“The rideshare is waiting. Are you guys ready?” Haley asked, peeking her head into my bedroom. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail.
“Yeah,” Willow and I said in unison as we exited my bedroom.
The car ride took us about thirty minutes from the school toward an area filled with large, stately homes. I began to question if we were going in the right area until the car stopped outside of a small brick building that looked as if it had been converted into a restaurant.
“This is it.”
From the back seat, I handed the driver a tip since it was my turn to pay and exited the car behind Haley. It felt like we were intruding as we followed Willow to the back side of the building, where a few people in heavy coats gathered at a table beneath a heat lamp. I spied glasses filled with some type of beer and assumed we had made it to a pub of some sort.
“Come on,” Willow called out to me as she gestured for me to follow them to the door. I hadn’t realized that I had stopped moving as I took in the group. “My lab partner said her brother was working as a server tonight and we could request his section.”
Something felt off as we stepped inside the pub. There was a woman standing at the entrance with intricate tattoos snaking up her arms and I immediately wanted to get a better look at them. She and Willow spoke for a minute and then she directed us over to an empty booth along the far wall.
A few patrons glanced up from their meals and drinks, but no one paid us any mind, just as Willow had promised. We each grabbed one of the laminated menus on the table and our eyes widened at the selection. This pub didn’t serve your typical fried foods and burgers. No, this menu had five-star meals.
Tuna tartare. Filet mignon with Hollandaise sauce. Duck confit. Lamb ragu with pasta.
My mouth watered as I read through the selections.
“Surprised?” Willow asked as she peered at us over her menu.
“Very,” Haley replied and I nodded. I wasn’t sure that I could afford the meals here, but I was certainly impressed.
I trained my eyes to stay on their salad selection because they were the only compilations that were in my budget.
A soft hand reached out from across the table and rested on mine as it held the menu in its grasp. “Jolee, this one is on me.” I blinked as Willow spoke. “Please, let me do this for you.”
“You’ve helped me out so much. And I still owe you for the table.”
“Oh, be quiet, you do not owe me for the table. And besides, this is what friends and family do.”
I sat the menu down and glanced through watery eyes at my cousin. “I haven’t really had either before.”
“I know, and we’re changing that. So, let me buy your dinner. Victoria, my lab partner, says that the duck is to die for.”
Her friend’s brother stopped by the table and took our drink and food orders. He was cute and couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Willow. I had a sneaking suspicion that Victoria had been masterminding a love connection.
“Have you heard from your parents recently?” Willow asked as our meals were placed in front of us. The duck confit looked and smelled delicious and I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into it, but Willow’s mentioning of my parents turned my stomach sour.
Before I answered her, I made sure to take a bite of the duck before I completely lost my appetite. I didn’t discuss my family much, if at all. They hadn’t wanted me to leave Alaska, but they barely spent any time with me while I was there. It was their way of controlling a situation, which for two people that were free spirits and nonconformists, they had no idea what they were doing.
“I spoke to them after fall break. That was the last time. They were headed to another mountain range with a new research team.”
Willow took a small bite of her filet and chewed the delicate meat daintily as she considered my words. “Are they still investigating the-”
“Stop,” I interrupted. I didn’t like anyone to know what my crazy parents examined. They spent all of their time researching and creating new theories, but most of the people in our town thought my parents were nuts.
“What do they investigate?” Haley asked, not wanting to be left out.
I sighed and set down my fork. Blindly I reached into my purse and grabbed my phone, typing Japan Flight 1628 into the browser and handed it to Haley.
“Oh! Wow, so they research. . .”
Holding up my hand, I beg her not to continue. “Please don’t say it.”
“I just. . .I didn’t know that it was a thing.”
“Oh, it definitely is. There is an entire community of people obsessed. Now, can we please talk about something else?”
We switched topics to our plans for Thanksgiving. Willow and her family were going down to Florida to visit her other grandmother, while Haley was traveling home to be with her parents. They both wanted me to join them, but I was looking forward to the downtime alone.
We were on our third drink, Haley’s courtesy of her fake ID, when the air in the room shifted. Haley’s eyes widened and it seemed I wasn’t the only one to notice. With a shaking hand, I put my mojito back on the table and turned toward the door where the ridge rogues walked in as if they owned the place. And as they bypassed the crowd waiting for a table, it seemed that maybe they did.
A statuesque woman with a short gray haircut walked behind them, smiling and waving at the servers and a few patrons as she passed. As they passed our table, I breathed a sigh of relief, assuming that we had gone unnoticed. But I should have known better.
The boys stood to the side as they let the women slide into the center of the rounded booth, then they each piled in beside her—three on one side and three on the other. Four of the guys immediately lifted their menus and began shouting back and forth about what they were going to eat while the other two stared directly at our table – Ford and Rylan.
I didn’t know what was going on with Rylan and Haley, but I could feel Ford’s intense scolding stare across the room. It practically burned my skin. We were invading their space and they weren’t pleased about it.
“Willow, I think we should go.”
“No, we can eat here too. Don’t let him kick us out.”
My saucy cousin had a point, and truthfully she always seemed so turned into herself that I was surprised she had wanted to go out into a crowded space at all. I remembered how meek she seemed at the airport picking me up, but I’ve come to know that Willow was anything but meek. And after a few drinks, she seemed to let her hair down.
Luckily, Haley agreed with my desire to leave and we overruled Willow. She huffed and pouted as we paid the bill. The rideshare was close by so we filed out of the booth and made our way to the exit. Something tugged at me deep in my chest and I couldn’t help but turn around and look back at the booth where Ford sat. His brows furrowed, only highlighting those blue eyes that struck me so many weeks ago. The same blue eyes that were both pleading with me to stay and begging me to go. With a gentle pull on my arm, I pried my eyes away from him and continued following my roommates out of the pub. But, somehow, it felt like I had left a piece of myself behind.
Chapter Ten – Ford
I sat in Jolee’s chair in our economics class for the third time and patiently waited for her to arrive. Today was our last review session before midterms and I was only there to get a rise out of her, I could pass an entry-level economics class with flying colors for no other reason than I studied the textbook over the summer.
Students had their assumptions about me: I was broody, angry, trouble. But what they failed to catch or try to learn was that I was smart too. All the free time I spent outside of school was done studying. I masked my brains with black and leather, barely giving anyone the chance to learn that part of me. I had a feeling Jolee suspected, though. She had commented more than once that I wasn’t taking notes and that the material was important. I only responded with a smirk and flicked at a key or two on her computer.
I waited patiently for her to w
alk into the lecture hall, remembering how stunning she had looked in those damn red pants last Monday when we were at Tracy’s friend’s pub. I couldn’t pull my gaze from her until she left. Even then I was lost in my own world, remembering how my heartbeat had stopped when I watched her fall from their coffee table. Tracy had begun to pry and my brothers made sure to point out that she was the woman that had me tied up in knots. They still had no idea that we had slept together, even though Chance kept giving me weird glances.
Jolee’s two friends hurried into the classroom, quickly followed by the professor, and I immediately sat up in my seat. She had never missed a class. Never even came close to missing the door locking.
I turned to look at the girl whose name I thought was Keeley and asked, “Do you know where Jolee is?”
Her eyes grew in size at my question, probably because I had never spoken a word to anyone in class besides Jolee. “I’ll. . .uh. . .send her a text.”
That wasn’t nearly enough, but it was going to have to do.
My knee bounced up and down the entire lecture until the class dismissal. Jolee had never returned Keeley’s message which had my anxiety skyrocketing. Dashing from the classroom and out of the building, I sprinted around crowds of students, moving quickly between them on my way back to the apartment.
Thank goodness for my daily five-mile runs because I had barely broken a sweat as I reached the fourth floor, having taken the steps two at a time. My fist pounded against the door as I called out her name, but when there was no response, I twisted the doorknob. Panic surged through me like electricity as I opened the unlocked door. My eyes and ears searched the place but nothing seemed to be amiss, at least from what I remembered when I was here last.
I made my way down the hall, opening every door on my way, finding them empty. I knew neither of the bedrooms were Jolee’s – they didn’t look like her personality at all. One was full of music posters while the other was full of flowers and twinkling lights. At the final door at the end of the hall, the bedroom a floor above mine, I twisted the cold metal knob.
Taking a deep breath, I opened it slightly to peek inside, there she was.
And I had never been more furious in my life.
“Jolee,” I growled, but the small vixen with her bare backside turned toward me, the sweet flesh peeking out from beneath the sheet, moaned in reply.
“Jolee!” I repeated, my voice raised as my body grew in awareness of her naked state.
“Huh? Ford?” she asked as she turned on her stomach and faced me. Her eyes were heavy with sleep as she blinked in confusion.
“Are you sick?”
Jolee’s pink tongue peeked out and licked at her dry lips and I had to stifle a groan that was building in my gut.
“No. . .” she said as she sat up, the sheet slipping down to her waist.
I needed to get out of there. Being so close to Jolee’s perfect body and knowing that I couldn’t touch it was sweet torture that was growing by the second. My fingers twitched against my thighs wanting to touch her. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath trying to calm myself, but that only added to my agony as her scent swirled around me. I couldn’t have imagined a sweeter hell than this moment.
I had to leave. Blindly I reached into my bag and took out the notebook I scribbled the lecture onto and held it out for her to take.
“Wha-”
“Take it.”
When the paper slipped from my hand into hers, I turned on my heels and made a beeline for the exit. My chest was heavy, as if I was having a panic attack.
“Ford?” she called out and I wanted to ignore her beckoning, tried with everything that I was, but I paused with my hand resting on the doorknob of her apartment. I could hear the soft patter of her feet coming down the hallway and found myself exhaling a deep breath. My body was geared up for a fight, and this time I wasn’t sure that it would be against Jolee, it was going to be against myself.
“Are these. . .are these your notes from class?”
“It’s no big deal.” Except it was. It’s not something that I would have done for anyone else except her. I knew that school was important to her and I knew she’d hate herself if she missed something right before the midterm.
“Ford, look at me, please.” Her voice was so soft, so reverent, and even though I knew better, I found myself releasing the doorknob and turning to face her. Jolee had her sheet wrapped around her body like a dress and I wondered for a moment if that was how she had worn my navy sheet when I had left her in my bed. She appeared like an ethereal goddess in front of me and I was severely lacking to be in her presence.
“Thank you. I don’t know how I can repay you for this.”
“Like I said, it’s no big deal.”
One elegant leg peeked out from behind the slit in the sheet as she took a step toward me. It had been an agonizing few days knowing how I left things with her and if she touched me, I was going to ravage her like a caged animal.
“But it is a big deal. You don’t even take notes in class. I’m intrigued to know why.”
“Stop, Jolee. Just take the notes, or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Really? Then why are you here, Ford? Why not just let me suffer? I could have asked Keeley or Sarah for their notes.”
Her skin was turning the prettiest shade of pink as she raised her voice and I watched in fascination as that color crept up from her chest to her cheeks.
“You’re looking too far into this. I tried to do something nice, obviously it’s not something that I’ll do again anytime soon.”
“You’re ignoring my question.”
Crossing my arms against my chest, the tension between us was growing as she grew more irritated. We were engaged in verbal warfare and it was delightful.
“What question was that?” I asked with a single corner of my lips tilting upward in a smirk. Her eyes blinked as she watched the grin move upward.
“Dang it, Ford, why did you take notes for me? Why did you rush to bring them to me when you could have brought them later? Why are you here?” she shouted and with each punctuated word my own irritation at her prodding grew.
“Because I was fucking worried that something had happened to you, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?” I roared, my entire body opening up as I unleashed on her. “You weren’t answering texts and you never miss class, even when you have a cold you sit in that damned seat annoying the shit out of me with your sniffles. So, excuse me if I felt an ounce of concern for you. But don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”
I wasn’t sure who moved first, but our bodies collided against each other and our lips met in a feverish crash. My hands sought out the soft skin around her waist, slipping through the opening in her sheet that was knotted above her breasts. Her body shook as I trailed my fingers around her waist and toward her ass.
“Ford,” she whispered as she nipped at my bottom lip. “Bedroom, now.”
By command, I bent slightly and slid an arm along the backside of her knees, lifting her in the air. As we traveled down the hall, Jolee pressed her mouth against the side of my neck and I nearly collapsed against the wall as she nibbled at the skin. Fuck, how had she seemed to find the one spot that could bring me to my knees? That one patch of skin just below my earlobe - a single nibble and I was a goner.
Gently I laid us on the bed, her sheet still firmly wrapped around her, but that wasn’t going to last long. I stepped over to her bedroom door, closed and locked it. I wasn’t sure if her roommates were around, but we didn’t need an audience for what I planned to do.
My leather jacket fell on the floor with a plop and my shirt quickly joined it. I walked toward the bed watching Jolee’s large brown eyes dilate with need.
“It’s really not fair how hot you are.”
Grabbing her ankles, I pulled her legs apart, the sheet masking the sweet center I was after.
“No, what’s really not fair is this damn sheet blocking my view.”
In a fla
sh, I yanked the ends of the damn piece of cotton and opened it like the best kind of birthday present. And I was definitely thrilled with what I found lying underneath.
“Ford,” she begged as I leaned toward her ankle and pressed my lips against the skin. I was determined to take my time as I worked my way up the inside of one leg, then the other. Jolee was writhing against my hands that gripped at her thighs. Her scent was floating around me as I reached the apex of her thighs and my mouth watered at her delectable flavor.
“Ford, no one has. . .” she trailed off as she spoke. I knew she was no virgin, but how could a man hold himself back from tasting her? It nearly killed me last time.
“Well, they were idiots.”
Her answering chuckle lingered in the room but disappeared as she gasped when I pressed a kiss against her slit. My tongue joined and followed the wet path up toward her pleasure button hidden beneath a rose-colored hood.
I swirled my tongue around her clit, loving how she jerked her hips silently requesting more. My finger slid inside her effortlessly as I continued to lick and suck her clit into my mouth. I used her wetness to glide my fingers up and down her folds coating her body in her own honey.
“Ford, I’m going to come,” she said as she sunk her hand into my hair, gripping the ends as she rocked against my mouth.
Jolee’s body arched off the bed as she climaxed and I watched captivated by her.
As she slowly came back into herself, Jolee murmured, “Oh my gosh.” While her eyes were trained on mine, I slipped the two fingers that had been deep inside her sex into my mouth. I could get addicted to her flavor, the perfect mix of sweetness and something uniquely Jolee.
With closed eyes, I stood up and tried to pinpoint exactly what she tasted like when I felt her fingertips on my belt. My cock was straining against my jeans, begging to escape, and now it begged for her touch.
“You don’t have to,” I told her as I placed my hand gently on her wrist and looked down, but damn, just seeing her crouched on the bed in front of me with eager eyes about did me in.
Of Boys And Men: An Enemies to Lovers, New Adult College Romance (Ridge Rogues Book 1) Page 11
