by Golden Angel
"Be sure that you do." The order in her mother's brisk voice was clear. "It's rude to keep them waiting."
"I will, mother. Oh, oops, look at the time, I have to go, I'll talk to you later, bye." Sharon hung up the phone before her mom could respond and scrunched up her face, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Dammit.
She sighed and picked up her phone again, pulling up Brian's number and swiping to call. A feeling of guilt niggled at her, which was stupid. It wasn't like she and Jake were actually dating. They haven't even talked about being exclusive fuck buddies, despite his little show of jealousy over Kincaid last weekend. And she wasn't going to be doing anything romantic or sexual with Brian even if he was her date to her cousin's wedding.
Hell, her pleasure box could use a break. They were approaching 'too much of a good thing' territory.
Unfortunately, Brian’s phone sent her to voicemail.
“Hey Brian, it’s Sharon – give me a call back when you get the chance? I’ll be at Stronghold tonight too, so I’ll look for you there. Bye.”
She supposed she could have left a voicemail asking him to the wedding, but she wanted to give him a heads up on exactly what he’d be walking into if he said yes. She’d told him a little bit about her family while they were dating, but she hadn’t gone into detail because there hadn’t been any need. She knew he would say yes regardless because he was the kind of guy who would want to be there for her, but she’d feel better if she were able to fully warn him.
Sighing, she tossed her phone back down and tried not to feel guilty about calling Brian to be her date when she was planning on another hookup with Jake tonight.
Chapter 7
For the first time, Jake felt like being at Stronghold sucked.
There had been times when he felt a little like the odd man out, or when he’d overheard more than he wanted to know about Patrick and Lexie or had seen something that made him want to go running into the night (some of the Dommes did mean, mean things to men’s junk), but tonight was by far the worst. Most of his friends were here, Lexie was properly attired, and no one had said anything about her and Patrick to gross him out. So far, the dance floor was pretty tame, everyone seemed to be keeping the more interesting activities to the Dungeon or the upstairs rooms.
But being here with Sharon, but not with Sharon really freaking sucked. Way more than he'd expected it to.
He didn't want to keep his hands off her.
Tonight, she was wearing straight-up lingerie, a little red silk slip with black lace all around the deep-dipping neckline and the very short hem. And he was ninety-nine percent sure that was it. Which meant his eyes kept dropping to her cleavage and the points of her nipples which were clearly visible through the thin material.
Even seeing the look of amusement on Patrick's face when he caught Jake looking - again - wasn't enough to keep him from doing it. He wanted to pick her up and carry her off and fuck her silly.
She knew it too. The little looks and the way she tilted her cleavage towards him were deliberate. And distracting.
Normally Jake enjoyed hanging out at Stronghold with their friends, but right now he just wanted this part of the night over with.
"So, I think I'm going to follow Jessica's lead and just let you all choose your own dresses, as long as they're blue and floor length," Kate said. The conversation had been revolving around the two upcoming weddings; Jessica's to Chris and Justin (well, they were having a ceremony even if it wasn't technically a wedding) was just a couple months before Kate and Andrew's. Wow. There were going to be a lot of weddings this year.
"You two are both terrible at this Bridezilla thing," Maria said, laughing and shaking her head. "Maybe I should have one of my sisters come talk to you and show you how it's done." She squeaked a little as Rick pulled her in closer to his side, giving her a look. The two of them hadn't been at Stronghold much in the past few months. Around Christmas they’d revealed that they'd been going through a rough time of it when Maria had had a miscarriage when they hadn't even known she was pregnant. It looked like they were making up for lost time now, more enamored with each other than ever. Jake was happy for them.
Kate shrugged, grinning back at her. "Hey, it's not my fault that we all look good in different styles. I'd rather not have everyone shelling out a bunch of money for a dress they'll only wear one time."
"If you want matching dresses, you should have them," Sharon told her, frowning. "I'll pay for them. They'll be my gift to the bridesmaids."
"No," Kate said, pointing her finger at her maid-of-honor. "You are not paying for everyone's dresses. Stop trying to spend money on my wedding. It's not happening."
Jake shifted uncomfortably. He’d never had a lot of money to throw around, although his lack of expenses while he was overseas meant he had a healthy savings account. Fortunately, his parents hadn’t minded acting as his storage unit, saving him even more. He had money too, but the way Sharon flaunted hers bothered him... yet at the same time he couldn’t help but admire her for making her generosity and dedication to making her friends’ lives easier. His conflicting emotions were pretty much par for the course when it came to her.
Although she nodded, Jake could practically see the gears turning in Sharon’s head as her eyes flitted around to the other women standing around the table with them. Andrew and Kate had asked their entire group of friends to be part of the wedding party, just like Justin, Jessica, and Chris, and he was sure his sister and Patrick would as well. Seeing that look, he didn’t doubt for one second that Kate’s bridesmaids would all be in matching dresses and that none of them would pay for them.
Kate had obviously noticed the same thing. Her blue eyes narrowed as she leaned towards Sharon almost threateningly.
“Sharon.” Kate drawled Sharon’s name, her voice heavy with a warning that Sharon completely ignored.
“Oh hey! Good, Brian’s here,” Sharon said, as if Kate hadn’t spoken. She started to get up from her bar stool.
Huffing out a resigned sigh, Kate pointed a finger at her. “Okay, but as soon as you ask him to go to the wedding, you and I are going to have a talk about this.”
“Wait, go to what wedding?” Jake asked before he could think about it, more than a little taken aback. Was Sharon inviting her ex to Kate’s wedding? No, that couldn’t be right, that was way too far away. So was Justin, Chris, and Jessica’s.
And why the hell was Sharon inviting her ex to a wedding right in front of Jake?
“My cousin’s,” Sharon said with a sigh, shifting back and forth on her feet as she eyed him. Her expression was fairly blank, but he could see the warning in her eyes. If they didn’t want their friends to know anything was going on between them, he needed to let it go. Hell, he needed to have not said anything in the first place, because he could practically feel the change in all of them even though he was deliberately not looking at any of them. “It’s in a couple of weeks and I need a date.”
“So you’re inviting your ex?” Yeah, he was not doing a good job of keeping his cool, but he was finding it hard to care that everyone was now looking between him and Sharon with various degrees of confusion and speculation. They might not be in a relationship, but he still couldn’t help but feel a little insulted.
Okay, he could admit it, he felt a little possessive too. He didn’t like the idea of her taking her most recent ex to a family wedding. Why he felt that way... Well, he wasn't going to examine that too closely. They were having sex, after all. A lot of it. It made sense that he would feel a bit possessive.
“Why do you care?” Lexie asked, leaning forward to catch his eye. She was sitting on Patrick’s lap and his best friend was smirking from behind her.
“Yeah, why do you care?” Andrew chimed in from the other side of the table, crossing his arms over his chest.
Jake ignored both of them, looking directly at Sharon. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
The look she gave him was pure exasperation, her ans
wer laced with barely repressed annoyance. “Yeah, sure, why not.”
He purposefully didn’t look at anyone else as he moved around the table to follow Sharon; she’d turned on her heel and was stalking towards the staircase – or maybe the hallway to the gardens – where they could have a little privacy. Even before he’d fully stepped away all of their friends were leaning forward over the table, murmuring to each other, and he didn’t doubt he’d just blown his and Sharon’s cover to hell.
There were going to be a lot of questions.
He didn’t have the answers because he didn’t really know what he was doing. He didn’t know why he was so irked.
The only thing he did know was that if anyone was going with Sharon to her cousin’s wedding as her date, it was going to be him.
******
Mother fucking fuckwit! What the hell is Jake thinking?!
She didn't even need to look over her shoulder to know that their friends were all abuzz. Sharon wouldn't be surprised to see one of them running for the front desk to grab their phone and start updating everyone who hadn't made it out tonight. Especially since Angel had demanded that she be kept in the loop.
She wanted to bang her head against the wall.
Or bang Jake's head against the wall.
Maybe it was kind of rude to go and ask another man to a wedding right in front of the man she was currently fucking but come on. They'd agreed to keep things both casual and on the downlow!
Stomping into the back hallway, she whirled around, glaring up at him as she planted her hands on her hips. The hallway wasn't dark, but it wasn't exactly well-lit either, and he loomed over her, crossing his arms over his chest. At least he wasn't half-naked like most of the Doms in the club. Jake always wore regular clothes to Stronghold, as if to drive home the point that he wasn't a Dom.
Even if he acted kind of like one sometimes.
"What the hell was that?" she asked, glaring even harder. Since he wasn't a Dom, she didn't have to worry about her tone of voice or cursing at him. She jabbed her finger, pointing past him and back at their friends, even though she couldn't see them because of his broad shoulders. "Do you have any idea what they're all thinking right now?"
"I don't really care what they're thinking," he said tightly. Even though his eyes were somewhat shadowed with his head tilted down toward her, she could feel his gaze boring into her. Her body stirred with interest. Dammit. It was like he'd trained her pussy like a Pavlovian dog. One dark, intimate look and her whole body tingled. "I want to know what you're thinking. A wedding date with your ex? Why not ask me to go?"
"Seriously?" She rolled her eyes. "We were trying to keep our friends from butting in. How fast do you think they'd be on us if I'd invited you to my cousin's wedding? Hmm?" She tapped a finger against the side of her lips, tilting her head, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Probably about as quickly as they are since you've gone all Captain Caveman in front of them."
Other than a little growl at hearing his new nickname, Jake didn't react to it, which was kind of disappointing.
"You could have asked me as a friend."
"We haven't exactly ever been super friendly," she pointed out, thoroughly exasperated. Throwing her hands up in the air, she resisted the urge to smack some sense into him. Dom or not, there was no way he'd tolerate that. "What the hell do you want from me?"
"I want you to take me as your date and not your ex."
"Oh, so we're dating now?"
She asked the question sarcastically, but Jake's reaction was nothing like she expected. His shoulders softened slightly, his mouth opened and closed without answering, and she blinked as she realized...
"Wait, you want to date me?"
Shit, shit, back up! Danger, Will Robinson, danger! There is a disturbance in the Force!
Talk about a total rewind for her brain. Did Jake like her for more than her body? Shit... That was going to make the little mini-crush she had on him a lot harder to fight...
"We can't just start dating, our friends would never leave us alone," he said finally, although there was a note of uncertainty in his voice, like he wanted her to argue with him.
But he was right. Plus, who knew if his sudden desire for more than being fuck buddies was real or if he was just suffering from some kind of sex-logged moment of insanity. Maybe she'd literally fucked his brains out over the past couple weeks and this was the result. At least he wasn't so far gone as to be totally unaware of the consequences.
She sighed. "Okay, so what you're saying is that as long as we're fucking, you don't want us to date anyone else?"
Although he cringed slightly at her blunt language, his head nod was decisive. "Yes. Exactly. If we find someone else we want to date, we'll stop our arrangement, but until then we're exclusive. So, I'll go with you to your cousin's wedding, and you’ll have a date. When is it?"
"The weekend after next, so you don't need to worry that it will interfere with Lexie and Patrick's engagement party. And we're going to have to travel to the Eastern shore and stay with my parents for the weekend."
"Great. Then you're definitely not taking Brian."
"Great," she said dryly. "Now what are you planning on telling our friends about all of this?" Swirling her finger between them, she lifted her eyebrow in challenge. There was no way she was going to take responsibility for coming up with an explanation. This was all on him.
Plus, she was busy repressing the sudden giddy warmth that had bubbled up in her chest. Part of her really liked the idea of Jake coming to Melinda's wedding as her date. Dammit.
Getting attached was a bad idea.
Wasn't it?
Except that he seemed kind of attached too... Ugh. Whatever. Chances were, once he met her family he was going to run. That or he was going to agree with all of her parents' opinions about her and she was going to have a perfectly miserable time, which would kill any interest she had in him anyway.
Ah well, it had been too good to last.
"I'm just going to tell them that I don't think it's a good idea for you to go with an ex and so I offered my services instead," he said matter-of-factly, as if he actually thought that would fly. Without waiting for her response, he turned to make his way back to the bar table.
Well, this should be entertaining. Already smirking, Sharon followed him back in.
******
Crossing his arms over his chest, Jake glared at his group of friends and at the exasperating woman currently smirking at him from across the table. He'd expected to be in the hot seat, but he hadn't expected to be there alone. Plus, he'd thought his explanation sounded reasonable enough.
Sharon shouldn't have to ask her ex to be her date when she had a single and willing friend, right?
His question had been met with a level of extreme skepticism that was a little insulting. Especially on his sister's part. Although she just looked like she didn't believe him; Andrew had been scowling non-stop at Jake since he and Sharon had returned to the table. Everyone's reactions had been pretty interesting; Andrew's was the most extreme.
Rick and Maria appeared more amused than anything else, Kate was giving Sharon dirty looks but not to the same extent that Andrew was glaring at Jake, and Hilary had disappeared, leaving Liam to shoot speculative glances between Jake and Sharon. His gaze was more thoughtful than anything else. Olivia and Luke were both quiet, although Olivia was watching Jake very carefully, her red nails tapping on the bar table. Sitting on the other side of Sharon, Ellie just watched everything that was going on with big eyes, while Michael seemed mostly amused.
Patrick found the whole situation hilarious, the big dick.
He'd laughed when Jake had explained that he was just doing the friendly thing and he hadn’t stopped chuckling since.
"You know that you're going to have to spend the whole weekend with each other, right?" Kate asked suspiciously. Looking at her wasn't much fun because Andrew's dark glare was coming from right over her head, but Jake did his best to focus on
her and not on her fiancé.
"And her family," he answered, shrugging one of his shoulders. "Sharon told me. It'll be fine. Unless you think she'd be better off with an ex than a friend?"
Kate's lips pressed together while Patrick coughed into his hand. A cough that suspiciously sounded like a laugh. Exchanging a glance with Rick, Maria raised her eyebrow, a small smile playing on her face as well.
Yeah, okay, so calling him and Sharon friends was a bit of a stretch, or would have been before the new year, but come on. A little faith would be nice.
"Ooo good, you're back! What did I miss?" Hilary's chipper voice made him twist slightly so he could see her. The pretty blonde was looking between him and Sharon, rather than at her husband, Liam, who was reaching for her. She had a fun, sunny personality that reminded him a bit of Sharon, but without the crudeness. Hilary pretty much epitomized the term 'lady-like'. If asked, Jake would have said that Hilary was exactly his type, although he'd never been attracted to her. Then again, she'd been taken, and therefore off-limits, when he'd met her anyway.
"Jake's taking Sharon to her cousin's wedding because 'they're friends' and she shouldn't have to go with an ex," Lexie said, drawling the words out with a complete absence of tone that made it clear she thought he was shoveling horseshit.
"Oh! Okay, I'll be right back," Hilary said, swinging back around and scurrying back to the front door. "Jessica, Angel, and Leigh are going to love this!”
Groaning, Jake covered his face with his hand as he realized why Hilary had disappeared before. No phones were permitted inside the club proper; despite that, she was taking care of updating everyone who wasn't there in real time. Great.
Why had he blown his and Sharon's cover again?
Wiping his hand down his face, he happened to see Brian on the dance floor with a pretty redhead and he scowled. Oh yeah, that was why. Because he didn't like the idea of her going away for a weekend with her ex, especially to a family wedding. Or, really, with anyone other than him.
