by Jo Watson
“Anyway, if you were on a date, you’d both be seriously cheap dates.” She pushed the Cokes towards us. “Shall I put this extravagant beverage on your tab, sir?”
Mike nodded, then turned to me, raising his glass. “Cheers!” he said, then he smiled slyly at me. “You must be thirsty.”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s just that climbing fences is really hard work; I would be parched, if I were you.” He looked at me over the rim of his glass as he took a sip.
“If you recall, I didn’t actually climb the whole fence. I barely made it up a meter.”
“Still, it looked like you were really exerting yourself,” he teased.
“Playful teasing; small, shy smiles . . .” Techno Tannie cooed.
I shot her a pointed look.
“Fine, I’m going.” She finally moved off and Mike and I were alone again. He put his glass down and moved an ice cube around with the tip of his finger. I stared at it, mesmerized by his finger.
He finally stopped playing with the ice and looked at me again. “So, tell me your boring stories,” he said.
I shook my head. “Nah, you really don’t want to hear them.”
“I do, trust me. I really want to know why you were lurking in a cemetery, pretending to visit your dead uncle.”
“You’ll think I’m strange, if I tell you,” I replied.
“I already think you’re strange,” he said, with a smile.
I looked down at my glass and tapped it with my fingernails. It made a nice noise, melodic, almost calming. Like wind chimes or something. “I just like cemeteries,” I said slowly.
“You do?” He sounded genuinely interested, and, for some reason, I continued.
“My father died, before I was born, and I like to go and sit and talk to him. I know that probably sounds strange and—”
“It doesn’t,” he cut me off. “I get it. My grandmother died, and sometimes I find myself just standing by her grave, saying random things.”
I looked up at him and our eyes met. We smiled together, slowly at first, and then both looked away. We sat there in silence for a few moments, both sipping on our drinks. I could sense something in the silence. Something under it that was noisy and trying to break free of it.
“Okay, I have a confession to make,” Mike suddenly said, turning to face me on the bar stool.
I leaned towards him slightly. “That sounds scandalous. Do tell.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath, as if he was getting himself ready. “It was me that read your book, not my friend. I bought the book for myself and I . . . well, I’m not afraid to say it—even if it might emasculate me terribly, when I am trying to be very masculine around you—I cried at the end.”
I burst out laughing. “Cried?”
He nodded. “Yes. Well, maybe twice, if I’m totally honest with you . . . Maybe even more than twice . . . Okay, okay, I cried several times throughout the book, not just at the end.” He looked at me through those long lashes. The long lashes that framed those deadly green eyes of his. His pupils were big and black and took up most of the green now. I felt compelled to look into them, as if there was a law written somewhere: Must look into Mike’s eyes! “So, do you think less of me now, as a man?” he asked, with a smile that was clearly a teasing one.
I laughed. “Maybe just a little bit.”
“I thought women liked men with emotions.” He took another sip of his drink. The black liquid slipped through his lips. He swallowed, and then licked the corner of his mouth.
“What women like is a very complicated thing, Mike,” I said, pulling my eyes away from his mouth.
“Really?” He raised that sexy, scarred, Drogo-esque brow at me again.
“Well, I mean, in general, since I have no idea what I want, specifically,” I said.
“Please, enlighten me. What do women want?”
I looked at him and shook my head. “I can’t. I’d be betraying my sex if I told you, and then I’d have to kill you.”
“Really?” He leaned in closer to me.
“Yup; we all take a secret oath when we’re born, you see.”
He laughed at this. “I knew it! It’s what I’ve always suspected.”
“We’re like the illuminati, actually.”
“That is so true!” he said. “You even have your own secret handshakes and secret looks and codes and mysterious languages that you speak that we’re clearly all incapable of understanding, because our brains are just not wired to extrapolate that ‘Yes, I’m fine’ actually means that you’re not ‘fine’, or that ‘Nothing’s wrong’ actually means that everything is wrong.”
“Oooh, sounds like someone has been on the receiving end of a very angry woman.”
He shrugged. “I may have, in the past, misinterpreted some female signs and made a few guy mistakes along the way.”
“Aaaah, and what guy mistakes have you made?” I asked, my cheeks feeling flushed with the giddiness of our obvious flirtation.
“Well, I possibly didn’t notice a new haircut once,” he said, looking up at me with those malachite eyes.
I gasped. “And how long were you guilty of that?”
“It was hard to say, but, in my defense, she did wear a cap during the day, so it was hard to see she’d cut bangs.”
“She cut bangs and you didn’t notice?! You’re clearly not very observant!” I laughed.
“Funny, that’s what she said, too.” He said it in a joking tone, but I sensed an air of sadness in his voice, and suddenly my stomach tightened.
“I take it this was a serious relationship?” I asked, looking back at my drink so he couldn’t see the expression on my face.
“Well, I thought so, until she dumped me for someone else. Clearly, I’m very bad at reading girl signals.” He turned and gave me a small, tentative smile.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m notoriously bad at reading man signals.”
He laughed. “Impossible! We are very simple creatures.”
“No, you’re not,” I said.
“Trust me, we are,” he said again.
“Nope.” I shook my head. “You are so complicated. Not to mention very, very confusing.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Well, the problem with most of you is that, when you get into a relationship with someone, you somehow manage to sneakily take the reins, without us even knowing you’re doing it! Until a year later you wake up and can’t believe where you’ve landed up. And for a moment, you think you were the one who landed you there, until you realize that it wasn’t you. You never actually had any power, you had just been steered along, taken for a ride you didn’t even know you were on, or signed up for. Because if you had known, you would never have signed the indemnity form!” I concluded.
Mike looked at me for the longest time and then started to shake his head. “Nah, sounds like your ex was just an asshole,” he said, bringing his eyes up to me. He looked at me intently, as if he were searching me for something. Looking into me.
I sipped my Coke again and gave a big nod. “That he was. That he bloody was. And what about yours? She sounds like a real piece of work, too.”
Mike shrugged. “Well, she just fell in love with someone else. What can I do? And now they’re married with their first baby on the way, so . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know, Becca. Matters of the heart are confusing, aren’t they? You know what I mean. You wrote a book about it.”
I looked at him for a while, taking him all in, and then a slow, small smile spread across my lips. “Okay, fine. I’ll break the girl code and tell you what women want, because it seems like you really need some help in this department.”
He turned in his seat and looked straight at me. “Okay. Tell me.”
“Right, we want someone sensitive, but not too sensitive. We still like manly. We want someone who is funny and can make us laugh, but not so funny that they can’t ever be serious. We want someone gentle, but not so gentle that th
ey can’t be a little bit rough sometimes, when required. We want someone who can listen, and we mean we really want you to listen. And there will be tests; we will ask you random questions from time to time to make sure you heard us. And we definitely want someone who thinks we’re the most beautiful woman in the world, and tells us this. Tells us often, but not so often that it sounds insincere. And we might say things like, ‘I don’t like flowers,’ or ‘Please, don’t make a big deal out of our anniversary,’ but, really, we want that. We really do, even if we don’t think we do . . .” I paused and looked at him, my face flushing a slight shade of red—I could feel my cheeks tingle.
“Really?” His smile changed now, from amused to a little bit naughty—and a lot flirty. “For someone who doesn’t know what she wants, that sounded very specific,” he said slowly.
“I was speaking generally,” I quickly said.
“I see.” Mike moved in his seat, a little closer to me. “So, you don’t think crying is too sensitive?”
I shook my head. “No. In fact, it’s kind of sexy when men cry,” I heard myself say.
“Sexy?” He leaned a bit closer.
“Definitely,” I said, my voice getting a little whispery.
“Are you talking generally again?” He leaned in a little more. “Or are you being specific?” he asked, equally seductively.
Oh boy, how had this conversation gotten here so quickly? But I knew the answer to that. It was crystal clear. I had known the answer to that from the moment we’d laid eyes on each other, and then hadn’t been able to take our eyes off each other as we’d driven away down that dirt road, him casting glances at me in the rear-view mirror, and me, waiting for them.
“I might be being specific,” I said, playfully, sexily, teasing.
“And who, specifically, are you being specific about?” He matched my teasing tone and I heard a small giggle escape my lips. This was all so strange, and somewhat exhilarating; I hadn’t been flirted with in ages, let alone flirted back with anyone—well, not anyone worth flirting with. And Mike was definitely worth flirting with. Suddenly, his hand left his glass and moved up to my face, and then, without warning, he was pushing a long strand of hair out of my face. I watched his finger out of the corner of my eye as he tucked the hair carefully behind my ear, my skin prickling and shivering as he did it.
He smiled at me. “It was hanging in your drink.”
I quickly looked at the strand and, noticing that the tip was wet, I cringed. “Sorry, that’s a bit gross. That’s, uh . . . not exactly sexy.” I pushed the strand back into the messy bun at the top of my head.
“Are you trying to be sexy, Becca?”
At that, I burst out laughing again. “You must not have noticed the coffee-stained sweatshirt I’m wearing, or my knotted hair piled up on my head, and I’m pretty sure my mascara is smudged.”
“At least you’re wearing red lipstick and your clothes aren’t ripped,” he said, with a very pleased-looking smile.
“Mmmm. So, you noticed that?”
“Well, you did have your hands between your legs—unless that was something else? And, if it was, I do want to point out that, under the disorderly conduct statute, lewd behavior in public is punishable by a hefty fine, and, in some cases, jail time.”
I bit my lip as the conversation slid further and further south, towards the gutter. “Jail time?” I asked.
“In some cases.”
“What kind of cases?” I asked.
He leaned in. “Only the very serious ones.”
“I see. And, if you were to arrest me, would you use your handcuffs for that?” I asked.
His eyes widened for a second and then he smiled. “Depends if you’re into that kind of thing or not?” It was a question.
“Only one way to find out,” I said.
CHAPTER 15
Hot wet kisses.
Kisses on my mouth.
On my neck.
Snaking up to my ear.
We barreled into my room, wrapped up in a flurry of fast, hungry kisses.
Yeah, yeah! I know! This was practically anonymous sex. Don’t judge me, okay? I’m a grown-ass woman and, yes, I have had a few one-night hook-ups. Nothing wrong with that!
Kisses. More. Harder. Faster. Crazier and more frantic as the energy between us became explosive. Like petrol to a fire, a match to a stick of TNT, two live wires . . . You get the picture. This was like nothing I’d ever experienced with anyone before. Never had I felt this level of hunger and desire, and never, as he ran his hands over my body for the first time, had anything felt so, so—
But suddenly he stopped kissing me.
“Wh . . . wha . . . what?” I asked, quite breathless.
“Oh. My. God! So this is what one of these rooms looks like,” he said, looking around. “Wow.”
“I know,” I replied.
He looked back down at me and our eyes met. “Well, this is a first for me,” he said, bringing his lips to mine. He kissed me again, and then pulled away quickly. “Just to clarify: it’s a first for me in terms of being in this room, not . . . you know?”
I chuckled and pulled him towards me. I couldn’t get enough.
I started peeling his T-shirt off.
Rock-hard abs. Steel-like, yet warm to the touch.
T-shirt slipping higher and higher.
Oh God—his chest! Hard and smooth, like polished marble.
T-shirt coming off.
Strapping shoulders that bulged and demanded that I dig my nails into them!
He moaned as I did, and I held on tighter as he lifted me off the ground.
I wrapped my legs around him as he pulled at my shirt, pulling it over my head in one move and cupping my ass in his big hand.
He tossed my shirt on the floor and then dropped me on to the bed and climbed on top of me.
Bra off.
His hands on my breasts, his lips, tongue, teeth pulling at them.
I arched my body towards him . . . I needed him.
He raised himself up on his knees, sitting over me, and started undoing his belt. I helped him out and unzipped him.
A moment.
A pause, as if we were catching our breath, and then . . .
Hands everywhere again.
Breathing becoming jagged as he slipped his hand down my pants and I pushed my hands into his.
Gripping him tightly.
Slipping his fingers under my panties.
“Oh God,” I cried out.
I closed my eyes and moved my hips in circles.
Faster.
My hand still gripping him.
Faster.
Tighter.
And then, when I could no longer take it, I pulled him down on to me and opened my legs for him.
His weight on top of me, crushing me into the bed, and then . . .
“Wait!” we both said at exactly the same time, pulling away from each other.
“Condom?” I asked, looking at him.
He shook his head and raised an eyebrow. “Condom?”
I shook my head back and then crawled out from underneath him and opened the bedside drawer. This establishment was the kind of place that would keep condoms by the bed, I was sure of that.
“Shit,” I cursed, when I found the drawer completely empty.
“Other one?” he asked, looking at me. His cheeks were even more flushed now, his hair was messy from me running my hands through it and a fine layer of sweat was glistening on his forehead. In a word, hot. Smoking, steaming, sizzling hot.
“Yes. The other one!” I climbed on to all fours and crawled across the bed to the other drawer. I opened it and—
“Shit!” I looked over at him and shook my head.
His shoulders slumped. “Don’t suppose this is something we can call room service for?” he asked, with a smile on his face.
I laughed. “Not sure about that.”
He flopped back down on his back.
“Don’t suppose Uber has started
a division where they drop condoms off?” I asked.
I heard a small chuckle next to me. “Don’t think so, but there’s an idea for a small start-up.” He rolled over, perched himself up on his elbow and looked at me.
“Condom drop dot com?” I asked, also rolling on to my side. My breasts were squeezed together by the move and his eyes immediately drifted down there. He slowly lowered his lips to them again and ran his tongue over my nipple, pulled it between his lips and—
We were kissing again.
Harder and hungrier than before.
Hands through hair.
Hands on hips, pulling, grinding . . .
But I needed more!
“Shit!” I hissed against his lips. “We reeeeeally need a condom.”
He sat up. “Convenience store. Two blocks away.” He was on his feet, pulling his shirt back on already, almost before he’d even finished the sentence.
I jumped up, too. “Why didn’t you say so?” I quickly pulled my clothes on and made a run for the door. Mike followed close behind me.
“Crap—left my car keys inside,” I said, as we were heading across the parking lot, and I started to turn around again.
“Got mine!” He dug in his pocket and pulled a set out, waving them in the air as he ran.
“Good. Good!” I followed him to his car, expecting to see his police car. I paused when I saw a very ordinary-looking Honda.
“Well, I don’t drive a police car all day,” he said, opening the car and climbing in.
“Aha! Of course.” I nodded as I got into what was clearly a man’s car. A can of deodorant lay on the floor by my feet, as well as an empty tin of energy drink.
“Uh . . .” He looked over at me. I could see he was embarrassed. “I don’t have many passengers,” he said defensively. “Well, not ones that aren’t criminals, and you’d be surprised how little they care about how your car looks.”
“It’s okay.” I pushed the cans away with my foot as we drove off.
The store really was only two blocks away and we could have walked. As soon as we parked, we both jumped out the car with a sense of urgency and then rushed inside, a little bell announcing our arrival. We ran up to the counter. A man was behind it and I immediately opened my mouth and started talking.
