GIRLIFIED: 15 BOOKS MEGA BUNDLE

by Nikki Crescent

  “I wish I was there,” Darren said.

  And then Darren was suddenly feeling particularly cheeky. He got up casually and wandered over to her desk. “Hey Lexi,” he said. She turned around with wide eyes. Her knees were pressed tightly together. She forced a smile.

  “Hey Darren,” she said.

  “Just wanted to check in on you—to make sure your hangover wasn’t too bad on Saturday,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Nope. All good,” she said. She was still forcing a big smile. She squirmed and mashed her thighs together slowly.

  “You okay?” Darren asked. He had to bite his tongue so that he wouldn’t smile. He knew she was seconds away from filling a condom full of hot jizz.

  “Mhm,” she said, nodding.

  “I also wanted to say that, uh, your dress was really pretty at the party. I thought it looked really good on you. I hope you don’t mind me saying…”

  “Not at all. Thanks, Darren,” she said. She was looking into Darren’s eyes now. Her brow lowered and she let a little whimper slip—she was coming while staring right into Darren’s eyes.

  “Maybe I’ll see you at lunch,” Darren said, turning away slowly.

  “See you,” she said softly. It was only a few minutes later when Darren received a picture of her cum-slicked cock next to a filled condom. He saved the photo to his secret folder and then he went back to work with a big grin on his face. He felt like he’d taken another step closer to getting Lexi for himself—and getting her away from Duke.

  CHAPTER IX

  Darren sat with Lexi during lunch, and they chatted through most of their lunch break—for almost twenty-five minutes straight. And then Darren lost Lexi to Duke again; she slipped out her phone and sent Duke a message, making Darren’s pocket buzz. But this time, Lexi heard the buzzing. “I think you just got a message,” Lexi said.

  Darren’s heart fluttered. He stood up quickly. “It’s probably Carol,” he said—Carol was their manager. “I told her I would be back from lunch early—I completely forgot. Enjoy the rest of your lunch.” Darren checked his phone on his way back from the sandwich café.

  “I really want to meet you. I’m starting to think that you aren’t real,” Lexi said to Duke.

  “I just need some more time,” Darren wrote back.

  “How much longer?”

  “I don’t know,” Darren said.

  “I don’t know if I can wait much longer.”

  Darren’s gut turned. Now he was feeling the crunch—she was giving him a time limit, but her limit was vague. It probably wouldn’t be long before she started messaging other guys on Tinder, and Darren knew it wouldn’t be long before she found a guy willing to sprint across the city to be with her and her beautiful cock. Darren had to think of a way to make Lexi his—he had to think of a way to kill of Duke without breaking Lexi’s heart—and the only way he could think to do that was to come clean—no lies, no sugar-coating. If she rejected him, then so be it.

  But the thought of having that conversation made Darren feel ill. He continued convincing himself that there must be another way.

  As Darren settled back into his desk at work, he noticed a brown coat flung over his cubicle wall. He stood up to see a man on the other side of the cubicle: the new guy. He looked up at Darren and smiled. And Darren’s heart sunk into his stomach.

  It wasn’t the guy from Duke’s profile pictures, but he was damn close. He was tall and thick with muscles. His face had a perfectly even stubble beard from ear to ear—he looked like a magazine model. Darren looked at his hands and saw that he was wearing no rings. Darren looked at his desk and saw that he had no pictures of kids or of women. His computer’s background picture was of a motorcycle—probably his own. The man was obviously single, and like every single man before him, he would undoubtedly be taking a shine to Lexi.

  As if on cue, Lexi came back from her lunch break. She started walking down the isle of cubicles, and the new guy noticed her instantly. He looked past Darren and stared at her, his eyes glowing with a newfound determination. Lexi looked at the man and hesitated. She probably stopped to wonder if the man was Duke—even she saw the similarities. She smiled and her cheeks turned a shade of pink. The new guy nodded with a charming smile, and then he looked up at Darren. “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “Her? Who?” Darren said, playing dumb.

  “The brunette with the legs,” he said.

  “Oh, she’s—uh, what’s her name again? Lexi—I think,” Darren said. He wanted to fall to the floor and curl up and lay there forever. He couldn’t compete with this new guy. His arms were thicker than Darren’s legs.

  Darren caught Lexi staring at the new guy a few times throughout the day—and he couldn’t blame her. He found himself staring at the new guy a few times, mostly out of jealousy. The man could have had any girl he wanted. He could use his own photos on his Tinder profile and probably get more hits than Darren got using photos he lifted from the Internet.

  It was about an hour before the end of the day when the new guy got up to chat with Lexi. He asked her to come over to his desk to help him with one of the computer programs. Darren had to suffer through the torture of sitting there and listening to Lexi as she leaned over the new guy’s shoulders and guided him through the program. The new guy was pretending to be especially oblivious so that Lexi would hang around for longer. “I really love your perfume, by the way. Who makes that?” the new guy asked.

  And Darren could practically hear Lexi blushing. “It’s called Nirvana, by Elizabeth and James.”

  “It’s amazing,” he said. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to be a creep. I just had to point that out.”

  “No worries,” Lexi said. Darren squirmed. Then he got the idea to send Lexi a message on Tinder, to pull her away from the new guy.

  “Send me a photo of your beautiful face,” Darren wrote. And then he heard Lexi’s phone buzzing on her desk.

  “Do you have to answer that?” the new guy asked.

  “It’s just a message—nothing urgent,” she said. Darren’s heart sunk into his gut. He was losing her—even as Duke. The new guy had a big advantage: he was actually real. She could actually see him with her own eyes and feel him with her hands.

  “We didn’t use any of these programs at my old job. The workflow here is so much different than what I’m used to,” said the new guy.

  “Well I don’t mind showing you through everything,” Lexi said.

  “Maybe after work we can grab a drink and you can tell me how things are done around here.”

  “I’d be happy to. But I need to get a bit more work done here. Just wave me over if you need a hand!” Lexi said. Darren looked over and saw that Lexi’s eyes were beaming as she turned back towards her desk. She was flattered and flustered. And maybe it was for the best. Maybe she was better off with the new guy—he could make her happy and he didn’t have to lie to her.

  Darren’s phone buzzed a minute later. It was Lexi, on Tinder. “Hey, sorry. I’m just at work right now and I can’t really send photos,” she said. “It’s super busy here today.”

  Darren sunk into his seat. It was the beginning of the end. Darren was hopeless and so was Duke. It was back to watching other guys have what Darren never would…

  CHAPTER X

  Lexi didn’t send many messages that night. In fact, she didn’t send any until Darren started messaging her, asking her if everything was alright. “Yeah, why?” Lexi asked. She sent no sexy photos and no flirty messages. When Darren asked how her day was, she said, “Just another day at the office.”

  “Anything interesting happen?”

  “Only if you think filing documents is interesting,” she replied.

  Darren felt defeated. The past couple of weeks had been the best of his life—which was sad, seeing as he had spent the better half of the past couple of weeks pretending to be someone he wasn’t. It was the closest he would ever come to Lexi, and it was probably the closest he would ever come to bein
g with a beautiful woman.

  On Monday, Lexi and the new guy were chatting a lot. Every break, they were in the break room, telling stories, telling jokes. Darren hated to see a man sweep her off her feet with so much ease. He was so confident—and of course he was. He had every reason in the world to be confident. It took Darren two years to build up the confidence to properly say hello in passing. He simply couldn’t compete with the new guy.

  But he found himself wondering if the new guy was possibly a blessing. Maybe the new guy could help Lexi forget about Duke, and then Darren could figure out a way to get the new guy out of the picture, leaving only Darren. It seemed like a good plan—Lexi was already starting to drop Duke. She asked Duke again that Monday if he could meet up finally, and Darren had to say, “I just can’t right now.”

  “Are you married? Am I just some online affair you’re having?” Lexi asked.

  “No, I’m single,” Darren said. And he said no more. He wanted Lexi to lose interest. And it was working.

  Though it hurt his heart when she wrote: “I like our conversations. I wish we could have them in real life.”

  “What if I was disfigured—and the photos on my profile were from before my accident?” Darren asked.

  “Accident? Are you okay?”

  “It’s a hypothetical question.”

  “I don’t know how to answer it. I want to say that I wouldn’t care, but who knows how I would really feel in person. That’s the most honest answer I can give you. I really hope you weren’t in an accident.”

  “There was no accident,” Darren said. “There were lots of mistakes, but no accidents.”

  “I just want to meet you.”

  “Soon,” Darren said.

  Lexi and the new guy went out for drinks again the next day. Darren’s heart stammered down into his gut. They were becoming closer and closer—though Darren was still the one that she had lunch with. In fact, the new guy asked her if she wanted to go out for lunch, and Darren overheard her saying, “I’m actually getting lunch with Darren.”

  “Okay, no problem,” the new guy said.

  Darren’s heart pounded with excitement. He hadn’t even asked her out for lunch—their little lunch date was just assumed after a couple weeks of getting lunch together. But it wasn’t much of a lunch date. Darren knew he had fallen into the friend zone. At the café that day, Lexi even told Darren about Duke. “I’ve been talking to this guy online, but he doesn’t want to meet with me.”

  “Maybe he’s not who he says he is,” Darren said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Darren shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe his pictures are ten years old. Or maybe he’s using someone else’s photos.”

  “You think he’s a catfish?”

  “Would that make you hate him?” Darren asked. And Lexi stared into Darren’s eyes with a curious look. She took a moment before shrugging her shoulders. “I have no idea,” she said.

  “I mean—if you met him, and he was a different guy, but he said all the same things and made all the same jokes, and you had all the same conversations—would you care?”

  “Of course I would care—then he would have lied to me.”

  “Would you care enough to drop him?”

  And Lexi didn’t have an answer, which gave Darren a warm glimmer of hope. But that glimmer was short-lived. As soon as they were back at the office, Lexi had her eyes set on the hunk of a new guy. He was wearing nothing but a tight white tank top—all of the girls in the office were staring at him. Darren overheard him saying that he spilled some of his lunch on his shirt and he didn’t have a spare with him. But Darren was pretty sure he was just looking for an excuse to show his muscles off around the office.

  That night, Darren received a Tinder message from Lexi. “Your pictures—are they really of you?” she asked. Apparently their conversation at lunch had resonated with her.

  Darren was slow to respond. His immediate instinct was to lie and say yes, to protect their little fantasy relationship. But he knew if there was ever a chance of a real relationship, he had to be honest. But he couldn’t force himself to do it—he couldn’t will himself to send the word ‘no’ to her phone. So he lied. “Of course they are,” he said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just paranoid,” Lexi said.

  “Are your photos actually of you?” Darren asked.

  She sent back a laughing emoji. “I send you photos of me all the time—if it wasn’t me, where could I have gotten so many photos of one person?”

  Darren squirmed. He hated lying to her. It made him feel sick and uncomfortable.

  “Now that I think of it, you’ve never sent me a photo of yourself—above the waist, I mean,” she wrote. “Maybe you could send one now, to put my mind at ease.”

  Now Darren was really squirming. He wanted to throw his phone against the wall and never think about it again. He wanted to go back in time and kill Duke. Duke was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. “The camera on my phone broke last night. I dropped it down the stairs,” Darren wrote.

  “That’s a shame,” Lexi said after a long silence. Darren could tell that she wasn’t buying the story. He put his phone away for the night and he found himself staring at his bedroom ceiling. He was starting to face reality: his fling with Lexi was coming to an end.

  CHAPTER XI

  Darren woke up the next morning with a clear head: he knew what he had to do if he was going to have a shot at Lexi—though he wasn’t proud of the plan. It involved breaking her heart, but he knew that she was a strong girl and she would recover.

  First, he had to delete Duke from existence. It wasn’t easy pressing that ‘delete account’ button that morning. Once the account was gone, he would have no way of conversing deeply with Lexi—and it would be the end of the sexy photos. But it had to be done. Duke wasn’t real so he needed to be removed from the picture. Darren bit down hard on his tongue as he willed himself to press that button.

  And he really pressed it. The account was gone. All of the messages were gone. Soon, Lexi would log onto her Tinder app and see that she wasn’t able to chat with Duke anymore.

  Darren found himself regretting his decision after just a few minutes, but the damage had been done and the Tinder account couldn’t be reactivated. Darren started thinking about creating a new account for Duke, flicking through thousands and thousands of profiles, just to find Lexi again. He could tell her that a friend took his phone and deleted the account as a joke. They could laugh it off and carry on their conversations as if they’d never ended.

  But Darren knew that would take hours—maybe even days or weeks. There were millions of people using Tinder—the chances of him finding her were slim. And deep down inside, he knew that deleting Duke was for the best if he was going to have a shot at Lexi.

  The second part of his plan was harder than the first. He needed to get the new guy away from Lexi, and he needed to keep her away from Lexi. He knew just how to do it, but he knew it was cruel. Still, the next day at work, he found himself looking over at the new guy’s desk, waiting for him to get up to grab a coffee from the break room. Darren just needed to get him while he was alone—just a few minutes.

  But the new guy only seemed to get up when he wanted to talk to Lexi. He was timing his breaks with Lexi’s breaks, and he even followed her off to lunch. Darren watched them during lunch, from across the café. The new guy had his arm over Lexi’s shoulder and he was talking quietly to her. She looked sad—and it kind of looked like he was consoling her. Was she upset about Duke’s suddenly vanishing?

  Darren decided to wait a few days—but he knew he couldn’t wait long. He knew that if he gave the new guy long enough, he would become too attached to Lexi, and there would be no splitting them apart. But he needed to give Lexi enough time to get over Duke, so that Darren wouldn’t just be a rebound.

  So it was a few days before Darren finally got up and cornered the new guy while he was pouring himself a coffee. “Hey,” Dar
ren said, startling the new guy. He nearly spilled hot coffee on his hands.

  “Hey, sorry—I didn’t see you there,” the new guy said.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re a really good person,” Darren said.

  The new guy smiled. “Oh, thank you. I mean—I do my best, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well I’m impressed. I don’t think I could get involved with someone like that… Not that I discriminate. But I guess it’s just a matter of preference,” Darren said. His heart was pounding. He hadn’t even broken the news yet and his gut was already churning with regret.

  “What do you mean?” asked the new guy.

  “Lexi—you guys are a thing, right?”

  He laughed and his cheeks turned red. “I don’t know if we’re a thing. We’re just friends, though I’m thinking of taking it further. You guys are friends, right? Got any tips for me?”

  “I should be the one asking for tips from you. I wish I could see past that.”

  “See past what?” asked the new guy.

  “Her being a man and all,” Darren said. And then he pretended to be shocked by the new guy’s suddenly pale face. “Wait—did you not know? Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I assumed she told you. Oh God, now I feel horrible. I’m sorry—that was none of my business. Please don’t tell her that I told you. She should be the one to tell you. I just thought you knew.”

  “You’re fucking with me, right?” he asked.

  “Like I said, it’s none of my business.” Darren turned around to leave, but the new guy grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “What do you mean, she’s a man?”

  “Sorry—that’s not politically correct. She used to be a man. But like I said—none of my business. Please pretend like I didn’t tell you that. I really feel awful. Poor girl—it’s probably so hard for her to tell people.”

  The new guy was speechless now, and that’s the way Darren left him. But Darren didn’t feel happy or even hopeful, even though another part of his plan had successfully been carried out. He didn’t want to get Lexi like this. He didn’t want to manipulate his way into her life. If she was happy with the new guy, who was he to put an end to their relationship? It really wasn’t his business, but still, he stood there and delivered the news without hesitating.