CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When I open the door, I hand her a virgin margarita.

She thanks me and takes a sip as she walks inside my apartment. She’s wearing jeans, black flats, and a dressy gray tank top with some kind of lacy neckline.

Dammit. She’s camouflaged. I have no clue what her intentions are based on her outfit. Admittedly, I might be oversimplifying matters, but if she were wearing a short black dress and fuck-me pumps, I’d be a lot less in the dark. Then again, I’m in jeans and a black T-shirt, so I’m not sure my clothes spell Game for Anything to her, but I hope they do.

She dangles a bag of gourmet gummy bears. “Farm fresh,” she says.

“Locally grown, too, I hope?”

“Of course. Within a fifty-mile radius from farm to table.”

“Excellent. They better be small-batch made, too,” I say, mocking the food purists of the world, glad I can at least still banter with her.

She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “They’re from Brooklyn. Of course they’re small batch. Though I still don’t understand why if we can send a man to the moon, they can’t remove the green bears from the bag.”

“It is one of life’s great mysteries.” I shut the door and gesture to the living room. She walks ahead of me, and I can’t help myself. I stare at her ass as she crosses the hardwood floor to my couch. She gave me the license to ogle this afternoon, as far as I’m concerned.

“Along with the existence of gigantic asparagus,” she quips.

“I’ll never understand the need for oversize vegetables. But did you really go to Brooklyn to get gummy bears?” I ask as she settles into my beige couch. The sliding glass doors that lead to my terrace are open, and the warm June night filters in.

She shakes her head as she kicks off her shoes, and tucks her feet under her. “The store in Brooklyn that makes them opened another shop in Murray Hill. But they are locally-sourced, and not made with gelatin.”

“Which is a basic requirement in a gummy bear.” I join her on the couch, repeating what she’s said over the years—she won’t touch candies made with gelatin since gelatin comes from beef, and if she wanted beef in her candy she’d eat beef candy, and she’s not doing that. Because that’s just disgusting.

Which is why beef candy is not a thing.

I point to my laptop. “What’s it going to be? Netflix? Hulu? Castle? Will Ferrell’s latest? Rom-com? Spy flick? Sports Center to catch up on your baseball stats?”

She rips open the bag of candy, and pops a yellow bear into her mouth. It slides past her lips. Lucky bear. “How about Castle? Let’s watch that one with the Irish mobster.”

I know exactly which one she means, since we’ve watched nearly every episode together. I find it quickly, sending a silent thanks to, well, myself that I remembered to close out my porn last night. Fido wanders into the living room, arches an eyebrow, and meows. I’m sure in feline language he’s telling her what I did, but thank God, no one has created a Berlitz translation guide yet for cat.

We settle into the rhythm that we’ve perfected over the years. She’s at one end of the couch, burrowed into the pillows. I’m at the other, and the laptop is on the coffee table, streaming the show to the TV screen. We plow through half the bag of gummy bears, Charlotte sifting through the colors. I dive on the green-bear grenade for her. We down our virgin drinks, and at some point during the show, she puts her feet on my thighs, crossing them at the ankles.

A spark zips through me even from that, and I flash back to last night at the restaurant when she ran her foot along my leg. I briefly wonder if I have a foot fetish. I never thought I did before, but as my gaze drifts to her feet, and the candy pink toenail polish that I can’t seem to stop looking at, I realize I’ve missed nearly every word of Castle explaining to Beckett what he thinks is the motive in this episode’s murder.

I return my focus to the screen, but my awareness of her has leveled up, like I’ve had a shot of caffeine and now my senses are on Charlotte alert. She shifts her shoulders into the pillow, and I steal a glance, wondering if she likes to be kissed there. She brushes a strand of hair away from her face, and I want to know how much she likes having her hair pulled, if at all. Castle and Beckett are this close to finding the killer when Charlotte munches on a red gummy bear, and I become intensely curious as to how the cherry tastes in her mouth.

She pokes me in my belly with her big toe. I tense for a brief second, wondering if she can tell where my mind is and isn’t. But hers is so clearly on the screen, since she’s not looking away from our intrepid heroes.

I don’t get it—I was sure we’d already be naked. But then, I have no barometer for reading this woman anymore. Except, based on my astute powers of observation, I’m pretty damn sure she wants a foot rub. I reach for her foot and start massaging it, having done this many times before.

As I work my way from her arch to her heel, I try to avoid the naughtiest thoughts involving her feet. No, not the ones where I suck on her toes, because I don’t have that kind of foot fetish. But the ones where I hold her ankles in my hands, spread her legs, and pound into her.

My dick transforms into a two-by-four. The fucking turncoat. I swear, if my dick were a person, he’d be a narc, always spilling my secrets.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.

She snaps her gaze to me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. All out of my drink,” I say, grabbing the glass from the table so I have an excuse to get some breathing room. “Just keep watching. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s okay. I’ll wait.” She hits the pause button, and that’s the last thing I need—her scrutiny as I walk to the kitchen to refill the glass I hardly want. I drag a hand through my dark hair and stare at the pitcher of margarita mix that’s mocking me with its innocence. Fuck it. I grab a tequila bottle from the cupboard and deflower my drink. I bend down, yank open the freezer and root around for more ice.

For my face.

A few seconds in the icebox cools me off.

I return to Charlotte and raise my glass. “Spiked mine,” I admit, then take a long, thirsty gulp.

She holds out her hand in a grabby gesture. I give her my glass, and she drinks some. “Mmm,” she says.

I set the drink down, and we return to the show as they solve a murder I couldn’t care less about right now. I’m not sure what to make of this afternoon’s heated moment in the bathroom at MoMA, but then I’m starting to accept that I don’t know what to make of a lot of what’s been happening between Charlotte and me over the last few days. I wish I did have a device to read her mind, because I’d really like to know what she wants to prove to me.

When the credits roll, she turns to me. “Want to watch Nick’s show?”

No! I don’t want to watch TV! I want to undress you and lick every inch of you. But you’re acting so damn normal, it’s throwing me off.

I shrug. “Sure. I’ve only seen every episode twenty times. Which one do you want to see?”

“I’ll find it,” she says, leaning across my legs to grab the laptop and toggle through Comedy Nation’s streaming app to find The Adventures of Mr. Orgasm. Soon enough, the familiar theme music begins, and so do the adventures. I close my eyes and let my head fall back into the couch cushions when I realize which episode she picked.

It’s the one where the woman has misplaced her orgasm. She hasn’t had one in a year, and she has to hire Mr. Orgasm to track down her missing climax.

It’s hilarious, and Charlotte laughs incessantly through the show, and I have a sneaking suspicion what she is trying to prove by acting like we’re just good buds when we both know we’re dying to do the deed, because she wants it as much as I do. The clues have been in front of me all along, and maybe I’ve been dense up until now, but I’m not anymore. I also don’t think I can wait any longer to find out if I’m right.

I reach across the couch and hit pause on the show. The din of a siren carries from somewhere else in the city, mingling with music from the bar down the street. My home has its own noise. The hum of possibility. We are teetering on something. Something I shouldn’t want. Something I want desperately.

“What did you want to prove? You said at the museum you wanted to prove something to me.”

She straightens up on the couch and sits cross-legged. “That we can be friends,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Okay. And did we prove that somehow tonight?”

She nods, looking pleased. “Yes. We ate gummy bears, and drank margaritas, and watched TV, and did all the things we’ve always done.”

“Why did you want to prove this?”

“Because I’m going to proposition you,” she says, speaking as directly as if she were going to offer me a job. “As you may know, it’s been a while for me.” She pauses and meets my gaze so I know what she means. I do. Oh yes, I do. I nod. “And apparently, I’m quite attracted to you. Go figure.” She shrugs, as if this is a big surprise.

I laugh. “Yeah, go figure.” I make a keep rolling motion with my hand. “Do go on.”

She gestures to the laptop. “I’d like your help.”

“Be more specific. Pretend I’m a totally clueless guy and you need to spell it out for me,” I say, trying my best to stay cool.

“Just as you propositioned me and asked me to be your fiancée for a week, I’d like to proposition you and ask you if you’d return the favor for the next week, in a slightly different way. The way where you finish what we started last night.”

That was where I thought we were heading, but now that she’s said it, I’m completely unprepared for the reaction in my body. I am electrified. The key has been turned in the ignition, and I race down the road of possibility of reenacting my fantasies from last night.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” she continues, and I hope to God she doesn’t know what I’m thinking, which is about how she looks naked coming on my cock. “You’re worried about us staying friends. That’s why I said I wanted to prove something to you. We can stay friends. It won’t be weird.”

Oh. Sure. Yeah. I wouldn’t say I was thinking that just now, but I’ve thought it before, so let’s go with it.

“Yes, that was on my mind,” I say, fibbing mildly.

“But we’ve made out like, what, three times already, and it hasn’t changed our friendship. Right?” she says, sounding so casual and so damn convincing, but I’m pretty sure she had me at farm fresh, the words she uttered when she walked in the door tonight.

“Right,” I say in a strong, assertive tone, like I’m banging a judge’s gavel because I’m so damn certain we should screw. Now. Then many more times tonight.

“So what would you think about us kicking things up a notch during the next week?” she says, then kicks me gently.

I think that’s a genius idea, and I’m ready to pounce on her and strip her naked. To fulfill all those fantasies I had last night, and all the ones she has. To give her an epic fucking orgasm or twenty to make up for months of none but the solo variety. But deals are always done best when both parties know what to expect from the get-go.

“We just need a few ground rules,” I say.

“Yes. Ground rules. Like no anal, right?”

“Um. That wasn’t really on my list, but I can live with that restriction,” I say with a laugh.

“Good,” she says, nodding, then she scrunches up her brow. “Why? What were you thinking for ground rules?”

“More like how long this will last.”

“One week. Until we break up.”

Clearly she’s given this some thought. “Got it. Makes sense.”

“Then we go back to being friends. Promise?”

“Absolutely,” I say, offering a pinky even though, let’s be honest, I don’t do pinky swears, being a guy and all. Still, it seems the right time to start, so she twists her pinky around mine.

“That’s vital,” she says emphatically as we link fingers then let go. “We just slide right back into the friend zone at the end of the week.”

“No sleepovers, either,” I add. “Because that just makes shit weird.”

“Agreed. And no weirdness. That’s another one.”

I nod vehemently and slice a hand through the air. “I hate weirdness. We can’t have any weirdness at all.”

“Also, no lying.”

“Definitely on board with that.”

She counts off on her fingers. “Okay. So we’ve got no anal, no sleepovers, no weirdness, no lying. We do this for a week, and we return to being friends.”

“Anything else?”

She shoots me a look like I’m crazy. “Well, duh. There’s one more thing.”

“Hit me. What is it?”

She rolls her eyes. “Obviously, no falling in love,” she says with utter disdain for the concept.

I can’t help but scoff, too. “Of course. Like that would ever happen.”

“It would so never happen.”

“There’s no way. Absolutely no way.” We both nod once again, completely in agreement on this topic. Then she reaches for the bottom of her tank top like she’s about to strip.

I hold up a hand. “Whoa.”

“You’re not ready?”

“First, I was born ready. Second, I’m pretty much always ready to go at a moment’s notice,” I say, my eyes drifting to my crotch so she gets my meaning. “And I have been incredibly ready for the last forty-eight hours.” That makes her grin. “But let’s, you know, turn on some music and yada, yada, yada.”

She smacks her forehead. “Right. Mood. Let’s get in the mood.”

“Already in the mood. But call it that if you want.”

She stands and holds up a finger. “I’m just going to pee first,” she says, and she scurries down the hall. She heads in the direction of the bathroom attached to my bedroom rather than the one off the kitchen. I shrug. Whatever.

I click on my streaming music app, cue up some sexy, sultry numbers that remind me of the bar last night, take my wallet out of my pocket, and grab a condom from it. I toss the condom on the table, and it slips out of my fingers easily.

It’s then that I realize my palms are sweating.

Holy shit.

I’m nervous.

I’m fucking nervous, and that is not acceptable. I do not get nervous before sex. I am a rock star in the sheets. I am all confidence, all skill, and all focused on the woman. Charlotte is not getting anything less than my A game. Hell, she’s getting nothing less than an A-plus game. I take a deep breath, letting it fill my chest. I straighten my shoulders and remind myself that this is what I excel at. This is my master class. I’m going to give Charlotte the most mind-blowing pleasure she has ever experienced in her life.

I walk over to the light switch, dim the overhead slightly, and when I turn around, Charlotte is in the living room, leaning against the wall.

She wears one of my white button-down shirts and nothing else that I can see.

I freeze.

I can’t breathe. I can’t blink. I can’t do anything but stare at her gorgeous figure. Her blonde hair curling over the front of my shirt. Her hands restless against the buttons, as if she’s unsure what to do with them. Her strong legs, all bare and beautiful. The edges of the shirt covering her. I don’t know if she still has on her panties, but I’m going to have a field day finding out.

Every atom inside me buzzes. I need to touch every part of her beautiful body. Kiss every inch of her skin. Lick her, taste her, fuck her.

Please her.

“Are you trying to seduce me?” I ask as I walk over to her.

“Yes,” she whispers, her voice feathery. “Is it working?”

I nod. “But that’s not how this works.”

Enough of her setting the rules. Enough of her making decisions. This is my fiefdom. I rake my eyes over her from head to toe and watch her reaction. She breathes hard, and her eyes shine with desire. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not seducing me.” I brush the backs of my fingers along her cheek, taking the reins as she trembles into my touch. “I’m going to seduce you.”