Legs
KELLY SISKIND
Published by CD Books 2017
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Kelly Siskind
Teaser excerpt copyright © 2017 by Kelly Siskind
Cover design by Brighton Walsh
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
First published as an ebook and as a print on demand: September 2017
The author is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the author.
ISBN 978-1-988937-01-4 (ebook edition)
ISBN 978-1-988937-00-7 (print on demand edition)
Table of Contents
Also by Kelly Siskind
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Three Months Later
Excerpt: Stud
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Kelly Siskind
Chasing Crazy
My Perfect Mistake
A Fine Mess
Hooked on Trouble
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www.kellysiskind.com
One
Rachel
Drinking wine was my form of Russian roulette. My first glass usually led to smiles and silly ramblings as I joked with friends. Glass two had the potential to set off laughing fits, the kind that produced tears and sore abs as onlookers gawked. Glass three could lead to dancing in public. Not a pretty sight. But glass four was the real risk.
Glass four often transformed me into Reckless Rachel.
Tonight I was on glass three, but my usual giddiness was absent. Ainsley, Gwen, and I sat perched around our high-top table, music swelling through the club. Vesper’s usual business-casual crowd mingled in clusters, all lit by large hanging globes. The type of light that turned a two into a ten after a few drinks.
“I need those shoes.” Ainsley zeroed in on a brunette’s mile-high pink heels. The stilettos wouldn’t mesh with my wash-and-wear wardrobe, but Ainsley’s closet could double as a Fashion Week boutique, complete with indexed shoe collection. The tagline on her Personal Shopper card read Style Whisperer.
“If you tackle her,” I said, trying to get into our people watching, “you’re on your own.”
Ainsley sighed longingly, her blue eyes locked on the coveted heels. “Some friend you are.”
“I can take her down for you.” Gwen flexed her defined biceps. My non-existent muscles had major arm envy. “But you’ll owe me, and I take payment in jeans.”
Gwen’s CrossFit ninja moves could get the job done, but the stilettoed woman nuzzled into a man’s side. He was blond. Handsome. And too built for Gwen to tackle.
Cute men abounded tonight, but the few who caught my eye were already chatting women up—men in button-down shirts with sleeves rolled to their elbows, dress pants tailored to slim hips, hair trimmed short enough to accentuate a strong jaw. The type who’d sail on the weekends and probably loved to play golf and drink good wine, and who had successful careers.
Unlike yours truly.
“Enough with that face, Rachel.” Gwen licked the salt from her margarita rim and took a sip.
I loosened my jaw. “What’s wrong with my face?”
“It’s depressing.” Ainsley’s husky voice battled with the hipster R&B tunes. “This is our night, and that sad puppy-dog look is far from festive. You’re not allowed to be sad on April twelfth.”
She was right, of course. April twelfth meant wine and loud music and jokes with Ainsley and Gwen. If I’d ditched them as contemplated, they would have kidnapped me, rolled me in honey and feathers, and left me in the San Francisco Zoo with a sign reading Yellow-bellied Traitor. The least I could do was force a smile.
“We should buy her another drink,” Gwen said. Ainsley nodded vigorously.
Both my friends bobbed to the music, but all I could muster was a foot twitch. “Four drinks are dangerous for me.”
“Dangerously awesome.” Gwen had a doctorate in peer pressure.
Last time she coaxed me into a fourth glass of wine, Reckless Rachel was unleashed. The video of me shouting “I have a penis” while waving a dildo in public would haunt me forever. But she could be onto something. Tonight was my birthday. Our birthdays. Not only were we celebrating another trip around the sun, but it was the sixth anniversary of the night we all met.
That memorable evening, I’d been dancing—nowhere near the dance floor—eyes closed, my arms doing some sort of Vogue-on-acid thing. Someone had toasted me, hollering, “Happy birthday!” at the top of his lungs, then Gwen was in my face with a smile that screamed trouble, shouting, “It’s my birthday, too!” Before we knew it, Ainsley was hugging us both, her “Mine, too!” slurred for all to hear. We woke up, officially twenty-one, all three of us in Gwen’s apartment with mussed hair, foul breath, booze leaching from our pores, permanent friendships forged over a greasy breakfast.
I needed to revisit that happy.
The funky bass thumped in my chest. “I’ll take that drink, but I still have half a glass to finish.” Since my giggly self had yet to appear, I prayed Reckless Rachel was on hiatus, too.
Ainsley finished her appletini. “You have to catch up with us anyway. I’ll get the next round, and maybe find someone to buy it for me.”
Considering she had more curves than Kate Upton, that shouldn’t be a challenge.
Ainsley hopped off her stool and nodded at my drink. “Another Pinot Grigio?”
I swirled my glass. “No. Pinot Noir. Only if it’s from Sonoma. If not, I’ll go with Cabernet Sauvignon, but nothing from Argentina. Preferably from Western Australia. Margaret River, maybe? But whatever.”
“But whatever?” She batted her thick eyelashes. “I’ll buy you something red.”
If I were at home, I’d choose a bottle from my wine fridge, not a loser in the bunch. Wine reviews were read and compared and entered into my spreadsheet before I gave up valuable real estate for a new bottle, all mine, all beautiful, all wondering which would get to breathe next.
Instead I’d be drinking something red.
She pushed up her boobs, her white minidress displaying ample cleavage, and sashayed toward the bar.
Gwen scooted closer. “Since I haven’t heard about any blind dates involving men with more hair in their ears than on their heads, I’m guessing your dating pool dried up?”
“For now,” I said. “Next time a family member sets me up, I’m planning to remove my contacts. Bette
r to bang into walls than be faced with unruly ear hair.”
Gwen massaged her shoulder, likely sore from some insane workout. “I’m taking a dating sabbatical myself.”
“To focus on work?”
“Because I’m an asshole magnet.”
After talk of ear hairs, my mind conjured furry assholes bumping down the street pursuing Gwen. I stifled my laugh. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we dug chicks?”
“Tell me about it.” She tilted her head, scrunching her nose in concentration. The look she assumed when dissecting my crappy dates and job woes. Gwen the problem solver. “But I don’t know. I could totally make out with you and maybe get in on some boob action, but all the business downtown”—she motioned to my crossed legs—“freaks me out.”
I cackled, an unattractive sound that had me second guessing another drink. “I’m bad enough with men. If a woman were between my legs, I’d freeze up.”
“Define bad enough.”
Water circled the base of my glass. I dipped my finger in it and spelled the word frigid. “I just get so in my head, stressing about…I don’t know what. I can’t come from oral.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Like ever?”
I mentally catalogued my oral history: Daniel Bend’s tongue spelling out the alphabet nowhere near my clit. Allen Goldstein motorboating his stubbled face so roughly I got a rash. My last boyfriend, Maxwell Bush-Wetter (his name was a total sham), who mistook my lady parts for an ice cream cone. “From sex, yes. Just not, you know.”
“You know? Is that your code for eating pussy?”
I ducked, and she shook her head.
“You need to get over yourself. The first step to owning your sexuality is by using words like pussy. Your mother can’t hear you. Her head will not explode.”
As if on cue, my cell phone rang. Without looking at it, I knew it was her. Even my mother’s ring had a tone. Urgent. Unrelenting. Shrill. Unable to handle a longwinded conversation about a distant relative diagnosed with The Cancer or The Gout, I dug through my purse to silence it, barely able to find the thing among her throng of paranoid gifts.
Bear bell: One never knew when a grizzly would charge down Market Street.
Swiss Army Knife: The need to drink wine or, say, skin a deer, easily solved.
Cortisone cream: Her cure-all.
I found my phone and hit mute. It wasn’t like we hadn’t spoken twice that morning, and she’d no doubt bring up my crappy job again, something I needed to suppress for a few hours. I sipped my wine, glad the call had at least cut Gwen and my conversation short.
Unfortunately, the next thing Gwen said was, “How did I not know about your oral issue?”
She was nothing if not persistent. Although us girls gossiped endlessly, the nitty gritty of my sex life wasn’t usually up for discussion. “It never came up?”
“Our definition of friendship differs, and we need to fix this handicap of yours.”
An unlikely fix. But my gaze slid back to that blond man and the woman pressed against him, to her hand resting on his very fine backside. It had been too long since I’d seen a man naked. Too long since my hands had roamed freely over a man’s physique. I’d given up on the elusive oral “O,” but I was all in for the rest—the slide of skin against skin, the belly swoop at the first kiss. Hopefully the next guy who took me out would be cute and fun enough to get us to second base.
That thought had me grinning.
The music pumped louder, a decibel higher than deafening, like someone hit the wrong switch. Ainsley returned with our drinks and placed my glass of red next to my half-full glass of Pinot Grigio. Guess I’d be double-fisting it.
“What are you two smiling about?” Ainsley may have shouted, but we still squinted, as though that would allow us to hear her better.
Unsure what was wrong with the sound system, I yelled back, “Getting head!”
Reckless Rachel territory.
She leaned closer and shouted, “Sorry, what?”
I inhaled deeply and, remembering Gwen’s sexuality comment, I screamed as loudly as possible, “Eating pussy!”
But the music had shut off. Abruptly. At once.
All nearby heads cranked my way.
Gwen tipped over, grabbing her belly as she nearly laughed out a lung. Ainsley followed suit. My cheeks and neck flamed, my freckles likely glowing.
The music returned just as quickly, most people picking their conversations back up, all except one man who did not belong in this swanky club filled with hair gel and primped women. With his threadbare jeans and a buckle that could double as a boxing championship belt, he’d have been more at home in a backcountry bar. Add his boots, that looked like they’d marched to China and back, the shaggy black hair, five-day scruff, and the ink peeking out of his cuffed sleeves, and he was maybe more biker than backcountry.
The girls were chatting again, and I tried to listen, catching the odd word from Gwen about her job at the adoption agency or Ainsley gushing about some new purse, but my attention kept drifting back to that man. That dude. That bad boy.
His gaze didn’t shift from mine. Not cocky, exactly, but confident. One elbow on the bar, he leaned on it as though he owned the place. My attention shouldn’t have been snagged on him, but he was gorgeous, smoldering the way he was, intensity in the sharp lines of his face.
“That guy is staring at you like you’re dinner.”
I swung my attention back to Ainsley. “Because Gwen told me to own my sexuality, and everyone and their mother heard me scream eating pussy.” Words I apparently couldn’t keep contained.
“I wish we had that on video,” Gwen said. “I’d play it at your wedding. And anniversaries. And funeral.”
I flicked her arm. “Glad to know who my friends are.”
She rubbed her bicep. “Whatever. You’d do the same.”
“Probably.”
“Seriously,” Ainsley said, still focused on Bad Boy. “That guy hasn’t even blinked, and he’s crazy hot. He has that whole lone wolf thing going on.”
Gwen propped her chin on her hand. “He could be on Sons of Anarchy. I bet he knows how to ride. A Harley,” she added with a wink.
Jesus. Like I needed to add that visual to all the rough and tumble he had going on. But I did. With relish. It had been ten long months since I’d had sex, and any sex I’d experienced had always been nice. Fine. The word that encapsulated my life. I’d never experienced the type of sex I read about in romance novels, with the arched back and lust-filled moans and dirty words whispered against sweaty skin. I’d bet my Chateau Montelena Chardonnay that Bad Boy knew how to make a good girl like me fall to her knees and fall apart around him.
I sipped my Pinot Grigio. Gulped may have been more like it, my buzz buzz-buzz-buzzing through my veins.
That’s when Bad Boy kicked off the bar, all that grit and swagger aimed right for me.
“Oh my God.” This from Ainsley.
“Holy shit.” Gwen’s acute observation.
What the hell? Embarrassment still burned my neck, but something hotter burned lower.
Bad Boy neared our table, his cheekbones and strong nose a study in male magnetism. A beer bottle swung from his hand, a few rings on his fingers glinting, the thick leather cuff around his wrist impossibly manly. His eyes were zeroed in on me. Because I’d screamed pussy in a crowded room.
The girls gawked as he stopped at my side. He placed a presumptuous hand on my back, on the area left bare by my top’s dipping fabric. “I’d like to buy you a drink.”
There was no question in his tone. No “can I?” or “would you mind?” Not that I could focus on much with his hand gliding over my skin, the tips of his fingers curling around the back of my ribs. This man definitely knew how to ride.
And I promptly said, “No.”
“Pretty sure your eyes said yes. They practically called me over here.”
Hello, overconfident. “You should pay attention to my mouth, then.”
“T
hat I am.”
Excuse me? Never had a man been so forward, so unapologetic in his advances. My fingers floated to my neck, my skin burning hot. “The answer is still no.”
He didn’t remove his hand, just studied me, his lips so full and tempting. So close to mine. A chain dipped below the top button of his shirt, the worn material shifting over what looked like a hard body. I gulped more wine, the dregs of glass three disappearing fast.
Gwen kicked my ankle. “What she meant to say was ‘My place or yours?’”
“I said what I meant.” I returned her kick and tried not to stare at the dark curls tumbling over Bad Boy’s forehead, the glistening of his plump bottom lip as he swiped his tongue over it. I was in skinny jeans, my halter top conservative except for the dip at the back, but under his scrutiny I felt naked—and it felt dangerously good.
He removed his hand from my back, nonchalance in the tilt of his head. “That’s a shame.”
With that, he turned, disappearing into the crowd, taking my rush of heat with him. I attempted to dampen the quickening of my heart, my back and ribs still tingling from his touch.
Gwen glowered at me. “What is wrong with you?”
“With me?”
“That”—she gestured in the direction Bad Boy had disappeared—“was bound to be a Hall of Fame Fuck, and you turned him down.”
Ainsley followed with a dreamy sigh. “I’d let him tie me up with that belt of his.”
“Come on,” I said. “You both know I’m not cut out for one-night stands. Forget the fact that I’m too much of a prude to enjoy that type of thing, the only reason he came over was because I shouted eating pussy. He’s probably a freak.”
“A wild and kinky freak.” Gwen craned her neck, searching for him. “Too bad I’m on an asshole break.”
Gwen’s strapless top flaunted her physique, kept toned through CrossFit, free-climbing, and surfing—anything to feel an adrenaline rush. Dangerous men also spiked her heartrate, the type who made false promises only to ditch a girl when it mattered. I knew the sort all too well.
Legs (One Wild Wish, #1) Page 1