“And your friend Dean isn’t a prospect?” I ask, feeling annoyed at the fact that I still seek that verification.
“No.” She shakes her head. “He reminds me of my brothers.”
I doubt your brothers touch you the way he did earlier.
She slaps her hand on her knee and bellows gallantly, “But you know what, Miles, you’re right! I should totally find a random hookup tonight.”
“Whoa, I never said anything about random.”
“Well, you’re doing it, so why can’t I?”
I narrow my eyes. “You don’t seem like the random type.”
“Maybe I should be.” Her eyes narrow when she leans in and whispers against my lips. “Can I tell you a secret, Miles?”
“You can tell me anything, Mercedes.”
She giggles and crooks her finger for me to lean in even closer. I’m so close I can smell the faint scent of her cherry lip gloss, and it’s not helping the half boner having a party in my pants.
Her lips graze my ear when she whispers, “My writing makes me horny.”
I nearly choke on my beer. “I’m sorry, what?”
“My writing makes me horny.” She pulls back and nods her confirmation. “I’m serious. I have a sex toy that works really well and really fast, but I miss the heat of a man, ya know?”
My eyes scrunch together, and I rub my fingers in the sockets to make sure I’m awake and hearing this all correctly. “I mean…I don’t really ever miss the heat of man, so I don’t think I know exactly what you’re saying.”
“Fine, the heat of a woman.” She rolls her eyes dramatically “You know what I’m talking about. The heat.”
I frown and shake my head. “You’re going to have to elaborate because I think of a lot of things when I think of women, but their body temperature isn’t one of them.”
“You asked for it.” She laughs and leans in so she’s speaking low and soft and directly into my ear. “The heat of a woman is so much more than temperature. It’s the soft, sensual curves of the female form. The way your fingers dig into the meat of her thighs when she’s wrapped around you. Her smooth, sunken tummy when she’s on her back, the delicate bumps of her ribcage when she’s throwing her head back in pleasure. Tight little nipples in pillows of creamy softness. The fact that you could fold yourself around her and envelop her body almost entirely and still want more. You’re saying you don’t miss that kind of heat?”
I blink slowly, recovering from what just happened. Her voice was a sensual, verbal caress straight on my cock. Then there was the warm heat of her breath on my ear. The deep husk of her tone. The way her warm palm rests softly on my thigh.
Fucking hell.
My dick immediately went from a halfy to a fully, and I’m so turned on that I don’t even give a fuck.
“You totally write erotica,” I state, my voice deep and gravelly with arousal. I sit back and shake my head at her.
“Damnit!” She snaps her fingers in front of her, clearly annoyed that she let herself get carried away. “I didn’t want you to know!”
“Why not?” I nearly growl. “What’s the big secret?”
“Because it changes the way you look at me.”
“How so?”
“Well, you’ll either one, think I’m some kind of sex freak who’s super frickin’ experienced in the bedroom.”
“That’s completely accurate.” I laugh.
“See!”
“I’m kidding, go on.”
“Or two, you’ll be embarrassed by what I do and not want to tell anyone.”
“Are you joking?” I bark and lean forward to turn her face so she’s looking at me. She actually looks kind of sad, and that blows my damn mind.
“Well, your buddy doesn’t count. He’s probably a horn ball,” she corrects. “I mean, anyone that’s super important to you.”
“Fuck that,” I argue and shake my head adamantly. “Then you don’t know me at all, Mercedes.”
“I know your kind,” she retorts with a cocky edge to her voice like this doesn’t really bother her. But I can clearly see that it does. “You dudes are all alike. You want a lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets.”
“Bullshit.”
She shrugs. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was a huge reason my ex and I broke up. He asked me to lie to his family about what I did for a living.”
My blood runs cold. “What?”
The shamed look on her face has my jaw clenches with rage. “Yeah, I thought it was weird that we’d been together for so long and he still hadn’t introduced me to his family. Then his sister was getting married, and he sort of had to bring me to the wedding. That was when he asked me to tell everyone that I wrote cozy mysteries.”
“What a fucker.” I growl and take a huge gulp of my beer to try to tamp down my rage.
“Well, he is that, but I write some really kinky shit in my books, and that’s not exactly easy to tell your grandma about.”
“Fuck that.” I growl and slam down my beer. “I’d tell my grandma about you.”
“You would not!” she argues with an incredulous laugh. “Grandmas hate me! My grandma hates me.”
“Your grandma can’t possibly hate you. You’re perfect!”
“She hates me. She’s really religious, and every time I come home, she tries to arrange a meeting with me and her priest. She thinks I need an intervention or an exorcism or something.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny.” I reach out and touch her thigh in apology.
She shrugs and picks at the label on her beer. “It’s a little funny.”
I watch her for a moment and hate the way her posture has hunched. She went from a feisty, hilarious, sex-talking hottie to this slightly uncomfortable, semi-muted version of the Mercedes I’ve been getting to know the past couple of weeks. Her ex is a fucker, and if he was here, I’d make damn sure he knew it.
Jaw tight with determination, I hold out my hand to her. “Come with me.”
She scowls at me. “Where are we going?”
“We have to go outside for a minute…just trust me.”
I pull her out of her seat and exhale heavily through my nostrils at how high her skirt has ridden up. She smiles sheepishly and pulls her hand from mine to pull it down. Damnit, she’s way too sexy.
She gives her friends a one-minute sign by holding her finger up as I pull her through the crowd to the exit. The bouncer stamps both of our hands and takes her half-drunk beer as I haul her up the stairs and out the front door.
It’s balmy out, the night air damp and hot against our skin. The blue neon lights of the Walrus Saloon sign glow against our skin as I look around for a private area away from the noisy drunks. Yanking her around the corner, I pull my phone out of my pocket and find a contact on my screen. I turn it to Mercedes.
“Press the call button,” I state.
She squints at the screen, and her eyes fly wide. “Are you insane?” she exclaims and shoves the phone away. “It’s after midnight, Miles. We are most definitely not calling your grandma!”