Velvet Kisses(3)

Maybe that can be the next headline for my article? “How I Got Arrested While Trying to Seduce a Fantastically Sexy Businessman.” Obviously he’s way out of my league.

Speaking of my article, I should go home and delete it. Who the hell am I to give sex tips anyway? I can count on one hand the close encounters I’ve had with the testicular kind. Will and I weren’t exactly active in that department. My article typically focuses on fashion with the odd sex tip thrown in for good salacious measure. It’s really my sex tips that bring the boys to the yard, regardless of the over-used euphemism. My sex tips bring the girls to the yard, too, and that, in and of itself, is why I have the most widely read article in both the print and online versions of the WB Daily.

Tall, Dark, and Alarmingly Sexy sears over me with those day glow eyes of his, and my body sizzles as if I’ve just been thrown in the bathtub with a toaster. He has an authoritative appeal like a lawyer or an undercover cop.

Cop! Gah! Forget calling the police. I bet he is the police. God. Of course, I’m going to be arrested—by him. He’s probably just off duty. Those types are always plaguing the Black Bear, trying to trip up the bartenders into serving minors. They live to shut places like this down. Unfortunately for Annie and her brothers, who actually own the Black Bear, this place is a magnet for minors, which, in theory, is fine since they serve a full menu and an entire array of non-alcoholic drinks to go along with it, but something tells me the odd hooker is not welcome on the premises.

I spin to leave in my cobalt blue lady-of-the-night heels and smack into a body.

“Marley?” Izzy backs up and steadies me by the shoulders. “Where are you in a hurry to? You want some more nachos?”

Izzy is my sister Jemma’s best friend, only friend, and my nighttime supplier of never ending tortilla chips doused in a questionable cheese batter. She and Jemma went to high school together. Izzy is engaged to one of the owners of the Black Bear, Annie’s big bro, Holt, thus the free never-ending digestional maladies she gifts whenever I frequent the place.

“Just taking off for the night.” I try to sidestep around her, but she rather elegantly blocks my path. Izzy is a dancer, who also happens to own her own dance studio, Electric Lights. As a savvy business woman, who, as far as I know has managed to escape the majority of her twenties without getting knocked-up, she’s the polar opposite of my sister, a three time divorcee with four kids under five. Have I mentioned different baby daddies?

Izzy pulls back and examines me from head to toe. “Look at you!” She ogles my convertible fit and flare dress with its crisscross back, its high slit up the thigh that has no place being out on a January night where the mercury is dropping to artic levels. “Don’t worry, I’m not judging. I think you look amazing. Love the over-shoulder thing you’ve got going on.” She bites down on her lip. “I heard about Will. Sorry.”

My stomach turns when she says she’s sorry. It’s all I hear now, sorry about Will! as if he passed away, and, believe me, I might have preferred that option.

“No big deal.” I shrug it off, eyeing the coat rack before I remember that I didn’t bother to bring one.

Perfect. I’m going to freeze on the way back to campus. I’ll lose my limbs to hypothermia, and then let’s see how many perverted police officers I can lure to my dorm that way. Never mind, I wouldn’t be lucky enough to survive the elements. I can see the school paper headline now, “Girl Freezes to Death in Blue Patent Leather Heels.” Knowing my editor, she’ll include the buy link for the heels at the end of the article. My name, of course, will be superstitiously omitted. People like me get through their fifteen minutes of infamy simply relegated to gender. Girl goes missing. Girl loses feet due to frostbite in an attempt to be sexually promiscuous. Girl gets arrested by the best looking member of the Hollow Brook PD and begs for a one-night stand on the way to the poky!

I glance over my shoulder and spot the handsome-as-hell business suit leering at me. He makes his way briskly in this direction, and I gasp. His eyes are focused, his jaw set in a mean scowl. He’s a man on a mission—and I bet a very specific part of him is waiting for an emission. That’s either fresh lust in his eyes, or he’s looking to meet a correctional quota, and, right now, I’d bet on the latter. Dear God, I’m about to be accessorized with a pair of silver bracelets! Definitely something I would never pair with this ridiculous fit and flare, limb-risking catastrophe. Besides, those kinds of bracelets scream cheap.

Of course, I might scream anything he wanted me to if he chained me to his bedpost.