by Eva Luxe
“Which reminds me, when was the last time you went out?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Not this topic again.”
“Come on. You chase down cheating spouses for a living. Even they’re getting more than you.”
“I’m not talking about this,” I said.
“When was the last time a man just gave it to you good?”
“Kami.”
“Really reamed it until your legs shook?”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Used your body for his pleasure before diving between your legs?”
“I hate you.”
“You love me, and I’m worried about you. You stay cooped up in that office all day with a boss who always jumps down your throat. The stress alone will kill you before you’re forty if you don’t release it somehow.”
“I’ve got plenty of toys to keep me company,” I said.
“Which is a pathetic replacement for an actual man. One with muscles and smooth skin and a baby face.”
“You know that’s not the kind of man I like, anyway,” I said.
“Yeah, you like them rugged. Chiseled. With dark hair and a brooding stare.”
“And tattoos. Don’t ever forget those.”
“Anyway, you should follow your dreams,” she said.
“I will when I have the money to. Now, can we please eat and revel in the fact that it’s Friday?”
“Wait, it’s Friday?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, shit. I’m so fucking behind. I gotta get back to work. You can stay as long as you’d like, but I’ve got four cakes due tomorrow, and I haven’t decorated a damn one of them.”
“Whoops,” I said, grinning. “So, I guess you don’t want to hear about the new client I’ve got?”
“Speak up and tell all, beautiful!” she said.
“My boss pulled me into his office this morning and told me I have a meeting with a high-end client. My first one.”
“Your first what?” she asked.
“High-end client!”
“Ah! The big bucks. What’s going on with this guy? Cheating spouse? Double life fears? Murder suspect?”
“Don’t know any of that stuff yet. I won’t until the file hits my desk Monday. All I know is that this client is gonna be paying me some serious money, and the client requested me personally.”
“Oh, shit,” Kami said. “Look at you, getting a reputation and all that.”
“I know, right? It’s the first time I’ve ever been personally requested. I’m really excited about this one. He’s going to be paying me so much that he’ll be the only client I take on next month.”
“That sounds so nice.”
“Nicer than being a starving artist?” I asked.
“Oh, I haven’t dropped that shtick yet. You’re too talented to let that painting go to waste. Please tell me you’re still painting in your spare time.”
“Yep. It’s why I’m not having sex. I’m painting all over the place.”
“I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not, so I’m just gonna roll with it,” she said.
“Honestly? I don’t know if I’m being sarcastic or not, either.”
“You’re losing it.”
“When was that ever a question?” I asked, grinning.
I took the first bite of my sandwich and moaned as I chewed. The Sub Palace was known for its sandwiches all along the coast of Oregon. I’d met people in the line at the shop that traveled an hour just to get there.
Their bread was baked fresh, their meat was from locally-sourced farmers, their seafood subs were to-fucking-die-for, and their seasoned chips were made in-house. It was expensive as hell, but I didn’t care. It was worth every damn bite I took whenever I could stand to wait in the line.
“How’s that sandwich?” Kami asked.
“I don’t know. Take a break and come take a bite. I brought you lunch so you’d actually eat it. Not leave it to sniff every once in a while.”
“You know that’s how us girls lose weight. We sniff the food we can’t have, and if we get desperate we take a bite, chew ten times, then spit it out.”
“Not me,” I said. “I eat whatever the fuck I want.”
“That’s because you carry your curves in all the right places. My weight shoots to my stomach. Yours fills out your hips, tits, and ass. I hate you, by the way.”
“Whatever. You know how hard it is finding clothes to fucking fit my weird-ass body?”
“Boo hoo. You have a body men drool over. Suck my dick.”
“Only if you start with me,” I said, smiling. “Come on. Put the damn fondant down and come take a bite.”
“This isn’t fondant. It’s just regular icing. I hate fondant because people can’t eat it. What’s the use of filling up a cake with something people can’t eat? I might as well put cardboard in it, to get it to stand up the way fondant does, but even better.”
“Who the fuck cares whether it’s fondant or regular icing or why? Come on. Come sit and eat. You can pull a long day or come in early or whatever. But if you pass out face-first in that cake because you didn’t eat, you’ll have to start all over.”
“Fine. Okay. The fondant issue is important to me. But I’ll come eat. Under one condition.”
“What?” I asked, groaning.
“When you know everything there is to know about this rich-ass client of yours, you have to call me.”
“You know I can’t do that until a case is wrapped up,” I said.
“Oh, come on. Who’s gonna know?”
I shook my head. “I can tell you everything except names once the case is finished.”
“You take this job too seriously.”
“Sucks to be an adult,” I said. “Now eat.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“I’ll take it if it means you eat. This sandwich was too expensive for it to go to waste.”
“Thank you for lunch, by the way,” she said.
“Not a problem. You’ve been busy all week. I figured your Friday would be no different.”
The two of us sat there in the back of her bakery and enjoyed the rest of our lunch. I was due back to work in thirty minutes, but it was time well spent with Kami. She was the only person I really talked to anymore since my job kept me in the shadows and cooped up in an office. Had she set up her bakery anywhere else in the state, I probably would’ve lost contact with her as well.
“When do you need to go back to work?” Kami asked.
“I gotta leave in about five. I walked here.”
“That’s why your legs are so damn strong,” she said. “You walk everywhere. Don’t you own a car?”
“I do. But gas is expensive, and I enjoy the fresh air.”
“You’re strange.”
“I love you, too. But I gotta get going.”
I shoved the last of the sandwich into my mouth before I grabbed my chips and my drink. Kami stood up and gave me a massive hug, encompassing my entire body as she pulled me close. I couldn’t even swallow the rest of my sandwich until she let me go. Then I chased it with some soda before I cleared my throat.
“What are you doing this weekend?” I asked.
“Tomorrow’s booked, but Sunday I’m free,” Kami said.
“Cajun shrimp pasta at my place with a movie?” I asked.
“I’ll bring the wine,” she said, smiling.
Chapter 4
Zach
I woke up that morning with the taste of a stranger on my lips and a used condom on the floor next to me. This was why people needed to clean up after sex. But I had been too tipsy last night to do anything but fall asleep after getting the job done with the woman from the bar. I groaned as I threw the covers off me, and then a small whimper came from the other side of the bed.
“Watch it,” a woman said.
I recognized that sultry voice. Those low tones and that sensual accent. I looked over at the one window in my apartment and saw the sunlight streaming through.
/> Shit. This chick had stayed the night.
“Morning,” she said.
She threw her arm over me, and her lips attacked my neck. My morning wood was throbbing, but my mind was whirling. How many fucking beers did I have last night? Not enough to be drunk. That was for sure.
Was I that tired from work? It hadn’t been a strenuous day. Not compared to some of the days I’d had.
I fucking got lazy. That was what happened. And now I was about to pay the price.
“All right, you need to go,” I said.
“Before I make us some breakfast?” she asked.
“Yep.”
I slid off my bed and tugged on my pants. I looked back at the woman in bed, and I could see the heated stare rising up in her eyes. Her fiery red hair was mussed from our romp in the sack, and she was clinging to the comforter as she pulled it up over her naked body.
I couldn’t even remember what her naked body looked like.
Like all the other ones, I supposed.
“But you have this nice comfy cabin and no one to share it with. It’s so quaint and cozy; perfect for enjoying a morning meal together. Let me just fix us something—”
“I’ll call you a car,” I said.
I grabbed my phone off the floor and opened up the Uber app. The first time I found out that one of those drivers would come all the way out to the edge of nowhere, the rugged forest where I lived, I was so grateful I decided to use them every time I found myself in one of these situations— whether I was too tipsy to drive, or too close for comfort with a girl who needed to leave.
I requested the closest driver so he could come dig me out of this shithole I’d found myself in. Thank goodness for Uber. I could hear the girl murmuring behind me as she pulled her clothes on while my legs carried me down the metal staircase of my warehouse apartment.
“The least you could do is offer me some coffee,” she said.
“Don’t drink it.”
“You don’t drink coffee?”
“Nope.”
“Who the fuck doesn’t drink coffee?” she asked
“Me. Your ride will be here in seven minutes.”
“Well, that gives us seven minutes to have a bit of kitchen-counter fun.”
Her hands slid around my waist, rippling across my bare skin. I could feel her lips pressing kisses into the tattoos on my back, but I wasn’t going to have this. She needed to leave before she got more attached. She needed to go so she didn’t get any ideas.
Women always loved the bad boy. The brooding one that didn’t talk. They thought they could change him. Make him into a better man and pull out some decent husband and father type material that was buried in his gut or some shit. They didn’t want a man like me. They wanted what they thought they could turn me into.
And they were partially right. Women had no fucking business being with a man like me. But where they were wrong was in thinking they could change me. So I always had them hit the road before they could try.
“Want some tea?” I asked as her lips attacked my skin.
“You drink tea?” she asked, giggling. “How cute.”
I grabbed her arms and ripped them off my body. Her eyes were wide with shock, and her tits poked through her blouse. She was ready to go another round— I knew she was— but her scent was growing mustier on my skin, and it was filling my cabin, and all I wanted was for her to leave. To get out.
“What the hell’s gotten into you?” she asked. “Last night, you couldn’t wait to get in between my legs.”
“Alcohol will do that to you,” I said.
“Sweetie, you don’t need alcohol to know I’ve got decent love to give.”
“Sometimes decent doesn’t cut it for guys like me,” I said.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she asked. “Can’t keep it up without alcohol?”
I heard a car horn beep outside, and I sighed with relief.
“Ride’s here,” I said.
Another thing I loved about Uber is that they were usually way quicker than the app predicted.
“Good. Because this place is a fucking dump. View of the waterfall, my ass. One measly fucking window. You’re pathetic, you know that?”
Their true colors always came out once the fun was over and things got serious— or at least once they wanted them to get serious and I stopped it.
“I bet you don’t even remember my name,” she said.
“Adriana?” I asked.
She scowled at me and I shrugged.
“Amber!” she practically yelled.
Well, I was close.
She ripped the door open and tried to slam it going out. Women always tried to do that. Slam a door that opened to the side. Being an ass to them was the quickest way to get them out.
As she left, in a huff, I was happy to see her go. Her ass didn’t even look nearly as good as it had in the dimly lit bar.
These women thought they were on the prowl for a one-night stand, but many of them were actually on the prowl for their fairy tale. Sleeping with the bad boy, only to wake up and find out he’s a soft guy at heart. They want to fuck him senseless, ride his face a bit, then wake up with his arms wrapped around their bodies and hear him begging for them to stay.
Women didn’t want one-night stands. They wanted impossible fairytale endings. The easiest way to burst that fantasy, if they didn’t listen, was to be an ass.
And I was fucking good at it.
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