The Sure Thing

by Samantha Westlake

  I tried to keep a wince off my face. That did sound a lot like Alex – except, of course, that Alex really could magically fix his issues. But I did suppose that this led him to act surprisingly carefree, believing that he could correct any mistake after the fact.

  Of course, that strategy wouldn't work with me, would it? If he screwed up with me, he wouldn't be able to change things. He'd be stuck with his choices, for better or for worse.

  But surely, Alex realized that fact. He wasn't stupid, even if he did sometimes seem a bit headstrong in his decisions.

  "Don't worry, Uncle," I said. "I'll be careful with him. We're taking things slow."

  Traitor, my mind whispered to me, choosing that moment to replay the kiss that he'd given me right here, right in the front of the store, where almost anyone could have walked in and seen us. And you're not thinking about taking things slow now, are you? You're thinking about how soon you can get another kiss like that, and maybe even do a bit more...

  No! Bad brain! I winced at the rush of intrusive and sinfully tempting images that followed. I hoped desperately that I could keep the blush off my face, that my uncle wouldn't notice the rush of color and heat to my cheeks and neck and other areas.

  Fortunately for me, Uncle Ryland seemed as oblivious to those feminine signals a she was to most womanly things. "I'm glad to hear that, then," he said, lifting his big hands and clapping them together, like a baker dusting off flour. "Now, are you going to be around for dinner tonight?"

  I shook my head, once again hit with a reminder of Alex, this time giving me that deliciously naughty grin as he held up a can of whipped cream in one hand and a strawberry in the other. No blushing, no blushing! "I've got plans," I said, hoping he wouldn't ask with whom.

  He didn't. "Well, then, looks like it's leftovers and Monday night football for me! Not that I'm complaining. Gotta get to bed early, too, so I can be here to open tomorrow for the customers."

  "You know, Uncle, I can be here and open for you if you want," I offered, not with much hope. Even though I literally lived right upstairs from the shop, Uncle Ryland still insisted on being the one to open each morning. I was pretty sure he considered it a point of personal pride, something that he offered for his customers that couldn't be matched by the big chains like Barnes & Noble. Still, I felt bad that he woke up so early each morning, and so I kept on offering to help him, even though he never accepted.

  Just as I'd expected, he waved me off. "I've got it, I've got it. You just relax. Can you handle closing up for me?"

  "Of course I can." I stepped around the counter, close enough to give him a hug – and then turned him so that I could push him gently towards the front door. "Now, you get out of here! Shouldn't you be retired by this point, you old man?"

  He laughed. "Old man, nothing! You just name the challenge, and I'll crush you at it!"

  I kept the store open after my uncle left, rolling back home in the same old, rusty pickup truck that he'd driven for as long as I'd known him. I probably could have closed down earlier, as we didn't get a single customer during the last hour, but I remained stubbornly open out of principle. We could be just as professional as a big box store, and with a personal touch that our customers couldn't get anywhere else!

  But once five o'clock rolled around, I locked the front door and did one last sweep through the shelves to make sure that I hadn't accidentally locked any prospective customers inside. It had happened before; one time, I locked up and headed upstairs to my apartment, only to hear a frantic pounding coming up through my floor about an hour later. It turned out that one elderly gentleman had drifted off to sleep while reading one of the books he took off our shelves, and he woke up to find himself trapped in the locked store! I apologized profusely, and fortunately, he calmed down once I told him that he could take the book he'd been reading home so that he could finish it in a more proper spot, like his bed.

  The real kicker on that tale, I remembered with a chuckle, was that the very same gentleman had come back in a few days later, holding the book that I'd granted to him for free – and insisting that he paid for it, as it had turned out to be such a good story! He even ordered the sequel, an order which I placed through the old, creaky computer in Uncle Ryland's back office. Once again, service and a smile trumped faceless corporate mega-stores!

  After I finished my sweep, confirming that no customers had nodded off in the chairs scattered around the store's interior, I returned to the front door to lock up. I opened it – and squeaked involuntarily in surprise at the man standing just outside it.

  "Hi." Alex gave me a slow, lazy smile, the kind that sent a little bolt of warmth coursing down my spine to curl up and purr inside my stomach. "Done with your day?"

  "Yes, but not ready to see you," I countered, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice and off my expression. "What are you doing here?"

  "Thinking about you." Somehow, he managed to sell the blatant, suck-up compliment with an innocent expression. He even batted his eyes! "So, are you going to invite me in?"

  "Nope. Store's closed."

  He stuck out his lower lip in a pout that should have looked ridiculous, but still managed to somehow be adorable. "What if I bribe you?"

  "What are you offering?"

  He just kept up that smile, one that promised far more nasty, delectable things than he could ever put into words. That purring warmth in my stomach exploded into flames, urging me to grab him right now, tackle him to the ground, make him take me before he came to his senses and realized that he could do better. Do it, do it!

  "I thought you promised me dinner," I said to him.

  "We can eat any time tonight you want. Why rush to do that first?"

  My long-neglected libido shrieked at me to invite him upstairs, up where there was a perfectly usable bed waiting for us. "I need to go get ready, clean up," I told him. "You'll have to wait down here."

  "Really?" He raised a sardonic eyebrow. "You don't even trust me to come and wait inside your apartment? Even if I sit quietly on the couch and don't say anything?"

  I was pretty certain that making love to Alex on the couch would be nearly as incredible as making love to him on a bed. "Nope, don't trust you even that far. You'll probably just steal my grandmother's silverware."

  He groaned. "Fine, you caught me. You ferreted out my dastardly plan. I'll wait down here. Just don't take forever, okay?"

  "I'll take as long as I want," I said, grinning that I'd somehow managed to score an unlikely victory.

  He gave me an eye roll. "I never realized how much I took my power for granted until I met you, and you started driving me crazy," he growled. "Go on, get ready. Just know that I'll make you pay for this, later."

  Something about the way he said those words, however, told me that the kind of revenge he had in mind involved teasing, torturing me with his exploring hands and hard body, as he kissed me senseless and breathless. Or, in other words, it wouldn't be unpleasant in the slightest.

  I gave him one last gloating little grin, and then bounced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, practically floating. Inside my chest, my heart and... other areas... throbbed in tempo with each other, both filled with eager anticipation for the night ahead.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ALEX

  *

  Paxton and I were... and hell, I still can't believe that I'm saying this... dating.

  That's right! Isn't that awful, reader? Me, a guy who could literally get just about any piece of ass in the world that I want, without having to do little more than think, is now in a committed relationship with one, singular, normal woman! What the hell is wrong with me?

  Maybe I've got some sort of brain parasite. I actually briefly entertained the idea, lounging back on my couch one day and idly tossing a Nerf football back and forth with Tommy.

  He snorted at me. "Brain parasite, my ass! You've fallen for this girl, that's what's happened to you."

  "Have not," I countered automatically. "Bu
t still, that shouldn't be making me act this weird. I've fallen for lots of girls before, and none of them have ever tormented me this much."

  "Because you don't let them." Tommy gave the ball a tight spiral that made it slap loudly against my palms as I caught it.

  I waggled it at him for a minute. "It's not like I'm asking for it. Remember when I dated that socialite girl, Paris? She was an absolute nightmare, but I didn't let her get away with using me as her boy toy to hang off her arm. I put her in her place, so why can't I do it to Paxton?"

  Tommy rolled his eyes so hard that he nearly missed my next throw to him. He only just managed to get his hands up and grab the ball before it shattered an eighth-century Chinese vase sitting on the glass shelf behind him.

  "Are you kidding me?" he answered, once he got the ball back under control. "Do you even remember how that 'relationship'," and he used air quotes around that word, "started in the first place?"

  "I asked her out?"

  "Nuh uh." He shook his finger at me, reminding me of a teacher scolding a bothersome pupil. I scowled back at him, not liking that thought, but he ignored my expression. "We were sitting here, watching TV, and there was a commercial for some burger chain that featured her in a bikini. You sat up and said that you'd love to, and I quote, 'hit that.'"

  "So?"

  "So at the next commercial break, there's a knock at the damn door, and it's Little Miss Paris herself, apparently lost on her way to a fashion show in New York and coming into a private building and up to the penthouse to ask for directions! What was her reason? Her private plane broke down?"

  I grinned at the memory. "Yeah. I wasn't as subtle back then."

  "You didn't even know what the word meant." Tommy chucked the football back to me, then turned to open the nearby fridge door and grab a beer from inside. My apartment had an open, minimalistic style, letting me continue to throw the football to him even as he stood in my massive, steel-and-dark-wood kitchen. "You had her on the couch for the next segment of the game, and off to your room by halftime. I don't think you even came out until the last few seconds of the match."

  "And you had the volume turned all the way up," I recalled.

  "Yeah, trying to drown out the sound of your disgusting sex noises, you oaf." Tommy twisted off the cap of the beer, then tossed it up in the air. I pointed a finger gun at it, and it vanished in a puff of smoke. It was an old tradition that we'd done for years. "But my point is that, while you did score with a billionaire supermodel hotel chain heiress, you certainly weren't dating her. You invited her over for a casual bang session, and then saw her a few more times because, and I quote you again here, 'she's a super flexible freak in bed, man, you don't even know.' That's not dating."

  I tried to find a hole in his argument to point out, came up empty-handed. "So what's your point?"

  He held up the beer in a mock toast to me before taking a pull. "So my point is that you don't really have relationships. You have flings, sometimes for an extended period of time, where you control everything about it. No chance of getting hurt if you always can make things turn around with a snap of your fingers. You've drifted along like that – until now, when suddenly, it's not totally in your control."

  Again, I opened my mouth, but couldn't figure out how to argue against this. Although I disliked it, Tommy had seized upon the truth. "Well, great. So what do I do now?"

  "You want my advice?" Tommy shrugged. "Go along with it and enjoy it. You're having fun with her, aren't you?"

  Surprisingly, he was right, and I was having fun – more fun than I'd imagined was possible with another person, to be honest. Paxton turned out to be a great blend of happy, enthusiastic, energetic – and sardonically sarcastic, and she never held back from putting me in my place. But even when she cut me down to size, I still saw that twinkle in her eyes that made my ire turn towards wanting to fire right back at her.

  "It's going alright," I allowed. "And she's also doing some research into my powers, which could turn out to be helpful if she manages to find anything."

  Tommy frowned. "I thought you tried to do that earlier, back when you first developed them in college?"

  "I did, but I can admit that I didn't really look that hard. Why stare a gift horse in the mouth, right? But Paxton..." I sighed, shook my head in a combination of admiration and amusement. "She's not letting it go. She even had me use my powers to get us into a restricted book library. I didn't even know that those existed!"

  "A restricted book library? What's that?"

  I'd asked the same question, when Paxton asked me to get her access. She'd sighed, rolling her eyes at me as if I'd asked what an orange was.

  "There are a lot of old books, valuable books, that are too rare to be found in libraries," she explained. "Most of them are owned in private collections, but some of them belong to universities and other public institutions. They can't fully hide them away to protect them, but you have to jump through a million hoops in order to gain access. The administrators worry that the public will be too rough with the books, destroy the remaining copies."

  "So how do you get access, then?"

  She held up two fingers. "Either you fill out a whole bunch of forms and submit to background checks, all the while arguing that it's essential that you see the books and that your grant money will repay the university for granting you the privilege, or you wait for years and hope that they eventually digitize the collection." She paused, and then held up a third finger with a smile. "Or..."

  I caught the gist of that drawn-out syllable. "Or you have a friend who can convince anyone to let you past without asking any questions," I finished for her.

  She nodded, leaning forward in her chair to plant a feather-light smooch on my lips. "Got it in one, handsome."

  I fought the urge to preen from the compliment, lost that fight. "I'm in. Let's go."

  Sure enough, it was about as easy as Paxton described. I had to talk to a couple of security guards, but they nodded in approval at the blank piece of paper that I held up as my credentials, along with a quickly composed sentence inside my head. Soon, we were in a climate-controlled underground room beneath the university's normal library, Paxton pouring over dusty pages while I stood nearby and tried not to fidget from boredom.

  "Are you sure you can't give me any more details to help narrow down how these powers started?" she asked, after a few minutes of silence. "Any other details, no matter how small, might help me narrow down my search topics."

  I grimaced for a second. She'd asked this question before, but I'd managed to dodge it until now. There were some things that I still didn't feel ready to share. I'd told her almost everything – but I had to keep a few secrets to myself.

  "I don't," I lied, covering up my wince with a blank look when she glanced over her shoulder at me. "I didn't have them as a kid – they started in college – but it just sort of happened. One day, I woke up, idly made a wish in my head – and then next thing I knew, it came true. And so did the one after that, and the one after that, and it's just kept on working ever since."

  Paxton sighed. "Too bad. I guess I'll just need to keep on reading everything, then. There certainly were a lot of people who've claimed, over the years, to have magical powers, but most of them were disproved as frauds. It's a slow process."

  I nodded, eventually wandering off to go try and find some books in the library that had pictures to look at. Paxton found me a couple of hours later as I eagerly pored over the pages of an ancient Ottoman Empire text that seemed to be their version of the Kama Sutra.

  "We should try a few of these positions," I said when she showed up, pointing at one particular page I'd bookmarked. "I didn't even know this was possible!"

  "I don't think it really is," she said, even as redness flooded into her cheeks. "No one's knees really bend that way."

  "Worth a try, right?" I grinned up at her, loving how clearly I could see lusty arousal and prudish sensibility warring on her face.

  Back in my
apartment, Tommy frowned at me. "You haven't told her about how you first got the powers? Don't you think that it's kind of relevant?"

  "How so?" I didn't quite meet his eye. "I didn't lie to her. I told her that I woke up one day and there they were, and that's the truth. It's not like I found a magical amulet or made a wish on some ancient cursed statuette or something. I would have noticed that."

  "Yeah, but you almost died! Don't you think that's important to mention?"

  "No," I said firmly. "Some things are going to stay a secret. And you're not going to say anything about them either, right?"

  Tommy held up his non-beer-holding hand in surrender. "Yeah, yeah, don't worry about me blabbing to her. I don't even have a way to contact her."

  "Well, maybe we'll change that at some point," I suggested. "We could go on a double date! The two of us, and..."

  "And I'll totally bring that long-term serious girlfriend who isn't imaginary at all," Tommy sighed. "Perhaps more of a friends' night, instead of a double date. You don't want to push her too fast, you know."

  "Er, right." To tell the truth, I was going out of my mind with frustration at how slowly things had been moving between us! Despite all my jokes about sex, despite how clearly she wanted it from me, our physical interactions went all the way up to passionately making out – and there they stopped, like running into a brick wall, dick first.

  I knew that she wanted it. I could see her starting to lose control whenever we grew too passionate together, her body moving with unspoken need, pressing in against me, delectably soft in all the places I was rock hard and driving me crazy...

  ...and then she'd stop. Every time, Paxton would gently put her hand on my chest, regretfully pull us apart. "I'm not ready yet," she'd whisper to me.

  I nodded, put up with it – and took a lot of cold showers. They helped, but not enough. I woke up each morning with a rod so hard that I could shatter concrete with it, and even porn had lost its appeal. I needed one specific girl to relieve this sexual itch, and she wasn't giving it up.