I know when this is over I’ll drive her home—because she won’t want to stay. But right now, the sex is good—it’s so good—and every time she turns her brain off long enough for her body to take over and collapse into orgasm, I feel some tiny shell chip away.
I want to see her tender pieces.
Fuck. It’s been forever since I wanted tender.
* * *
“WHERE’D YOU DISAPPEAR to last night?” Dylan asks.
I close the car door and lock it behind us remotely. “Went home with someone. What did you guys do?”
“Went back to Dan’s.” Dylan pulls the door open to Fred’s. “I don’t know how to describe the weed he had other than to say it made Jenny bark like a dog.”
I follow him in, not sure I heard his answer correctly over a hundred people yelling, and the loud, pounding music: “Did you say Jenny barked like a dog?”
He nods, his wild blond hair bobbing with the movement, and leads us to the bar. My chest tightens when I see Logan there, working. She looks hot: hair piled high and messy on her head, arms bare in a white tank top that shows off the shape of her perfect tits, a face free of makeup save for her shiny mouth. I feel like an odd mix of idiot and asshole for not anticipating that she might be here tonight.
I hope she doesn’t think I’ve come because of her.
But, shit. I also don’t want her to think I’d avoid her, either. I don’t think I want her to avoid me.
I make a mental fist and imagine punching myself in the jaw.
“Hey, Freak,” Dylan says to Logan with a grin.
They know each other?
She looks up, smiling easily. “Hey, Sideshow.”
She doesn’t react the way I expect her to after last night, so I assume she doesn’t see me behind him . . . but then she tosses two coasters down on the bar top and I realize she’s just greeting me like she would any other customer. It makes something in me grow tense at the same time something else unwinds. What did I expect? That she would suddenly go from a girl determined to have one wild night to a stage-five clinger?
She puts her palms on the bar and looks at us, waiting. “What can I get you guys?”
“A snack,” he says. She laughs, reaching for a cherry and tossing it into the air. Dylan catches it in his mouth, chewing it while he eyes her playfully.
Holy fuck. Dylan not only knows Logan, but he likes her?
Swallowing, he says, “And now an amaretto sour.”
“Amaretto sour?” Logan and I say in unison.
“They’re delicious,” he insists.
“Cultivating your feminine side?” I ask.
He shakes his head, dismissing me. “London makes the best amaretto sours. Seriously, try one.”
I open my mouth to ask him who the hell London is when Logan leans forward, handing him another cherry. “Aww, thanks.”
Every muscle in my body hits pause and my brain seems to trip over the sudden stillness.
She isn’t watching my reaction. Without asking what I want, she pops open some obscure IPA for me, sets it on the bar, and gets to work on Dylan’s drink. But I wouldn’t be able to tear my eyes from her even if someone shot a gun on the other side of the room.
“London?” I say, leaning my elbows on the bar. I grab my beer, taking a sip as she lifts her face to me and pours his shaken drink into a tumbler.
“Hmm?” she answers, blinking quickly to Dylan and then back to me, eyes tight with warning.
I lean in, giving her a tiny shake of my head. I told him I went home with someone, but not who. Besides, he’s distracted—as he usually is—nodding his head to the music and looking around the room as if it’s his first day out of the cave and he can’t believe everything that’s happening all around us.
“Your name is London?” I ask quietly, heart hammering while I try to remember how many times I said the wrong name last night. Trying—and failing—to remember whether I grunted out the wrong name when I came. “I’ve been calling you Logan.”
Her dimples appear a split second before a smile curls up the corners of her mouth. “You have.”
“You let me call you by the wrong name?” My smile feels like a bare flash of teeth. Inside I’m a chaotic swarm of reactions: amused, irritated, embarrassed, confused.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she explains. “You got all the important details right.” With a wink, she takes the twenty I’ve put on the bar, rings up our drinks, and drops my change back in front of me. Without another lingering look, or even another word, she steps away and helps another customer.
Okay, what the fuck just happened?
I can be pretty casual about sex, but even I would correct someone if they were calling me Lucas or Jake. Especially if we were fucking. To think the entire time I was calling her by the wrong name and it mattered so little to her she didn’t even bother to correct me . . .
Dylan turns back to me, grabbing his drink and taking a sip. His expression softens into euphoria.
“I think I just saw your O face,” I say, squeezing my eyes closed. “That will never be unseen.”
“Try this.” He shoves it in front of me.
I take it from him, sliding the straws out of the way to sip directly from the glass. Ugh. “I’m not really an amaretto sour connoisseur,” I tell him. “It tastes like amaretto and sour to me.”
I look over his shoulder and my eyes snag on the sight of . . .
Shit, I am so bad with names.
“Dyl.” I lift my chin, indicating he should subtly follow my attention to the overly made-up brunette and her pixie-cut friend making their way over to us.
But of course he whips around.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Aubrey,” he answers, waving to her. “I think her friend’s name is Lou?” And then his brows pull together as he turns back to me. “Wait. Didn’t you sleep with her last summer?”
I nod, giving him a guilty wince as he calls me an absolute asshole under his breath, and then Aubrey is there with her tits and hopeful smile aimed right at me.
“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she purrs into my ear.
“Hey, Aubrey.” I hold my breath, hoping that I haven’t messed up her name, too.
“You remembered my name!”
Dylan coughs out a single syllable: “Dick.”
Aubrey doesn’t hear him. Her wide brown eyes meet mine, and the invitation is there, so clear. I feel a tightening in my abdomen, the warm rush of adrenaline.
She was sweet, I remember now, looking at her. Unlike London, Aubrey seemed to want more than just one night. She reassured me she didn’t take guys home often, made porn star noises in bed, and faked about seventeen orgasms, but it still managed to be fun. I didn’t nearly pass out when I came the way I did last night with London, but I managed to get off just fine.
I glance over at London as the thought rolls through me, and for a stabbing, panicked second I worry about how this must look. I’m standing at the bar, not ten feet from the woman I had sex with last night, and there’s a woman I’ve obviously slept with standing with her arm around my waist, her cheek resting flirtatiously against my shoulder.
It isn’t the first time two women I’ve hooked up with have been in such close proximity, but it’s the first time I feel like I’m tangled in Saran Wrap, mildly claustrophobic.
Though I don’t know why I’m worried; London still hasn’t looked back over at me. She doesn’t even seem to want to remember it happened.