S-E-X.
That’s what it all boils down to, really.
The whole world is built on one, single, animalistic need. Our quest to look better, work out harder, become richer, and to chase things we don’t even need—a better car, more defined obliques, a promotion, a new haircut, whatever bullshit they try to sell us on ads.
All. Because. Of. Sex.
Every time a woman buys a perfume or a beauty product or a fucking dress.
Every time a man enslaves himself to ridiculous payments on a sports car that’s not half as fucking comfortable as the spacious Korean car he had a week ago and injects steroids in the locker room at a stuffy gym…They. Do. It. To. Get. Laid.
Even if they don’t know that. Even if they don’t agree with that. You bought that blouse and that Jeep and that new nose to become more fuckable. Science, baby. You don’t argue with that shit.
Same goes for art. Some of my favorite songs were about sex before I even knew I could do something with my dick that didn’t involve pissing my name in snow.
“Summer of ’69”? – Bryan Adams was nine. He’d clearly been singing about his favorite sexual position. “I Just Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew? – Talks about orgasms. “Ticket to Ride” by the Beatles? – Prostitutes. “Come On Eileen”? That cheery fucking song everyone dances to at weddings? Sexual coercion.
Sex was everywhere. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s fucking magnificent. I couldn’t get enough of it. I was good at it, too. Did I say good? Scratch that. Amazing. That’s the word I was going for. For practice makes perfect.
And God knows I’ve had a lot of practice.
Which reminded me—I needed to order another box of condoms. I had them specially made by a company called SayItWithaRubber. I didn’t just design the foil to have my name on it—hey, some chicks wanted to keep that as a souvenir, who was I to deny them?—and pick the colors (I liked red and purple. Yellow made my balls look a little pale. Not a good color for me…), but I was also picky about the type of rubber, thinness—0.0015mm, if you must know—and the sensitivity level.
“Morning, you,” one of the girls croaked, rising from her sleep. She pressed a fluttery kiss to the back of my neck. It always took me a few seconds to remember whom I spent the night with, but this morning was even worse, because I’d spent yesterday drinking like my mission was to liquefy my liver into rum.
“Did you sleep well?” the second chick droned.
My body was tilted to the side, toward the nightstand, as I scrolled down a long-ass text message written by my friend and business partner, Vicious. Most people wrote curt text messages to get their point across. This intense bastard made Siri his bitch and sent me the whole fucking Bible. Waking up to a message from him was the equivalent of waking up to a blowjob from a shark. And this was what he wrote:
Dear Dickbag,
My fiancée brought it to my attention that her headache of a sister might be late to the rehearsal dinner next Saturday because she’s trying to save a few bucks taking two connecting flights to make it to Todos Santos.
She is Em’s maid of honor, hence her attendance is not fucking optional. It is mandatory, and if I have to drag her by the hair, I will, but I’d rather not. You know how I feel about this place. New York is hard on the body. Los Angeles is hard on the soul.
I have no soul.
I’m asking you as a friend to knock on Rosie’s door and shove a new ticket into her hand. Have Sue book her a first-class ticket next to you and make sure she gets on that plane with you on Friday. Chain her to the goddamn seat if you must.
This is the part where you’re probably asking yourself why the fuck would you do me any favors. Consider this a favor to Millie, not me.
She’s stressed.
She’s worried.
And she doesn’t deserve this type of shit.
If Em’s baby sister thinks she can do whatever the fuck she wants, she’s wrong.
Make her realize how wrong she is, because every day she plays the dutiful, frugal saint, my future wife is getting hurt.
And we all know how I react when something of mine is being damaged.
Peace, motherfucker.
-V.
Not exactly purple prose, but that was Baron Spencer for you.
I stretched, feeling a hot body climbing on top of me, fighting the lake of navy blue, seamless, silk sheets between us. There were heaps of rich fabric, hot flesh, and soft curves all around me. The sun poured in from my floor-to-ceiling window, shining over my one-thousand-square-foot balcony, a sea of freshly cut grass bleeding into the Manhattan skyline. Rays of warmth licked at my skin. A wet bar called for me to fix myself a Bloody Mary. And plush, gray and navy loveseats begged me to take the girls on a ride against them for all of New fucking York to see and hear.
In short: this morning was awesome.
Vicious, however, was not awesome.
Therefore, I allowed myself to bathe in the comfort of these women—Natasha and Kennedy—and do what God, or nature, or both, wanted me to do—fuck them hard. Because civilization and seed spreading and shit.
As Kennedy—the lovely redhead, my memory reminded me—peppered kisses down my neck, making her way to my morning wood, and Natasha—the racy, fun-sized yoga instructor—kissed my mouth ravenously, I processed the new information through the pounding hammers of a well-deserved hangover.
So, Millie LeBlanc was stressed about her dinner rehearsal. No surprises there. She was always this goody-two-shoes girl who wanted everything to be perfect and worked hard to make it that way. A stark contrast to the man she was marrying, who took it upon himself to tarnish as many lives as he could using his dry wit and appalling behavior.
She was the sweetest person I knew—not necessarily a good thing, by the way—and he was by far the nastiest.
I guess I was supposed to think about the ‘what if?’ because Millie used to be my girlfriend. Because the human brain is designed to fill in the gaps, and I was twenty-nine, and Millie was my only serious girlfriend, so people might assume it was some big, lost love.
The truth, as always, was both disappointing and unflattering.
Millie was never a big love. I liked her, but it wasn’t fierce or deprived or insane. I cared for her and wanted to protect her, but never in a way that drove me out of my fucking mind, like it did to Vicious.
The fact that I still liked her after she bailed out on me and fucked off leaving a half-assed breakup letter just goes to show we weren’t really meant to be. Because the truth was, I was enamored with Emilia LeBlanc…until I wasn’t.
Sometimes I think I just loved the idea of her, or never loved her at all. Either way, one thing couldn’t be disputed—when I was with her, I was good to her. Loyal. Respectful. She, in return, fucked me over.
To this day, I don’t feel like I truly knew my only ex-girlfriend. I knew her traits, sure. The crap that would make it onto your dating website profile. Dry facts. She was artistic, shy, and well-mannered. But I had no idea what her fears and secrets were. What kept her up at night, what made her blood simmer and her body sizzle.
The other part of my ugly truth was I never felt like I wanted to know these things about anyone other than Rosie LeBlanc. But Rosie fucking hated me. So, I stayed single. She was going to change her mind. She had to.
Speaking of Rosie, she didn’t take money from Vicious and Millie unless it was out of necessity. That was common knowledge, and she made that point a year ago by furnishing my two-point-three-million-dollar New York condo she had been living in with Craigslist discards that cost less than two hundred bucks in total. I doubted I could change her mind, but when it came to her, I was always up for trying to.
So, anyway. Back to the important stuff—fucking.
It was when Kennedy took me in her mouth, exhibiting some serious deep-throat talent, that I heard a knock on my door. No one was allowed into the building without a code, and no one had asked me for one recently, which brought me to the simple conclusion it must be Miss LeBlanc herself.
“Dean!” Her raspy voice crawled from the outside hall into every tissue in my body and I immediately grew harder. Kennedy noticed, I’m sure, because her grasp on my dick loosened, then I felt her breathing hard against my thigh. Natasha stopped the tongue-action. They both froze. Three more knocks. “Open up.”
“Is that the weird girl again?” the latter inquired with a hybrid of a scowl and a pout.
“Sure fucking is.”
“She’s freaking me out.”
“Such a weirdo,” Natasha agreed. Like their opinion mattered. To me. To Rosie.
I rose to a sitting position and tucked myself into my black sweatpants. I didn’t mourn the unfulfilled fuck. I was more eager to catch a glimpse of that tiny thing, wondering what she came here for. I got up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, my hands sliding up to purposely mess my hair. “This was fun.” I kissed both the backs of their hands before I started stalking to the entrance door with purpose. “We should do it again sometime.”
We weren’t going to do it sometime. Or anytime. This was goodbye, and they both knew it. I was clear when I picked them up the night before at some Manhattan bar I went to. They were inhaling cocaine like it was powdered sugar, maybe a grand’s worth of it, on a table in a glitzy place I went to whenever I needed to make use of those custom-made condoms. I sat at the bar, exchanged some flirty looks with them, then signaled the bartender to send the girls some drinks. They invited me to come over and do some shots with them. I invited them to sit on my face. One drink turned into seven. This script was getting old.
“Whoa, you’re such a piece-of-work.” Kennedy was the first to get up from the bed. I twisted my head to watch her collect her dress from the floor, yanking it up like it wronged her somehow.
Really? I thought. Before I hailed a taxi to take us to my place, I laid it out for them, clear as the fucking August sky: this was a random hookup. Christ, what part of picking them up from a bar and using Two Girls, One Cup as a small-talk topic made them think there would be more?
I offered the girls a consolation wink before swaggering my way into the vast, champagne-lit hallway, cream marble flooring, and black and white family portraits glaring at me from every corner with huge, white-toothed smiles.
“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Asshole? We were kind of in the middle of something!” Natasha added in a high-pitched voice. I was already in the foyer, swinging the door open, drawn like a magnet to the source of my entire fucking libido. Baby LeBlanc. That little, beautiful, crazy, pixie.
Rosie wore a pair of untorn jeans and a basic white button-down shirt, her version of a tailored suit. A high, messy bun sat on top of her head, and her huge eyes told me she was not impressed. I leaned my shoulder against the door, grinning.
“Changed your mind about brunch?”
“Well, you blackmailed me into it with your reevaluation threat.” Her eyes strayed from my face to my abs for a second before lifting back up to narrow at me.
Shit, I did. My memory of last night was fogged by alcohol, weed, and pussy.
“Come in.” I stepped sideways. She turned her head in my direction as she stepped in.
“Thought you’d at least make some coffee before you tear me another asshole with the rent. So much for being neighborly,” she muttered, drinking in my apartment through wide eyes.
I folded my arms over my chest, aware of my cut figure, and swiped my tongue over my bottom lip.
“You want neighborly? I can buy you breakfast at the bakery downstairs and give you a few orgasms for dessert,” I said, adding, “And I can tear you another asshole in bed if you prefer.”
“You need to stop hitting on me.” Her voice was painfully flat as she walked past the massive white and gray island in the middle of my kitchen, stainless steel winking at us with a sparkle from every corner of the room. She plopped onto a stool and glared at my empty coffeepot by the sink as if it committed a hate crime.
“Why?” I taunted, turning the coffee machine on. Why did I have to stop hitting on Rosie LeBlanc? She was single now, after she dumped her boring, doctor boyfriend. She was fair game, and I was going to try to play with her until she had third-degree carpet burns all over her back.
In fact, that was the first thing I thought about when I saw the sorry-ass motherfucker moving his shit from her apartment. From my apartment.
I’m going to fuck your ex-girlfriend before the tears on her pillow dry, I thought. And she is going to love it so much she’ll be crawling back for more.
Meanwhile, in real life, Rosie greedily accepted the mug of steamy coffee I silently offered her, taking a sip. She closed her eyes and moaned. Yes, moaned. Fuck, I wanted this sound to be my new ringtone. Then she opened her eyes and poured ice-cold water all over my fantasy.
“Because you’ve already dipped your sausage in my family gravy, and even though I know it’s a secret recipe everyone wants more of, I’m afraid you’re all out of luck.”
“I love it when you talk culinary sex with me.” I took a step toward the island, placing my forearms on it with a heated gaze.
“Maybe it’s because we’re Coca-Cola, and you always settle for Shasta.” Her eyes wandered to the direction of my bedroom.
Every muscle in my torso tightened as I let out a genuine laugh. My noticeable V-taper, veiny arms, tight abs, and prominent pecs didn’t escape her, and her newly peach-colored cheeks admitted that, even if she never would.
“I want you,” I said simply, unapologetically—vulnerably, even—because I did.
“As you did my sister.” Baby LeBlanc gave a curt nod. “Are you planning on screwing your way through our family tree? Should I print out a copy of our ancestry.com profile?”
“Please, when you get the chance.” I served her some sass back. “Though I have a feeling you can keep me busy just fine.”
“You’re too stubborn,” she coughed, as she did every other minute, taking another long sip of her cup of Joe.
“Yeah. Not lacking in that department. Or any department, for that matter.” My smirk widened as my eyes slid down to my groin. We were engaging in a battle of will. That was fine. I was bound to win. I always got what I wanted. And what I wanted was sitting in front of me, waiting for my verdict about her rent.
Kennedy and Natasha appeared from the hallway. They were roommates, so I wasn’t surprised when the latter told her friend the Uber they called would be downstairs in three minutes. Sharing a cab was smart economy. They needed to watch their spending after snorting their rent’s worth in coke. Good for them.
“Bye, girls.” I waved.
“Bye, asshole.” Kennedy hurled her heeled shoe at me with an arm swing that made the quarterback in me want to whistle in admiration. I dodged it, ducking my head down fast. The red heel flew across the kitchen, passing next to Rosie’s shoulder and crashing against the fridge.
It made a dent. At least she had that going for her. No woman had managed to do that before.
Rosie took a tentative sip of her coffee, reeking of indifference. “Hmm,” she said. “This tastes good.”
She didn’t mean the coffee. She meant watching the side effects of me being a manslut. But she did that little moan thing. Again.
This is so on, Rosie LeBlanc, I thought. I’m going to drag you by the hair to the dark side, and you have no fucking clue.
“Let’s cut to the chase, sweetheart. You’re flying with me to Todos Santos on Friday.” I fished the scoop of the whey protein from its container, mixing up the powder with fat-free milk. You don’t get to look like me from scarfing junk food all day. I made things happen. No matter the price. At the gym, at work, at being a sweet, perfect son. Everything was calculated and earned the hard way. No shortcuts for me. It’s been like this from a young age, but I didn’t know anything different. To them—to Rosie, her sister, my friends—I was this lucky asshole who was born with a silver spoon shoved so fucking deep in his mouth, he never had to lift a finger and work. I let them think that. No harm in being underestimated.
I heard Rosie shuffling on the high stool by the island and knew she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. For a sick girl, she was feisty as fuck.
“Millie has already asked me. The price difference is two hundred bucks for a ticket. It’s just the rehearsal, dude. It’s not like I’ll miss the actual wedding.”
The actual wedding was on Sunday, but most attendees—Jaime, Trent, and me included—were flying into Todos Santos on Friday, staying a full week and a half and cramming a rehearsal dinner, a bachelor/bachelorette party, and the wedding into one, out-of-control escapade. We were a tight-knit group. Abnormally so. Whenever we could spend a good chunk of time together, we jumped on the opportunity. Rosie was strapped for cash by choice. Her sister was marrying one of the richest men in America. I appreciated how Baby LeBlanc wasn’t the type of girl to leech on someone else’s purse—she did get the nearly free apartment and amenities, and also got her meds paid for—but she worked hard for everything else. And made the time to change dirty diapers and greet guests at a children’s hospital a few times a week. She was a keeper, but I didn’t need a reminder of that.
“You’re the maid of honor.” I turned to face her, leaning a hip against the counter. Her eyes were fixed on my bulging bicep as I shook my drink. It moved back and forth like a tennis ball. She licked her lips, shaking her head, probably to get rid of the mental image of me slapping her ass with the same muscular arm.
“I understand the gravity of the role, and I’m perfectly capable of walking in a straight line in uncomfortable shoes for two minutes while holding her dress. You do realize that’s the only thing my part entails, right?”
“What about a bachelorette party?” I rubbed my naked abs to try to make her moan or lick her lips again, tossing back my head and taking a gulp of the cookie and caramel drink that tasted nothing like cookies or caramel and everything like rotten ass.
“What about it?” She challenged, her gaze hard on my face.
“Who is planning Millie’s? Shouldn’t that be the maid of honor’s role, too?”
“It’s under control, and it’s going to be epic. Why? Are you planning Vicious’s party?” she asked, surprised. She angled her body forward, her small, perky tits squeezing together inside her bra. I grunted, feeling my cock swelling inside my low-riding sweatpants.
From the outside, it looked like Vicious and I had a shit-ton of issues. Truth was, our friendship was strong. It was different from the normal brotherhood the rest of the guys had, but it was solid.
“I am. Jaime is helping, too. We’re doing a weekend in Vegas.”
“Classy.” Her smile was condescending.
“Well, we considered not giving a fuck and bailing on our friend’s rehearsal dinner, but then you came and stole our idea. What crawled up your little perky ass, anyway? Are you jelly your older sister’s getting hitched?”
She spun in her seat, and when I saw her face, something tightened in my chest. Great going, jackass. Whatever I said affected her enough to drain the blood from her face.
“Shut up, Ruckus. I’m just wondering if what I have planned is fancy enough. I was going for a slumber party of some sort. With a special playlist and all.” Unsure flaky eyes asked for my opinion. It was unlike her. Rosie was usually burning with self-confidence, and it felt like shit to be the one who put her flame out.
“Slumber party, ah?” I walked past her just so I could brush my fingers against her waist. By accident, of course. “Millie is a low-key chick. Can’t see a reason why she wouldn’t dig it.”
“I’ll tell you why, because you’re doing Vegas. Now I need to up my game,” she complained, helping herself to a second cup of coffee without asking.
“You want to be a good sister? You can start by accepting the goddamn ticket I’m going to buy you.”
“The answer is no,” she drawled, sighing big. “Is English not your native tongue? Should I say no in another language? I don’t speak Asshole fluently, but I can try,” she grunted.
“Vicious is dead serious about this. He is going to come here and drag you himself. I’m the lesser of two evils, Baby LeBlanc. You’re coming with me,” I repeated. Not that any of them deserved any favors from me, but I was happy for Vicious and Millie. Even happier to spend a week with Baby LeBlanc. I’d been crushing hard on her creamy, round ass for years now. It was time for me to claim it.
Rosie looked away, folding her arms like a stubborn kid. “Nope.”
“Yup,” I said in the exact same tone. “And you better pack a fucking bag, because the flight leaves Friday morning, and we both have a busy week ahead of us.”
She blinked, not answering.
“Let’s cut a nice deal, shall we?” I got in her face, my elbows on the island. Her body followed suit, gravitating toward me. We were aligned, and she didn’t know it, but we looked like two, sculptured bodies. Made for each other. What she also didn’t know was that we were going to test my theory and see if we were going to match. Soon. Real fucking soon. “I’ll take you to the devil’s den, because you have to come.” I knew how impossible Vicious could be. “But I’m on call if you need anything. Think about it. It’s a good way to get to know each other.” I offered her a dimpled smile.
“I don’t want to get to know you. Everything I know about you, which is quite a bit, I don’t like,” Rosie said. “If we’re not going to talk about my rent, let me know, and I’ll leave.”
“Come to Todos Santos with me.” I ignored her last statement.
Fuck, she was so persistent. Why did that turn me on? Maybe because most women had the tendency to act different in front of me. They were agreeable, extra nice, and flirty. Three things you couldn’t blame Baby LeBlanc for being.
“Forget it,” she muttered, hopping down from the stool.
“Rosie,” I warned.
“Dean.” It was her turn to mimic me. She rolled her eyes. “Let me know what my new rent is before the end of the month, please. I need to make the necessary arrangements if I can’t keep the apartment.”
She walked to the door and slammed it in my face before I had the chance to tell her that her rent would stay the same if she came along.
That was fine, I had patience, as long as things went my way.
Baby LeBlanc was going to bow down to me eventually.
Her clock was ticking faster, and I was done letting her waste our time.