Choose Me

by Donya Lynne

  I arch one eyebrow. “You like her?”

  He frowns. “Yeah, you got a problem with that?”

  I sigh and flip open the carton of eggs. “Would it matter if I did?”

  “No.”

  Biting my tongue, I crack open an egg and drop it into the bowl. “Then let’s just say I don’t have a problem so we don’t get into a pissing contest about it.”

  “And if I want to see her again, are you still not going to have a problem?”

  This sounds like a bad idea, but what do I know except infidelity never turns out good?

  A throbbing sets up in my temple that I try to pretend has more to do with the fact I went out drinking last night and haven’t eaten breakfast, yet. “It’s your life, Ed.”

  He snorts. “I bet that was hard for you to say.”

  “You have no idea.” What I want to tell him is to stop acting like an idiot and to get his shit together, but I hold my tongue. “Just promise me you won’t fuck her under my roof again.”

  He bristles and looks like he wants to tell me to kiss his ass, but instead he takes a deep breath and slowly nods. “Fine, Greyson. I know how you feel about this shit, so I won’t bring her back here again, okay? Are we cool?”

  It’s not what I want to hear, because it still means he’s going to see her again, which means he’s going to fuck her again. And he’s barely three days into his separation from Anabel.

  “Yeah, we’re cool. I just wish you’d wait until you—”

  He stops me. “I’m filing for divorce tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, but filing for divorce isn’t the same as being divorced. You’re still married, Ed.”

  “Jesus, Greyson, I get it. Ease the fuck up on me, would you? I’m doing the best I can.”

  I hold up my hands in surrender and go about preparing breakfast. For a few minutes, neither of us speaks. He goes back to eating his Wheaties. I cook turkey bacon and chop up vegetables for my omelet. I think we both need a moment to shift back into neutral with one another so we can become non-antagonistic friends again.

  After a few minutes, Ed pushes his empty cereal bowl away and folds his hands one over the other on the granite countertop. “So, how did things go with Katherine?”

  Just the mention of her name makes my balls tingle, and I perk up. “Good.”

  Ed grins knowingly, and I turn away to flip the bacon one last time then busy myself checking the temperature of my omelet pan so Ed doesn’t see the evidence of what I did last night written all over my face. Because I know it is.

  When I turn back around to fetch my bowl of whisked eggs and vegetables, he catches my eye.

  “You fucked her, didn’t you?”

  I quickly turn back around and pour the egg mixture in the skillet. “Come on, Ed, you don’t want to hear about my night.”

  What I mean is that I don’t want to talk about it, even though I do. I’m practically busting to bump fists with him and say, “Hell, yeah, bro! I got laid!” like some sophomore in high school who just lost his virginity.

  In a way, I did lose my virginity.

  “You did, didn’t you?” Ed says, coming around the counter. He rinses his bowl in the sink then sets it aside and stares at me. “Come on, tell me what happened.”

  I don’t kiss and tell. I was raised better than that, so Ed’s going to have to go on wondering.

  “I’m not telling you what happened between Katherine and me, Ed.”

  “Just tell me that she liked it. You can at least tell me that much.”

  Ed and I have known each other long enough that there’s nothing we don’t know about each other. So yeah, Ed knows all about my Dong of Death and how it’s scared away every woman I’ve ever dated or tried to get with. His curiosity about how last night went stems from a good place. He genuinely wants me to find a woman who isn’t terrified of having sex with me.

  Smiling, I shake the omelet pan, loosening the egg mixture from the bottom, then give it a little flip so that one half flops over perfectly on top of the other. “You’re just going to have to wait and see like everybody else.”

  “Are you going out with her again?”

  “Yes.” I glance over my shoulder at my phone, which sits nearby on the counter. I need to text her and set something up.

  Ed claps me on the shoulder. “She liked it. I knew it.” He laughs. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you found a woman sturdy enough for you.”

  “Sturdy enough?” I’ve never quite thought of it that way.

  “Yeah.” He starts out of the kitchen, nabbing a slice of turkey bacon off my plate, our argument all but forgotten. “Who knows, Grey, maybe she’s the one who’s gonna change your life and make you want to tie the knot.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I haven’t even known her twenty-four hours.”

  “Anything can happen, Grey. Lightning can strike even on a sunny day.” He waves over his shoulder, heading for the stairs. “I’m gonna grab a shower. I’ll see you at the office.”

  Maybe she’s the one.

  She’s the one all right. The one who can take me. The one who can swallow me. The one who has awakened my fantasies in a whole new way that suggests they won’t stay fantasies much longer. But The One? As in, a woman who holds enough power to make me forget what my mother did and make me want to abandon the notion that marriage is for men who only want to be cheated on?

  It’s going to take a very special lady and a remarkable set of circumstances for that to happen.

  Chapter 9

  Katherine

  I pour French vanilla creamer into my cup of Twinings English Breakfast tea. The result is something that tastes more like melted gourmet ice cream than a hot beverage, and I’m one hundred percent addicted to it. I’ll rip off your hand if you try to take my tea from me, so be warned.

  I check the time again.

  Jess is late. I sure hope she’s okay. I feel guilty about bailing on her last night, but after Greyson destroyed my sense of reality, there was no way I could go back inside the club.

  My thoughts return to the way I came undone under Greyson’s ministrations. To how my body reacted to his in a way it’s never reacted to anyone. To the shocked and awed expression on his face as I swallowed him down my throat. To his bewildered look of determination as he stared heavily back at me in the mirror of the Walgreens bathroom where we had sex. He’d been a man on a mission, and based on what he’d said during and after, that mission was to finally have sex without fear of hurting his partner.

  God love him. I’ve been so eager to find a man with a big penis that I never considered that it could be such a detriment.

  But Greyson doesn’t need to worry about hurting me. I love how long and thick he is, and now that I’ve found him, I just want to roll all over him for the next two months.

  Can you believe I’m actually sore this morning? Not unpleasantly so, but in a way my four previous summer flings never made me feel.

  This is the way a woman is supposed to feel the morning after great sex. Delightfully achy in her most tender places so that every time she moves she can be reminded of how thoroughly she was fucked the night before.

  I passed the Walgreens this morning on the way to the restaurant and had to clench my thighs together as echoes of the orgasm Greyson gave me thundered through my muscle memory. I’ve been in a perpetual state of arousal all morning. Just thinking about what we did last night got me so wet that I had to change my panties before leaving the house to come here.

  By the way, here is Gochet Arlain, an elegant French restaurant that serves the best Sunday brunch in Denver. The most expensive, too.

  Jess and I have made Gochet Arlain as much of an annual ritual as my yearly summer fling. Every year, we splurge on the fifty-dollar-per-plate brunch on the morning after my quest to find the one to giggle and start finding faults in the man I’ve chosen.

  Finding faults is critical. Faults make the preordained end-of-summer breakup so much easier. Thi
s is the first year I can’t think of a single fault after the initial introduction. Not even when I try. With my four previous summer flings, I knew right away what would end them. But I’m genuinely excited to see Greyson again and to find out what the coming weeks hold for us.

  But these brunches aren’t totally about slicing and dicing Mr. Summer Fling. They’re also for fantasizing about what kind of lover he’s going to be. Will he make the first move or will I have to? Will he be a good kisser? Will he be good at cunnilingus? Will he be hung enough to please me?

  Except for the oral sex, I already know how to answer those questions with Greyson. The first move was mutual, but he definitely spurred things along. He’s also an excellent kisser who smells good to boot. And, yes, he’s hung like a damn horse. If he goes down as well as he kisses, I’m not sure I’ll be able to say good-bye at the end of the summer.

  But I have to, so I’ve got to find a fault with him. He’s got to have at least one, and finding it has to become my mission from this point forward.

  I check my phone to see if Jess has texted me. She hasn’t. Where is she? I’m dying to tell her about my night.

  I know I shouldn’t kiss and tell like some adolescent, but I can’t help it. A girl’s gotta have someone to share her bubbly moments with. You know, the moments that make her feel like she’s got a belly full of fizz being stirred by dancing butterfly wings. The kind of moments that make a thirty-four-year-old, grown-ass woman who’s about to take over her father’s company feel like she’s still in high school and just had her first orgasm with the most popular boy in her class. The kind of moments that do, in fact, make a woman feel like a girl again. An innocent, wide-eyed, hormone-flooded girl who just lost her virginity.

  “Sorry I’m late.” A breathless Jess slides into the chair across from me.

  She’s tousled and windblown, as if she rushed to get there, her long blond hair falling around her face in that oh-so-alluring way that’s so Jess.

  “Where have you been? I was starting to worry.”

  Her cheeks turn rosy as she gives me a sly, guilty smile. Uh-oh. I know that look. She’s been up to no good. Probably with some guy she picked up at Alesca.

  “No,” I say, my mouth falling open. “You didn’t. Did you?” I’d told her she needed to find a man if I was going to do my summer fling again this year, but I never thought she’d actually do it.

  She lets out a quiet squeal and shimmies in her chair as she clutches my hand. “I did!” She squeals again.

  Her excitement is infectious, and I laugh and squeeze her hand. “So did I!”

  A few nearby patrons turn curiously to see what all the fuss is about. Most smile, but a couple frown. We’re disturbing the peace inside Gochet Arlain. Shame on us and our giddy girly parts.

  “Ssshhh.” I giggle and press the side of my index finger to my pursed lips.

  This briefly makes Jess laugh harder. A moment later, she pulls herself together, but her blue eyes are still sparkling as if she could erupt in another fit of giggles any second.

  “Who was he?” I say.

  “That’s just it,” she says. “He’s one of your guy’s friends. Greyson’s.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the mussed-up hair and tawny eyes. Ed.” She makes dreamy eyes. “Girl”—she fans herself—“he’s good. He’s real good.” Her expression turns wry. “And your guy? Greyson? Mmmm-mmm, honey. He looked like he had some major demons he was working out this morning.”

  My heart skips a beat. First of all, how does she know how he looked this morning? Second of all, is the fact that he was working out demons a bad thing or a good one?

  “He was there?”

  Jess catches the waiter’s eye and points to her empty coffee cup with a desperate smile that screams, “Please, I need coffee STAT!”

  “We were at his house,” she says.

  “Whose? Greyson’s?”

  She nods again. “I guess Ed’s staying with him temporarily.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “We were too busy”—she leans across the table and whispers loudly—“having sex to talk about the why.”

  My face and neck grow hot from embarrassment as a pair of conservatively dressed older women frown at us.

  “Jess, sshhh.” I admonish her with a fierce but brief frown. “You’re going to get us thrown out of here.”

  She giggles. “I’m so glad you made me join you in your manhunt this summer. I think Ed and I are going to have a lot of fun.”

  She still hasn’t told me what she meant abut Greyson’s demons, and it’s making me antsy. Did he regret what we did last night? Now that he’s had a chance to reflect, is he second-guessing himself? Is he second-guessing me? I had come off like a two-bit floozy, falling all over him, spreading my legs like an unconscionable slut.

  God, I am a whore. Just like Phil said.

  I suddenly want to cry. I want to shrivel up and hide in a cave for about a week. How could I have behaved so irresponsibly?

  Jess stops laughing, her expression growing serious. “Kate, hey, what’s wrong?” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Are you okay?”

  I bow my head into my free hand and sigh. “Oh, Jess, what have I done?”

  Her expression turns from serious to grave. “What do you mean? What have you done?”

  Not even ten minute ago, I’d been so excited, but now I’m mortified.

  My eyes sting. “I slept with him,” I whisper, making sure my whisper is a lot quieter than hers.

  Confusion mars her features. “So? Isn’t that what these summer flings are about?”

  I sniffle and take a deep breath, forcing back my emotions. “I guess so, but now I just don’t know.”

  Her perfectly plucked eyebrows pinch inward, and she bites her lip. “Oh no. Don’t tell me he’s not packing.”

  I hesitate as I try to make sense of her reply, and then I let out an abrupt laugh, drawing the attention of the nearby patrons again. “No, no.” I wave off her comment. “That’s not it at all. Trust me. I can assure you Greyson’s packing. He’s got enough down south to keep me happy for the rest of my life.”

  “Then I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is, I didn’t just have sex with him.” I lean forward and drop my voice so only she can hear me. “I fucked him. I mean . . . Jesus, Jess, I’m not even sure fucking is a strong enough word for what we did to one another.” I glance to the side and lower my voice even more. “I was every bit the whore Phil said I am.”

  Jess frowns and shakes her head. “Screw Phil and what he said. You are not a whore. There’s nothing wrong with having really good sex.”

  I roll my eyes and scoff. “This was so far beyond what I would call really good sex, Jess. This was hotter-than-the-surface-of-the-sun sex.”

  “Well, good for you!” She offers me a cheery smile, trying to brighten my spirits. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”

  I smile weakly. “Well, yeah, I guess, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But what if he isn’t interested in seeing me again? What if he thinks I’m some desperate, middle-aged hussy who puts out on the first date and isn’t worth his time?”

  “That’s so untrue.” Jess pours creamer into her coffee. “First of all, you’re not middle-aged. Thirty-four being middle-aged is like saying Seattle never gets any rain.” She stirs her coffee then sets her spoon on her saucer. “You’re mature, Kate. Mature, as in you’re not some know-nothing college girl who’s looking for her next sugar daddy, which is something a man like Greyson can appreciate. At least, he looks like a man who appreciates an intelligent, beautiful woman who isn’t going to play games with him or pour her honey all over him for his money. And second of all, you’re not the type to put out on the first date. For you to do so means there were some major fireworks going off between the two of you.”

 
; I appreciate Jess’s words of encouragement, but I still feel cheap. “There were definitely fireworks, but after what I did to him last night, I don’t think it matters.”

  “Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that bad.”

  “Let’s just say that putting out barely covers it, and I bet he’s thinking I’m some kind of nympho or sex addict or both.”

  Jess’s eyes grow wide. “Oh?” She’s obviously curious, but she’s also treading carefully, because she can see how fragile my emotions are right now. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I stare into my teacup. “I don’t know.” I sip my tea and glance over my shoulder. Our server should be back any minute with our brunch. I turn back and eye Jess. Using a measured tone, I say, “When you said he looked like he was exorcising demons this morning, what did you mean?”

  Realization sparks in her eyes. “Is that what this is about? Do you think I was saying he looked upset? Like he was having regrets?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “That’s not what I meant. I was just saying he looked like he had a lot on his mind, but not in a bad way.”

  “How so?”

  “He was coming out of what I’m guessing was his home gym, and he seemed totally absorbed in thought with a grin on his face until he saw me. Oh, and he was covered in sweat. And I mean, glorious, head-to-toe, virile, fuck-me sweat.” At least this time she keeps her voice down so we don’t draw anymore dirty looks. “And let me just say, Greyson looks good covered in sweat.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Last night, in the Walgreens bathroom, with his shirt unbuttoned and his heart beating so hard I could see his pulse throbbing on the side of his neck, he’d been coated with perspiration and looked out-of-control sexy. I like sweaty men, so I can’t even list that as one of his breakup-worthy faults.

  “You know, huh?” An impish grin spreads over Jess’s lips. “Really now? Do tell, because this I’ve gotta hear.” She props her elbows on the table and laces her fingers together in front of her chin.

  I duck my head and evasively tuck my hair behind my ear. “Well, I, uh . . . I might have seen a little sweat last night.”