FREE-RANGE TITTIES.
I’m not a picky man when it comes to breasts. I pretty much like them all—small, medium, large, larger. A handful can be enough, but I can also handle my cup running over.
But if I had to pick my favorite of all the titties, I’d have to go with free range—any size. They’re unobstructed, uninhibited—not being caged in by those pesky bras—and beautiful. Those plump mounds with the sweet orbs in the middle, just begging to be sucked.
Currently, two very nice ones are staring me right in the face. However, in my hungover, possibly still-intoxicated state, I can’t remember who they belong to or how they got here. But that doesn’t matter. They’re here and I intend on enjoying them.
“You’re even a perv in your sleep,” a groggy voice moans as I tweak a nipple. And I’d know that voice anywhere. It belongs to the person who is often the bane of my existence, but also the source of my greatest pleasure.
“Piper?” I ask, peeling my face away from her bare chest and trying my damnedest to focus in on her face. Her beautifully pissed off face. She’s always wearing a scowl, at least when she’s with me, even when I’m fucking her against a wall or laying between her legs, giving her an orgasm that rocks her world. Her brows are always scrunched up, turning her petite features into a harsh glower. And, somehow, she’s still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
But I’d never tell her that.
I like her pissed off. It works for us.
“Why are you in my bed?” she demands, pulling the sheet up and effectively covering my favorite titties.
I almost whimper at the loss, but don’t want to give her the satisfaction.
“Fuck if I know. I’m guessin’ I gave it to you so good last night you decided to keep me for a second round this mornin’.” I go in for her neck, knowing exactly where to start nibbling to get her to drop her frigid front.
“No,” she groans, but her body is saying yes. The way she tilts her head to the side, giving me access to the smooth skin right behind her ear, tells me she wants me. She just hates to admit it. Actually, she never admits it.
We hate-fuck.
And sometimes, we fuck the hate right out of ourselves until we’re somewhere between tolerance and indifference, verging on liking each other, but that never lasts long.
“You sure about that?” I ask as I slide on top of her, rolling her onto her back, causing her dark hair to fan out beneath her. Her sleepy face is staring up at me and it nearly steals my breath. I never get the chance to see her like this. Usually, we have sex half-clothed, and we never sleep in the same bed. It’s one and done, until the next time. Now, the next time has been later that same day, but we make zero commitment to each other. We set no dates. We have no contract or agreement. When we’re finished, we leave things like you would a one-night stand.
Thanks to our mutual friends, we’re often forced into being in the same room together. That usually results in stares and glares and sometimes an exchange of words, but as far as everyone knows, that’s the extent of it—we hate each other.
And, we do, but we also get each other and we know how to please each other. There’s a strange mutual desire to be together and when neither of us can stand it any longer, we give in.
But that’s it. That’s as far as it ever goes.
Pulling Piper’s hands above her head, so I can have control of her body, I’m stopped by an unfamiliar accessory that catches my eye.
“Piper?”
“Yes,” she breathes, her way of telling me to get on with it without coming right out and saying it.
“What the fuck is on your hand?” I ask, not able to tear my eyes away.
“What?” she asks, annoyance building the longer I wait to give her what she wants. Piper hates games. I think that’s why she’s so opposed to relationships. She’s slipped a few times and told me bits and pieces of her childhood and about her parents. They’re filthy rich and masters of manipulation, especially with each other.
I bring her hand down and thrust it in her face.
“This.”
On Piper’s ring finger of her left hand, sits a large, shiny diamond.
Much to my disappointment, faster than I can blink, Piper slips out from under me like a ninja.
Much to my enjoyment, she’s now standing in front of me, naked and fucking perfect.
Her eyes flicker from the ring to me and then back to the ring, her gorgeous mouth dropping open.
“What the fuck is this?” she screeches, pulling hard until it slips off her finger.
“Uh,” I say, because that’s all I’ve got. I mean, give me a fucking break. I just woke up, next to Piper Fucking Grey and she’s standing naked in front of me. It’s hard to form coherent sentences under any of those circumstances, let alone all three.
“Tucker,” she yells. “My eyes are up here. And I’m talking to you!” She snaps her fingers at me and just like that, the bitch face is back. “What the fuck is this? And why am I in your hotel room? And what the hell is this?” With each question, her voice gets louder and her tone more frazzled. I watch as her eyes scan the room, looking for something.
When she spots her black dress from the night before laying over by the chair, she marches over to it and grabs it up and holds it to her chest. Then she’s on a scavenger hunt around the room, collecting her belongings.
Lacy panties by the night stand.
Fuck-me stilettos by the door.
“What did you do?” she mindlessly asks, her voice panicked. “What did we do?” I don’t know if she’s talking to me or herself, but I just sit back and watch the show. I’ve never seen this side of her and it’s oddly entertaining, but also disturbing.
Her expression is out of place. Piper Grey is a lot of things—beautiful, annoying as hell, gorgeous, smart, put together, in charge, control freak—but unsure and panicked is not in her normal repertoire.
“Well, babe,” I begin with a drawl, but she throws something at me and it hits me in the head. Reaching down, I find the diamond that was on her finger.
“Don’t. Call. Me. Babe.” She quickly slips her panties up her delicious legs and pulls her dress over her head. Her hair goes up in a quick bun as she inspects herself in the mirror, swiping at the leftover mascara under her eyes.
Reaching for the handle of the hotel room door, she turns back around. “If we got married, or some crazy shit like that, I’m gonna cut your balls off and feed them to you.”
I laugh from my spot on the bed, twirling the ring around on my pinky finger.
It’s a really nice ring and from the way it reflects the light coming through the opened curtains, I’m assuming it’s real.
Like, a real fucking diamond.
“Piper,” I call out, causing her to stop just before the door shuts behind her.
“What?”
Another memory starts coming back to me and I jolt up from the bed, walking toward the door.
“Don’t come near me with that,” she says, pointing down below my waist.
“What?” I ask, looking down at my cock standing half-mast.
“That. It’s evil. It makes me do bad things.”
“My dick?”
“Demon dick,” she corrects.
I can’t help the laugh that erupts from me. This entire morning is ridiculous.
Did I marry Piper Grey?
Wouldn’t I remember that?
“How much did we drink last night? What did we drink last night?” I ask, trying to stitch together the holes in my memory.
She drops the tyrant bit for a second, slipping on her shoes and standing taller than her normal five-foot-nothing. “I don’t know. I . . . I can’t remember.”
I scratch my head, moving my unruly curls out of my face, and reach for my discarded boxers on the floor by my feet. Pulling them on, I rack my brain for my last memory from the night before. “We were with Micah and Dani at that bar . . . the one with the hidden door.”
“Right,” she says, placing her hands on her hips. “You morons started taking shots for everyone at the bar.”
“One for the guy with the suspenders . . .” I say with a smile, happy that I can remember something.
“And the girl who looked like a dude,” she says, shaking her head.
“And the dude that looked like a girl,” I counter.
She tries to hide the smile, but I see it.
“Morons,” she reiterates.
“And then Micah and Dani ditched us to celebrate on their own, and I can’t remember much after that.”
We both stand there, with the door half open, trying to piece it all together. I grab my phone, figuring if I really did drop change on a wedding, it’d be on my bank app by now. Just as I swipe across the screen, a text message pops up on my phone.
Dave: Congrats, dude!!!
Dave is one of my old band members, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine what he’d be congratulating me for. I scratch my head again in confusion. What the hell? Come to think of it, I do remember seeing him last night. Sort of.
“Did we go to The Cat’s Meow?” I ask aloud, as I type out a similar question to Dave. A fragmented memory of test tube shots and singing along to Sweet Child of Mine filters through my brain.
“Who are you texting?” Piper asks, her eyes wide again, the panic setting back in.
“Dave,” I tell her, like she knows who I’m talking about. “I think we partied with him last night.”
Piper reaches into her slim black purse and pulls out her own phone.
About that time, a video comes in from Dave and I hit play. At first, the picture is out of focus and the background is loud. There’s lots of talking and hooting and hollering, and then everything goes silent.
“Piper Grey, you’re the best lay of my life,” I say, or video-me says, while down on one knee on a stage I know very well. “And you’ve got great tits. I want them in my bed every day from now til’ eternity. Listenin’ to Micah pour his heart out tonight got me thinkin’ . . . since I found the person I want to screw for the rest of my life, I shouldn’t let you go. So, marry me.”
The video spans across the room to a smiling, obviously drunk-off-her-ass Piper. She’s not crying, like some girls do, like Dani was when Micah proposed last night. She’s just smiling, ear-to-ear, and then she cups her hands around her mouth and yells her response, “I’ll marry you.”
Everyone in the crowd goes wild, applauding and whistling.
Then, above the noise, Piper gets everyone’s attention with a loud whistle, that, if I’m being honest, is sexy as hell, even on a grainy video. “On one condition,” she says with a slight slur as she holds a finger up in the air.
Whoever is taking the video, sweeps across the room from Piper, back to me, standing on stage.
“Anything for you, Darlin’,” I tell her, jumping off the stage and walking through the mass of people, like Moses parting the Red Sea.
“You buy a drink for all of our friends.” She waves her arm through the air at the hundred people packed tightly around us. “And promise me one of those mind-blowing orgasms you give so well . . . every day, for the rest of my life.”
By that time, she’s gripping the front of my shirt and we’re nose to nose. I’m still holding the microphone from the stage and the place is starting to erupt, everyone telling me to say yes.
“I already said, anything . . . and I mean, anything.”
We kiss and the crowd goes fucking wild.
And the video ends.
Another text comes through immediately after.
Dave: This shit has gone viral!!!
The hotel room is dead silent. Piper is still standing by the door, listening to the sounds of our drunken night coming back to haunt us, while I stare at my phone like it grew two heads.
“Huh,” I grunt out, unsure of what else to say. I mean, it’s not that bad. So, what? I proposed to her in front of a bunch of drunk bastards at The Cat’s Meow? That’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened.
At least we didn’t get married.
But I feel the tension filling the room, and I swallow once, my body wanting to take a step back from her in preservation, just in case. For some reason, I’m pretty sure Piper isn’t going to think it’s quite as humorous as I do.
Taking a chance, I glance up just in time to watch as the blood returns to Piper’s face, turning it a shade of pink, as the anger boils. I see it in her eyes and the hard set of her jaw as she grits her teeth together and breathes in deeply through her nose.
And this time, I do take a step back, raising my hands in surrender, phone in one hand, diamond ring in the other.
She takes a counter step toward me, her finger rising as she seethes. “Fix this.”
“Hey, babe,” I tell her in a soothing tone, trying to talk her down a little before she says or does something we’ll both regret. “It takes two to tango.” Or maybe I’m trying to piss her off even more, but fuck me, if I’m going to let her put all the blame on me.
“Don’t call me babe,” she yells, her finger poking into my chest. “I swear to God. If this gets out—goes any further than this hotel room—I’ll kill you. And I’ll enjoy it. And when they come to take me away, it’ll be the happiest fucking day of my life, because you’ll be dead and I’ll get three-square meals a day, and a roof over my head and I won’t ever have to look at your face again . . . or ward off your demon dick.”
Her rant is crazy, almost as crazy as she is, and it’s making zero sense, but I let her go. Partly, because I’m afraid of her. And partly, because I really love it when she’s all worked up.
“Make that shit go away,” she finally says, gathering her wits and smoothing her hair back. “Tell George or Darrell or whoever the fuck to delete that video.”
“What about this?” I ask, holding up the ring.
“I don’t care what you do with the damn ring, Tucker! Sell it. Pawn it. Stick it up your ass!”
“So, you don’t want it?” I know I’m egging her on, but I can’t help myself. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a morning fuck session for my efforts.
“No, I don’t want it.” Her tone oozes disgust. “What I want is for this to all be a nightmare and I want to wake up in my bed. Alone!” She screams in frustration and slams the door behind her, effectively ending our banter and leaving me with a semi.
I smile to myself, falling back into the bed, rolling over and hugging Piper’s pillow to me.
She might frustrate me to the ends of the earth. And I wouldn’t say I like her. I don’t even tolerate her on most days. But I love the way she smells. And I love the way she fights. And I kind of like the part where she said she’d marry me . . . even if she was drunk.
If for no other reason than knowing she’s not going to let this go or forget it, and I’ll still be pissing her off, even when I’m not with her.
That’s enough for me.
A random, hazy thought fills my mind, playing out like a movie—me and Piper, walking down a dark sidewalk, her leaning into my side, laughing.
When I see the flickering gold sign ahead, I stop dead in my tracks.
“I’m gonna buy you a ring.” I pull Piper back and look down at her half-shuttered eyes, loving how beautiful she looks peering up at me, without the hard persona she usually wears. She’s just Piper and she’s gorgeous.
“Yes!” Piper squeals. “I wanna big one.” She waggles her eyebrows at me with a sly grin on her face.
“Oh, Darlin’, I’m gonna get you the biggest one they got.”
The pawn shop light flickers again, almost beckoning us inside . . . or maybe it’s more of a warning, but in my drunken state, this seems like the best idea I’ve had all night.