by Lauren Rowe
There’s a rippling commotion just behind him and a loud squeal, but I’m too fixated on Josh’s exquisite body to take my eyes off him. Fuck the bet. Fuck the application. I’m gonna have drunken sex with this gorgeous man right now and come like a freight train. Right fucking now. In the bathroom. Or in one of the back bedrooms of the suite. Or, hell, right here in this goddamned swimming pool, if need be. Hell yeah. That’s the plan. We’ll just pretend we’re hugging and cuddling in the water and all these drunk, high people around us will never effing know I’m having the orgasm of my life.
“Josh Faraday, you better get your gorgeous ass—” I begin, but I stop.
Holy shitballs.
Isabel Randolph just waltzed right up to the edge of the pool! Oh my God. She’s even more beautiful in person than on the big screen. I feel faint. How is this my life right now?
“Reed!” Isabel says, waving happily toward the swimming pool, her eyes focused immediately to my right.
I glance to my side and Reed’s standing just a few feet away from me in the pool, holding a drink. When did he get into the pool? And, hey, he looks mighty fine, I must say.
“Hey, Isabel, you came,” Reed replies, smiling broadly. “Awesome to see you.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it. Hey, Josh,” Isabel says, turning her attention to Josh a couple feet away from her on the ledge of the pool. She kisses him on both cheeks and then unabashedly looks him up and down. “Wow. You’re looking awfully... fit.”
Josh opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say a damned word, his face pales like he’s seen a freaking ghost.
“Josh Faraday,” a blonde woman says, emerging from the milling crowd and sauntering toward him and Isabel. “I had no idea you’d be here.” She squeals. “I don’t see you for seven long years, and now, out of nowhere, I get to see you twice in two weeks—and both times without a stitch of clothes on?” She giggles gleefully. “I guess there’s a God, after all.”
Nineteen
Josh
I feel physically ill.
I look at Kat in the pool and her face is a mixture of rage and... well, no, nothing else. Just rage. Shit. I look at Reed in the pool and he grimaces at me like I just got pounded in the face with a sledgehammer.
Jen takes another step forward, advancing on me like she’s gonna hug me, so I do the only thing my drunken brain can come up with to save myself: I cannonball into the pool.
The minute I emerge from my splash-landing—or is it a crash-landing?—I throw my hands up at Reed. “What the fuck, man?” I ask, my voice low but intense.
Reed throws his hands up in mimicry of my posture. “You didn’t tell me you were gonna be in Vegas this week, Faraday—how the fuck was I supposed to know?” he says, matching my energetic whisper. “I invited Isabel to the RCR concert when we saw her last week in New York. You should have told me then you were gonna be in Vegas if you didn’t want to see—”
“I didn’t know I’d be here—it came up last minute. Why didn’t you at least tell me Jen was coming tonight? Jesus, Reed. Help a brother out.”
“I didn’t even know Jen was coming—I didn’t even know Isabel was coming. She said she’d try, and that’s the last I heard.” He lowers his voice to barely above a whisper. “And I sure as fuck didn’t know she’d bring Jen, man.” Reed glances furtively at Kat.
“Fuck,” I say. “Not good, man.”
“It’s your own damned fault,” Reed says. “Play with crazy, you’re gonna get crazy-burned.”
I turn to Kat, ready to apologize or assure her or laugh with her—hell if I know where her head is at right now—and the expression on her face makes it clear she’s pissed (though about what, I’m not sure).
“Kat, listen,” I begin. “I—”
There’s a loud splashing noise right behind me. Jesus, no. I wheel around, hoping my gut is wrong. But it’s not wrong, unfortunately—Jen just jumped into the pool in her bra and underpants, giggling and squealing like she’s auditioning for Girls Gone Wild.
I grunt in frustration and lunge over to Kat. “Kat, I’m not even remotely interested in her. I told you that—”
“Josh!” Jen says wading up to me, her jaw-dropping tits on bodacious display in her see-through electric-blue bra. “Isabel didn’t tell me you were coming to see RCR, too. Awesome.” She puts her hand on my arm and leans into me like she’s gonna kiss me.
I jerk my arm and lurch back from her violently, toward Kat.
“Jen, I’m here with someone.” I motion to Kat. “I’m on a date.”
Jen’s face instantly turns to ice. “Oh.” She clenches her jaw. She blatantly looks Kat up and down. “So are you gonna introduce me to your date? Unless, of course, you don’t know her name?”
I feel physically sick. “No need to be—”
“Actually, he doesn’t know my name,” Kat spits at Jen. “He hasn’t asked me for it and I haven’t supplied it, despite the fact that we were just about to fuck in this pool.” She glares at me sideways and then flashes a sweet smile at Jen. “I’m Kat.” She puts out her hand.
Jen takes Kat’s hand like she’s picking up trash from the side of the road. “Jen.” Jen looks Kat up and down again. “A Vegas girl, I presume?” Her nostrils flare. “When in Rome, I guess, huh, Josh? Charming.”
Kat turns her demonic eyes on me, full-force. “Oh, so your name is Josh, is it? Did I hear that right? Or did she call you Jess?”
I don’t reply. Well, not with my vocal chords. My dick certainly seems to be replying, loud and clear. Yeah, my dick’s always had a thing for crazy, it’s true—not to mention a perfect pair of tits. Not to mention two perfect pairs of tits, all of them glistening wet and covered in barely-there see-through bras.
Kat stares Jen down, smiling the whole time. “You know what, Jen? I think you just saved me from doing something really dumb.” She’s spitting nails through that beauty-queen smile of hers. “This guy here—Josh or Jess, whatever his name is—won’t stop talking about some woman he banged in New York last week.”
Jen’s face lights up. What the fuck is Kat doing to me right now? Is she clinically insane?
“Yeah, he keeps going on and on about how this New York girl was a horrible fuck, that the whole thing was totally meaningless to him, how he was so fucking shitfaced drunk he doesn’t even remember it—’oh, it was such a huge mistake, blah, blah, blah—she was such a fucking airhead’—I mean, how chicken-shit is that? Why the hell did he bang that poor girl if she was such a horror show? What a fucking douche.”
Jen’s brief elation from a moment ago is long gone. Now she looks like she was just whacked across the face with a two-by-four.
This is one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. Jen looks like she’s gonna cry—which makes me feel like the biggest prick on the planet—and Kat, the demon-queen herself, is glaring at me like she’s readying her blowtorch, a Hershey bar, some graham crackers, and a very sharp knife.
“And here I was stupidly about to give the guy more of the same,” Kat continues, on a roll. “Just some meaningless, shitfaced sex he won’t even remember tomorrow. Ha! Well, fuck that shit.”
Without warning, Kat heaves herself out of the pool and glowers at Jen from the ledge, her incredible body dripping wet and on full, glorious display.
“He’s all yours, Jen. Maybe you’ll have more luck than the poor girl he burned through in New York last week—whoever the hell she was.” She flashes me a rage-filled smile. “Bye-bye, Jess. Or Josh. Whatever your name is. Have fun in Vegas, asshole—when in Rome.” With that, she struts over to the nearby lounge chair, grabs her sparkling dress, and waltzes toward the open French doors leading back into the suite.
A man has never leaped out of a swimming pool so fucking fast in his entire life.
“Kat,” I yell after her. “Wait.”
But she doesn’t wait. Hell no, she doesn’t, because she’s a goddamned terrorist.
She marches straight through the French doors, in
to the suite, and toward the front doors, her incredible ass-cheeks shuddering with each ground-quaking march of her long, toned legs. On her way to the front door, she makes a pit stop at C-Bomb sitting on the couch. She bends over and whispers something to him, her tits falling out of her bra and into his face as she does. I’m just about to leap across the room and tackle him when he nods and hands her his drink—which looks to be straight whiskey or Scotch. She throws the whole drink back in one fluid motion and hands the empty glass back to him. “Thanks, son, I owe you one,” she says, patting him on the head.
“Any time,” he says, smirking and looking right at her chest.
“Kat,” I say, my blood pounding in my ears.
She completely ignores me. She puffs out her fucking incredible chest and marches haughtily toward the front door of the suite, her ass-cheeks bouncing with each determined stomp.
Jesus Christ. This woman is gonna be the death of me.
“Kat, wait,” I say, running to catch up to her. But she ignores me again. Jesus, the girl’s having a bona fide tantrum—but she’s so fucking hot while she’s doing it, I truly don’t mind.
“Kat, what the fuck are you doing?” I call to her.
She swings open the heavy front door of the suite and marches right through it, toward the private elevator at the end of a long hallway, her sequined dress in her hand, her wet body glistening under the hallway lights.
“Kat,” I say, making my way through the doors. She’s halfway down the hall. “Wait. I’m coming with you and I can’t go down there in my fucking underwear.”
She stops on a dime.
Oh, that’s what made her finally stop? Another peek at my nearly naked body? Well, good to know.
She whips around to look at me, and, instantly, her gaze falls right on my dick. My very, very hard dick.
Her mouth drops open. “Wow,” she says, her eyes not wavering from my crotch.
I look down. My soaking wet briefs are completely see-through. I might as well be completely naked right now.
She opens her mouth and closes it again. “Wow,” she says again, her eyes fixated on my hard-on beneath my see-through briefs.
My dick twitches under her gaze and hardens even more. “Just stay put,” I say. “Okay? I’m gonna get my clothes from inside and come right back. I’m coming with you.”
“No,” she says, her hand on her hip. “Fuck that shit.”
I laugh. “Fuck what shit? What the fuck does that mean?” I ask.
“Did you see how she talked to me? ‘A Vegas girl, I presume?’ Ha! I’m not gonna stay here and get treated like scum on the bottom of her fucking shoe.” She whips back around and marches toward the elevator at the end of the hall again.
“Kat, wait. You’re drunk. You can’t go alone.”
“Yes, I can.”
“You don’t even have your fucking shoes.”
She stops short and looks down at her feet like she truly had no idea she’s shoe-less. “Well, hmmph. I don’t need no stinkin’ shoes.”
I laugh. She’s so fucking adorable. “You said you never get jealous,” I say. “What happened to that, hmm? ‘I never get jealous unless the guy is mine in the first place.’ Remember that?”
“Yeah, well.” She sniffs the air and wobbles in place. “I guess I changed my motherfucking mind. So sue me, fucker.”
I laugh. “Nice language.”
“Girls can’t say fuck? Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I laugh again. “Kat, you’re acting fucking crazy.”
Her face changes from pissed to hurt on a dime. “Why’d you fuck her of all people, Josh?” She wipes her eyes. “She’s so mean. So... snooty. What were you thinking?”
“What was I thinking?” I shrug. “Not a whole lot.”
“Why’d you fuck such a mean, mean girl? I hate mean girls.”
I’m utterly confused. “You want me to have meaningless sex with only nice girls?”
She ignores me. “And why’d you let her keep thinking you were interested in her after New York, huh? She obviously thought there was some sort of open invitation afterwards.”
“No. I told her I wasn’t interested.”
“No, you didn’t. No frickin’ way. Or if you did, you didn’t make it clear enough. Total douche move, Josh Faraday.”
“What are you talking about? What’s a total douche move?”
She waggles her finger at me. “I should have known with that whole ‘Mickey Mouse roller coaster’ thing. Douchey. I should have listened to my Scooby Doo senses.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? It’s douche-y that I had sex with Jen?”
“No. That you had sex with a girl who obviously wants a relationship and then left her hanging. That’s douche-y.”
“Oh, and I assume you sat Cameron Schulz down right after you fucked him and told him he has zero chance with you?”
“Well, not then and there, no. I’m not that heartless. But, yeah, I told him later when he called, very clearly, that I wasn’t feeling it. But maybe, now that I think about it, that was a mistake on my part. Maybe I should have said yes when he asked to see me again because a) he’s not a douche, and b) I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but he’s the shortstop for the goddamned Mariners!”
I roll my eyes. “Gimme a fucking break. You’d rather scratch your eyes out than go out with that tool again—unless, of course, you suddenly have a huge craving for Shirley Temples.”
“Maybe I do,” she seethes. “Maybe that’s exactly what I want right now, come to think about it—a nice, sweet guy who actually respects women and doesn’t fuck any mean bitch who happens to have a great rack—and, did I mention?—who happens to be the shortstop for the goddamned fucking Mariners!”
“I respect women,” I say lamely.
“Maybe this is exactly the wake-up call I needed,” she huffs. She waves her arms at me in a bizarre little frenzy like she’s a magician on meth trying to make me disappear, and then she turns back around and begins stomping away from me again.
“Goddammit, Kat,” I say. “Stop.”
She stops and whirls around, glaring at me.
“What are we fighting about?” I ask earnestly. “I’m totally confused.”
She doesn’t reply. She whirls away from me, again, and saunters away, once again mesmerizing me with the stomping motion of her incredible ass.
“Kat,” I bellow. “You’re a fucking train wreck. Chill the fuck out and listen to me.”
She turns back around to face me and crosses her arms over her spectacular chest. “What?”
I know we’re supposedly in the middle of a heated conversation right now—maybe even a fight—about what I’m not entirely sure because I can’t figure out exactly what I’ve done wrong and why she’s reacting this way—but the truth is I can’t stop looking at her insane body. It’s as gorgeous as her face. She’s perfection from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. Jesus. She’s not an eleven like I previously thought—she’s a fucking twenty—way hotter than Bridgette, and Bridgette’s a fucking supermodel, for fuck’s sake.
“What?” Kat repeats, tapping her toe.
I swallow hard. “You were gonna fuck me in the pool?”
“What?” She scoffs. “No. You wish.”
“You told Jen we were just about to fuck in the pool.”
She rolls her eyes. “I just said that to piss off your nasty little bitch of a fuck buddy. I’d never be just another ride on your freaking ‘Mickey Mouse roller coaster.’ Hell no. I’m officially done with that. Starting now.” Those perfect tits of hers are rising and falling sharply with her rage. Fuck, she’s turning me on so much, I can’t think straight.
“What the fuck are you so pissed about?” I ask. “I told you I fucked Jen in New York and you didn’t give a shit. I didn’t know she was gonna be here tonight—I wasn’t the one who invited her. So what the fuck’s made you so goddamned mad?”
She presses her lips together, her cheeks rising with col
or.
I chuckle. “Oh man.” I smile broadly, realization descending upon me. “You’re so jealous, you can’t see straight,” I say. “Miss I’d-Only-Be-Jealous-If-You-Were-My-Boyfriend is so fucking jealous, she’s about to explode.” I take a cautious step toward her and she takes a step back like a skittish pony. “Aw, come on, Party Girl. Tell the truth. You’re jealous as shit.” I smirk. “Come on, babe. We’re telling the truth tonight, remember—we’re playing the honesty-game?”
“Well, one of us is, anyway,” she says, taking another step back. “And one of us is full of shit. I’ll leave it to you to decide which of us is which.”
I laugh. “You’re insane right now. Certifiably insane.” I bite my lip. “But I guess that’s what jealousy will do to a woman, huh?”
She scowls.
“You were totally gonna fuck me in the pool just now, and you know it.”
She shakes her head, but her eyes tell me I’m right.
“You wanna talk about who’s full of shit? You don’t give a shit about my stupid application—that’s all an act. All you care about is feeling my hard cock deep inside you—nice and deep, making you come like I did in the club, only even harder.” I take another slow step toward her, and to my surprise, she doesn’t back up this time. Oh shit, her nipples are hard little pebbles behind her skimpy lace bra. “Aw, poor little Party Girl,” I coo at her. “You wanna fuck me so bad, just thinking about my hard cock inside you is making you drip down your thigh.” I point.
She jerks her head down to look between her thighs. “No. That’s just water from the pool, you sicko.”
I laugh. “Oh no, it’s not. It’s your juices. You’re dripping wet for me, aching for me so bad it hurts.”
“Screw you,” she mutters. She wheels around and marches emphatically down the hallway toward the private elevator, throwing her sequined dress over her head as she goes. She gets tangled in her dress briefly while it’s over her head and walks smack into the wall with a loud thud.