“Oh God, Sergio. I love your cock,” Catarina says, and for all the echoing going on in the centuries-old architecture of this fucking chasmlike place, she may as well have yelled it.
Holy audiobook orgasms. My cheeks flush pink, and my heart stops beating in an impressive showing of synchronization. I am mortified.
The man standing in front of me bites at the plump flesh of his bottom lip as his smile deepens.
“Fuck yes, you do,” Sergio says. “Your pussy loves it.”
Cool it, Sergio, you horny bastard!
I scramble for the phone on the ground, dropping to my knees without care for how hard the tile will be as they hit it and slapping at the phone like a cat with a string.
In a matter of ten seconds, I’ve morphed from a woman running the front desk at the law library into a flipping vaudeville comedy act. Add in some old-timey music and jazz hands, and I’ll be able to take this goddamn spectacle on the road.
“Oh yes. Oh yes!” Catarina shouts.
Good Lord, Catarina! Can’t you come quietly, for fuck’s sake?
If I didn’t know this was a contemporary romance audiobook, I’d be convinced Catarina was in the middle of a porno. For once in my life, I’m a little annoyed that the male and female narrators are so convincing.
I can hear the handsome man’s throat clear above me, but I don’t look up. I know the torture won’t end until I find the off button and successfully push it.
Frantic enough to try anything, I slap a flat hand over the device like a spatula, just to trap it from traveling any more, and reach over with the other to scoop it up. Almost like when you trap a spider with a cup and have to use a piece of paper to make sure it can’t get out.
I pick it up as Sergio climaxes, shouting his triumph for all of the New York Public Access Law Library to hear. “It feels so good,” he groans huskily a few seconds later.
My phone in check, I find the button with my thumb and push the pause button manically.
Unfortunately, I click it so many times, the device can’t decide what to do, switching on and off in rapid succession, alternating between silence and Sergio and Catarina’s throes of passion.
“You’re gripping me so tight!”
Silence.
“God, Sergio, I love you! I love your cock!”
Silence.
Insanely hot stranger man and I stand in opposing silence—his smile growing by the second and my stomach trying to turn itself inside out—while we wait for my phone to decide on which command to land or for Sergio and Catarina to stop waxing poetic about their orgasms and each other’s private parts.
It comes to heel eventually—I am a human with opposable thumbs after all—but not before the embarrassment has had time to really percolate. If this shit were tea, it’d be dark as hell.
No milk, no cream, no sugar, just straight-up black and bitter.
I guess if there’s any silver lining to be had, it’s that the screen on my phone, somehow, remains intact.
“Interesting,” the man says softly when Sergio’s groans and Catarina’s moans finally give way to silence. “Very interesting.”
I try to cover my discomfort with fidgeting—tucking a piece of hair behind my ear, shifting on my feet, straightening nonexistent items on the desk, and turning behind me to grab a pen I clearly don’t need.
He doesn’t comment, but boy oh boy, the strength of his smirk when I finally meet his eyes is comment enough. It would melt paint off walls, cement off sidewalks, and seven layers of panties off a woman.
It’s the kind of smirk that clenches a fist around your heart and sends a zap of lightning to your soul.
It’s the kind of smirk that few men can do but all wish they could, and it’s all I can do to stay upright as I look at it.
“Um, hi,” I say, choosing the easiest words possible. I mean, it’s not really a choice, seeing as doing so is actually crucial to my survival, but it’s the route I go all the same. “Can I help you?”
“Sorry to interrupt…” He pauses, and that smirk is still there, knowingly pointed in my direction. “But I need to make copies of this court transcript,” he says, holding it up and waving it in front of me just in case I don’t understand words. Given my current trauma, it’s probably not a bad idea.
“Right, right, of course,” I push out through a dry and scratchy throat. “I just need your library card.”
“I don’t have my library card.”
I scrunch up my nose. “I…uh…I can’t make copies for you unless I have the card.”
He is undeterred. “My assistant, who is otherwise occupied having a baby right now, has my card. But I know the number.”
His assistant. So, hot-stranger-man is important enough to have his own assistant…
I shake off the questions that start popping into my brain. Even though I kind of want to know more about this guy, my gut instinct is telling me I do not want to know more about this guy.
“Okay. I guess that should work. What’s the number?” I ask, and I finally find a reason to use the pen I grabbed earlier to jot it down.
He rattles off the twelve-digit code with surprising ease.
I record it on a small yellow Post-it note, grab the folder from his hand, and head for the back room before remembering something and turning back. “Just, uh…copies are fifteen cents a page. That okay?”
“Are you sure I don’t get some kind of friends and family discount?”
I draw my eyebrows together. “Friends and family? But I don’t know you.”
“No?” he asks with a smirk. “After our introduction, I feel like you should.”
And he doesn’t give me time to respond before adding, “Or maybe Sergio and Catarina could help me with that discount? We all feel like real good buddies now.”
Good God. If I could burrow myself into the ground and end up in China, I’d do it.
My stupid cheeks bloom again, a whole fucking garden of blood-red roses this time. “Yeah, well…” I don’t know what to say to best disarm his nearly offensive charisma, so I blather the first thing that comes to mind, and I do it almost petulantly. “I don’t really have the authority to make a decision about a discount like that. And Sergio and Catarina are otherwise occupied.”
He laughs, completely unfazed by my standoffishness and sarcastic retort, and leans his arms into the counter. “All right. Fifteen cents per page is fine, but I’m going to count, just to make sure you don’t overcharge me.” My heart jumps to triple its normal pace when he finishes with a wink.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” I turn back to the copy room and step inside before my cheeky reply really hits me.
Holy shit, where did that come from?
I have plenty of dating experience, but this kind of guy—this kind of outright cockiness—is not my type.
I like the guys who let me off easy. The ones who do what they say and call when they should and don’t take too much effort. I don’t want a wallflower, but this guy has high-maintenance player written all over him, and I don’t have the time or stamina to get dragged into the deep end of that pool of hot mess.
With those dimples and charm and seriously ruggedly perfect jaw? Cheeky responses should be far, far away, enjoying a vacation somewhere on a trek through the rain forest at this point.