I jump out of the underbelly of the Web and return to the keypad. I try to call Violet once more, but her phone goes straight to voice mail again. Time to head into the fray. I slip my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, cross the street, and walk to the entrance.
“Excuse me,” I say as I weave around a mom pushing a stroller.
“No problem,” she says, then her lips twitch up. “Go Renegades!”
I give a quick fist pump then dart around a few more people crowding the sidewalk. A teenager up the street lifts his phone and takes a picture as I push on the mistletoe-decorated door.
The receptionist looks up and then beams, her bright green eyes wide and eager. “Hi, Cooper!”
Several faces snap in my direction at once. Customers seated on a white leather couch in the waiting area gawk, while a woman in a salon chair with tinfoil in her hair peers over the top of her glasses. A lady with cherry-red hair stares my way as one of Violet’s half-dozen or so stylists snips her hair.
There’s no point pretending I’m anyone else, so I give a friendly wave, then drum my fingers on the receptionist’s desk.
“Hey, Sage,” I say to the woman with silvery-purple hair and bangles up to her elbows. “I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping to see—”
“Your girlfriend,” she says brightly, her voice matching the jingle of her jewelry.
I don’t answer right away. I let the word girlfriend bang around in my skull for a little longer. The last time I had a girlfriend was in college. Kelly was a track star, and we were a good fit since we were both more obsessed with sports than schoolwork, partying, or, frankly, even the opposite sex. Don’t get me wrong—we engaged in plenty of horizontal exercise, but neither one of us was keen on anything that dug much deeper on an emotional level. Hell, maybe that was why we were together for an entire year. We were easy, we were painless, and we were good. We broke up when she transferred to another school that had a better track team.
“Yes, I’m here to see my girlfriend,” I say to Sage, and I hear whispers behind me.
A few seconds later, the click of heels across the tile catches my attention. Violet walks toward me, and it takes me a few seconds to process what she’s wearing. Black leather pants. Holy hell, she’s wearing black leather pants, and she looks like a rock star in them, and I want to know how they’d look wrapped around my hips as I push her against the wall.
Rewind.
The pants are off in this fantasy. But she can leave those black boots on. They hug her calves and stretch all the way to her knees, and I bet she’d look hot as fuck in those boots and nothing else. I’m so damn glad she loves to wear boots. My eyes travel up her body. A flowy pink top clings to her breasts. A long gold chain with a feather on it hangs between those beauties. Her clothes are so fucking lucky.
Her smile is wide and devious. “Hey, baby.”
Baby?
“Hey, sweetie pie,” I say, trying that on for size, if we’re going to toss terms of endearments at each other now.
When she reaches me, I steel myself for a number of possibilities. She might be pissed that everyone is still calling her my girlfriend. She might be annoyed because her landlord is a dick. Or she might be ready to remind me that I shouldn’t show up without an appointment.
Instead, she grabs my hand, tugs me over to the nook in the front of the store with shelves of shampoos for sale, then throws her arms around me. She tugs me in close, pressing those sweet breasts against my chest.
Well, hello there, angels. So nice to see you again.
She threads a hand in my hair, and heat sweeps over me. She tilts her face up and nibbles on the corner of her lips. An electric charge surges down my spine. When she curls her fingers around the back of my head, I’m ready to call a two-minute warning because if she moves any closer, she’ll know there’s nothing fake about the way my body responds to her.
I’ve gone from zero to fully aroused in less than ten seconds. She presses her cheek to mine, her soft lips brushing near my earlobe. My chest rumbles. What the hell is she doing to me? Forget aroused. I’m ridiculously turned on, and also confused as hell. But I’m a physical man, so I go with it. I wrap my arms around her, holding her close.
“I texted you,” she says softly. “Did you get them?”
I can barely think with her lips so close to me, with her soft voice floating in my ear. “No. I mean, yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” English is hard with her breasts getting acquainted with my chest, and me wanting to know how they’d feel without all these clothes between us. “Then Ford ambushed me and there were ducks, so . . .”