by Lisa Suzanne
It was vaguely familiar. God, I was a horrible bitch sometimes. I shrugged. “You go first.”
Now it was his turn to be in the spotlight. “You already know what I do for a living. I’m thirty-three. I’m from Wisconsin. I feel like I’ve already told you all of this.”
“Did you know my brother before you moved here?”
“Yes. Actually, we met maybe six or seven years ago at a company training and became friends. We work together quite a bit, and we meet up at trainings and conferences a few times a year.”
“Good old Grumpy Grant.”
“Grumpy Grant?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of my thing. I nickname people with a word that starts with the first letter of their name.”
“So what’s my nickname?”
I blushed. “I plead the fifth.”
“Come on. Tell me,” he goaded.
“Honestly, up until last night, I always called you one thing in my mind. But that kiss may have changed my mind about you.”
“Well now you have to tell me.”
“No.”
“Come on. I’ve got a few for you, too.”
“Oh?” Nobody ever came up with anything good for a girl whose name started with a Q.
“Quarrelsome, quirky, quaint, quixotic Quinn.”
“Quixotic?”
“An English teacher who doesn’t know the meaning of quixotic?”
“I know what it means. I just don’t think it applies to me.” I played with my noodles, knowing I should eat because I’d need my strength for the rest of our night. I just wasn’t hungry with those blue eyes staring me down.
“No?”
“I’m not idealistic. I’m practical.”
He tore off a piece of his bread. “Well maybe I can help you with that.”
“It’s not something I feel compelled to change.” I took a sip of wine.
“Right. Now tell me your nickname for me.”
“I call you Preppy Porter in my head more than anything else.”
“But what’s the R word?”
“Repulsive,” I blurted.
He flinched. “Ouch.”
“But I told you, the kiss changed it.”
“You thought I was repulsive until I kissed you?”
I forced myself to take a bite of my salad, and I chewed thoughtfully before answering. “No. I never actually found you repulsive.”
“Thanks for taking so long to think about it.”
I laughed. “I’m still coming up with a new one for you.”
“Tell me what you’re trying out.”
“Well, obviously I need to get to know you better before I can decide for sure, but I’m working with remarkable, righteous, romantic, ridiculous, or reckless.”
“Righteous? Nineteen-eighty-four called. They want their word back.”
“Fuck you.”
“Maybe after dinner, Quarrelsome Quinn. If you behave.”
It took all of my strength not to throw my glass of red wine in his face to create the perfect duet of soap opera revenge together in one night.
“So tell me more about you.”
“I am not quarrelsome, for starters.”
“I disagree. Go on.”
“I’m twenty-nine. I’ve been teaching high school English since I graduated from college, and I’ve taught freshmen every year. I started teaching seniors three years ago.”
“What do you like better?”
“Seniors. Freshmen are just so young and immature.”
“I could see that.” He ate a forkful of pasta, and I watched his strong jaw move up and down. My eyes moved to his lips, and I remembered the feel of those lips against mine the night before.
It felt like it got about a hundred degrees warmer in my apartment while I remembered.
I took a sip of wine to try to cool down the heat I suddenly felt all over my body.
“Enough about work. Tell me what you like.”
“What I like?” I liked fucking and drinking, but that didn’t seem like an appropriate answer.
“What do you do in your spare time? What are your hobbies?”
“Fucking and drinking.” God dammit. It slipped out of my mouth unexpectedly. My brain to mouth filter tended to malfunction when I was drinking wine.
He choked on his mouthful of pasta.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He held up a hand and nodded as he coughed. I ran into the kitchen and brought back a bottle of water.
“Thanks,” he said, his voice hoarse. He drank down half of the bottle. “Sorry about that.”
“No, don’t apologize. I’m sorry. I don’t know why that slipped out.” I giggled on the inside at my last statement.
Reed winked at me. “That’s what she said.”
My internal giggle erupted into loud external laughter and I realized that I was actually enjoying myself with the very non-Repulsive Reed.
“So I’m going to go ahead and change the subject after the ‘fucking and drinking’ comment because if I spend any more time thinking about it, we will never finish eating since I will be helping you partake in your favorite pastime.”
“Drinking?”
He glared at me.
I took a sip of my wine. “Okay, then. New subject.”
“Did you know that your brother speaks very highly of you? I was excited to meet you because of that. That day at your parents’ house, I just never expected that it would be the gorgeous, if not a little bitchy, girl I’d met at the bar the night before.”
“Way to kill the mood. Bring up my brother and my parents.”
It was his turn to laugh.
“Quinn, you’re right.”
“About what?”
“I once asked you if you thought you were funny, and you said you were ‘fucking hilarious.’”
“Do you remember everything I have ever said?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I hope this doesn’t sound creepy, but I think it’s because when I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you and replaying our conversations and trying to figure you out.”
“It’s not creepy. But there’s not much to figure out, Reed. I’m no mystery.”
“I disagree.”
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond.
“I’ve never had to work this hard to get a woman to notice me, and the funny thing is, I’ve never wanted a woman to notice me as much as I want you to.”
I gazed at him and believed that he was telling the truth. The more I stared at him, the more gorgeous I realized he was. And I’d immediately judged him and written him off as not “my type” because he didn’t have dark eyes and dark hair and tattoos and a scruffy chin. Although as I inspected him, I did see a sexy shadow of a beard growing in. His eyes weren’t mysterious, but they were expressive. His hair wasn’t dark and messy, but it was silky and touchable. And he wasn’t a tough guy, a bad boy, a douchecanoe, or an asshole. He was a genuinely nice guy with ambition and a good job.
So, in other words, he was totally and completely unlike any other man I had ever dated.
The proof came after the meal. “You sit and finish your wine while I take care of the dishes,” he said.
Where the hell did a man like this even come from?
I did as instructed, and as he walked away from the table, I chanced a glance at his ass. The denim fabric stretched against his firm body. His black shirt was tucked into his jeans, and he wore a black belt around his trim waist. I couldn’t help my eyes as they moved up from that perfect ass to his firm back, the back my hands had been all over the night before when we made out at Strikers.
Okay, maybe it was slightly more than a glance.
“I can feel your eyes on my ass, Quinn,” he said, and I turned around quickly with a blush.
“I’m not looking at your ass. I’m enjoying my wine.”
“The mirror over here told me a different story.”
Busted. I forgot about the stupid mirror in my kitchen. I made a mental note t
o take that traitor down later.
He did the dishes while I worked off the blush, and he returned with the bottle of wine and topped off both of our glasses.
“Shall we move to the couch?” he asked.
“We shall,” I said, and he held out his hand to help me up. I took it and felt a little spark pass between us, and he held onto my hand, causing those flutters to fire up inside of me once again.
He sat and I settled in next to him, curling my legs up under me. My couch only sat two comfortably, so we were sitting close to one another. He rested his hand on my knee and turned in toward me. My knee felt like it was on fire under his palm.
“So you mentioned a few of your hobbies earlier. What else do you like to do?”
“You mean aside from men?”
He chuckled. “Thanks for catching me without a piece of baked ziti in my throat this time.”
I grinned. “I like music.”
“Me, too. What do you listen to?”
“Classic rock is my favorite, but I listen to pretty much anything. You?”
“I listen to pretty much anything, too, but lately I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music.”
“Nerd alert.”
“You’re kind of mean to me sometimes.”
“That’s me. I’m a bitch.”
“I’m not going to argue with you on that point,” he teased, squeezing my knee. He glanced over at me with affection. “But I like it.”
I smiled. “I also like movies and shopping.”
“Typical woman. Shopping.”
“You don’t like shopping?”
“It’s not my first choice of activities.”
“Did you even see how my heels exactly match the shade of my shirt? All in good shopping.”
“No. What I saw was that you were wearing fuck me heels, thereby sending me the message that you want me to fuck you.”
“Thereby?”
“Yes, and there you go being mean again.”
“Oh I’m sorry. I’ve just never met anyone my age who uses words like ‘thereby.’”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to expand your vocabulary a little. And besides, I’m not your age. I’m much older and wiser.”
“Older, yes. Wiser?”
“Yes.”
I giggled, and he took my glass of wine from my hand and set it next to his on the end table. He turned toward me and took one of my hands in his, covering the top of mine with his other hand.
“I know we just met, but I was serious when I said that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Can we explore this with each other? Can we just give it a chance?”
I shrugged noncommittally, and he heaved out a frustrated sigh.
“I think I’d really like that,” I said softly. I wasn’t ready to make things exclusive with him just yet, but I was enjoying our date. I liked how he made me a little nervous and threw me off of my game. I liked him – a lot – and I could already tell that together we had the potential to be amazing.
But I still had a lot of reservations about jumping into something serious, especially with a guy who was so unlike what I tended toward, even if I was starting to realize that having a “type” was stupid.
He leaned in toward me, and I knew that he was going to kiss me.
And after the way he had kissed me the night before, I suddenly couldn’t wait any longer.
Our lips met in a slow and seductive reunion. He didn’t open his mouth right away to mine, so our lips did all the work. His were firm and soft somehow at the same time, pressing hotly against my own as the weird tingly feeling in my chest intensified into full-blown butterflies.
He shifted and moved closer to me, grasping the back of my head with his hand and finally opening his mouth to mine. His tongue met mine with confidence. On the outside, he looked like the type of guy who would move tentatively, but he didn’t.
He went for it.
And it was hot.
One of Reed’s strong hands tangled in the hair at the back of my neck as the other started at my hip and moved up my torso, running an outline up my body and stopping just short of my breast before moving back down. I wanted his hand on my breast. I wanted my nipple in his mouth.
He was taking his time with me. As we set a slow tempo for our night, I started to think that I wanted to move slowly with him. I wanted to take my time, because maybe rushing into things could potentially ruin whatever we were starting.
But as he kissed me, I was certain that the night would end with me on top of him in my bed, and knowing the guy for only a week before hopping into the sack with him wasn’t exactly moving slowly.
His hand reached my hip and then started its ascent back upward as his tongue moved languidly against mine. Those thoughts of moving slowly were banished to the back of my brain as I gave into the lust that was taking over my body. His hand paused over my ribs, kneading the flesh there.
I pulled back and gazed at his lust-filled eyes. He held his palm up toward mine, and I pressed my palm to his. It was one of those brief, intimate moments where we both stared at our hands and then his fingers laced through mine and folded down. Something about holding hands with Reed was sweet and sexy at the same time.
I pressed my lips back to his as I moved his hand over my breast. I felt his mouth form into a smile against mine, and then he started gently squeezing and kneading. I moaned into him because his hands on my body felt magical.
It was different than it was with Ty. With Reed, I felt like he respected me and wanted me to get as much pleasure from what we were about to do as he was going to get.
With Tyler, it was always about getting him off quickly, and if he had the time or inclination, he’d take care of me, too.
I couldn’t help the comparisons. I’d never been with anybody like Reed before, and I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of being treasured. It was unfamiliar, but it was comforting and sexy and just right.
One of my hands rested over his on my breast, and the other started rubbing his leg. I inched my hand closer and closer to his cock, wondering how big he was and whether he was hard for me. I knew I was plenty wet for him.
My hand finally inched close enough to brush against his length. I couldn’t help but gasp. It was like he had a giant snake made out of titanium in his pants, and I suddenly had to know what that would feel like moving inside of me.
I climbed up over him so I straddled him, and he groaned as I grinded my hips down into him. One of his hands never left the back of my head, but he had moved the other under my ass. He pushed me up and I grinded back down, and we repeated the motion while his tongue continued its provocative dance in my mouth.
I was more in charge of the kiss now that I was on top, and he leaned back and let me take control over him. He pulled his hand out from under me, and I continued the up and down motion while his hand slipped under my shirt to feel the skin on my back. He pushed his hips up to meet my downward motion, and we both grunted when our bodies met.
If only we weren’t wearing any clothes.
He stroked the skin of my back, and then his hand found my bra. He snapped it just once and somehow it came unclasped.
The man had talents that I hadn’t even begun to discover yet.
“One of your many talents?” I asked against his mouth with a grin.
“Oh, my beautiful Quinn, you have no idea,” he said, his mouth never leaving mine as he shifted his hips up into me again.
My heart skipped a beat.
Oh fuck.
I was in serious trouble with this guy.
His hand reached around to my front, and he moved my bra and then his fingers found my nipple. He rolled and squeezed it between his fingers, and the slightest edge of pain from the pressure sent a shot of desire straight through me.
I reached down and ripped my shirt off over my head, taking my bra with it. He groaned audibly as he came face to face with my breasts for the first time.
I leaned back and he looked up at me. “
Sweet Jesus. How are you so fucking perfect?”
I shrugged and grinned. “Practice makes perfect.”
He leaned forward and kissed the valley between my tits.
“This,” he said, kissing my skin again, “is the most gorgeous skin I have ever kissed.”
What a sweet thing to say.
It might have been the sweetest thing any man had ever said to me.
Before I had a chance to respond, he kissed his way over to my nipple and then sucked it into his mouth. I yelled out in pleasure.
I tended to be pretty vocal in bed. I found that it encouraged the kind of participation I liked. And the louder the guy yelled, the more turned on I became.
He took my nipple between his teeth and sucked again, and I moaned as I nearly convulsed. He was much better at this than I had ever imagined he would be.
The thought hit me that I was about to have sex with Preppy Porter. And suddenly I was very okay with that. Suddenly I wanted that more than I wanted to take my next breath.
I pulled my body back so his mouth was no longer attached to my breast.
“Take me to my bedroom,” I demanded.
“I was planning to fuck you right here on the couch.”
“I don’t care where. I just need you inside of me.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, and he stood with me still straddled around him. I threw both arms around his neck and held on, my fingers snaking up into that hair that I’d at first found unattractive but now found completely addictive. “Where the fuck’s your bedroom?” he asked, and then he kissed my neck, groaning when I tugged on his hair. He spent a moment with his lips attached to my neck as I tried to collect my thoughts enough to give him the answer to his question.
“Down the hall. Last door on the right,” I said on a moan.
“Got it,” he murmured against my skin, and he buried his face in between my breasts again as he carried me down the hall and deposited me gently on my bed.
He pulled my heels off and placed them on the floor. Then he massaged my feet, and it was at that moment that I truly believed there was something magical about his hands.
I’d written this guy off so quickly from the start when I was certain that nothing would ever happen between us.
What a colossal mistake.
I really needed to work on my judgment of others, but while I was about to be fucked wasn’t the time to start working on it.