Damn. Game over, and my dick is still hard enough to cut diamonds with. "Ok, yeah. We can take a break. What's wrong?"
"Nothing … nothing's wrong. That's kinda the problem."
"You're gonna have to explain that to me."
"I don't know anything about you. And here I am fucking … wet … just from the sound of your voice."
I take a second to absorb her words, but they're not adding up yet. "Ok? I still don't see where the problem is." I laugh, trying to put her at ease again.
"I literally just got out of a relationship – like yesterday."
Though my hand's still on my cock, even I can't jerk it to relationship talk. She's feeling guilty, that's what it is. I can fix that.
"Exactly. Yesterday – not today. Not now. Right now you're a single woman who's looking for some intimacy, and I'm a single man looking for a night of distraction. That's it."
She pauses, and I hope she's getting back in the zone. "Still, it's … "
"You're rationalizing this, but I know for a fact your body's telling you something different," I soothe. "We're both consenting adults, right? Come out and meet me."
I don't want to push her too hard, but there's something in her voice that's practically begging me to take her out of her comfort zone and give her a night she'll never forget.
I tuck my cock back in my pants and get up from the couch.
"I … " She hesitates, still breathing hard. "I want to, but I can't … "
"Take a shower and come and meet me at my place. I live in the hills. Trust me, you're gonna love it. If not, you can turn around and go home. No harm, no foul."
She giggles a little, and I can still hear how her nerves are unsteady.
"This is … so unlike me."
I start making my way around the den, picking up the empty bottles that I've left around there throughout the day. I've made up my mind: this is the girl I'm going to fuck tonight, even if I have to clean up to do it.
"It's pretty out of character for me too, which is why it'll be perfect." It's partially true, at least. I've never had one of these booty-callers come directly to my house before. But for some reason I trust this girl.
"This is crazy … "
"Come on. If I can make you wet with my voice, just imagine what I can do with my hands. I can be gentle, too."
She laughs again. The anxiety falling away piece by piece. I know she's not trying to play hard to get, but I have to admit I'm kind of enjoying the chase.
"And what happens, exactly? We fuck, and then, bye?"
"Put a little emphasis on the fucking part."
"That doesn't sound like it would work. I've never done the whole one night stand thing."
I bring the bottles into the kitchen and make my way back to the den, where I settle on the couch again.
"Call it a ‘greasy pancake fuck,' then."
"A what?"
"A ‘greasy pancake fuck.' You've never heard of a ‘greasy pancake fuck'? Don't tell me I have to explain what a ‘greasy pancake fuck' is."
"Would you stop saying ‘greasy pancake fuck'?"
"Sorry."
I let the silence hang in the air.
"Ok," she says, giving up. "What's a ‘greasy pancake fuck'?"
"I'm glad you asked," I say, with a smile she can probably hear. "Well you're single now, and soon enough you'll be dating again; seeing what the world has to offer beyond that ex of yours – who sounds like a real scumbag by the way. You'll be meeting guys, living life, and having sex. Well, if you come over tonight, it'll be the ‘greasy pancake.'"
"The ‘greasy pancake,'" she repeats, unconvinced.
"Right. The first pancake you make of a batch, the one that's just there to soak up all the grease. You're probably angry at your ex right now. Maybe depressed. Maybe lost. You could spend weeks getting over him. Flicking through the photographs, reliving the arguments in your head, throwing out the fluffy stuffed animal he bought you for your birthday that you thought was cute but was actually just a last-minute purchase at the gas station."
She laughs. "It was a keychain, actually. And some wilted flowers."
"Or, you can come over here, and just fuck all of that shit away. A big blow-out. Just let yourself loose, and cut yourself off from the past. Mentally, emotionally."
"Physically," she adds.
"Exactly."
She pauses, and I hear her inhaling deeply as she considers my argument.
"You make it sound pretty easy."
"Because it is."
"I barely know you though. We've spoken for – what, twenty minutes?"
I glance at my phone and realize, to my shock, it's been almost forty. "What's the difference if it's twenty days? The only thing that happens when you wait too long is you miss out. You're frustrated, I'm bored – the stars are aligned right now. And I like you."
"There you go with the astrology again."
"Like you said – it's fate."
She sighs.
"If you feel uncomfortable at any moment," I say, "you have my permission to kick me in the balls and run away. Just don't steal any of my stuff, please."
I wait for what feels like years until she answers again.
"Ok. But I don't even know what you look like."
"Believe me, you won't be disappointed."
I give her directions to my house, and we break the call. I toss the phone onto the table and lie there for a few moments, staring up at the ceiling. Her voice is still echoing in my mind, that colorful laugh, and the stuttering gasps. I've been called a superficial bastard many times in my life, but if those people could see how turned on I am right now by nothing but a disembodied voice and a snappy wit they'd retract their statements. Ok, maybe it's still true, and maybe I'm still hoping she'll be a knockout, but frankly, even if she isn't, I'm ready to put in a prize-winning bedroom performance on her.
I get up and shake my limbs like a prize fighter getting ready for the fight of his life. My balls are aching from how fucking hard she got me, and it's all I can do to save myself for when Miss Mysterious shows up.
"Shit," I mutter to myself, as I take out a bottle of nice wine and some glasses, "what if she doesn't even show up?"
I stamp the thought all the way into the back of my mind – like I do most things these days – and jog on up to the second floor to change.
I get dressed, comb my hair, and go back downstairs. I put a little music on in the den, something slow, but edgy – none of that sugary shit. I like a little dirt in my music. Then I proceed to walk around the room, checking my watch as I pace like I'm scared of getting stood up in my own home.
I stop as soon as I hear a sound, not sure if it's real, and too involved in my own imagination to hear it properly. Was that a car door slamming? I hear footsteps on my porch.
And there goes the fucking doorbell.
Dylan and Gemma's sexy adventure continues in BOOTYCALL: PART ONE
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Discover the Sexy Bastard series: five friends, one bar, and a whole lot of trouble. From Eve Jagger – out now!
HARD
RYDER
CH. 1
There are two smells in the world I love more than any others: a woman right before sex and this warehouse right before a fight. They're different, of course. There's nothing like a naked, wet, waiting woman, the scent of her skin salty with sweat but sweet at the same time, like swimming through an ocean of roses. The warehouse's odor is far less pleasurable, phantoms of last round's knocked-out teeth, bruised faces, and aching bones making the air heavy, grimy, stifling, like the smell of fresh dirt. But both are thrilling and unpredictable and make me want to explode.
Even when it was me in the ring a few years ago, my ribs about to get punched, my knuckles about to crash into someone's cheekbone, the smell of this place would intoxicate me. Facing off with a guy whose sole intention for the next several minutes is to pummel you into submission is as terrifying as it sounds. And as exhilarating. The policy of bare-knuckles brawls is no shirt, no shoes, big problem standing right across from you. But all I had to do to calm myself was take a big inhale of this warehouse air, let the molecules seep into my lungs, into my bloodstream, and I won every match.
I always win.
So tonight, after Crutcher beats Miller in an upset, a big win for me for sure, when Tyler tells me that some kid is in for $10,000 and has disappeared, I tell him he's got to have it wrong. "I would never have let Jamie McEntire run up that kind of tab," I say. "I've seen him around. I wouldn't give him ten dollars, let alone ten thousand." When I took over running fight night two years ago, I did a little cleanup from the mess my predecessor left. No five- or six- figure debts to people we don't know, no credit to anyone who's welched more than once. We may be an underground operation, but there are standards. There's also a dress code: women in heels, men in collared shirts, and our crowd is the type who likes to drop a lot of money on both. We have security guards. The bartender will call you a cab if you get too drunk. I run a tight ship. Even the police think so. That's why they don't hassle me. Sometimes they even take a try in the ring.