Pushing Patrick: Fight Dirty (The Gilroy Clan Book 1) by Megyn Ward (11)

 

 

 

Nineteen

Cari

Trevor presses his hand into the small of my back, steering me through the crowded restaurant, dodging wait staff and busboys while the hostess leads us to a table for two in the center of the room. As soon as she’s gone, I flip open my menu and bury my head in it like it’s made of sand. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with Trevor.

“What looks good, baby,” he says, glancing at me over the top of his menu.

None of it. I shrug my shoulders, closing my menu before laying it on the table between us. “I don’t know. Sushi isn’t really my thing.”

Trevor laughs at me like I’m a three-year old, faced with broccoli for the first time. “Crunch rolls are my favorite,” he says, flicking his gaze over the menu. “Spicy tuna is good too.” He says it like it’s something dirty, lifting his gaze to pin it to my breasts.

I’m going to burn this dress as soon as I get home.

“Will you excuse me,” I say, pushing away from the table to stand. “I need to freshen up.” Not waiting for an answer, I swipe my clutch off the table and bolt across the restaurant, asking directions from a random waiter on the fly.

The bathroom is a unisex one stall. As soon as I push my way through, I bolt the door behind me. Shoulders sagging, I snap open my clutch and pull out my phone. Dialing with one hand, I use the other to turn on the tap while it rang.

Please answer. Please answer. Please answer.

The call was dumped into voicemail halfway through the second ring. “Hey, this is Patrick. I can’t get to the phone right—”

I hang up without leaving a message. To be honest, I have no idea why I called him in the first place. What could I possibly say that would make this situation better.

Hey, I know I’ve been a giant cocktease for the past six months. Sorry about that.

Jesus.

Sticking my free hand under the spigot, I let cold water run through my fingers for a few seconds before pressing them to my chest. Not ready to give up, I shut off the tap before dialing a different number. This time the call is answered almost right away.

“Fuck,” Tess says, grunting softly. In the background I hear Poison’s Talk Dirty To Me and the jangle of metal tools hitting concrete. “I thought you were on a date.”

“Where are you?” I say cautiously, even though I know. “Am I on speaker phone?” Tess works for Conner. He owns his own garage a few blocks away from Gilroy’s.

“Competing in the Miss Universe pageant. Where do you think I am?” she says, delivering the last few words through gritted teeth. “I’m in the middle of dropping a transmission—” She grunts again, the sound followed by a satisfied sigh. “And yes, you’re on speaker phone.”

“Take me off.” I can barely say what I need to say out loud, let alone broadcast it across the garage Tess works at on speakerphone.

“Con’s not here,” she says, reading my mind. “It’s just me, Brett Michaels and a ’57 Chevy—so spill.”

I sigh, leaning against the bathroom sink and do what she says.

I spill.

To Tess’s credit, she doesn’t interrupt while I tell her what happened between Patrick and me. In fact, the only way I know the line is still open is because while I’m blabbering, Poison gives way to Skid Row. Even so, as soon as I run out of steam, I say, “Are you still listening?” It’s only been a few minutes but as much as I’d like to, I can’t stay in the bathroom forever.

“Yup.” More tools clatter, one being exchanged for the other. “Let me see if I got this straight,” she says, her words punctuated by the rasp of a socket wrench. “You’ve been spending the past six months whipping Patrick Gilroy into a sexual frenzy and when he finally snaps, you leave him and his raging hard-on to go on a date with Trevor?” Tools clang again, this time metal on metal. Finished with whatever she’s doing, she’s tossing them into her toolbox. “Is that what you did?”

“Yes.” Hearing Tess say it makes me sound as horrible and stupid as I feel. Tucking the phone between my shoulder and my ear, I wash my hands. “What should I do?”

“That depends,” Tess says, blowing out a heavy sigh. “Do you still want to fuck him?”

That’s Tess. As delicate as ever.

I think about this morning, my ear pressed against the bathroom door. Listening to him while he touched himself. The way he said my name, right before he came.

“Yes.”

“So, order an Uber and get your ass back home.” The Chevy’s heavy hood slams shut. “And hope like hell he’s still there.”

I take Tess’s advice. As soon as I hang up with her, I use the app on my cell to order a car. I wash my hands again. I’m stalling. I have fifteen minutes before the Uber arrives. About fourteen more than I needed to tell Trevor it’s over.

Someone knocks on the bathroom door, the impatient rap telling me I’ve stalled long enough. I turn off the tap and dry my hands before tucking my clutch under my arm.

Time to face the music.

I visualize marching across the restaurant. Stopping in front of Trevor and telling him the truth. That while he’s a nice enough guy, I don’t have feelings for him. At least not the sort of feelings I’d need to take the next step.

As ready as I’ll ever be, I pull the bathroom door open, apology poised for the person I kept waiting. “I’m so sorr—”

It’s Trevor. As soon as I open the door he pushes me back and slips inside, closing the door behind us both, His hands grab at the hem of dress, trying to pull it up, mouth plastered to mine, tongue shoving past my lips and teeth. I jerk away and slap him, hard across the face. He stumbles back a few steps, looking confused. The confusion doesn’t last. Now he looks angry.

“Jesus, Trevor,” I say, scrubbing at my mouth with my knuckles. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I got tired of waiting,” he says, touching the corner of his mouth with his fingertips before pulling them away, checking for blood. There isn’t any but that doesn’t seem to matter. “Thought maybe you did too.” His voice is soft, seductive but he’s glaring at me like he wants to hit me back.

“You thought wrong,” I say, inching for the door. Concern flows into panic when he matches my movements. He’s not going to let me leave. Not without a fight. “I called an Uber. I’m going home and I don’t want to see you anymore.”

I take another sidestep for the door and he follows suit, close enough to reach out and grab me if he wants to. And he wants to. I can see it in his eyes.

“It was just a misunderstanding, baby,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. No need to overreact.”

Overreact my ass. “I’m leaving, Trevor.” I put as much force into my tone as I can muster while my hands curl themselves into fists. “And just so you know, I hate it when you call me baby.”

He smiles at me again. “Okay, Cari. If that’s what you want.” His face goes soft, the smile does too. “At least let me drive you home.”

Fuck. No.

Before I can put my refusal into words, there’s another knock. “Is everything okay in there?” A female voice, unsure yet determined.

I dart toward the door and yank it open to find a waitress on the other side, her gaze bouncing between my face and Trevor’s before settling on mine. “Are you okay?” She sounds concerned.

“I’m fine,” I say nudging her out of the doorway so I can slip into the hall. “I’ve called an Uber. Can you wait with me until it gets here?”

She looks over my shoulder at Trevor, her eyes narrow slightly. “Absolutely.”

“James says hi, by the way,” Trevor sneers at me and my shoulders stiffen. Trevor knows James. Six months later and I can still see his face, angry and cold because I finally, after nearly a year of being his doormat, told him no. It makes me wonder what would’ve happened if I’d let Trevor take me somewhere private.

We leave Trevor in the bathroom, the two of us weaving ourselves between tables and booths, moving toward the exit as fast as possible. “So, your boyfriend is kind of a dick,” the waitress says behind me and I can’t help but laugh.

“He is not my boyfriend.”

I’m settled into the back of the Uber and halfway home when my cell phone rings. Thinking it’s Trevor, I dig it out of my clutch to tell him to fuck off but it’s not Trevor. It’s Conner.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Legs, sorry to interrupt your date but our boy’s in pretty bad shape.” Connor’s usual lazy drawl sounded strange. Almost urgent.

“Patrick? What happened?” I sit up, pressing my shoulders forward. I can hear Gilroy’s Friday night crowd, a dull roar in the background. It can get pretty crazy sometimes, especially when Connor is there to lead the charge. “Is he okay?”

“Depends on your definition of okay,” he says. “He’s pretty wasted. My dad cut him off and sent him home. He took a tumble down the stairs.” There’s a pause, the sound cut off like Conner’s covered the mouth piece with his hand.

“Conner?”

And then there’s sound again. “Think you can come home?”

“I’m on my way.”

 

 

 

Twenty

 

Patrick

 

“Hey, roomie… you’re home early.”

As soon as I say it, Lisa pulls her mouth off my cock and looks over her shoulder.

When she sees Cari, she scrambles to her feet out the door before I can say, thanks for the blowjob.

I take another swig from the bottle, grinning around its rim before letting it fall away from my mouth. The bottom clunks against the wall I’m leaning on and the booze inside it makes a sloshing noise. It’s the only sound I hear aside from the cacophony of noise that drifts up from the bar downstairs. Cari’s got her eyes nailed to the spot on the wall just left of my face. Her cheeks are stained red and for some reason I look at her shoes. That’s when I remember that my pants are yanked down around my hips and my johnson is still on full display. “Well... this is awkward.” Looking down, I see candy-pink lipstick smeared all over my cock. I know I should be embarrassed. Probably even ashamed but I’m neither. I just keep grinning.

She doesn’t say anything, she just shifts herself out of the doorway and shuts it softly before turning the lock. She clicks on a lamp while I stay where I am, shoulders pressed against wall the only thing holding me upright while I watch her move across the room, tossing her purse on the coffee table before disappearing into the bathroom. I hear the hinges on our linen cabinet squeak a second before the quiet rush of water. She’s back in less than a minute, wet washcloth in her hand.

“Are you okay?” She sounds half-pissed, half-concerned, an odd combination that has me laughing. She’s looking at me like she’s taking inventory. Like she thought something was wrong.

“Well, if you’d waited another five minutes before storming the castle,” I say, pulling that cocky grin on like a mask. “I’d be a damn sight better.”

She scoffs and nods, glaring at me like she’s trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. “I’ll have my things out by the end of the week,” she finally says, tossing the washcloth at me, hitting me square in the chest. It sticks there for a moment before it falls, hooking itself around the semi I’ve still got going. She doesn’t wait to see if I use it, she just turns away and leaves me standing there.

Her words are like a bucket of ice water tossed in my face. One second, I’m half-plowed and feeling pretty full of myself. The next I’m stone sober and I’ve got a cold, wet towel hanging off the end of my dick.

The bottle of Jameson slips through my fingers and I barely take the time to clean up before I’m pushing myself back into my pants. I see myself going downstairs. Getting drunk with Conner while he talks some wasted co-ed into letting us do body shots off her tits on one of the pool table. Maybe I can even talk Lisa into finishing what she started. The night is salvageable. She wants to move out—let her. Like I give a fuck.

But I don’t. Because I do.

About two seconds after I wrangle my cock back into my pants, I storm after her. She’s in her bedroom and this time her door is shut.

Like throwing gasoline on a fire, I pound on the door with the side of my fist. “So, now you close the goddamn door,” I say on a laugh, my voice slightly raised. “Too little too late, sweetheart.”

I can hear her on the other side and for a second, I think she’s going to ignore me. Or maybe call the cops. Instead, she throws the door open, cutting me down with an ice blue glare.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she says, her cheeks flushed. She’s wearing that fucking robe again. And pretty much nothing else.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Cari,” I say, barging into her room. I turn on her and she takes a step back, pressing her shoulders against the doorframe. She’s looking me in the eye and I realize she’s still wearing the heels.

“You don’t close your bedroom door—not ever.” I take a half step, throwing up a hand, bracing it against the frame, hemming her in so she can’t run away. “Do you know I can see you? That every time you change your clothes, every time you get out of the shower, I sit on the couch and watch you in the living room mirror?”

“I—” She starts to deny it but then the flush blooming across her chest spreads, the heat of it collecting under her collarbone before inching lower, into the soft valley between her breasts. “Of course I know, Patrick—” She says it softly, the tip of her tongue licking at her lips like her mouth has suddenly gone dry. “Why do you think I hung it there in the first place?”

There it is. Confirmation that she’s been playing me since the day she moved in and it’s all I need to hear.

Keeping her hemmed in, gaze locked on hers, I use my free hand to tug at the hastily knotted belt keeping her robe closed.

She doesn’t try to stop me.

“Did you fuck him?” I say, finally managing to pull it loose. The slinky length of it slips through my fingers and lands on the floor between us.

She’s looking at me, eyes wide and blue enough to drown me. “Who?” The word skates across my bare chest on a warm breath that shoots down my spine. My cock is rock hard again in the space of about five seconds and all she had to do was breathe.

I slide a hand into the open space between the silk of her robe and the silk of her skin. My fingertips glide over trembling flesh and it’s hard to tell which is softer. “Tim/Travis,” I say it easy, like I couldn’t care less. The truth is, the thought of that asshole putting hands on her makes me want to kill something. “You know, Mr. 5th date.” I finally drop my other arm to circle her waist with my hands, popping her hips off the wall, feathering my thumbs across her bellybutton. “Did you fuck him?”

She furrows her brow for a moment, her blue eyes glazed and cloudy. “His name is Trevor.”

Her breathing has gone ragged. Each pump of her chest pushes her breasts against the robe. Her nipples are stiff and swollen. Begging for relief. Begging for me.

I can feel the corner of my mouth lift in that trademark Gilroy grin again. It’s new to me but fits perfectly. “Answer the question, Cari.” I lower my head to her breast, drawing the hard, swollen tip of it into my mouth, sucking her hard through the silk, grazing her nipple with my teeth.

“I didn’t,” she shutters out on a broken sigh, her fingers threading through my hair. “I didn’t.” she arches into me, pushing her breast against my mouth. “I wouldn’t... not after...”

I wouldn’t... not after...

I don’t want that to matter. Not now. Not after she’s all but admitted to turning me inside out, on a daily basis, for nothing more than sport. Instead of answering her, confessing to her that I love her, that I’ve loved her for as long as I’ve known her, I don’t say anything at all. The time for pretty words and true confessions is long gone.

I wrap a hand around her hip, the long fingers of my hand gripping her while my thumb slides up the middle of her. “So, when you asked me to zip you into your dress...” The scrap of lace between her legs is wet. I crook my thumb, jerking it to the side to give myself access to the slippery warmth beneath it. “That was just more of you driving me crazy.” I whisper it, finding her center with the pad of my thumb while my other hand cups one of her breasts, its tight peak pressed against my palm. It’s not a question and I don’t phrase it like one.

I start to move my thumb in slow, lazy circles against her clit and she whimpered, eyes closed. “Patrick, I didn’t—”

“Shhh...” I dip my head to the breast I’m cupping, grazing her nipple with my teeth before drawing it into my mouth for a slow, hard suck. I keep at it—teasing and sucking until I can feel her thighs start to shake under my hands and her chest heave beneath my mouth.

When I have her on the brink of coming, I stop. “I want the truth, Cari. Not excuses.” Take a step back. “Turn around,” I say, putting some weight into my command.

The sudden absence of sensation opens her eyes. She’s looking at me like she has no idea who I am. That make two of us. She levers herself off the wall and does what I tell her, Arms folded and pressed into the wall, she pillows her face against them while I position her hips, angling them off the wall so that her tight, round ass is pressed firmly against my cock. “Spread your legs.” I lean into her, whispering it against her ear, while I trail my fingertips along the inside of her thigh. Again, she does what I tell her.

A guy could get used to this.

“Earlier, when you bent over to put on your shoes.” I say it calmly, each word brushing my lips against her ear. “That cock massage you gave me with this...” I grip her ass with both hands, thumbs feathering against the thin strip of cherry red lace nestled between her cheeks. “That was on purpose.”

Her spine goes stiff. “Patrick—”

I deepen the pressure of my thumbs, pushing just enough to loosen her knees. “That was on purpose,” I say again, making it clear I’m not interested in apologies.

“Yes...” She moans the word, the sound jerking my cock like it’s on a leash. “I—”

“To play with me.” If she has an explanation, I don’t want to hear it. We’re past that now. “To push me.”

“Yes.” She whispers the word but I’m only half listening, too busy to care.

“Is that what you were doing, Cari?” I hook that strip of cherry-red lace with my finger and pull it to the side even farther. “Were you trying to push me?”

“Yes...”

“What did you think would happen?” I cup her wet, throbbing pussy in the palm of my hand, the tip of my middle finger pressing against her clit, giving her slow, lazy circles. “That once I figured it out, I’d just keep my hands to myself. Let you keep twisting me in knots.” She starts to rock against the pressure of my hand, the motion grinding her ass against me.

She moans softly, fucking herself with my hand. “No—”

The feel of her. The sound she makes when I touch her is enough to push me over the edge if I let it. I fight for control, hiding behind the calm, cool exterior I use to conceal the way I really feel. What I really want. “This whole time…” I slip two fingers between the soft folds of her, barely breeching her entrance, nothing more than a promise of relief. “It was just a game. A joke.” Their way eased by her arousal, I fuck my fingers into her, fast and deep. “Is that what I am to you, a joke?”

She’s shaking her head, whimpering, her hips moving against my hand. “No…”

Pulling halfway out, I give her short, shallow strokes, each one grazing her clit, while I use my free hand to gather her hair and pull it away from her face. Her eyes are squeezed shut, lips parted slightly, panting with need.

Pulling my fingers free, I can feel the hot, tight walls of her pussy tightening, trying stop my withdrawal. “Open your eyes, Cari.” I say, raising my glossy fingers to my mouth. She does as I say and opens her eyes, lids heavy with arousal. She watches as I put my fingers into my mouth and suck them clean. She tastes just like I imagined she would. Warm and wet. Dark and sweet.

I want more.

I drop to my knees behind her to cup her ass in my hands, dipping my thumbs under her cheeks to spread and lift her toward my mouth to drag my tongue up the center of her. She cries out again, moving against my hands, seeking the pressure of my mouth. I pull my face away and she whimpers. “I want you to come all over my face, Cari,” I say, hooking my fingers around the lace at her hips and jerk her panties down around her knees. “Tell me that’s what you want.”

“Yes…” The word trails off into a shuttering gasp when I bury my face in her, licking and sucking at her pussy lips, the taste of her almost enough to pull me apart. Pushing my tongue deep, I find her clit. Tongue pressed against it, I start to suck her off—hard, relentless pulls against tender flesh. She bucks against the mouth, pushing herself against my face, her hips rocking against the suction created by my lips and tongue. “Patrick... oh, god...” Each breath a gasping sob. “Patrick, please. I can’t—”

She starts to quiver against my mouth, her swollen clit throbbing on my tongue, begging me incoherently. I don’t stop, fingers digging into her ass to hold her against the unyielding pressure of my mouth. She lets out a shuttering moan that sounds like my name as a sudden shot of honey coats my throat. I keep sucking, wringing out every drop of sweetness she has to give me, until she’s limp and still.

When I finally moved from between her thighs, she’s sagging against the wall, caramel-colored hair falling across her face, breath ragged, body slicked in a sweat. She looks spent. Completely satisfied. I like that I’m the one who did that to her. That I’m the one who made her come.

Standing, I turn her around so that she’s facing me, tendrils of hair curving around her breasts. I work my pants down around my hips again. “Take your panties off,” I tell her, licking at the sweat-salted tips of her breasts and she arches into my mouth just before I break away again. Reaching into my pocket, I tear off one of the condom Conner gave me—God bless him—and I rip it open to roll it on.

She doesn’t say anything. She just watches me while she steps out of her panties.

I reach for her, fitting my hands under her ass. Lifting her, stepping into the widened cradle of her thighs. She wraps her legs around my hips, eagerly pulling me close until the tip of my cock finds the slick, wet center of her. I look down—watch as her soft, wet folds split around the blunt, swollen head of my shaft. I rock against her hips, pushing myself deeper and deeper with each thrust. “Fuck, Cari,” I groan against her neck. “Jesus, you’re so fucking tight.” The walls of her pussy squeeze around my cock and it feels so good I’m almost blinded by it. Unable to stop myself, knowing I have to get inside her, I grit my teeth and stroke into her with a deep, hard thrust that brings us hip to hip and has her letting out a shattered moan.

I don’t move. I can’t move. Not if I want this to last so I kiss her the way she kissed me that night in my car. My tongue licking and swirling inside her mouth. I kiss her until I can feel her drowning, until she’s lost to everyone but me. One arm anchored under her ass, I lift a hand to her breast. Caressing it, rolling its tight, swollen nipple between my fingers, squeezing until she cries out.

“Patrick, please...” Eyes closed, bottom lip caught between her teeth, she grinds her hips against me, urging me to move but I don’t.

Angling her farther off the wall, hands wrapped around her waist, I lift her up the length of my cock until just the tip is still buried inside her. “You want to come on my cock?” I say, lowering her just enough to make her moan. “If that’s what you want, you just have to ask.”

One of her hands slips off my shoulder and down my torso to find the place where we’re joined, her fingertips grazing the base of my cock as she finds her clit so she can stroke herself. “Please, Patrick... please let me...”

She lets her eyes slip closed on a shuttering sigh.

That sigh breaks something inside me. I’m no longer able to hide behind the calm, and there’s nothing reasonable about what I want to do to her. I want to fuck her for hours. Days. Make her come over and over, licking and sucking every inch of her until she’s completely wrecked.

Hands still wrapped around her waist, I slam her down the length of my shaft so hard and fast her eyes fly open, the fingers gripping my shoulder rake into my skin, the pain of it so thin and sweet I can feel my ball contract, getting ready to release. I fight the sensation off with a vicious growl. I’m not ready to let this end. Not yet.

Instead, I do what she wants. I fuck her like it’s my job.

I pound into her, my hips pound against the soft cradle of her thighs with deep, hard thrusts that bang her shoulders into the wall I have her pinned against with each spine-shattering stroke.

I step into her to bury my face in her throat with a groan, slipping my arm between her back and the wall to cushion her from the blows. “Is this it,” I rasp against her neck, using my free hand to angle her hips so that each of my thrusts rub the base of my cock against the clit she’s fingering. The smell of her—salty and sweet. Dark and warm—beg me to take a taste. “Is this what you want?” I lave my tongue along the column of her throat, but it’s not enough. I bare my teeth to the hammering pulse at the base of her neck, grazing and nipping against her skin but that’s not enough either.

“Yes... oh god, Patrick...” She’s sobbing now, ankles locked around my hips. Nails clawing into my shoulders while her other hand pushes up between us to squeeze her own breast. “I’m coming, I’m...”

She shatters around me, her pussy baring down on my cock, gripping it like a fist. I keep fucking her through her orgasm, my hips pounding against hers, hard and fast. Her hands latch on to my shoulders again, the heels of her cherry-red heels digging into my ass like spurs, urging me to take what I want. To use her the way she used me.

My own orgasm hits me like a speeding train, my balls tightening and tingling while stars explode in front of my eyes. She cries out again, the inner walls of her pussy tightening, pulling me deeper. I crush her against me, pinning her between my chest and wall, her arms and legs wrapped around me. Hair tangled and wild. Breath ragged and harsh.

The euphoria doesn’t last. Within seconds, I remember how I got here. How she played me. How she pushed me. Years of games and frustration—of being jerked around like a puppet—for nothing more than her own personal amusement.

I’m a chump.

The thought has me stepping back. 24-hours ago I would have done just about anything to be where I am now. And now, I just want to disappear.

I’m hurt. And that makes me angry... it also makes me a little dangerous.

We looked at each other, long and hard, for a few seconds. Assessing one another carefully. She must know I’m angry, can probably see it written all over my face. “Will you at least let me explain?” she says, pushing her long, thick tangle of hair out of her eyes.

I shake my head. I didn’t wanted to hear an explanation while I was fucking her and I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood for one now. “That’s not necessary,” I say, jerking the condom off my cock before zipping up my pants for the second time in one night. “I think I understand perfectly.” I drop the condom, unceremoniously, into the wastepaper basket by her door.

She watches me, arms crossed over her chest—whether it’s to hide herself from me or because she’s angry, I don’t know. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” I bend down to retrieve her robe and toss it at her. “You’re just sorry you got caught.” I say before I walk out. The last thing I hear before I leave is her bedroom door as it quietly clicks shut.

 

 

 

Twenty-one

 

Patrick

 

I find Conner where I left him, only this time he isn’t alone. Hemmed into the booth by a trio of co-eds—two blondes and a redhead—he saw me coming. By the time I slid into the booth across from him, my cousin wears the kind of grin that would make the Cheshire Cat wonder what he’d been up to.

“It worked,” he says, taking in my misbuttoned shirt, undone belt and generally disheveled appearance. “Fuck me, it actually worked.”

“What worked?” I say, scanning the crowded bar for Lisa. I spot her over by the pool tables, slinging drinks. When she sees me, she cuts me a quick smile—one that says she’s embarrassed about what happened but not so embarrassed that she wouldn’t give it another go. The blonde sitting next to me slides across the booth, inching a bit closer—so close her smooth, bare thigh is pressed against me and I can smell pop princess perfume. She’s been looking at me, practically licking her chops, since I sat down. I try out my Gilroy grin again, letting her have it. She responds by putting her hand on my knee.

Will wonders never cease?

“You banged Legs.” Conner says it proudly—like I’ve just birthed him a son and I look at him, suddenly putting it all together.

Lisa and the handsy blonde forgotten, I lean across the table. “What did you do, Conner?” I ask, even though I’ve already guessed. He’s the reason Cari walked in on Lisa and me. He’d somehow gotten her to come home early from her date.

He leans away from me and laughs. “Me?” he says, green eyes round with feigned innocence. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You guys look alike,” the girl sitting to Conner’s left says, flipping her bleach-blonde hair over a self-tanned shoulder. “Are you twins?”

“No—he’s my clone. Bought one of those self-cloning kits off Amazon.” I say before Conner has the chance, and the blonde’s face crumples slightly like she’s trying to figure out if I’m joking or not—my guess is she’s not attending college on an academic scholarship.

Before she can ask, Conner reaches into his pocket, pulling out a wad of bills, peeling several off. “How about you go pay our tab so we can get out of here,” He drops the money into the redhead’s open hand with a grin. “Go back to your place.” Conner never takes them home.

“Are you coming too?” Suddenly the blonde sitting next to me is practically in my lap, her hand wrapped around the inside of my thigh.

I maneuver myself away from her, sliding out of the booth so she can join her friends. “Maybe I’ll try to swing by later,” I say, holding out a hand to help her up and she pouts prettily at my answer.

“Try hard,” she says, trailing her fingertip over my shoulder as she wandered toward the bar with her friends.

As soon as they’re gone, I turn on Conner again. “What did you do—” I advance on him, cocking my head. “and don’t tell me nothing.”

“I may have call her and told her you fell down the stairs to your apartment.” He says it fast, like he’s ripping off a bandage.

“Are you for real?” I don’t know if I want to laugh or choke the shit out of him.

Conner shrugged. “Look—that girl has been leading you around by your balls for years and since you let her move in, it’s been fucking unbearable to watch. I had to do something.”

“So, you decide to Parent Trap us?” I say it like I’m mad but I’m not—not really. How can I be? Conner interfered but considering my face had been buried between Cari’s legs less than an hour ago, I’m having a hard time being angry.

“I sure the fuck did,” he says, without an ounce of remorse. “You two have been dancing around each other for so long I was starting to get dizzy.”

“How’d you even know it’d work?” I say, shaking my head.

“Are you kidding me?” he says, looking at me like I’m a mentally-challenged toddler. “Let me let you in on a little secret—men and women: not so different as they would like us to believe. They want what they can’t have, the same as we do.”

“I don’t know... she was pissed. Still is,” I say, thinking for the first time that maybe this wasn’t what I wanted—it certainly wasn’t how I’d wanted it. “She’s moving out.”

Now Conner smirked. “She say that before or after you fucked her?”

I glare and he laughs, shaking his head.

“You want her to move out?” he says, laughing again as soon as he finishes the question. The look on my face must’ve answered his question just fine. “Okay. Do you love her or is it just about the sex?”

Love or sex? For Conner it’d never been an issue—love never factors into the equation. The only thing he loves is sex.

I look behind me to find all three girls waiting for him by the front door, ready to go. “Your groupies are waiting,” I say, avoiding the question.

He shrugs, a cocky half-smile resting comfortably on his face. “They’re not going anywhere.”

I’ve been lusting after Cari for so long, maybe I’ve confused the two. Maybe I don’t know what I want anymore. All I know is that as hurt and angry as I am, I can still taste her. Still smell her and I not ready to walk away from that... but she’s been playing me for months—hell, years.

It’s time to give her a taste of her own medicine.

“I don’t know, cousin...” I say, signaling Lisa to bring me a beer. “But we’re gonna find out.”

 

 

 

Twenty-two

Cari

What the hell just happened?

He left me here. Walked out the front door while I brace myself against the wall, naked and slightly dizzy from the absolute best fuck of my life. I can’t follow him, even if I wanted to. I’m pretty sure my knees would buckle before I took my first step.

Waiting until my breathing returned to normal, I brace a hand against the wall while reaching down with the other to pull off one heel and then the other. Flat on the ground again, I feel a little bit better.

I don’t know what to do. The rash, impulsive me wants to throw on some clothes and charge downstairs. Hound him until he listens to reason. Until he lets me explain. The rational, prudent me—the me I should’ve been listening to all along—is telling me to let him go. He’s angry and he has every right to be. Just give him some space. Let him cool off.

Is that what I am to you, Cari? A joke?

No. Nothing about what just happened was even remotely funny.

Totally unexpected? Yes. Ridiculously hot? Hell, yes.

So hot I want to do it again.

I instantly reject the idea. Less than thirty minutes ago, I walked in on him getting a blowjob in our living room and what do I do? I let him fuck me. What self-respecting woman does that? And I didn’t just let him—I begged him to.

Please fuck me, Patrick…

The memory heats my cheeks, the warm flush streaking lower to pool, hot and heavy between my thighs. Incredibly, I’m not ashamed of what the way I behaved. What I let him do to me. I’m ashamed that I’m not ashamed, if that makes any kind of sense.

I decide to listen to rational me. I’m not chasing after Patrick Gilroy. If he wants to talk, he knows where to find me.

I think about a shower. I need one. I smell like Patrick. And sex. Instead of heading for the bathroom, I decide to go to bed. I’m about to crawl between the sheets when I hear my cell chime from the living room, signaling a text. Retrieving it from my purse, I carry it back to my room. It’s a text from Trevor.

Trevor: CALL ME.

I’d rather jump naked into the harbor.

The texts keep rolling in, one after another.

Trevor: CALL ME.

Trevor: CALL ME.

Trevor: CALL ME.

Trevor: CALL ME.

Trevor: CALL ME.

James says hi.

It’s what he said me as I was leaving the restaurant.

James says hi.

I tap out a response.

Me: Tell James I said fuck off.

That goes 2x for you.

I get a response almost immediately.

Trevor: Yur going to be sorry you said that.

Whatever. Not wanting to deal with it, I set my phone to silent and resolve to call my provider in the morning and have Trevor’s number blocked from my contact list. If that doesn’t work, I’ll change my number.

I set my phone plug my phone into its charger before tossing it onto my nightstand. Laying down, I slip beneath the blankets and settle in, listening to the dull roar of Friday night college revelry going on down stairs. On a typical Friday night, I’d be down there, shooting pool with Tess and Patrick, taking bets on which co-ed would crack first and follow Conner into the ladies’ room.

No doubt Patrick is down there and if he is with Conner, there’s no telling what they’re doing. Or who they were doing it to. I push the thought out of my head. Who Patrick fucks is none of my business. I think about the scene I walked in on, Lisa the cocktail waitress on her knees in front of him. Patrick’s jeans open and jerked down around his hips. Her mouth on his cock. The way he looked at me when he saw he standing there. Like he wished it was me. Me on my knees in from of him. My mouth he was fucking.

Like he hated me for it.

I wake up way earlier than I want to. Reaching for my phone, I see it’s barely 7AM on a Saturday. Also, I have a waiting text message. Thankfully, it’s not from Trevor.

Tess: So…

I scowl at my phone for a few moments before tapping out a response.

Me: So what?

Tess: Quit being a dick.

You and PP—did it happen?

PP. Predictable Patrick. I look over the foot of my bed, at the wall Patrick’d had me pushed against last night, his face buried between my legs. I can still feel him pressed against me. Moving inside me... not even Nostradamus could’ve predicted that.

Me: yes

Tess: OMG!! FINALLY!! I want details.

Scratch that. I deserve details! Plus, you

owe me lunch. I can take my break around

2.

The last thing I want to do is go into detail with anyone about what happened last night. Any other guy—sure. But this isn’t any other guy. This is Patrick.

Me: K. Meet me down stairs?

Tess: c u @ 2

I won the bet!!

I set my phone back down and get out of bed because if I lay here for one more second, thinking about him, I’m going to go crazy. I reach for my robe, actually tried to put it on before I remembered what had happened to it. I lifted it to my nose and breathed deep. It smells like him. Like us.

Hanging the shredded robe on its hook, I pull on a pair of boxers I stole from Patrick’s laundry a few weeks ago. They were blue paid, worn thin and soft. I don’t even know why I’d taken them other than the fact that they were his.

Adding a baggy white T-shirt before throwing my hair into a quick ponytail, I finally gather the courage to open my bedroom door. The apartment is quiet, Patrick’s bedroom door firmly shut. He’d been drunk last night. Drunk enough to bring one of Gilroy’s cocktail waitresses up here for a quickie.

I want to be mad at him for it but I can’t—not really. I’m the one who’d pushed him after all. Maybe if I’d just been honest about what I wanted instead of agreeing to play Tess’s head games, things would’ve happened differently.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have happened at all.

Irrational me rears her ugly head, urging me to justify the damage I’d done. The delicious ache between my legs helped convince me that irrational me is right. I got what I was after. Sure, Patrick was angry but he’d get over it. I just have to find a way to apologize and set things right.

In the kitchen, I make coffee before poking around in the fridge for a few minutes. Finally finding a yogurt, I shut the fridge just as I hear the front door to our apartment open. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me that Patrick isn’t hungover and he isn’t sleeping. Despite tying one on last night and everything that happened after, he looked normal—like he did every morning.

He looks fantastic.

“Morning,” he says, stopping just inside the door to kick off his running shoes.

Knowing he left after what happened, I expected to catch him doing the walk of shame in last night’s rumpled clothes, I’m surprised to see him in workout clothes, like it was any other Saturday morning. “Good morning,” I say in a voice that’s surprisingly steady considering I suddenly can’t get the image of the two of us pressed against my bedroom wall out of my head.

Moving across the living room in my direction, he snags the hem of his fitted tank and drags it up over his head, tossing it into the basket of dirty clothes he has parked by the coffee table. It’s all a part of his Saturday routine. Workout. Laundry. ESPN until his eyes glaze over.

Predictable Patrick.

“You’re up early for a Saturday,” he says, giving me that same easy, gorgeous smile he’d given me yesterday morning and every morning since the day I moved in. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Last night he’d been angry. Unwilling to talk about what happened. Unwilling to let me explain. Less than twelve hours later, it’s like it’d never happened.

I want to ask him when he came home—if he came home—last night but I don’t. I’m not his girlfriend. We fucked, once. One mind-blowing, earth-shattering time. Who he was with and where he went afterward is none of my business. Instead, I turn around, yanking open the silverware drawer for a spoon. “No—” I say, my face hot. Had I dreamt it? Had he been so drunk last night that he doesn’t remember what happened? Thinking about it, the ache between my thighs grew warm and heavy. “Tess texted me.”

“Oh.” He laughs while squeezing into our tiny kitchen, his smooth, muscular chest bare and slick with sweat, brushing past me on his way to the fridge. “I bet she’s chomping at the bit to know what happened last night.”

I drop my spoon and it clatters to the floor. “What?” I say, cutting him a sharp look. He’s got his head stuck in the refrigerator. All I can see is a set of tight abs and a pair of navy track pants slung low on well-defined hips. A baseball scholarship in college and working construction with his cousin Declan has paid off. The result is a body that would make any woman weak in the knees.

Myself included.

“Tess,” he says, straightening away from the fridge with a bottle of water. “She texted you to get the down and dirty about Trevor, right?” He leans against the counter behind me, cracking the lid on the water to take a drink.

“Yeah,” I say, turning my back on him to focus on my breakfast. The faster I eat, the faster I can go back to my room and hide. Yanking the foil lid off my yogurt, I fold it neatly and throw it in the trash before bending over to retrieve my spoon off the floor. “She wants to have…”

Patrick isn’t leaning against the counter anymore. He’s standing right behind me, so close I can feel his rapidly growing erection against the curve of my ass.

I stand up slowly, agonizingly aware that this is almost exactly what’d happened between us last night. What I’d done to start all this...

Only now he’s doing it to me.

His hand skims across my hips, fingertips brushing the hem of my shirt. “Are you gonna tell her?” I can feel his breath against the nape of my neck, slow and even.

Oh. My. God...

I take a deep breath, fighting to stay calm. “Tell her what?” I say, my hand clenched around the handle of the spoon so tight I can feel the imprint of it on my skin.

“Are you gonna tell her what happened?” His large, callused hand slips under my shirt, his fingers doing a relaxed slide up my ribcage while his hips do a slow grind against my backside.

“Nothing happened with Trevor. I told you—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Laughter brushes against my ear a moment before he presses his mouth against the underside of my jaw. “And you know it.”

Any hope that he’d been too drunk to remember what happened between us—and why—is gone, leaving me with the overwhelming and unexplainable urge to explain myself. To apologize.

“Patrick…” I don’t know what I’m going to say but it doesn’t matter. The second his hand closes over my bare breast, my mind shuts off completely.

Totally blank.

“Yes, Cari?” he says, the words brushing his mouth against my nape. He fondles me under my shirt, cupping my breast, rolling my swollen nipple between his fingers—tugging and pinching—exerting just enough pressure so that when his other hand slips into the waistband of my boxers, I widened my stance without even thinking, giving him room to do whatever he wants to me.

“Patrick,” I try again, squeezing my eyes shut, forcing myself to focus even though the last thing I want to do right now is think. “I think we need to—”

His long fingers skim the damp seam of my pussy, teasing me. “Why aren’t you wearing panties?” he whispers in my ear and I have to swallow hard against the moan that his hands are building up inside me.

“I don’t…” I swallow again, my head kicking back against his shoulder when the fingers plucking at my nipple squeezes even harder, the sensation shooting through my belly, straight to my clit. “We should talk.” I pushed the words out even though I’m afraid that once I do, he’ll stop touching me. I think I might die if Patrick stopped now.

“We are talking,” he says in that same calm, measured tone he’d used on me last night. “Where are your panties?” His fingers roll and tug at my nipple while his tongue traces the line of my neck. “Tell me, Cari…” he says when I don’t answer right way.

“You…” I manage to say despite the fact I can’t breathe. “you took them off last night.”

“Oh yeah…” Patrick’s fingers slide into me and my back arches, urging him to stroke me even deeper. “I remember now.” He skims his teeth against my jaw and that moan I’ve been fighting shutters out of me when he pulls his fingers out to work the drenched length of them against my swollen clit. “You’re wet,” he groans against my throat, his hand tightening on my breast. “Have you been thinking about me? The way I made you come on my tongue?”

“Yes…” My brain is completely scrambled. I push myself against him, working my hips against the maddeningly slow ride his juice-slicked fingers are giving me. I can feel the ridged length of him, pushing against my ass and suddenly, his fingers aren’t enough.

I want him inside me. Now.

I try to push his hands away so I can turn around and rip what’s left of his clothes off but he tightens his hold on me, keeping my back pressed firmly against his chest. “Is this it?” he says, his voice horse and tight, like he’s fighting for control. “You want to come on my cock again?” he grinds himself into the cleft of my ass, pushing against me through our clothes.

“Yes...” I don’t even know what I’m saying, what I’m agreeing to but it hardly matters. Not if it means he’ll stop playing with me and get serious.

His tongue skates along the long line of my throat, coasting toward my ear. “You want me to jerk these shorts down around your ankles?” He slides his fingers inside me again, slow and deep. “Bend you over the counter and pound my cock into this sweet pussy of yours?”

Something about his calm and reasonable tone, coupled with the filthy things he’s saying in my ear send another lightning bolt of arousal shooting through me, flooding my pussy. “Yes...” My breath stutters out of me as his fingers find my center again. They move in slow, feather-light circles that increase in pressure until my knees are loose and unreliable and my breath is hitching in and out of me in ragged pants.

“Patrick…” I can feel it build. My legs start to tremble. The quivering sensation that begins in my belly—a vibration that spreads slowly but doesn’t overtake me. And then I know. He’s punishing me for what I did to him. All those months of teasing I subjected him to. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry for everything.”

“It’s a little late for that,” he says in my ear, confirming my suspicions. “It’s going to take more than a simple apology to make it up to me.” His mouth slides around to the back of my neck. “A lot more.”

And then, just like that, everything stops. As suddenly as it started, it’s over and he’s walking away from me. “I’m meeting Conner later,” he calls over his shoulder like the last three minutes never happened. He strolls down the hall, disappearing into the bathroom, leaving me stunned and shaking in the middle of the kitchen.

 

 

 

Twenty-three

Cari

He’s obviously pissed  and if there’s anything I’ve learned in our three years of friendship it’s that a pissed off Gilroy is not a thing to be messed with. I should just walk away. From him. From this whole mess. Last night, I said I was moving out—another stupid, impulsive mistake—but standing here, strung out from the feel of him all over me—inside me—it seems like the only sane thing to do. I should just leave. What I did was horrible and cruel but he got his revenge. That made us even.

But I don’t want to be even and I can’t walk away. Not from this.

Not from him.

I stand in the middle of our tiny kitchen for a few moments, waiting for my legs to stop shaking and then I go after him, barging into our shared bathroom, the door rebounding off the sink so hard it slammed shut again.

“Wow,” he says, his voice bouncing off the shower stall walls. “You’ve developed a habit of walking in on me while I’m jerking off.”

His taunt should shame me but it doesn’t. It just makes me angry. And the anger makes me reckless. “You can’t just do that, Patrick,” I yell at the shower curtain.

“I can’t hear you,” he shouts over the sound of the shower. I’m not sure but I think he’s laughing at me.

Incensed, I rip the shower curtain open. “I said—” I’m still yelling but I’m unprepared for the sight of a fully naked and very wet Patrick and I almost swallow my tongue. Jesus, he’s beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes you feel a little desperate. Like you can’t even hope to measure up. Like you’d be willing to do just about anything to prove that you do.

“You can’t...” I take a deep breath and try again. “You can’t do that to people.”

Despite what he said to me, he’s washing his hair, water and soap runs down his chest. Slushes off tightly packed abs. Splits around the base of his thick, hard cock to coast down long, muscular legs...

I’m trying not to look but seriously?

“Hello... my eyes are up here, Cari.” This time I’m sure he’s laughing at me. I can hear it in his voice.

Mortified, I force my eyes back to his face.

He finishes rinsing his hair and drops his hands. “Do what?” He’s using it again. That calm, reasonable tone that makes me crazy. He’s looking at me like I am crazy.

“You know what.” I say it through clenched teeth, my cheeks hot.

He’s not laughing anymore. “Oh... you mean tease you?” he says, the corner of his mouth lifting in a grin that’s totally void of humor. “Touch you.” His hand slides down his well-defined chest, taking my gaze with it, to wrap around his cock. “Make you wet...” He starts to work his hand in a slow, even rhythm, gripping the head before sliding his fist all the way to its base. “Make you want things... and then just walk away.”

That’s exactly what I’d been doing to him for months now. Hearing him say it jerks the indignation right out of me. “You’re right.” I manage to push the words out against a throat that suddenly feels like it’s full of sand. I lick my lips, trying to find my voice. “What I did what shitty and I’m sorr—”

“Stop. Apologizing.” He bites the demand in half, his reasonable tone taking on a dangerous edge.

“Then what?” I whisper, my throat horse, eyes glued to his hand, watching him. “What do you want from me?”

He doesn’t answer me, just throws me a question of his own. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about you while doing this?” Something about his voice pulls my gaze back to his face and I find him watching me, his hooded, green stare nailed to my mouth. “You, in that goddamned robe...” His voice is thick, chest pumping, quick and hard. “That fucking dress...” His hand is still moving, flexing and sliding around his cock while his gaze dips to my breasts, their tight, swollen tips pushing against the thin cotton of my T-shirt.

That’s the last coherent thought I have. Before I can think about what I’m doing and why, I grip the hem of my shirt and drag it over my head, exposing myself to him.

I cup one of my breasts, rolling and pinching its nipple between my fingers, the sensation of my hand and his eyes on me, watching me touch myself, slams into my gut with the force of a freefall.

Catching my bottom lip between my teeth, I slide my other hand beneath the waistband of my boxers. “I’m guessing you’ve thought about me as much as I’ve thought about you...” that last word gets caught in my throat as I skim my fingers along the seam of my pussy, pushing inside just enough to get them wet—mimicking what he’d done to me in the kitchen. He’s watching me, his own hand gone still and fallen to his side.

I stop touching myself too. “To be honest, it feels better when you do it,” I say, holding his stare for a few seconds before I turn and walk out.

I barely get the door open before I hear him behind me, ripping the shower curtain off the wall, scrambling across the slick tile floor of the bathroom, careened after me.

Thank god.

He catches me in the hallway outside my bedroom and we go down hard, Patrick’s wet, muscular body covering me, his hips wedged between my legs. I can feel the stiff length of him against the back of my thigh, his breathing hot and ragged against the side of my face, his wet, muscular chest plastered against my back. “I thought I made it clear last night,” he says, dropping his shoulder and bending his elbow a bit to bring his mouth closer to my ear while he grinds his ridged cock against the thin cotton barrier between us. “You shouldn’t push me, Cari.”

I suddenly realize that even though we’ve been friends for years, I don’t know Patrick Gilroy at all. I know the boy scout. The nice guy. The Patrick who’s nursed me through a dozen break-ups. The friend who always lets me have the last slice of pizza when we order in. The roommate who tolerates my obsession with reality television. This is not that Patrick.

This is someone else entirely.

“The only thing I learned last night,” I say, pushing myself against the hard length of him, practically begging him to fuck me. “Is that I like what happens when I push you.”

I’ve lost my mind completely and he confirms it when he rears up, cursing—the sound of it low and harsh against the back of his throat—as he grabs onto the waistband of my boxers and jerks them down.

Before I can take my next breath, his fingers are thrusting into me so fast and deep it steals my breath, scatters stars across my field of vision.

He covers me again, breathing harsh and uneven against my neck. “I don’t think you understand,” he says, seemingly calm despite the ragged breath that skates down my spine, his erection bobbing between my legs with each deep, lazy stoke. “You’re not calling the shots anymore.” The tip of his blunt, callused fingers graze the sensitive spot deep in the center of me, again and again and I whimper in response, pushing back against his hand. I want more. Need more. “I am.” He keeps fucking me with his fingers. His hand. The maddeningly reasonable tone of his voice. “Got it?”

No, this isn’t the Patrick I know at all.

Cheek pressed against the floor, eyes squeezed shut, I nod. My legs start to shake again, the warm heaviness in my belly pressing lower with every stroke he gives me. I’m close to coming for the second time in less than ten minutes and I’m not sure I can take it.

“Say the words, Cari,” he whispers in my ear, his fingers buried deep inside me, their callused tips crooked slightly while I move my hips, stroking myself along the blunt length of them. “Say, I understand, Patrick.”

Not caring anymore, so desperate to get off I’m on the verge of crying, I push my hips off the floor, making room for my hand between them and the floor. “I understand, Patrick.” I moan it out, pressing my fingers against my clit.

He chuckles softly in my ear and the sound of it would make me angry if I wasn’t dangling off a cliff. “Good girl.”

He pulls his fingers out, the wet suction sound of it heats my chest even as I let out a frustrated groan, the orgasm spinning away from me. I press and circle my fingers against my clit, harder and faster, trying to catch it.

“No, you don’t.” He flips me over, grabbing my wrist to pull my fingers from between my legs, holding it high above my head. “That’s against the rules.”

Rules? I lift my head off the floor, my gaze pulled downward to land on his rigid cock. It’s only inches from where I want it, the rock-hard heat of it scorching the inside of my thigh. I force myself to lay flat, meeting his gaze.

I let out a strangled scream, tears prickling the back of my eyelids. “I hate you,” I say it through clenched teeth and I mean it. I hate him.

He grins down at me. Hand still clamped around my wrist, he lifts my hand between us, its fingers still wet and glistening with my own juices. “If you say so,” he says, slipping my fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean.

I can feel the head of his cock, twitching against the junction of my thighs. I close my eyes, my concentration centered on the feeling of his tongue on my skin, even if it’s just my fingers. Lifting my hips off the floor, I run the slick seam of my pussy against the head of his cock. “Please…”

“If you still want to move out, then move out.” He drops my hand and reaches back, fingers digging into my upper thigh, stopping me cold. I can see it. How angry his is. The hard set of his jaw. The hurt I caused him, still fresh in his eyes when he looks at me. “Go ahead—I’m not going to stop you. I’ll even help you pack,” he tells me, leaning hard on the arm planted on the floor so he can lean closer. “But if you stay, I’m gonna fuck you.” The movement pushed the head of his cock against my entrance, stealing my breath. “Whenever I want. As much as I want. However I want. Understand?”

Again, like a complete idiot, I nod.

“New roommate rule:” he says, dipping his head to my chest. “You don’t come without my say so.”

His tongue touches my nipple, circling sensitive flesh before drawing it into his mouth, sucking and nipping at it with his teeth until I’m panting again, each draw his mouth makes on my breast bumping the head of his cock against my slick, wet center.

I moan.

Patrick lifts his head and gives me a crooked grin before he levers himself off the ground and away from me. “Now, if you don’t mind,” He turns his back on me, heading toward the bathroom. “I’m going to finish my shower.

 

 

 

Twenty-four

 

Patrick

 

I leave Cari in the hall and head back to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. The shower is still running and its curtain is laying on the floor. The spring rod it hangs on is floating in the tub. I fish it out and hang the curtain back up before stepping back under the spray to finish showering. I want to jerk off so bad it’s making my dizzy. Scratch that—I want out of this shower. I want to bury myself balls deep in Cari’s quivering pussy. I want to pound myself into the center of her so hard and fast she won’t walk right for a week. I want her screaming my name so loud the whole damn neighborhood will know who’s fucking her.

Instead, I stay where I am. The shower is ice cold but I force myself to stay put until my hard-on is gone and my dick is practically shriveled in on itself.

If this is what it takes to be an asshole, I’m not sure I can manage it.

Out of the shower, I sling a towel around my hips and duck across the hall into my own room as quickly as possible—but not so quick that I don’t notice her bedroom door is closed.

I’d had a plan—a simple one. Give as good as I’d been getting. Make her feel all the things I’d been feeling for the past six months—hell, the past three years—while keeping my own response in check.

Usually something I’m good at.

The only thing I learned is that I like what happens when I push you.

That’s all it took. All she had to say before I was yanking down her pants and finger fucking her in the hallway.

The guy I’d been 24 hours ago would never do something like that. He wouldn’t have let things get so out of hand. He wouldn’t have tackled her like a sexually deranged linebacker. He wouldn’t have taken her to the brink of coming and then left her there without delivering.

And he wouldn’t have felt so good about it either.

I rub my hair dry and get dressed—cargos and a random t-shirt—before I realize I still haven’t shaved. Not wanting to risk another visit to the bathroom, I make a beeline for the living room. Stopping only long enough to pull on a pair of shoes and snag my laundry basket, I head out the door.

When I leave, her bedroom door is still shut.

I don’t go far. Heading downstairs I round the bar to see Declan behind it, building a round of Black and Tans for a bunch of rowdy locals in the back of the bar, watching the Sox game.

He gives me a chin jerk and tosses me a key as I walk past the bar before reverting his attention to the pints he’s working under the taps. Carrying my load of clothes down the hall, I use the key he tossed me to unlock the office where we keep a stackable washer and dryer. Adding soap to my load of clothes, I set the dial before locking the office on my way out.

When I get back, Lisa is standing at the bar, waiting for her order. When she sees me, she smiles and I smile back as I slide onto a worn leather stool. “Hi, Patrick,” she says, looking at me through her lashes while Declan sets the last of her order on her tray.

“Hey,” I say, gaze straight ahead as she walks past to deliver the round.

“Con told me but I was sure he was full of shit,” Declan says as soon as she’s out of ear shot.

“What?” I look up to catch his expression. He’s either amused or concerned. With Dec, it’s hard to tell.

He sets a pint of Harps in front of me and shakes his head. “She’s more trouble than she’s worth,” he says, whipping the towel of his shoulder to wipe down the bar between us. “Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”

I think he’s talking about Cari and I feel my jaw flex, the muscles in my neck going tight. I’ve known Cari for years but that didn’t mean I know about every guy she’s been with. The thought of her and Declan together makes me want to hurt something. Namely him.

Before I can say anything, he continues. “I dated her for a few months in high school,” he says, shaking his head. “She’s crazy. Like, bag-full-of-cats crazy.”

He’s talking about Lisa. I pick up my beer to cover up the fact that I’d been three seconds away from committing assault over just the thought of Cari with someone else and even though it was a simple misunderstanding, I can’t quite shake the anger that’s clawed its way into my gut.

I shrug, already done with the conversation. “It was over before it even started,” I say setting my pint on the napkin he tossed in front of me. “And I’m not looking for a do over.”

“Really?” Declan says, arching an eyebrow at me. “Does she know that?”

“She’ll get the picture.” I lean back on my stool, elbows resting on the edge of the bar, gaze glued to the muted television behind him. “Eventually.”

“Yeah?” Declan looked at me for a second before letting out a low laugh. “You heard the part about her being nuts, right?”

I think he might be right and it feels strange not to care. Before I can tell him to drop it, light streaks across the dark Mahogany bar as someone comes through the door, drawing his attention. Ready to call out a friendly greeting to his new customer, Declan sees who it is and tenses, his fingers tightening around the towel in his hand before he drops his gaze, the greeting never uttered. Curiosity getting the better of me, I shoot a quick look past my shoulder to see who has my control freak, over-achieving cousin polishing rocks glasses like his life depended on it.

It’s Tess. She shoots me an I-know-your-secret look as she strides past the bar before bouncing it up, letting her gaze skim past Declan, barely acknowledging his presence before landing it on the Sox game going on over his head.

Ouch.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I say, lifting my pint and draining it. I set it on the bar and nudge it forward. After our construction business took off, Declan rarely worked weekends. Matter of fact he only works Thursdays and that’s just so he can keep Conner’s bathroom conquests to an absolute minimum. The thought of Conner left alone to tend bar on Ladies’ Night was as awe-inspiring as it was frightening.

“Con’s backed up at the garage and Da’s taken Mom away for the weekend.” He looks relieved that I’m not peppering him with questions about what I just witnessed. “It’s their anniversary.” He sets a fresh pint in from of me. A reward for minding my own business.

I lift the pint and shake my head. “You should’ve told me. It’s my—”

I hear her before I see her and I can’t stop myself for looking in her direction as she steps off the stairs and into the bar. She’s wearing her loose sundress; the one I tease her about looking like a blue potato sack. It’s about as sexy as a hospital johnny but the sight of her in it jerks at my cock like a divining rod. Because I know what’s underneath it.

She looks directly at me. Challenging me, like she knows exactly what I’m thinking and I have to force myself not to look way. To give as good as I got without dragging her back upstairs to finish what I started this morning.

She passes by, giving Declan a wave on her way to the table where Tess is waiting for her.

“Hey.”

I look over the bar to see Declan watching me watch her.

“What?” I gulp half the pint down in a few swallows.

“What’s going on with you?” Now there’s no question about it. He’s concerned.

“Nothin’,” I say, contemplating the Jameson in the well behind the bar. Maybe if I get drunk enough, I’ll manage to put my cock into a booze-induced coma.

Right—because it worked so well last night.

“You sure?” Declan looks at the pint in front of me like he’s sorry he poured it. “Because you fucked the cocktail waitress last night. That’s not like you.”

I didn’t fuck Lisa but I didn’t correct him. Let him think what he wants. “Maybe I’m just tired of letting Con have all the fun,” I say with a shrug, already tired of this conversation.

Declan shakes his head at me. “You’re too smart to pull that shit and I’m too smart to buy it.”

“How’s the wedding planning coming along?” I swivel in my stool, looking directly at Tess for a second before turning back to Declan. “Mind if I bring date?”

“You’re too smart for that too.” Declan’s jaw sets, his hand going tight around the towel again.

I scoff, aiming another look over my shoulder, letting him think I was checking Tess out when the only thing I can see is Cari. “Smart is overrated.”

Growing up, Conner and I used our fists on each other plenty and I’ve had to pull Con and Declan apart more than once before things got too bloody, but me and Declan? We’ve never come to blows.

I have a feeling that’s about to change.

He must feel it too because he loosens his grip on the towel and blows out a sigh. “Look, I’m just worried about you. That’s it.”

“Keep your worry.” I drain the pint and push my empty across the bar. “Give me a Jameson.”

Declan snatches my empty glass off the bar and drops it in the sink. “What the fuck did Conner do to you last night?” He’s not looking at me when he asks so I don’t answer.

He’s also not pouring me a Jameson.

Before I can reach across the bar and help myself, the door behind me flies open again. This time ushering in a swirl of moderately expensive perfume and the fast click of knock-off stilettos. This time I don’t have to turn around to see who it is.

Jessica.

“I don’t care who’s in the hospital,” she says in a tone that shrivels my balls. “I have a cake tasting scheduled for 1:45.” Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of her leaning across the bar, pouty lips puckered, smudging lipstick across Declan’s cheek. She’s fake—every inch of her from her bleach blonde hair, right down to her bogus shoes. The door knocker of a diamond sparkling on her finger is the only thing real in between. I let out a sound that would’ve been a laugh if it didn’t feel so sharp and nasty against the back of my throat.

“I don’t want excuses,” she hisses in the phone, tossing her long hair over her shoulder. “I want a wedding cake and there better be someone there to sell me one.” She jabs her finger at her phone, silencing the apologies of whoever she’d been verbally abusing, before giving Declan her full attention. “What are you still doing here?” She says, rubbing her thumb against his cheek, smearing lipstick across his face. “My parents are meeting us for dinner at six.”

I look at my watch. It’s not even noon.

“Hey, Jess,” I say, calling her Jess because she hates it and I’m just drunk enough to not give a shit. Our brewing fight forgotten, Declan shoots me a warning look before exchanging my empty glass for a few fingers of Jameson. Probably in hopes of bribing me into keeping my mouth shut.

“I have zero time for your shit, Conner,” she says to me, narrowed eyes taking in my three-day beard, ratty t-shirt and cargos. I give a fleeting thought to correcting her but I kinda like the fact that someone who’s seen me a thousand times and standing right next to me has mistaken me for Conner. I lift my glass and down the whiskey, muttering “fuck off,” into the bottom of the glass between swallows.

Acting like she didn’t hear me, she turns toward Declan again, giving him a what are you doing just standing there look. “Well? Let’s go.”

Declan sighs. “I can’t just go, Jessica,” he says to her, gesturing around the bar. “I’m working.”

“No, you’re not,” she says. “You’re standing here, talking to your brother.”

“I’m the only one behind the bar,” Declan says in the kind of tone you’d use to reason with cranky toddlers. “That means I’m working.”

Jessica scoffs before letting her gaze float around the bar, her face hardening almost instantly. “What is she doing here?” she says turning toward him again, voice raising an octave.

I turn in my bar stool, look at Tess. She focused on Cari, not to pay attention to the fight that’s brewing a few yards away. Cari’s got her hand clamped around her wrist like she’s holding her in her seat. I whip around, mouth open but Declan shoots me a glare and pours me another Jameson. Instead of talking, I drink.

Declan sighs again. This time it’s the long-suffering sigh of someone who’s had this argument a thousand time and doesn’t want to have it even one more time. “She’s eating lunch in a public place, Jessica,” he snaps at her, jerking the towel off his shoulder again. “and we’ve known her since we were kids—”

I’m about five seconds away from picking her up and dumping her ass on the sidewalk. Instead, I reach across the bar and yank the soggy towel out of Declan’s hand. “Get the hell out of here,” I say before draining my glass. “And take your screech owl with you.” I slam my glass on the bar and stand.

Jessica’s eyes narrow again at the insult but she’s smart enough to let it go. “Let’s go,” she says, smiling now that she’s gotten her way.

Declan gives me a fuck no look. “You’ve been drinking.”

Jessica scoffs. “Shocker,” she mutters before turning and making a beeline for the table Cari and Tess are huddled around. I want to follow her and do what I can to shield Tess from the river of shit that’s about to be unleashed. Instead, I walk around the bar, ducking under the pass through.

“Get her out of here, Declan,” Standing beside him, I hold out my hand, gesturing for the apron he’s wearing but he’s not paying any attention to me. Instead he’s looking across the bar, zeroed in on whatever was going on between his fiancé and his brother’s best friend.

“Dec,” I say, nudging him in the arm. “I’m serious. Just give me the keys and get her the fuck out of here.”

Making up his mind, Declan looks at me and nods, reluctantly fishing the office key from the front pocket of his jeans. “Are you sure?” he says, finally reaching around to untie his apron.

No matter what Jessica thinks, he knows I’m not his brother and that other than occasional weekday shift, I have zero experience behind the bar. I am in no way ready for a Saturday night shift.

The fact that I’m sorta drunk is a secondary concern, and we both know it.

I just smile. “What are brothers for?”

 

 

 

Twenty-five

Cari

Tess is staring at me, her mouth open, while I quietly recount how I spent last night and this morning. “Patrick said that?” She leans across the table, placing the flat of her hands on its surface to push herself forward. “That he was going to… and that you were…” She leans back in her seat, looking genuinely confused. “We’re talking about Patrick Gilroy, right? The guy who spent forty-five minutes last Sunday, helping Mrs. McGintey wrangle that bastard dog of hers? The guy who coaches baseball and volunteers at the library? That Patrick?”

“That’s him,” I say, doing my best not to look over my shoulder. If I do, I’ll see Patrick sitting at the bar. Watching me. Thinking about him, the warn ache between my thighs starts to throb, making me irritable. Making me wish I’d defied Patrick’s orders and made myself come before I came down here and tried to interact with polite society. “And could you keep your voice down—we’re in enemy territory.”

“Sorry,” Tess says, taking it down a few notches while sitting back in her seat. “It’s just...” she shakes her head, shooting a quick glance over my shoulder. “That’s not what I expected.”

“Oh, yeah?” I say, flipping the menu open even though I’ve read it a thousand times. “What did you expect, exactly?” I can’t keep the hostile tone out of my voice. I know it’s not Tess’s fault things have gone so wrong between Patrick and me but blaming her is easier than blaming myself. This was all her stupid idea to begin with wasn’t it?

“I don’t know...” she says with a shrug, seemingly oblivious to my current mood. “But I didn’t expect Predictable Patrick to go all 50 Shades on you.” She falls silent and leans back. “What you’re describing isn’t anything like the sex Sara clued me in on.”

The second Tess says the name of Patrick’s ex-girlfriend, I nearly choke on my own tongue. “What?” I manage to croak out, too loud. I aim a quick look over my shoulder. Patrick is still sitting at the bar talking to Declan. “You asked Sara what he was like in bed?” I hissed at her. “Are you nuts?”

“Relax,” Tess sighs, rolling her eyes like I’m the crazy one. “I made it sound like I was interested in taking a run at him,” she laughed at the thought, shaking her head like Sara was an idiot for buying it. “She wasn’t too happy with the thought but she told me what I wanted to know.”

I held out for about two seconds before curiosity got the better of me. “And?”

Before she had a chance to spill, Lisa appears with our drinks.

“Here you go,” she says, syrupy sweet. Too sweet. “What can I get you girls to eat?”

I listen while Tess orders, a double bacon cheeseburger, chicken wings and a basket of onion rings. She’s five-foot-nothing, and wouldn’t weigh a hundred pounds after being fished out of the Mystic. Where she puts it, I don’t know.

Unfazed, Lisa scribbles on her pad before looking at me. I can’t be sure but her eyes seem to narrow just a bit. “Same,” I say, smiling while I hand her my menu, like I didn’t catch her with Patrick’s cock in her throat less than twelve hours ago. Like I didn’t want to punch her in the fucking mouth and drag her down the street by her goddamned hair. “Thanks.”

She takes the menu and nods, that sugar sweet tone smeared across her face in the form of a smile. Tess watches her go, slim dark brow arched. “Was that weird?” she says, looking at me. “She was acting weird, right?”

“I caught her going down on Patrick last night,” I say, waving a hand in Lisa’s direction. Right now, I didn’t give a shit about Lisa. “What did Sara say?”

“What the fuck,” Tess hisses at me, slapping her hand on the table with a laugh. “What the hell did you do to him last night?”

Her question sends another rush of heat through me. I can still feel his mouth between my legs. His tongue thrusting into my pussy, lips sucking my clit. “What. Did. Sara. Say?”

She considers me for a few seconds like she’s thinking about leaving me hanging. “That he was gentle. Sweet. Generous. Considerate—all different words for the same thing.” Tess grins at me. “Boring.”

“Of course,” I mutter, pulling the wrapper off my straw, sticking it in my drink.

“What’s that supposed to mean,” she says, dark brows arched over her wide hazel eyes.

“Nothing,” I shake my head. How can I explain to her that Sara’s description of Patrick’s bedroom behavior all but confirms that as far as he’s concerned I’m not girlfriend material. I’m not the girl you bring flowers to and put on a pedestal, treat gently and say sweet things to. I’m the girl you take standing up. Finger fuck in the hallway. And the kitchen. Laugh at when she all but begs you to fuck her.

You asked for it. And fuck if I didn’t love every second of it. What does that say about me?

Tess must’ve picked up on my tone because she narrows her eyes at me. “Wait—are you mad?”

I shake my head—I’m not sure what I am right now. “He’s mad. At me. He wants me to move out.”

Tess grins at me. “Revenge sex can be pretty hot,” she says, shifting back in her seat. “Truthfully, I didn’t think Mr. Predictable had it in him.”

“Quit calling him that,” I raise my voice, drawing the attention of a couple of regulars, playing pool. I drop my voice to a harsh whisper. “Did you hear what I just said? He wants me to move out.”

“That’s not what he said, exactly.” Tess pursed her lips. “Sounds like he’s leaving it up to you.”

If you stay, I’m gonna fuck you. Whenever I want. As much as I want. However I want.

My pussy clenched tight at the memory, forcing me to clamp my thighs together. “I know,” I say, pushing my drink away. “but he’s angry, Tess. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to stay.”

Tess starts to respond but closes her mouth when Lisa makes another appearance, this time with food. “Here ya go,” she says, moving to set a plate in front of Tess before lifting it back up. “Oops.” She sets the plate in front of me instead. “Your wings are coming right up.” Lisa smiles, showcasing the candy pink lipstick smeared across her teeth.

“Thank you,” I tell her, looking at the burger she placed in front of me then at the burger she put in front of Tess. They were the same, so why was she being so specific about who got what?

As soon as she’s gone, Tess lifts the bun on her burger and adds mustard. “Are you afraid he’s going to hurt you?” she says, her expression caught between concern and disbelief. “Because I’ve known Cap’n a long time and he’d never—”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “No.” Patrick had almost beat James to death with a bat for grabbing my arm. There was no possible way he would hurt me. “That’s not what I’m worried about… I’m just not sure our friendship is repairable.”

“Did you try apologizing to him?”

“Yes,” I bark the word. “Every time I even look like I’m going to say the word sorry, he—”

“Gives you a mind-blowing orgasm?” Tess says baldly, chomping on an onion ring while shaking her head. “What an asshole.”

“Shut-up,” I grumble at her and she laughs. I’d told her a sanitized version about this morning’s episode. I didn’t tell her about being so frustrated and desperate for release that I’d started finger fucking myself in front of Patrick or that he’d stopped me.

If I don’t stop thinking about him, my pussy is going to chew my leg off. I force myself to focus on the conversation. “He won’t listen.” I sigh and push my plate away. There’s no way in hell I’m eating food Lisa touched. Not ever again. “What we did was mean. It was wrong and...”

“We?” Tess says before taking a bite of her burger.

“Yes, we—” I hiss, looking over my shoulder toward the bar again to find Lisa watching me. Now I’m positive she’s spit in it. “This whole thing was your idea, Tess. Patrick hates me.”

“What do you care?” she picks up the bottle of ketchup and squirts a blob onto her plate. “I mean, really? You got what you wanted. You’ve scratched your Gilroy-sized itch and now it’s done,” she says, dipping another onion ring into the ketchup before popping it into her mouth. “On to the next, right?”

That’s what I’d thought. What I’d fooled myself into believing but, no. Not on to the next. There was no next.

There was only Patrick.

Tess must’ve seen it on my face because her burger hit her plate with a resounding plop. “You forgot to mention that part while you were offering up your feeble protest about Operation: Get Gilroy,” she says, using air quotes around the word protest.

I’d forgotten how observant she was. How easily she can read people. “What part?” I reach across the table to snag one of her onion rings off her plate.

“The you’re in love with him part,” she hisses at me. “I never would’ve suggested any of it if I’d known you have actual feelings for him.”

“What?” I scoff at her like she’s crazy. “I’m not in love with Patrick,” I say. “I’m just having my doubts over whether or not fucking him was worth ruining a friendship over.”

“Uh-huh. Right,” she says, slapping my hand away from her plate when I reach for another onion ring. “Eat your own.”

“I can’t,” I say, looking at my plate. “I think Lisa spit in my food.”

She looks at me like I’m crazy but, something catches her attention behind me and her face drains of color. I turn to look, my stomach dropping onto my feet the second I do. Declan’s fiancé, Jessica breezes in, talking loudly on her cell, knock-off Coach bag swinging from the crook of her arm.

“I wish you would’ve told me about you and Dec before I agreed to be one of her bridesmaids.” I turn in my seat to find Tess staring at the TV screen directly above Declan’s head. “I would’ve said no. I might’ve even spit on her.”

My words draw her attention and she smiles like nothing wrong. “Are you kidding? If you’re not there, who will give me the down and dirty on how much of a train wreck it turns out to be?”

“You know the only reason she asked me is because I’m a blonde and can pull of the dress, right?”

“That’s not why she asked you.” Tess shakes her head. “She asked you because you’re my friend,” she says, getting ready to scoot her chair away from the table. “I have to use the—”

I reach across the table and close a hand around Tess’ wrist. “You have every right to be here,” I say, stealing a quick glance over my shoulder. Declan and Jessica are arguing and Patrick is looking at us. He pissed and for once in recent history, it isn’t at me. Before I can blink he’s out of his seat, tossing back his shot before snagging the bar towel out of Declan’s hand. Whatever he’s saying, it looks like Jessica is temporarily mollified.

I turn back to Tess and smile. “See? Everything’s—”

“Christ,” Tess mutters under her breath, eyes locked on something over my shoulder. “Fuck my life.”

Before I can turn in my seat and see for myself, a shadow falls across our table and I look up to find Jessica standing over us. “Cari,” she says, a plastic smile fixed to her face. “I’m so glad I caught you—we’re having a little girl’s day next weekend. Declan’s ordered a limo to pick up all my bridesmaids and take us to Anton’s for dress fittings.”

Just then, Lisa pushes in, a basket of hot wings in each hand. “I’m sorry it took so long, the fryer is acting up,” she says, wedging the baskets between the condiment caddy and the napkin holder. “Is there something wrong with your burger?” She looks at me, seemingly confused.

Uhh, I’m pretty sure you poisoned it.

I shake my head, forcing a smile. “Nope.”

As soon as Lisa is gone, I look up and catch Jessica looking at the food spread across the table, nose scrunched in disgust. “I ordered you a size six,” she says, shifting her gaze to take in my baggy sundress. I fight a smile because I know it’s impossible for to her to get a read on my current weight. “I hope that’s going to work for you.”

I reach over and snag one of Tess onion rings and stuff it into my mouth. “Should be fine,” I say around the food in my mouth, being gross on purpose. “And if not, that’s what fittings are for, amiright?”

Unamused, Jessica fakes a laugh before turning her attention to the real reason she came over here. “Hello, Tess,” she says, looking at the grease stains on Tess’ hands. “On your lunch break?”

“Yup,” Tess answers, fishing in the basket of wings for a drumstick. Finding one, she pulls it out and starts to chew.

Finding her opening, Jessica goes in for the kill. “I don’t know how’d I’d manage a job and planning a wedding.” The plastic smile turns nasty. “I’m so lucky to have someone like Declan to take care of me.”

I feel my fingers curling inward, hooking themselves into claws but before I can launch myself at Jessica and show her what she can do with her size six, Declan appears, closing his hand around his fiancé’s elbow. “Let’s go,” he says, pulling her away from the table. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch.” He’s looking at me but he’s talking to Tess, I can tell. Tess doesn’t even look at him.

“Don’t forget, next Saturday.” Jessica says, pulling out of Declan’s grasp to loop her arm through his. “It’s going to be so much fun.”

Declan looks like he’s going to be sick but he manages to turn her around and pilot Jessica toward the exist, but before he passes through the door he looks back at our table and I see it etched plainly on his face.

Regret.

 

 

 

Twenty-six

 

Patrick

 

As soon as Declan leaves, I stop drinking. I’m going to have enough trouble getting through the next couple of hours without adding booze on top of everything else I’m feeling. I scoop some ice into a pint and added club soda and lime. If I don’t sober up soon, I’ll make some coffee.

Cari and Tess are still here, both of them leaning into the table, talking quietly. Tess looks a bit shaken—a confrontation with Jessica could do that to anyone—but she’s recovering quickly. Just in case, I called Conner.

“Gilroy’s Garage,” he barks into the phone, music blaring in the background.

“Hey—it’s Patrick,” I say, keeping my voice low. “How slammed are you?”

He laughs like it’s a stupid question. “At the rate I’m going, I’ll get caught up by Christmas. And that’s if Tess gets her ass back here and finishes the tranny rebuild and two oil changes she started yesterday.”

I watch Lisa saunter over to their table and rip their check off her pad, talking while she slides it onto the table. I’m not sure I want to know what’s coming out of her mouth. “Any chance you can give Tess the afternoon off?”

Conner sighs into the phone and I hear a sharp metal clang like he’d just slammed a socket wrench into the heavy metal table he uses for rebuilds. “What did that cocksucking brother of mine do this time?”

I tell him about Jessica coming in and stirring everyone up before dragging Declan out by his balls. “He left you alone?” Conner says, angrily.

“I’m not a fucking idiot, Con—I know how to use the bottle opener and make change,” I say, an unrecognizable edge sneaking into my tone. “I didn’t call about me, I called about Tess.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a pussy-whipped, dumb-ass, piece of fucking …” he mutters under his breath before letting the insult trail off. “How is she?” he says and I know he’s not asking about this brother’s fiancé.

You know Tess,” I say, hitting the volume button on the TV above the bar, trying to drown out the sound of my voice. “She looks fine, but …”

“Yeah.” Another sigh, followed by another clang. “Fuck it. Let me call her, tell her I’m closing up early to help you with the bar. Give her the night off.”

“Alright, man—thanks,” I say, quickly, watching Cari carry her check up to the bar. I hang up right before she stops in front of me. “Need something?” I say, wiping the bar down in front of her even though it was spotless.

She doesn’t say anything, just flashes her check before holding it out for me to take. As soon as I take it she reaches into her purse for her wallet.

“Something wrong with your food,” I say, keying in the total while behind her, Tess’s phone goes off. She answers it, looking momentarily confused before the expression gives way to one caught between gratitude and annoyance.

“I’m pretty sure your girlfriend spit in it,” Cari says, fishing her debit card from her wallet.

I started to say Lisa wouldn’t do something like that but then I remember what Declan said about her. That’s she as crazy. Instead of defending her, I take the card out of Cari’s hand and run it for half the amount. Behind her, Tess finishes her conversation and gets up, heading for the door. She leaves without saying goodbye and I don’t try to stop her. She knows I called Conner and she’s pissed. A few seconds later, I watch her pass by the window, on her way back to the garage. She flips me the bird as she passes by.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say ripping off her receipt before slapping it and a pen onto the bar between us. I meet her gaze, my hand still settled on top of her receipt, not letting her take it just yet.

She narrows her eyes at me for a second, an angry flush crawling across her chest. The birthmark on her chest is darker than I’ve ever seen it. The deep wine color can only mean one thing. Cari’s pissed. Between having my fingers inside her, her taste in my mouth and watching her finger fuck herself, my cock’s been hard all day. Knowing she’s angry at me pushes me across the line.

“Thanks for coming,” I say, giving the last word some weight, just to see how far I can push her. I think it might be my new favorite thing. Seeing how far I can push her.

Cari goes a little pale, the blood rushing from her head to her chest. She opens her mouth but before she can say a word, the side door closest to the bar—the one that requires a key—opens, letting Conner in. And he has someone in tow.

Seeing us in what looks like the start of pretty good row, Conner jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “This guy’s looking for you, Legs,” he says, stepping out of the way so the guy behind him can step up.

“I’ve got a delivery for Cari Faraday,” he says, reading the name off the clipboard in his hand. “That you?”

“Yes,” Cari says, regaining a semblance of composure. She blots her hands on the skirt of her dress before reaching for the package. It’s large, two feet by three, thin with hard angles, poking through its plain brown paper wrapping. The delivery guy hands it over and she sets it on a barstool, leaning it against the bar.

“Don’t keep me guessing, Legs,” Conner says, rounding the bar, pulling on an apron while he walked. “Open it.”

She blushes, her birthmark glowing bright red, gaze darting between the two of us like she’s trying to figure out which one of us is playing a trick on her. Finally, her curiosity gets the better of her and she reaches out, ripping the paper away from the package.

“Oh…” The words flows out on a sigh, soft and feathery, filled with reverent disbelief. Her hand flies to her mouth, fingers trembling just a bit against a mouth that slowly spreads into a smile. I want to vault over the bar to get a look at what it is but I plant my feet firmly and wait for Conner to do his job.

“Come on,” he says, giving her an impatient gesture. “Let’s see it.”

She lifts the package and turns it, smiling and still a little breathless. When I see what it is, it’s like a fist slamming into my gut.

It’s that painting. The one she went nuts over when it was on exhibit at the museum a few years ago. She must’ve dragged me there a dozen times to stare at it. The artist is local... I finally make the connection. It’s from that guy I met yesterday at the gallery. Everett Chase. Early thirties. Successful. Wealthy. Just her type.

Knowing that, I feel the fist in my gut start to twist at my insides. Tucked into the corner of the frame is a small white envelope with her name printed across the front in small, neat letters.

She plucks it from the frame and lifts the flap to pull the card free. I watch her big blue eyes scan the card, her cheeks so flushed, I immediately look at the spot below her collarbone. It’s as red as an apple.

Someone clears their throat and we all look up to see the delivery guy still standing by the door, clipboard in hand. “I’m supposed to deliver your answer.”

Cari looks down at the card, re-reading the note before bouncing a quick look up at me. Our eyes connect and hold for a few moments before she looks away, tucking the card back in its envelope. Picking up the painting, she turns, reaching out for the clipboard to sign for the delivery. “Tell him I said yes,” she says, handing back the clipboard before heading upstairs without a backward glance.