Wicked Tease: A Bad Boy Next Door Novella

by Aubrey Irons

  Shit.

  The jacket should have stayed on.

  The jacket definitely should have stayed on. Because past all the bulky tweed and outdated buttons is something I’ve tried fairly hard to forget about: that Addison Tanner looks good.

  Addison Tanner looks way too good.

  I mean for fuck’s sake, it’s not even a “sexy” blouse, and it’s buttoned up all the way. But it’s enough. It’s enough to give me a hint of the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hip where the blouse tucks into her skirt, and the slender lines of her arms, down to the cuffs buttoned tight, right where her fists are balled against her hips.

  “What?” She coughs, and I manage to drag my eyes back to hers.

  “Nothin',” I say with a grin. I take a final sip of beer before setting it down and holding a hand out. “Let’s dance.”

  Addy grins, and she does ignore my hand like I figured she would, but slowly but surely, she starts to let go. I grin as she bites her lip, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her hips as the Pixies crash into another track on the record player. Clanging guitar notes and eighties drumbeats crank through the old stereo speakers.

  One track bleeds into the next, which bleeds into yet another, and I can’t help but smile as I watch her - eyes closed, head banging to the music, tendrils of her blonde hair coming loose from that bun and framing her face.

  She’s having fun. She’s trying to hide it from me, but she is. When she gets into it and out of her own damn head, Addison Tanner has fun, and damn does she look fucking gorgeous when she does.

  She opens her eyes, as if sensing me looking at her.

  I don’t look away.

  She grins, both of us swaying, both of bobbing up and down to the rock music. We’re both laughing and smiling, and moving closer together. She throws her head back, and it’s like the last vestige of uptight Addy gets tossed away as she lets out a whoop and throws her hands in the air. She drops her head back and her eyes lock with mine. And she’s flushed, and wild-eyed, and grinning, and so damn close to me.

  Fuck it.

  I’m kissing her before I even register I’m thinking about doing it. I’ve got one hand on her waist, and one on her jaw as I kiss those perfect lips of hers.

  Hard.

  It’s punitive. It’s a kiss demanding answers for the time she kissed me. It’s a kiss that says not a fucking day has gone by since that night that I haven’t thought about it.

  It’s a kiss so deep I feel like I’m falling.

  Wait, no; I’m actually falling. Because Addy’s just shoved me in the chest.

  My ass hits the ground hard, momentarily knocking the wind out of me. I grunt and shake my head to clear it.

  “Are you kidding me? You can’t just kiss people!”

  The record scratches as she reaches over and yanks the needle away from the vinyl.

  I blink, bringing a hand up to rub the back of my head.

  “Glass houses, princess.”

  “What was that?”

  Her face is red and flushed, but she’s not smiling anymore, that’s for damn sure.

  “I said-”

  “I know what you said,” she snaps. She takes a shaky breath, standing upright and pushing the loose hair back from her face. Her eyes lock onto mine.

  “You can’t just kiss people, Cole,” she says quietly, before quickly turning on her heel and running from the room.

  “Yeah, got that,” I mutter to myself. “Loud and fucking clear.”

  Chapter 5

  Addison

  My lips are still tingling as I finally find myself in the large and strangely empty kitchen of the house. I stop to take a deep breath, letting my eyes close as I lean against the refrigerator and tuck my loose hair behind my ears.

  That’s the second time Cole Grady’s kissed me.

  That’s not true.

  The voice inside my head is instant and sharp.

  And right.

  That’s…definitely not true. I know full well what happened that night a month before graduation. Well, not all of it, but I remember the highlights. I remember drinking too much. I remember Cole just being there. Cole, the boy I’d spent every minute with when we were kids but who I’d barely spoken to in years suddenly being at my side and putting an arm around my waist.

  I remember the car ride, turning to see his face illuminated by the car radio as he took me home to my father’s house. I remember him parking a block away, his arm around my waist again as he helped me around the back of the house and mercifully through the back gate.

  But none of that matters compared to what I really remember about that night. Because what I mostly remember is me grabbing his shirt collar at the back door, yanking him into me, and kissing him with literally every single thing I had.

  Me. I kissed Cole Grady, not the other way around. And I have no idea why I did. Maybe it couldn’t be helped. Maybe it was years of what-ifs and wondering what might have happened had we chosen different paths or been different people. Maybe it was being worried that leaving for college in a few months meant never seeing him again and always secretly wondering what those lips tasted like, or felt like against mine.

  But there’s one part about all of it that isn’t a maybe. It's that what we did was wrong. Kissing Cole that time never should have happened, and having it happen a second time just reinforces what I know.

  That can’t happen again.

  I mean, whatever charming little boy he was, Cole Grady the man is certainly the opposite of that. He’s disgusting, and crude. I mean, there's the tattoos, the alleged piercing down there, the litany of girls that were always following him around as soon as we hit junior high.

  Cole Grady is so inappropriate. And so is kissing him.

  The door the kitchen swings open, and the devil himself strides in.

  “Okay, okay, hang on,” he says and puts his hands up as I ball my hands into fists. “That was my bad.”

  “Why did you kiss me?”

  He mulls it over for a second, his jaw tightening. “Temporary insanity.”

  “No, I mean…” I bite my lip. “That night.”

  His brow perks up and he steps around the kitchen island toward me. “So you do remember that.”

  “Maybe,” I swallow quickly. “Parts. I remember you kissing me,” I hiss, poking him in the chest.

  “That’s how you remember it, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  I chance a glance into his eyes, and instantly find them held by his.

  “You don’t maybe remember a kiss, Addy, and you’re not answering the question.”

  I know I’m lying through my teeth. I know I kissed him that night, but there’s one question left unanswered, and one I’ve always been too scared to even ask myself.

  I want to know why he kissed me back.

  “Takes two to tango, you know,” I throw back.

  “You want to know why I didn’t stop you.”

  I rake my teeth across my bottom lip, saying nothing.

  Cole smiles thinly. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I liked you?”

  “Bullshit.”

  He barks out a laugh. “You know, contrary to popular belief and this bullshit attitude of yours, you’re actually kinda likable, Tanner. At times.”

  It’s the answer I never wanted to hear, because it’s too hard to believe. It’s too hard not to see it for the line I know it is, from a guy like him, with a reputation like his. Cole Grady, who slept his way through half the girls in school. Cole Grady with the impossibly gorgeous smile and wicked eyes, both of which he uses for one thing.

  Selling bullshit lines like that.

  Oh, you liked me? Is that it?”

  “I just said-”

  “You just wanted to screw me, Cole.”

  His face sours as his brow furrows. “That’s not it at all, and you know it.”

  “Right.” I roll my eyes. “It just happened to be the last month before graduation, before we knew we were bo
th coming to LSU. Please, Cole, I know what it was. You saw one girl you never managed to bang, and your window of opportunity to do so was closing.”

  “We have established that you kissed me, right?” He growls angrily.

  “I was drunk, Cole, and you saw the perfect opportunity.”

  “You sound like a fucking crazy person, you know that?”

  He’s right, I do. I sound insane, and I don’t even believe anything coming out of my mouth. But it’s about salvaging whatever pride I can from what happened between us.

  It’s about severing whatever ties still exist between me and the wide-eyed little boy I used to play by the creek with.

  It’s about getting on with my life, without Cole Grady.

  Chapter 6

  Cole

  I always hated high school parties. Maybe it was because growing up in a house like mine, you grew up too fast, so I’d done it all before most of those kids figured out what alcohol was. They were always full of shitty people listening to shitty music and saying shitty, stupid things until someone threw up or someone started a fight.

  Yeah, not my idea of a good time.

  But I was especially bored that night. Well, that and my dad was on a particularly hard bender, which meant me getting out of the house for a while. So, there I was. And then I saw the one person even more unlikely to be at a party, let alone stumbling around with a drink in her hand.

  Addison Tanner.

  Addison Tanner who I’d barely spoken to in four years of high school. Addison Tanner who mostly stayed in that especially bookish, driven subset of the popular crowd. You know, the crowd that had and wanted fuck-all to do with grungy shop class kids like me.

  Except that it hadn’t always been like that with us. There was a time when we’d been friends. Deep down, I don’t think either of us ever forgot that, which is why I stepped in that night. That night where five minutes after walking in the door, I stormed over to where Chad Loomis was trying to put his arm around her with her eyes closed on the couch, told him to go fuck himself with a claw hammer, and got her out of there.

  The night I put my arm around her waist, frowning and ignoring the electric pulse the contact shot through me as I led her to my car and got her inside. The night I parked two streets away from her dad’s house and helped her through the back gate to avoid the scandal of Senator Tanner’s daughter stumbling home drunk.

  And I remember stopping for a moment at her back door as she fished for her keys. I remember her stopped and turning, her big blue eyes dragging up to mine and her pulse beating quick in the pinkness of her cheeks. I remember wanting to kiss her then more than I’d ever wanted to kiss anyone. I remember wanting to crush my mouth to hers and leaver her breathless and spinning.

  But not there, not like that. Not when she’d been drinking like that.

  So I didn’t.

  And that’s when she leaned right up, grabbed my shirt, and kissed me.

  Hard.

  I remember kissing her back like it was yesterday. I remember cupping her chin, feeling her hand slide up my arms, and kissing her with everything I’d ever held back in the years we’d known each other. Every lingering look, every honest conversation we’d never had, every word we’d never had the courage to say to each other came exploding out in one heart-stopping, head-spinning, world-shattering kiss.

  And then it was over.

  She pulled away and she looked up at me with that dreamy look in her eyes for another second before they started to close.

  “Dreamy” turned into straight “sleepy”.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” I’d murmured, pulling her keys out of her hands.

  Her eyes had flown open.

  “You, just you,” I’d added with a smile. “C’mon.”

  And then it was getting her into the dark house, sneaking her up the back staircase, easing her into bed clothes and all, and tucking her in.

  And then I left.

  I drove around that night, head spinning from it all, and questioning every single thing I’d ever thought I’d known about Addison and me. I drove around furious at the years wasted, the time I’d pissed away chasing bullshit, fake versions of her, and the fact that pretty soon, we’d both be leaving for good.

  And I didn’t want to waste another second without her.

  That’s the determination I’d been full of when I arrived at her house the next afternoon to check on her. It’d been the only thought going through my head as the door opened - that I was going to tell her everything.

  That’s before I saw the scowl that answered the door - the accusatory look of anger in her face, the shake of her head.

  The door slammed in my face before I could get a word out.

  How we got from there, to realizing at orientation that we were both at LSU, to the cell phone prank, to here in the kitchen of this party is irrelevant, because here we are. And whatever she thinks happened that night, she’s still pissed about it. Me getting us into trouble on week one of college didn’t help. Hell, me being at this college didn’t help.

  “Look, what do you want from me, huh?”

  Addy’s still got her back against the big subzero fridge behind her, her eyes still wild and searching my face.

  “I want you not to have come.”

  I frown. “To this fucking party? Fine, I’m gone.” I start to turn, but her words stop me.

  “This school, Cole.”

  I turn back, slower this time.

  “I want you not to have come to this school so I could’ve just started fresh and been myself.”

  My eyes lock with hers as I take a step toward her. She swallows quickly.

  “Just been yourself, hmm?” I snort. “How's that working out?”

  “Fine.”

  “Political Science, huh?”

  She pauses a beat before nodding. “Yes.”

  “So, you know, just being yourself I guess.”

  “Yes, Cole.”

  I stare at her, shaking my head. I know her a hell of a lot better than she likes to admit I do.

  “You still painting?”

  She says nothing, but something flashes in her eyes as she glares at me.

  Yeah, she is.

  “I’m guessing Political Science was Daddy’s idea?”

  Her eyes narrow at me. “You don’t know a thing about it, Cole.”

  “I know you used to love painting, and I know you were fucking great at it. And I know you said something about the Art Institute of Chicago that night in the car when I drove you home.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “So it’s your dream to come to your dad's fucking alma mater and follow in his exact footsteps?”

  “Fuck you, Cole.”

  I smile thinly. “Wow, guess you’re right, maybe I don’t know a thing about you.”

  We hold each other’s eyes like that, face-to-face in the empty kitchen, breathing heavily. Suddenly, the same shitty dance music from before comes rumbling through the house again.

  Guess the fucking DJ's back.

  “Look, just leave, Cole,” Addy says quietly.

  “Fine.”

  I hold her eyes for one more half-second before I turn and march out of the room to the sound of thumping bass and my own heart.

  Chapter 7

  Addison

  I don’t let my breath out until the door to the kitchen swings shut behind him. I close my eyes after, sinking back against the cool metal of the refrigerator thinking about what was just said.

  It was cold, but necessary.

  I remember the night of the party, and of course I remember that kiss. How could I not?

  I kissed him that night, but the fierceness in the kiss I got back from him scared the hell out of me. There was more to his kiss than I ever expected; more than I’d ever felt before.

  I’m still not sure why I kissed him. Maybe because in another storyline, or another version of this life, we’d have done that a long time ago. But that’s not who we
turned into. The boy from the woods and the creek went his own path - motorcycle, girls, tattoos, and trouble.

  I went the opposite. I went to advanced placement classes, and formal functions for state officials. I had a driver, for fuck’s sake.

  But that kiss showed what could have been if things had been different. If his family had been from a different side of town. If my dad hadn’t been who he was.

  But that kiss also said something else.

  It was a promise of something else to come - a hint at the raw heat and passion behind his perfect lips.

  I knew what he wanted that night. I knew what a guy with the reputation Cole had wanted with a kiss like that. And it wasn’t something I could give, because with him it was just too big. I wasn’t ready for that, least of all to him.

  I’d spent half the night tossing and turning, thinking about it. And then he’d shown up the next day, to “check on me”.

  Please.

  I knew what he wanted. I knew how he was with girls. And yet, in another timeline, who knows.

  Somewhere else in the house, the DJ is blasting music that in no way fits this scene or this mood.

  At least it’s blocking out whatever the heck is going on upstairs, I think, my face blushing at the memory of what we heard earlier.

  I know I should leave. And I also know I should probably go find him first and say something to close this chapter for good. We’re both here at LSU, but it’s a big school. Avoiding each other won’t be a huge deal. I can do my studies and do what I need to do, and he can go right on doing whatever it is he does. Sleeping with anything with a pair of tits, I guess.

  I finally pull myself away from the fridge and make my way out of the kitchen.

  Directly into my roommate, Melissa.

  “Hey!”

  I blink in surprise as she throws her arms around me, the smell of gin and what I’m ninety percent sure is pot wafting off of her.