Page 34 of Not So Goode

“He makes your pussy wet, doesn’t he?”

I sputtered, “ALEXANDRA ROCHELLE GOODE!”

“He does, doesn’t he?” She leaned closer. “He makes you want to do things you didn’t know were a thing.”

“Stop.”

“Like climb up on that big hard body and make him forget his own fucking name.”

“ALEXANDRA,” I hissed. “Stop!”

I wriggled. Because the image of climbing on top of a man like Crow did indeed make certain portions of my anatomy, which I had thought were essentially atrophied at this point, get all gooey and shivery.

Lex was watching me intently, biting a thumbnail and grinning in the dark. “Ohhh, baby, you aregone.”

“Shut up.”

“Stop fighting it, Charlie. Just go with it. This is as safe an opportunity to go a little wild and get a little dirty without repercussions as you’re gonna get. Stop overthinking it and just go with the flow.” She tickled my ribs. “And if the flow lands you riding that man’s cock, then all the better. You’d be a hell of a lot less uptight if you got boinked.”

“Lexie, there’s so much wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to start.”

“Let me guess, in order, you take issue with the words ‘cock’ and ‘boink’?”

“Yes.”

She leaned close, whispering. “I bet he has a huge, veiny cock. Thick, and throbbing and hot and hard as a steel fucking spike. Eight inches and thick as my wrist, or I don’t know men.”

I closed my eyes, refusing to let her goad me into revealing my runaway imagination.

“I bet that stubble of his would be scratchy and soft against your thighs as he ate you out…”

“Shut the hell up, Alexandra!” I lurched upright, away from her. “What the hell iswrongwith you?”

My legs gave out as the world span crazily, and a big hard body pressed against me. A strong arm wrapped around my waist, holding me tight. “Got ya. Again.” That voice, like a lion’s feral snarl put into a human throat.

I put my feet under me, but he didn’t let go. “Hi.”

He stared down at me. “Gotta stop meeting like this, sweetness.”

I swallowed. Heat—so much heat. Radiating from him, and billowing inside me.

What was happening to my body? A chemical reaction to too much alcohol, I bet. That’s all.

He licked his lips, his eyes raking over my face. “Ever see a concert crowd from backstage?”

I shook my head. “N-no.” Now, why did I stutter? I must be sick. The alcohol has pickled my brain and turned me into a stuttering moron.

Woman up, idiot girl.

Be strong.

He kept his arm around my waist, and I honestly don’t think I could have walked at all, much less in a straight line. His hand was on my hip, or just above it, actually. Wildly intimate, but notexactlyinappropriate. He walked me toward where the guitars were, stacked in a line, waiting. On stage, Myles, in profile, had his guitar slung around behind his back and was on his knees at the edge of the stage, reaching out to touch hands of the people below. Singing, grinning. Shaking a hand, kissing another, tapping fists, from one side of the stage to the other. Back and forth, never missing a beat, a word.

I blinked against the brilliance and heat of the stage lights along the top, and then squinted through them and saw the crowd. It was one thing to be lost in a sea of humanity like that, but seeing it like this? Wow. Just…so many people. Too many to make out an individual face, except for the first few rows. How many? Ten thousand? Twenty? Thirty? Smaller than Coachella, which I went to with Cassie once, a couple years ago, at the end of college before I started at Denoyer and Whitcomb. But still massive, especially for what seemed to be a pretty lax and last-minute, barebones sort of thing. The focus was on the music, and providing enough infrastructure for the amount of people they hoped to bring in. No frills. It was…dizzying.

“How does he not get nervous?” I asked.

He laughed. “Hell if I know. He’s been performing on stage since he was a kid, though. His gramps was a honky-tonk legend in South Texas, and so was his dad, and my boy Myles there has been playing guitar and singing on stage since he was old enough to do either. Just in his blood, I guess.” He brought his hand from my hip to my shoulder—I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. “He gets nervous, though, but he just channels it into excitement. I just feel like I’m gonna puke whenever I go out there.”