What the fuck was I thinking?
Oh, that’s right. I wasn’t.
I hadn’t actually thought about the fact I was going to have sex with Elliott Sloane. I hadn’t thought about what it would feel like to kiss him or have his hands on my body. I hadn’t stopped to consider what it would feel like to have my naked body under his, or his hands gripping my hips as he fucked me from behind.
I hadn’t stopped to think for a second that he might be a fucking dirty talker.
Nope. It was classic Peyton. Do, don’t think. Get on with it, don’t consider it.
Now, now, now. That was me. Demanding and impatient and oh so fucking stupid.
I tore a big bite off my donut. A couple of sprinkles dropped onto my desk, so I licked my finger so they’d stick and tapped them all up to eat them.
Sugar. I needed sugar to process this.
I swear, I could still feel his fingers digging into my hips. If I touched my hips, they were still tender. He hadn’t hurt me, not at all—and if he had, it’d felt too damn good then for me to register any kind of pain.
It was good. Great. Mind-blowing. Everything sex with Elliott Sloane had no place being.
I shivered, then took another bite of my donut to brush it off.
Goddamn him.
Goddamn me.
Goddamn my brother and my friends and this stupid thing called my life.
I hated Elliott. Hated him. With a passion. If you struck a match on my hatred, you’d have a nuclear explosion.
Was that why all I could think about was how hard he’d made me come?
Oh, I was so mad. I could feel it all snaking its way through my veins like a poison. I was so pissed at myself for having sex with him—I was even more annoyed that I’d enjoyed it. More than enjoyed it.
I licked frosting from my thumb.
I can’t believe I had sex with Elliott Sloane.
Red-hot, filthy, dirty-talking sex.
And I’d liked it.
I’d liked it. I was attracted to him. Hated him, but attracted to him. Did that even make sense? I didn’t know. Nothing much did make sense. Like how I’d even ended up sitting across from him in the first place.
Oooh.
My best friends were assholes.
Of all the submissions. Of all the guys. Of all the choices they could have made.
Of all the men on that website who were sexually compatible with me, they picked him.
My enemy. My arch-nemesis. The villain in my fairytale.
All right, I was exaggerating. He was nothing more than a decade-long grudge, and I sure as hell was not living a fairytale, therefore there was no room for a villain, but still.
How could they pick him? There had to be at least ten people on that site I could have screwed and happily got on with my life without.
I knew Elliott—or I had, once upon a time. But I still knew him. I remembered him. I remembered that he preferred baseball to football, he hated ice-cream, and he’d never seen an episode of Friends in his life.
Which was blasphemy, but I digress.
Or did he?
Did he still prefer baseball? Had he grown to like ice-cream? Had he finally watched an episode of my favorite TV show?
I didn’t know Elliott. I knew high school Elliott, not adult Elliott. I knew the guy who snuck out after curfew, who played football because it made his grandpa happy, and who was a petulant jerk.
I didn’t know the guy who’d sat across the table from me during dinner last night.
I didn’t know the man who was a father.
And I hadn’t allowed myself to ask. I was curious—too curious by nature, and that would be the one thing I’d have to curb if I was going to sleep with him again.
Questions. No questions. Not about him and not about his daughter. It was none of my business. The only thing that was my business was what was inside his pants.
I was only allowed to care about what was inside his pants.
And, you know what? The assholes who called themselves my best friends had been right.
His cock really was kinda pretty.
***
“I cannot believe you two!” I slammed Chloe’s front door behind me.
A scream echoed. “Damn it, Peyton!” Mellie shouted when I walked into the open living area. “I almost cut my thumb!”
“I don’t care!” I tossed my purse on the couch and pointed vigorously at them. “Y’all are lucky I don’t cut you for the stunt you pulled!”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Chloe said, cradling a wine glass.
“Lies!” Mellie pointed her knife at her. “It was your suggestion!”
I threw up my hands. “The betrayal! How could you do this to me? Why would you do this?”
“Settle down, Jennifer Lawrence.” Chloe put down her wine glass. “The Oscars aren’t evaluating this performance.”
I glared at her.
“Okay, maybe in hindsight it wasn’t the best idea.”
“Maybe? Not the best idea? What part of you ever thought it was a good idea?” I was almost shrieking.
What? I’d kept this inside all day. The more I thought about it, the more their audacity pissed me off.
“You hate him,” Mellie answered reasonably, tossing sliced sausage into the pan. “You’ve hated him for ten years. I couldn’t think of a better person for you not to fall in love with if I’m honest.”
“Did you even bother to read his profile? He has a child!”
Chloe poked her head out of the fridge and looked at me. “He has a child?”
Mellie turned. “He does?”
“Yes. A three-year-old daughter he has sole custody of. He was only on the website because his mom thinks he should start dating again.”
“That’s a lot of new information for someone you hate,” Chloe pointed out.
“You sent me to dinner with him! Was I supposed to sit there and glare at him the whole time?” I mean, half the time was more than enough to convey my annoyance at the situation.
“You could have left.” Mellie shrugged.
“And let Dom win? No way!”
“He didn’t even know.” Chloe shut the fridge, wine bottle in hand, and retrieved a glass from her cupboard. She poured.
“Keep goin’,” I told her. “I want a real glass after the emotional distress you’re putting me through.”
Mellie burst out laughing. “Emotional distress? Oh my God, Peyt. You’ve lost your damn mind. If sitting opposite that hot piece of ass all night was distressing for you, then I think you’ve lost your touch.”
“Hot piece of ass?” I questioned. “Hot piece of ass?”
“We saw his photos. All of his photos,” Chloe reminded me as she slid me my glass across the kitchen island.
My full glass.
I sipped. “What do you want me to say? Yeah, he’s hot. He always has been hot.”
“He’s hotter now,” Chloe mused.
They were goading me. They weren’t going to win.
“I can’t believe you picked him. Just because I want to win doesn’t mean I want to be tortured while I try to do it!” I huffed and leaned forward, resting my forearms on the countertop of the island. “Of all the people—”
“Here we go,” Mellie muttered, throwing more sausage into the pan.
“I can’t believe you’d pick him. You know how much he hurt me in high school. You know what he did to me and how he humiliated me.”
“That was ten years ago!” Chloe said.
“Isn’t that how long you’ve been in love with her brother?” Mellie asked.
“No!”
She was right. It wasn’t. It was way longer than that.
“And we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about Peyton.” Chloe turned to me. “Ten years ago. Can’t you bury that hatchet to screw the guy three times? You’re the one who agreed to Dom’s stupid-ass challenge, Peyt. Nobody made you do it. By picking Elliott, we picked the guy we thought would help you win it.”
“She’s right,” Mellie interjected, turning around. “We’re on your team, Peyton. I guess we didn’t realize you held such a huge grudge against him still.”
“I don’t still hold it,” I argued. “It was brought back to life when I walked in there, and one look at him set my panties on fire.”
“Whatever.” She laughed.
“Look,” Chloe said. “So he didn’t work out. It’s fine. We can find you someone else. Dom didn’t know you had a date, so as far as he’s concerned, we’re all still looking for someone.”
“Right,” Mellie carried on. “And, he didn’t stipulate when this stupid bet had to start by, so we have a ton of time. You went to meet Elliott, you sat through dinner, and you left. We were wrong.”
“Ugh.” Chloe dropped her head back. “I hate it when we’re wrong. I so thought he’d be hot enough now that you could forget all that stuff and just sleep with him. Your vagina has more morals than I thought.”
Oh, man, this was awkward.
“Well…” I paused.
They both jerked around. Chloe was holding an onion as if she was going to throw it at me, and Mellie had the knife pointed right in the direction of my chest.
“This is not at all threatening,” I drawled.
They dropped their…almost weapons.
“What was that “well?”” Chloe demanded.
“I know that “well.” I’ve heard that “well.”” Mellie turned off the stove and advanced toward me, Chloe on her heels. “Peyton, did you have sex with Elliott?”
“I, ah, um…” I pinched my finger and thumb together. “Little bit.”
“Little bit? You can’t have a little bit of sex with someone!” Chloe exclaimed. “Oh, my God!”
“I don’t have to justify myself to you! I’m a grown woman! You’re not my mom!” I ran backward and almost tripped over the coffee table as they wrestled me onto the sofa.
Chloe launched herself on top of me and stretched across the sofa so I couldn’t move. “Tell us!”
“No!”
Mellie grabbed two books off the shelf next to the TV and brandished them at me. “Tell us the truth or the books get it.”
My eyes widened.
“That’s right,” she continued, an evil glint in her eye. “You tell us the truth, or I’m putting these books back on the wrong shelves, and the sizes will be all mixed up!”
I whimpered.
She put the bigger book on the shelf with the smaller ones.
Oh, man.
“Hey,” Chloe said. “Be gentle. The books aren’t the ones being a dramatic, stubborn idiot.”
“Fine!” I squirmed. “Put the books back. You know I hate it when you do that.”
“Are you gonna tell us?” Mellie questioned.
“Yes.”
“Say it,” Chloe demanded. “Say the words right now.”
I took a deep breath. “I had hot dirty sex with Elliott, and I liked it!”
I clapped my hands over my mouth.
They both gasped.
Mellie dumped the books on the table, and Chloe climbed up off me. I shook out my arms and legs and sat up properly.
“I had sex with him,” I said again. “He wanted to know how the hell we ended up having dinner together, so I told him everything, and there you have it. He agreed to be the guy I sleep with since he agrees I’ll never fall in love with him, and that’s the end of it.”
“So, you came in here screaming and shouting about us picking him, only to tell us that you had sex with him anyway?” Mellie asked.
I paused. “Pretty much.”
“Hot, dirty sex that you liked?” Chloe continued.
“I don’t have to justify myself to you. And for God’s sake, let me put those books back!” I got up and grabbed the books from the table and put them back.
Thank God for that.
Nothing annoyed me more than mixed book sizes.
Or just disorganization in general.
“You hate him!” Mellie laughed. “Of course, you have to justify yourself. At the very least, you have to justify the bitch fit you just threw.”
“You had no right to pick him.”
“But you had a right to sleep with him?”
I held out my hands. “My vagina, my rules.”
Chloe stared at me for a second before she burst out laughing. “Okay, first, Mellie? Your sausage is burning.”
“Shit!”
“And, Peyton? Sit down, because we need to hear more about your—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
***
Unknown: Your friends really suck at privacy.
I blinked at the message notification on my phone screen.
It was five-fifteen in the morning. Who was the sadist texting me this slightly ominous message?
I sat up in bed and flicked the switch for the lamp on my nightstand. The room flooded with a dim, warm light, and I pulled the covers up over my waist as I propped myself up on my elbow to reply.
Me: Who the fuck are you and why are you texting me at this sadistic hour?
Unknown: It’s Elliott.
Of course, it was. I saved the number before I replied.
Me: How did you get my number?
Elliott: Chloe and Mellie are not good at protecting your privacy.
Me: Color me surprised. But that doesn’t answer the question of why you’re texting me at five in the morning.
Elliott: Couldn’t sleep.
Me: And you didn’t have anyone else to text?
Elliott: Not anyone I can text saying, “Hey, don’t you need more sex to stay on track with your bet?”
Me: I feel like we’re potentially entering into sexting, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Elliott: Does sexting count to your total?
Me: I’m gonna say no to be on the safe side.
Elliott: Damn it. In that case… Never mind.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Me: Never mind? Never mind what?
Me: You don’t get to wake me up at five a.m. and leave me hanging.
Elliott: If I tell you, you might kill me.
Me: Got plenty of reasons left in the bank from high school to kill you, buddy.
Elliott: You interrupted my sleep, and now I have a raging hard-on because I woke up too early.
Oh.
Ohhhh.
I fidgeted in the bed, clamping my legs together. Why was the idea of him having a dirty dream about me kinda hot? And why did I like it?
Goddamn it. Where was teenage Peyton and why wasn’t she reminding me of all the things I hate about him?
Me: That’s hardly my fault. I didn’t WANT to wander into your dreams.
Elliott: I thought I’d gotten rid of this problem after graduation.
Wait, what?
I sat upright, the covers now pooling around my stomach.
He dreamed about me in high school?
Me: You dreamed about me in high school?
Elliott: Me and half the other guys in our year.
Me: That’s why I stayed a virgin until after graduation. I wasn’t about to lose my virginity to some two-bit fuckboy who’d only ever made out with his right hand.
Elliott: And that’s the most accurate description of our graduating class I’ve ever heard.
Me: Did it cure your boner?
Elliott: No.
Elliott: Honestly, I’m a little torn.
Me: On what?
Elliott: Half my high school fantasies about you in senior year were you on your knees, and since that actually happened…
Me: I hated you throughout the entirety of that year.
Elliott: I know. But horny teenage boy > pissy teenage girl.
Me: Watch it, or I’ll come over there and slap your cock back to soft with a fly swatter.
Elliott: All I’m saying is that if you’re not averse to lying on your side and being fucked from behind, it can be arranged.
Oh, God. There was another squirm.
Elliott: Really hoping you aren’t against it, because I can’t stop thinking about lifting up your leg and playing with your clit while I fuck you.
I swallowed and clamped my legs together. No. I was not going to get turned on by his messages. Not at this time of the morning. Not ever.
Even if now I was the one who had that image in my head. Me on my side, him behind me, my hand holding my leg up while his sneaks between my legs to play with my clit…My back arching while he—
Fuck it.
There it was. My clit ached as a gentle flush of heat ran through my veins. I was turned on, and now I was screwed. I wouldn’t be able to get that idea out of my head. That picture would be with me until it happened.
Me: I’m not listening to this.
Elliott: You’re wet, aren’t you?
Yes.
Me: Even if I were, I wouldn’t tell you.
Elliott: I’ll see you later.
What?
Me: You will?
He didn’t reply.
And I was wide awake.
Awesome.