And yet, it was all I had.
“You know, I wasn’t actually planning on fucking you tonight,” I said into Gabe’s awkward, fidgety, trying-to-get-away silence. “Obviously that’d need your buy-in too. I’m just saying—if you offered, I’d say no. You were flirting. I was trying to flirt back. I’m bad at it. Even more obviously.” I cleared my throat awkwardly. Gabe’s gaze had flicked back to me after my first few words, and his eyes had widened impossibly, his lips parted. God, he was fucking beautiful. Even with the hair and the piercings. Maybe especially with the hair and the piercings, and didn’t that show me just how screwed I was. “Look, no pressure, but do you want another glass of that? I’ll get another beer.” I shouldn’t. Three meant starting to veer into lowered-inhibitions territory. But I would, for the chance to stay and get this right, or at least a little less wrong. “But I’m not going to hit on you, and if I take you home, I’ll walk you to your door. That’s it.”
“Okay,” he said at last, drawing the word out into three syllables. “Okay. Um. That—I’m having the malbec?” He didn’t know what he’d ordered? Or was he simply so nervous his voice had started to waver? “I’ll be right back. In a minute. Right back, I promise,” he added in the tone of someone lying through his teeth.
With that, he slid out of the booth and escaped, slipping through a gap between cocktail tables and disappearing into the back of the bar, where he no doubt knew where to find an exit if he wanted to. A bathroom, too, but I’d give it fifty-fifty.
I replayed what I’d said in the slightly less embarrassing privacy of my own mind. Yep, I’d been myself. I sighed. More like sixty-forty, and not in my favor.
I flagged down a server and ordered myself another beer, along with a glass of malbec I doubted Gabe would come back to the table to drink.
I wasn’t actually planning on fucking you tonight. That couldn’t have been more presumptuous and rude if I’d tried.
Jesus Christ. Seventy-thirty. At best.
5
Gabe
The bathrooms at V and V didn’t have the same seedy, dingy, paper-on-the-floor vibe as the clubs I usually visited on my evenings out, but a bar bathroom was, in the end, a bar bathroom. My face looked faintly orange in the mirror over the sink, some quality of the lightbulbs people always used in fixtures like these. Stupid noble gases. Not one of them managed to cast a flattering light.
And contemplating my annoyance with a whole group of chemical elements wouldn’t get me any closer to figuring out whether I ought to bolt out the back door, risking setting off the alarm in order to escape from the most unsettling date of my life.
Alec seemed different tonight. More polished, less frightening.
Or he had, until he’d sliced right through my practiced flirtation with a direct come-on that felt too heavy, too out of place in a venue like an upscale wine bar. I’d have expected it from someone hitting on me at a club. But not here. And not out of the mouth of a guy who’d otherwise been making obvious efforts to be polite and put-together this evening.
Everything about him felt slightly off.
And I’d still wanted to take him home and jump him, take his come-on and run with it until he had me pressed up against a wall just like he had the day before, only this time with the clothes coming off.
But for once, I’d listened to that little voice in my head that said You’re better than this. Hadn’t I been thinking about how empty my hook-ups left me? I deserved better. I deserved more. And I wouldn’t be getting it from Alec.
On the other, other hand, I really wanted what I might be able to get from Alec. I’d regret it in the morning, but I wanted it now.
And then he’d done an about-face, maybe because I’d looked like I might be shooting him down. The typical move of a guy who couldn’t deal with rejection: reject me first.
I wasn’t actually planning on fucking you tonight.
Christ. So fucking condescending. Like it was all up to him, his decision alone whether I put out, no matter what off-hand, even more condescending, Obviously I’d need your buy-in too he tacked on. The pierced, slutty twink who’d kissed him in a park…of course that guy would be ready to bend over, right? So maybe I’d brought it on myself, but I still deserved better, damn it.
I squared my shoulders, shook my head at my orange reflection, and marched out of the bathroom.
No running away from the stupid, predictable consequences of my own poor decision-making. And no rolling over with my ass in the air, either. So Alec had crudely propositioned me and then backpedaled, pissed that I wasn’t quite as easy as he thought and wanting to save a little face. So maybe I’d slipped into my usual, fake, slutty persona tonight, out of nerves—and because it’d been so long since I just let myself be myself with a man I might want to sleep with that I’d forgotten how.
I’d go out there, and I’d drink another glass of wine, and I’d remember how to be Gabe Middleton, Ph.D. candidate and intelligent man of the world, instead of slutty, twinky, easy Gabe-the-club-rat with an unlimited credit card and no standards. If Alec walked, then he didn’t deserve me. And if I walked first, when he inevitably didn’t like the real me, then at least I could do it with my head held high.
I spotted Alec at our table, toying with the beer glass in front of him. As I approached, I saw he hadn’t gotten me another drink. Huh. He’d expected me to ditch him, then. Smarter than he’d let on, I guessed. Still, I’d promised to come back, and here I was. I’d see it out to the end.
He glanced over his shoulder as I walked up, and straightened up in his seat as I slid in opposite him. “Just a sec,” he said, and waved at the server, who’d stopped by a nearby table with a tray of drinks. A moment later, a fresh glass of malbec appeared in front of me, and the server vanished again with a smile.
“Thanks?” I picked up the glass, more than a little confused.
Alec shrugged, his muscular shoulders making the gesture a little bigger than it should have been. “I didn’t want you to think I’d slipped anything in it, so I had them wait until you got back.”
“I wouldn’t have thought of that.” Oh, God, I totally would have, but only after I’d taken my first sip…and score another point for Mr. Hot, Scruffy, and Surprisingly Perceptive and Thoughtful. A little of my annoyance melted away. Okay, so he’d been an asshole. But not a total asshole, if he’d gone out of his way to put me at my ease afterward.
His mouth quirked up at one side, and he looked at me levelly over the rim of his pint glass. His dark eyes glittered in the low light. “Yeah, you would.” He set the glass down on its coaster with a thump. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m shit at this. Dates. Seriously, this is one of my better ones, believe it or not.”
I sputtered into the malbec, narrowly avoiding getting some up my nose. “What? Are you—you can’t be—” I burst into laughter, putting the glass down so I didn’t spill it all over my lap. “Sorry,” I wheezed. Oh, God, he was going to hate me. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. I’m such a dick.”
Alec’s hard, serious face split in what I realized had to be the first actual smile I’d gotten out of him. Jesus, he was even hotter when he wasn’t scowling. So not fair.
“I think you’ve earned the right to laugh about it,” he said ruefully. “I mean, here you are.” He gestured, encompassing V and V and him and me and all of it, and the giggles hit me again, until I ended up propping my elbow on the table and leaning my forehead in my hand, waving at him with the other to wordlessly say, Give me a minute, I’m just being an idiot.
And he did. When I looked up at last, he’d finished about a third of his beer, and he’d leaned back against the booth’s backrest, completely at his ease. Patient. Amused, maybe, but not in a mean way.
I eased back myself, picking up my wine again and feeling strangely—better. Lighter. Like maybe all I’d needed was a good giggle fit to slot the universe back into place again, or at least to slot me back into my place in it.
A sip of wine settled the last of
my shakiness, and I cleared my throat. “So if this is one of your better dates, you should definitely tell me about the worst.” His lips started to pull down into another frown. Oh, no, not when I’d just started to crack him. “Listen,” I said, leaning conspiratorially across the table and lowering my voice, “you can tell me anything. I promise to laugh at you.” I waggled my eyebrows and grinned.
And miracle of miracles, Alec smiled, and then smiled wide enough to show a set of white but slightly crooked and oddly charming teeth, and then—laughed. A full, warm chuckle that lit him up from the inside and set my insides melting. He had no business being that attractive, not when I hadn’t decided whether or not I liked him.
Not when I probably shouldn’t like him, because everything about him screamed bad idea.
“Fine,” Alec said once he’d recovered, a smile still curling the corners of his mouth. “Let me tell you about the time a guy threw his drink on me before we’d even ordered dinner…”
His story held me enthralled, more because of the way he told it than the details themselves. Alec clearly had a sense of humor—about himself, even, which made me melt even more. God, I needed to get a grip. His dark eyes gleamed, his lips…shit, his incredibly mobile, expressive lips, making me think about all the things he could do with them if I took him home after all…
“…and my sister told me it was my fault, and I should’ve pretended to be enthusiastic about going away for a weekend with him, his recent ex, his ex’s poly boyfriends, and six chihuahuas, and I’d end up dying alone.” Alec pulled a face, his scowl somehow managing to be more self-deprecating than off-putting this time. “And that’s the story of my worst date. Laugh it up.”
“Six chihuahuas,” I said a little breathlessly. I couldn’t find a witty reply, and I couldn’t even laugh, although the story had been ridiculous. I couldn’t focus on anything but Alec’s shoulders and chest and mouth, and the parts of him I couldn’t see beneath the edge of the table but could vividly imagine. “If it were me, I’d have dumped my drink on him first and run away before he could walk out on me.”
“I dodged a bullet,” Alec said agreeably. “Even though I probably will die alone.”
He shifted uneasily and picked up the dregs of his beer, polishing it off in one long swig, his throat moving distractingly. Alec hadn’t meant to say that, I didn’t think, and maybe he’d surprised himself more than me.
“It’s okay. I mean, I will too.”
I hadn’t meant to say that, either, and my glass was already empty when I lifted it to my lips.
A heavy silence fell. Shit. Should I beat my forehead against the table in despair? Grab a piece of paper and a pen so Alec could take notes on the new worst date of his life, for the next time he needed to try to entertain someone over drinks? How had I turned drawing him out and persuading him to tell me a funny story into the kind of maudlin moment you usually got at the end of the night after six clubs and ten tequila shots?
Alec set his glass down with a thump. “No, you won’t,” he said, his voice low and serious, nearly drowned out by the jazzy piano playing overhead. They’d turned the music up a little as the night went on, and it looked like someone might be setting up for a live show on the stage across the room. I glanced up at him to find him gazing at me intently, leaning forward a little over the table. “You’re gorgeous.”
I waited for a second, hoping for an and. Nope. He stopped there. Gorgeous. Which…I appreciated—really. Who didn’t want an incredibly attractive man to call him gorgeous?
But basically, he meant that he wanted to fuck me. Or that hypothetically, since he wasn’t actually planning on fucking me tonight, apparently, someone else might want to fuck me. My value, in a nutshell. Hadn’t I just given myself the you deserve better pep talk fifteen minutes before? It didn’t look like Alec thought I did.
“Thanks,” I managed, through a dry, tightened throat. My eyes prickled a little, and a throb had started in my temples. “I appreciate that.”
Alec stared at me for a long moment, his frown deepening. “Let’s get out of here,” he said at last, and pulled out his wallet.
I started to protest automatically. “I can get—”
“Nope, I invited, I pay,” he said in a tone that left no room for discussion. He pulled out some cash and dropped it on the table next to his glass, raising a hand to attract the server’s attention at the same time. I mentally tallied his beers and my wine. At least Alec was a generous tipper. And he paid for dates. I wondered how he could afford it, but I pushed that thought away. Because how long had it been since that happened to me? “Come on.”
He rose and grabbed his jacket, and I followed him awkwardly to the door.
Which he held open for me. And not in that Aren’t I a gentleman, I expect you to put out asshole nice-guy way, but naturally, like he really did just open doors for everyone habitually.
And then he put his hand on my lower back as I walked through the door. A fleeting touch, more of a brush. But my shirt had ridden up, leaving a tiny strip of skin for his fingers to heat with his. Enough to send sparks up my spine and leave me incredibly conscious of that little bit of skin his fingers had grazed for a millisecond.
We ended up standing there outside V and V, against the wall where we could be out of the way of the little groups of people strolling through the marketplace laughing and chatting and holding hands, and generally looking like they were on much more successful dates.
Awkward. I tried shoving my hands in my pockets. My tight jeans defeated me.
More awkward.
I managed to look up at last, only to find Alec frowning out across the marketplace, his thick dark brows drawn together.
Apparently I wasn’t gorgeous enough to hold his attention, let alone possessing any other qualities that might catch his interest.
“Why did you even invite me out tonight?” The words flopped out of my mouth before I could bite my tongue, and Alec snapped back to me, staring me down with the same frowning intensity he’d been devoting to the evening crowd. I swallowed hard, but hell, I’d gotten this far. In for a penny, and everything. “You don’t even want to fuck me.”
Somehow, in the evening air, with a fresh breeze flowing by and the pretty lights strung along the edges of the marketplace and no background music, the word fuck took on a heavy, ugly, inappropriate twist. But he’d used it first.
I lifted my chin and did my best to stare him down in my turn.
Alec’s eyes went dark, and he leaned in, like he couldn’t help it. Another one of those shivers went down my spine. He looked dangerous again, all of a sudden. Predatory.
“I said I wasn’t going to,” he said, almost in a growl. Like a predator who’d gotten his hackles up. I forced myself not to fall back a step. The last thing I needed was to let him pin me against a wall—again. My cock disagreed, but screw that guy. His judgment sucked. Alec added, even lower, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”
“Oh,” I choked out. “That’s…oh.”
Confusing. And so arousing I nearly couldn’t breathe through it. Looking at me like that, he could’ve had me up against the wall after all. I wouldn’t have even protested.
“Yeah,” Alec said. He pulled back, and it looked like it took effort. “You should let me walk you home. Just to your door,” he added hastily. “No further.”
“Why?” I swallowed hard, and my hands felt awkward again. They really wanted to reach for him, stupid little bastards. Obviously they were in league with my even-stupider dick. “I mean, if you want to. Want to.” I couldn’t finish that sentence, even on the second try.
Alec fixed me with a long, level gaze, the kind that felt like an X-ray showing all my insecurities right down to the bone. “I think you ought to get some say in that, don’t you?”
I rocked back, absorbing the blow of that—because God, I’d been doing it again. Just assuming that any guy who wanted me kind of had the right to me, because what else did I have to offer anyone?
And Alec agreed I didn’t have much else to give. Right? Hadn’t he as good as said so? Except that maybe he…didn’t.
And this didn’t feel like it had in the bar, when he’d offhandedly acknowledged that maybe I got to decide who fucked me. This felt like an apology for that, like he knew how he’d come across and wanted me to understand what he’d really meant.
An actual apology might’ve been nice, but I could live without one. Or was I just selling myself short again?
“Come on,” he said, interrupting my spiral. “It’s a nice night. We can walk through the park.”
I laughed a little at his raised, sardonic eyebrow. That looked like a challenge to me, and I always rose to a challenge.
Fuck it. I could overanalyze later at my leisure.
“Be careful,” I managed. “I hear some seedy guys hang out there.”
That drew out a genuine chuckle, and the atmosphere between us lightened enough that when we turned to walk down Church Street, my shoulder brushing his arm, the heaviness in my chest eased up.
We’d made it three blocks before I realized he’d never answered my question.
I leaned in a tiny bit, risking bumping my shoulder against him on purpose, trying for companionable and maybe a little flirtatious. The mood needed lightening. And anyway, I wanted to touch him.
“Why did you ask me out?”
He started a little, as if he’d been far away and lost in thought. We kept walking, the breeze off the lake brushing my hair out of my face and making the city feel fresh and clean, despite the taint in the air left over from the lake’s recent, now-fading cyanobacteria bloom. Chilly, though, and I wished my blazer had pockets, since my fuck-me jeans weren’t going to let me fit my hands in theirs.
At long last, Alec said, “I’m sorry about coming on so strong yesterday.”
Okay, not an answer, but at least he’d decided to talk, period.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said emphatically. “Look, I’m new here. And you kind of took me off guard, and made me think—” He broke off with a gusty sigh. “First impressions are a bitch. You bought me books about drug dealers. You look like kind of a scene kid, you know? And I’m new here. The whole random act of kindness thing with the books threw me. I wanted to find out what you wanted. And I did want to meet you, too. It was—not my finest moment. So I’m sorry.”
Undercover (Vino and Veritas) Page 5
