“That depends,” he stated, dampening his lips. It was quite possibly the most erotic thing I’d ever seen, and hell, if I could explain that. He looked up at me. “What are the odds that you’ll be there too?”
Quite high. “I wanted to jump tonight.” Crazy I was admitting this, admitting to a stranger, this. I nodded. “I was sad.”
And confused, confused why the sheer happiness of the evening tonight would make me want to do such a thing. That someone else’s happiness would physically pain me. It didn’t make sense and sounded almost cruel. Like I was evil.
Like I was petty.
I expected him to let go, but he didn’t. If anything, he held me closer. His fingers wrapped around my wrist again, his throat jumping. “I’m less happy than I am something else,” he admitted too, nodding too. “Most days something else.”
We were the same, both of us but in different ways. My head bobbed twice in acknowledgment. “It doesn’t have to be that way tonight. You could be more happy than something else.”
Who was this person? Certainly not me. I mean, I was basically propositioning this complete stranger for sex, his smile soft. Taking my hand, he used my finger to pull down an entire strand of my dark hair.
“And maybe you don’t have to jump,” he stated, but then a shrug. “Or maybe I could jump. Jump with you? What do you say, Jersey girl?”
I wouldn’t make him, of course. But something told me no one could make this guy do anything. He had a lot of his own control, his dedication to his friend told me that. He’d stood back once upon a time, allowed someone else to come in who he knew would love her. It told me so much about the control he had over his life as well as something else.
This Midwestern boy’s heart.
Chapter Five
Ramses
I should ask her last name.
But before I could manage the thought, things were moving too fast and I was taking her home.
Why the fuck was I taking this woman home?
Why had I revealed shit I barely acknowledged myself? Things about my past and who I was? The night started as me trying to save her from... whatever this shit was she was dealing with, and now, she was doing the same for me. This was fucked up.
Right?
My thoughts couldn’t help but say yes, and that was opportunist as fuck. I wasn’t this guy. I didn’t take women home. Well, I took women home but not like this and not under certain situations like this. They also definitely weren’t anyone remotely close to Brielle. I’d been with a handful of older women before but...
No, they weren’t like her. They didn’t feel like her if that made sense, and I most definitely didn’t play out all my shit in front of them like I needed some kind of therapy. I mean, what the hell had I sounded like tonight? I sounded needy, like I needed her.
I hadn’t even talked to December about all this.
True, I never aired out all my dirty laundry to my friend, made easier in the past with all the land mass between us. I told her things from time to time but nothing heavy, and I most certainly wasn’t a “sharer.” I wasn’t scared of my feelings or anything, but I wasn’t one to sink into them either. I was pretty laid-back. I simply dealt with stuff as it came up.
Or in this case not.
I tried to tell myself this was a different situation with Bri. That I wasn’t running once again and not dealing. That I was taking this woman home because we both wanted that. Hell, she’d been eye-fucking me over a deep-dish pizza as bad as I’d been her. I mean, it had to be pathetic the way I was looking at her half the night, her tits perfect and crimson the way the swell flushed above the top of her black dress. She was all woman from the smoky tone of her banter and even to the way she told me off tonight. It’d even turned me the fuck on.
Who was I right now? Really?
Certainly not this guy, but my keys in my hand and the other on her back, we were getting in my car and moving most certainly too fast. It was like I had blinders on when it came to this woman, under her spell, like prey to her. The only one I felt getting played was her since I was allowing this shit to happen. I needed to be the responsible one, the guy and analyzing all the cues of the situation.
A ready and willing (but most important of all sober) woman?
Check.
A hot-blooded male?
Fucking hell. Check.
Two damage souls with clear avoidance issues?
That was where shit got sticky. That was also where things got a little unethical. True, I was avoiding my own trivial shit, but I was well aware of my own issues. I hadn’t even grazed the surface of hers, though. What if she was dealing with something? Truly dealing with something, and here I was letting her use this, us, to not deal with it? This was starting to travel into asshole territory, and I wasn’t that guy no matter how much she physically called to me.
Which was a hell of a fucking lot.
This woman was a goddess, point blank, and I had no problem worshipping every inch of her for as long as she’d physically allow me. I wanted her like I wanted my hands and dick to do the very job, but I was straddling a line of uncertainty here.
Bri let me take her home this evening. Different since she hadn’t even wanted to get in the car with me when the night began. She didn’t know me, so I hadn’t been offended. Now, we were both behind the dash with her hand on my leg and mine at her nape, playing with her thick hair that smelled like bottled flowers. It filled up my damn car, and odds were, it would long after she got out.
Think about what you’re doing.
I wasn’t thinking. Being an asshole who thought more about his cock and avoiding his own feelings. I was getting more than one thing out of this.
Maybe feelings were an issue for me.
Such a stereotype, right? And not the man my mother raised. She’d be looking at me with a major side-eye right now.
Hell, I was side-eyeing myself.
Turned out Bri lived on the north side of Maywood Heights. The drive was silent the majority of the ride outside of the easy listening hip hop beats I played. I was used to sitting with my own thoughts, so I preferred music that didn’t drown them out. In tonight’s case, the choice had been annoying, but I couldn’t change it since it was already playing when she got in. That would have been weird, and in any sense, I found a fair amount of distraction with Brielle’s hand simply on my thigh. She drifted rather close to my cock, which made my shit basically unbearable in my tight dress pants.
I squeezed her neck in front of her uptown complex, not the suburbs but upscale none the less. In fact, the city had been developing the subdivision more and more to attract more businessmen and women, as well as young professionals and my father’s company, Mallick Enterprises, even had a few properties there. I knew because I’d asked to be sent all his newer projects as well as the ones in progress under my family’s real estate and development company. I suppose they weren’t my dad’s properties per se but the ones his company managed and made decisions on while he was away. I guess this was all my cross to bear now, and I got to stare it in the face with this woman’s hand near my cock.
A few stories raised high to the night’s sky in a snow-encrusted evening. I took to underground parking, but I didn’t turn off the car when we arrived, nor did I get out. I was still in debate here, hesitating, but Brielle wasn’t. She gazed up at me expectantly, her cheeks incredibly flushed and her lips pouty. She wanted to be kissed, and she wanted me to do the job.