocent Coke—which takes ten of our precious fifteen minutes to even get—all I find myself thinking about is which color tie will go with my slate-colored slacks. Maybe red is too desperate, too “look at me”. Do I go for a pink one to indicate sophistication, or something more saturated to convey my focus and passion?
Looking good is hard work.
“That one,” Elijah says, pointing.
He’s been doing this too for the past ten minutes, pointing out every guy in the club who seems to not have a half-dressed woman rubbing their lady bits all over him. “Straight,” I blurt back, just like the last four.
“How about that one?”
“Straight, too.”
Elijah smirks at me. “How can you tell?”
“They’re all straight or taken. All of them. Can we go now? I think I left your stove on.”
“Four minutes. You promised. And no, you didn’t.”
I slurp on my Coke. “We really should be spending tonight and tomorrow researching marketing strategies and preparing for—”
“We have a whole summer to do that. Tonight, all we research is dude butts.” Elijah lifts an eyebrow. “That’s what gay guys are into, right? Butts? You’re a bunch of puppies running in circles smelling each other’s holes, right?”
I shove Elijah for that, earning a hearty laugh from him as he nearly falls off his stool.
Then, across the room, I catch sight of a man standing at a tall bar table all by himself. He looks strangely out of place wearing a clean, fitted blue suit jacket with a slight shimmer to it and crisp slacks. Through the haze of people and smoke, his eyes are aimed my way.
Oh. At me.
He’s looking right at me.
Damn, his eyes can pierce like a spear. His hair, golden brown, is sharply combed, save for a chaotic tuft in the front. His chiseled face sports a bit of beard at the chin that tapers off like a razor’s edge down his strong jawline toward a set of smooth, shaven cheeks and high cheekbones.
Fuck, what a gorgeous face …
And his body. Wow. Even through the haze, I spot a button-up shirt beneath his sexy blazer that hugs a big, muscular chest. The sleeves of his jacket enwrap arms as thick as footballs, which immediately makes me think of him doing naked pushups for some reason. Even his legs are big and strong. The shape of his body is present through the thin material of his clothes, which hug his form exquisitely. I can only imagine what those slacks are doing to his ass. I kinda wish he’d turn around so I can know.
And all of that smoldering sexiness is looking right at me.
Then, quick as a storm rolling in, the aisle of nothing that existed between me and that man closes in, filling with dancing bodies and half-fucking couples on the floor.
My view of the sexiest man in the world is obliterated in the blink of an eye.
“Besides,” Elijah is going on, oblivious to any of this, “you do realize we’ll probably be gofers for a good portion of the summer. I hope you’re good at taking coffee orders.”
I lean one way and then the other, desperate to regain eye contact with the man. Too many people are in the way. “I’m sure we’ll be put to much better use than that,” I retort distractedly.
“Doubt it. How about that one?” he asks, gesturing.
“Straight.” I didn’t even look. “And I don’t doubt it. You and I were chosen for a reason.”
“Yeah. We’re local. We’re young. We’re gofers.”
“We’re smart,” I state, “and we’re qualified, and we’re driven. And we got recommendations from our professors.” I give him my full attention suddenly. “I mean, have you really considered what this’ll do for our fourth and final year at the university, Elijah? Working for Mr. Gage?”
“The Gagency,” he quips.
I elbow him hard. “Gage Communications. Don’t be caught dead calling it anything else, dude. You saw how strict that supervisor is. Rebekah. She’ll whip you in half. Two minutes.”
“If you think she’s strict, she’s got nothin’ on Mr. Gage himself. He’s a downright bossy control freak with an attitude. Or so I hear. Three minutes.”
“So you hear. Two minutes.”
“Two and a half actually, according to my iPhone. Gotta pee. Hold my seat.”
As Elijah gets up to go, I call after him, “Better not take longer than two and a half minutes!” But the words are lost to the storm of loud, hypnotic music and screaming chatter already washing over the room.
I push away my watered-down Coke and continue staring through the crowd, wondering if I’ll find that man again. When I finally manage to get a view of the table he was standing at, however, I find it sadly unoccupied.
I slouch, deflated. He left. Maybe he was actually staring at a girl near me before. Or he was lost in a thought and wasn’t even looking my way at all, staring off into space. Or some hotter guy or gal snatched him up while I sat over here discussing minutes.
I shouldn’t be discouraged. It’s not like I had an actual shot anyway. I’m not seriously considering Elijah’s advice of hooking up with someone here. What he doesn’t realize is that I’m not the casual-sex kind of guy.
In fact, I’ve never even had serious-sex before.
Like, at all.
That may seem a bit hard to believe, considering I’m twenty, have three years of college under my belt, and while my looks may not rival a six-foot-four beauty on the runway, I’m certainly not the least attractive guy in the room.
I crane my neck once more, searching the club for the man in the sexy suit. Again, my search is in vain.
I can’t even begin to think about what would happen if a man like that actually approached me, told me I was hot, and had his way with me. How would I react? Would I seriously tell him, “No thanks, Captain Dreamy. See, I have this big important finally-meet-my-boss thing Monday morning and totally need to keep a clear mind for it. You were going to fulfill my every fantasy? Oh, well, thanks, but no thanks. The only thing I fantasize about are studies on whether social media compromises the very fabric of our humanity.”
No. I wouldn’t tell him any of that. I’d likely not be able to say a damned thing as he took my body and pulled it up against his.
Oh, that’s a nice image. I chuckle to myself, my thighs pulling together as I feel blood rushing below. Let’s think of another.
Wish granted. I’m choked for words as I imagine him standing over me, commanding my attention. He’d have every ounce of it. Statistics and staples and bewitched copiers would fall right out of my mind, replaced by a throbbing in my fast-tightening pants and a desperate, hungry need for my hands to be all over his body—and for his hands to be all over mine.
He has to have strong hands to match those bulging biceps.
I cross my legs suddenly. I’m getting so stupidly hard just thinking about what those muscles might feel like beneath my gripping fingers. I wonder what the meat of his body would sound like if I were to push him against the brick wall over there.
No, scratch that; he’d be the one doing all of the pushing into brick walls. Definitely him.
I close my eyes, the noise of the nightclub far, far away as I imagine my hands on his chest, sliding down his rippling abs. Let’s face it: Mr. Hot Stuff definitely has rippling abs to go with that huge chest. And in my dream, I can put my hands anywhere I want.
Even in his pants.
I bite my lip, my crossed legs squeezing harder to conceal my throbbing, aching boner.
Then at once, I flip open my eyes. What the hell am I doing? Am I really this pent up that I’m going to sit here in the middle of a bar and fantasize about some random guy who might or might not have been staring at me across the crowded room?
Maybe Elijah is right. Maybe I really do need to get laid.
But not tonight. I lift my chin, take a deep breath, and try to coax my furiously cramped hard-on to go away.
No hot man with muscles in a bar, nightclub, or anywhere for that matter is going to distract me from my goal. That includes the dumb, sexy boys at the office, none of whom like me, I’m quite convinced. And they don’t have to like me, I’ve also decided. I’m there for only one person: Mr. Gage. He’s the only one who matters. Not my coworkers. Not Elijah and his quipping. Not even our immediate supervisor Rebekah.
And not a hot guy in a bar. I’ve worked too hard and for too long to be addled by some muscled man in a tight suit who’s giving me tight situations in my pants. That’s a fact.
“Were you looking for me?”
I turn at the sound of that deep, sultry voice right behind me, and my eyes fall on a beautiful man.
It’s him. The man. From across the room.
Yes, I’m still hard as a rock. And now I’m getting harder. He’s twenty times more gorgeous this close-up. Oh my gay gods. Now my fantasy has relocated to right in front of me, and for a countless amount of excruciating seconds, I can’t say a damned word.
And then …