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SADIE

“With the crystals?” Lucy asks. Ann quietly slurps down her shake while taking in the ambience of an In-N-Out at two in the afternoon.

“He says, ‘Why don’t we try panning for gold?’ Like old prospectors.” I’m damn near buzzing with excitement to tell them my date.

“Isn’t that what kids do?” Ann pipes up, her face taking on a particular hue of green.

“Shh. Keep going,” Lucy insists, on the edge of her seat.

“I’m dredging the pan, giving it a shake, finding nothing but rocks. He’s beside me, doing the same. When he’s focused on something he gets this like little v at the top of his nose. I want to kiss it, but most of the time he makes it while he’s um…ya know.”

“Pestling your mortar?” Lucy asks, and I blush. Did people hear that? I start to sink down when my back brushes against the chair. Wincing, I nearly yelp as pain and rapid itching tears across my skin.

No matter what I do, I can’t seem to shake these hives.

I’ve washed all my clothes and sheets, changed my soap like fives times.

I can’t trust lotion anymore and have taken to using nothing but Vasoline.

They’ll start to fade, then boom, another set somewhere else.

If I didn’t have a man worshiping my body damn near every night, I’d be very annoyed at it right now.

Adjusting myself so I don’t go rabid wolverine on my hives, I smile.

“Anyway. I playfully splash him, he does the same back to me. Soon we’re slapping water at each other until he smacks a wave at me.

Drenched, I turn away to dry off. Which is when the park ranger tells us to cut it with the monkey business. ”

“Riveting,” Ann says.

“Trying to be good, we go back to panning, but when I pull mine out of the water I catch a glint of something shiny. Gold and purple gleaming from below the sand. Ecstatic, I start to wash it off, certain I found something…” I pause for dramatic effect.

My dramatic effect lasts two seconds, because I can’t help myself. “It was this!”

Triumphantly, I point to the teardrop amethyst pendant dangling off a gold chain on my neck.

“He hid it in my pan so I’d find it. Isn’t that so cute?

” I catch the hanging purple gem and turn it to the light.

I’ve worn it every day since he put it on.

Some of that was waiting for someone to ask me where I got it.

“Yes,” Ann says while scratching her cheek. “He’s the perfect boyfriend.”

“Uh…” My mind jumps the tracks and Ann sits up, at last interested.

“Are you not dating?”

“We are. I mean, he’s…grinding my rosemary every night, if you get my meaning.”

Ann and Lucy both glance to each other. Lucy rests her hand on the table reaching for mine. “Sounds like a fuck buddy situation to me.”

“I’ve been to his house,” I assure her.

“Seen his cat?”

“No.” I frown. It’s like Astin’s a ghost. If not for all of the pictures Aubry has of his cat in the same kitchen he’s fucked me in I’d think he was lying. Who lies about having a cat? “But I’m sure I’ll see him in time.”

“Uh huh.” Ann’s damn near gleaming, her eyes bright as she sits back in her chair like a queen. “So what’s he like?”

“Quiet, more so in public. He can open up on occasion. He has some wild tales about the Philippines. Doesn’t talk as much about Vegas, but maybe he’s not allowed to.

Everyone’s got to sign NDAs these days. Oh, and he’s got a soccer player’s thighs and ass.

I could watch him walk around in his tight shorts all day long…

” The restaurant goes eerily quiet just as I start talking about Aubry’s posterior.

I swallow all the things I want to do to it.

“But, sweet. And talented at so many things.”

“He was a bouncer, right? A bouncer that carries epipens to bars?” The way Lucy says that careens through my brain like a wild wrench.

I’d never really stopped to think why Aubry had that epipen with him that night. I supposed I’m used to always having two on me, so someone else doing it didn’t cross my mind. But why did he?

“I guess he’s just thoughtful like that.” I put on a smile, refusing to let any rainclouds dampen my mood.

“Okay, okay. We’ve heard all this a hundred times. Your sweet, gigantic, rich bouncer. What I want to know is what he’s like in bed.”

As thrilling and terrifying as riding the crest of a wave. As soft and gentle as a kitten’s belly fur. As willful and inevitable as a volcano. As talented as a trapeze artist with a double-jointed tongue.

“Hot,” tumbles from me. “He’s hot. So…damn hot.”

Ann rolls her eyes, but Lucy cuts in. “What’s he taste like?”

“It’s funny you say that, but there’s like this tingling I get sometimes when we kiss. I can’t explain it. Like pop rocks bouncing off my tongue.”

“Not that. I mean when you…” She jerks her head to the floor. “Ya know, scale down that mountain.”

“When I…? Oh. Oh!” I gasp as the innuendo hits, then I frown. “I…don’t know.”

“You’ve never sucked him off?” Ann asks.

“No, I have. At least, I start to. But then he always wants to do something else.” He always finishes in the condom or across my skin. Never once in my mouth. “Usually so I come thirty times.”

I’m trying to laugh at that little missing piece in our varied sex life, but Ann and Lucy are staring at each other like they solved a mystery. “What?”

Swirling her shake around, Ann stares at me, gives her straw a pump, and says, “Now we know why you’re not his girlfriend.”

No. That’s not it. We just haven’t had that talk. The one when you have be vulnerable and pin all your hopes and dreams on someone else liking you as much as you do them. If all he needed to do was blow a load in my mouth then I’d have had a dozen boyfriends by now.

Lucy shrugs. “How many times has he eaten you out,” she says.

Damn it. They’re right.

I open my phone to check the time out of habit, and read Aubry’s last text begging me to come to his place. “We’re meeting up tonight,” I tell them and reach for a fry. Jabbing it knuckle deep into the ketchup, I declare, “So I’ll tell you what he tastes like tomorrow.”

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AUbrY

She barely turns off her engine before I throw open the door and rush into the fading light.

“Hi.” Sadie sticks her legs out of the car, then turns back to grab something on the front seat. “Sorry I’m late. Am I late?”

I reach her just as she spins back around, bottle in hand. “I brought wine.”

Without saying a word, I bend down and scoop her up into my arms. She gives a surprised “Whoa,” but settles almost instantly. One hand holding wine, the other her purse, she strains up to kiss me.

I have not been a nervous wreck since Cuke’s visit. There were no floorboards worn down in a circle, or knives sharpened as I watched the surveillance cameras. That would be a sign of paranoia for a man who wasn’t trying to hide from the mob.

But as the weight of her body solidifies in my arms, my pounding heart skips a new beat. I don’t kiss her.

I take her.

Heat, lips, taste, tongue—it’s damn near as close to fucking on the pavement without taking any clothes off as I can get.

She trembles in my arms and reaches up to hold my cheek. The chill of glass brushes over my jaw and I lean back before she accidentally beans me with the wine bottle.

Drifting and dreamy, Sadie’s eyes flutter open and she gazes at me. “Hi.”

“Hello,” I say at last and turn for the house.

In the foyer where I could easily carry her up to one of six bedrooms via the winding staircase, I pause. That can wait. For now…I have business to attend to.

But as I tip her legs to the floor, I let my palm sweep up her thighs and over her ass before resting on the small of her back. Her cheeks flush and she keeps shifting. Does she want to leap on me? Crush me between her thighs and pin me down right here with the front door wide open?

I close it before she can get any wild ideas, then take her bag.

“What’s all this?” I ask as I realize it’s full of groceries.

“I’m going to make you dinner,” Sadie declares. “Like I should have on our first date.”

I juggle the bag, trying to get a sense of what she has planned. My senses ping, already on high alert, and I stare up at her watching me.

“It…was it a date? I mean, it didn’t have to be. It could have been a friendly meeting. A really friendly meeting. Without pants. For like ninety percent of it. That kind of meeting might have kept me in a corporate job. Oh, I’m babbling.”

Snickering, I drape my arm over her shoulders, rest the shopping bag at my side, and walk her to the kitchen. “We can call it a date, if you’d like.”

“Okay. Good. What would you call it?”

I hadn’t put any thought into that first time. A night of hot fucking had been the plan. Then, after a slight detour, I was to vanish. What does it even matter? A date here, a night out there. It’s all the same in the end.

Damn near kissing her ear, I whisper, “A fucking good time.”

“Ha ha.” She blushes all the way down her deep cut neckline. I trace the rush of red with my eyes and clench my hands around the shopping bag so they don’t follow.

Being professional is fucking impossible around her.

As a distraction, I start to unload the groceries. Sadie sidles in beside me, tapping a finger to her lips. “But if, say, someone were to see you and ask, ‘Hey, who is that?’ What should I say?”

“Aubry Gene,” I tell her slowly.

“I know, I know. But…”

What is she getting at?

She doesn’t know, does she?

What if Cuke or the other Squash told her? What if the Peppers have already found her?

“What would you tell them?” I ask, eyeing up the exits without thinking. Is she sweating? What does she know?

“I’d say…” Sadie twists her fingers together.

I stop staring at her cleavage and focus on her neckline. That dress is so tight there’s no way it could hide a wire. Unless the mike is between her tits.

She won’t meet my eyes and stares at the ceiling.

If they got to her, then they could be outside right now. Watching. Where? I itch to swing out the security cameras.