Candy Boys

by Raven, Jo

  Goes to show, one hears what one wants to hear, and combined with her pretty face, loose blond hair and the dark blue dress that hugs some seriously hot curves, well…

  Poor brain. Don’t worry, I get you. She’s too pretty, too perfect to be what you need, and when something looks too good to be true, then it’s not. Lesson learned.

  So back the fuck off.

  I grab two Coors and open them while waiting for my thoughts to settle and my body to calm the fuck down.

  “Was the last group any good?”

  I glance up and find her face inches from mine. My grip on the bottles slips, and they crash to the grass, spilling beer everywhere, including on my black jeans.

  Oh for fuck’s sake. Grunting, I bend over to collect the now half-empty bottles—and she does the same, our foreheads bumping.

  “Ow!” She stumbles backward, and I snatch at her wrist. I manage to grab it and steady her before she ends up on her ass in the spilled beer.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure? Why don’t you sit here?” I drag her toward the chair behind the table, the one I’m not supposed to use, because I’m supposed to be standing and chatting up people and making sure they know I’m having the time of my life.

  She lets me settle her in the chair, and I’m about to grab a fresh pair of beers, when she blinks golden-brown eyes at me, and I still.

  There’s something about her. Something… spicy and sweet, sharp but delicate, from the look in her eyes that measure me from head to toe, weigh me and shake me up, to the pale arch of her throat to the dark hollow between her full tits, barely contained in the thin summer dress she’s wearing.

  Now that she’s seated, I also see her legs. Long. Slim. Smooth. Slender feet shoved into green flip-flops, pink toenails peeking out.

  Not my kind of chick. Too girly, too colorful, too playful. Too light, despite what she said—and why did she say it? It was as if she saw right through me, looked right into my soul.

  What’s left of it, anyway.

  I open two more beers, careful to put them on the table before I turn back to her. “That would be… hey, girl?” She’s still staring at me and hasn’t moved at all. “Hello, Earth to girl sitting in my chair?”

  She smiles.

  Her silence is worrying me, though. Maybe she’s wasted. Or got a concussion. “Shall I find your friend?”

  “No, it’s fine.” She finally stirs, pushes up from the chair. My gaze dips again to her tits, her waist, her hips, and I lick my dry lips. Can’t help it. Meanwhile, she rummages in her small purse and hands me money for the beers. “Um. Thanks.”

  I push it back at her. “No. My treat.”

  She smiles again, and I bask in the brightness of that smile. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Did I say I have to? I want to.”

  “That’s cute.”

  Is it? That’s not what I’m like, not normally. Cute, me?

  She’s staring at me, her eyes a little wide, and I rub the back of my neck self-consciously. What the fuck? Nobody gets me flustered like this.

  She takes a step away, and I scramble for something to say, to keep her longer.

  “Staying to the end of the concert?” I manage.

  “Possibly. My friend,” she tips her blond head in the direction of the stage and golden curls tumble everywhere, “has a crush.”

  “A crush.”

  “Yeah, on this stupid guy who thinks rock is only about black clothes and bad manners.” She bites her lip, her gaze darting down my body, and back up. “No offence.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not into rock anyway.”

  “You’re not?” Her eyes narrow. “But the style… and you’re working here. This gig can’t be paying much.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug, heat rushing up my neck and into my face. “That’s how I dress, and I lost my job yesterday. I have to come up with the fucking rent money somehow, and…”

  I clench my fists. Goddammit, why am I spilling the beans to a total stranger just because her lips and tits look divine in the golden afternoon light?

  She’s not a heroine in the comic I’ve been drawing this past year. She’s a real girl, in this very real piss-scented park, and I should shut my mouth.

  “I’m sorry.” She gives me a solemn nod. “Hey…” She licks her lips, starts again. “What’s your name?”

  “Jethro.”

  She nods, but her cheeks pale. “Jethro.”

  “I know, it’s a weird name.” She pales more, and I frown. “You all right? Fuck, you’re dizzy, aren’t you?” I glance around for the paramedics that are stationed nearby. “Sit here and wait for me, I’ll be right back.”

  “No, wait.” She grabs my arm, and the touch is searing my skin. “Look, I can’t offer you a job at a bar or anything like that.” She goes on quickly, before I have a chance to cut in and tell her I can work in anything and everything. “But if you think you’d be interested in a different kind of work… God, I’m just talking without asking you—”

  “Asking me what?”

  “If you even like books.”

  “Books.” Huh. Do comics count?

  “Not that you’re required to, of course,” she adds hastily. “You can hate them and sell them just fine, only it would be a soul-sucking job if you do.”

  Her eyes have gold in them, and it glints in the sun, like her hair. She’s made of gold. “Work in a bookshop?”

  “That’s right. I know a girl who left suddenly, and there’s a position to be filled.”

  Soul-sucking or not, I need a job, and I could do worse than working at a bookshop. Besides, I don’t hate books. I’m not their biggest fan, but that’s not their fault.

  “That sounds great,” I say, meaning it. “Where is that shop?”

  “Wait, let me give you the card.” She fishes in her endlessly deep purse, and withdraws triumphantly a business card. “Here you go. Just give them a call. Say Candy sent you.”

  “Candy.” Her name is Candy. It fits her perfectly. Candy sugar. I wish I could think of a line that doesn’t sound like a come on. “Hey, how about—?”

  “It’s a great place. Nice people. You should give it a try.”

  “I will, promise. Listen, Candy, about—”

  “Going now.” She grabs the beers, and fuck, I want her to stay here, to go with me for a drink, to find out more about her.

  “Will I see you again?” I call after her.

  She turns and smiles at me. I could get addicted to her smiles, I realize, and fuck, that’s dangerous. I hardly know her.

  “That’s up to you,” she says.

  Then she turns around and hurries away and I’m left to ponder the fact that I met a girl who’s intrigued me and turned me on for the first time since I can remember, and I’m letting her go. I don’t even know her last name.

  Fuck!

  “Hey, where are you going?” my boss shouts at me as I go around the table and sprint after her, the business card clutched in my hand. “Come back here, you can’t leave the stall unattended! I’ll fire you.”

  But I’m running through the crowd, trying to locate her blond head, my heart pounding. Too many people. I hate crowds. I hate noise. Where the hell did she go? She’s short but not that short to vanish completely.

  Distracted, I crash into a huge guy with a shaved head and a sword tattooed on his forehead. He grabs my shoulder. “Goddamn retard.”

  I elbow him in his considerable gut, cursing under my breath. Just what I need. No way can I catch up with Candy girl now.

  Even worse, sword guy starts shaking me, and I can feel the panic creeping into the back of my mind like a black tide.

  I pull back my fist and punch him in the gut.

  Which results in him punching me in the face.

  It all goes downhill from there.

  He tries to punch me again. I sidestep and duck under the hand he still has on my shoulder, throwing him off balance, and
kick back at his knee.

  He howls, then punches me in the kidney.

  I go down to one knee, my vision blacking out. The pain runs through me like fire, but I push it down with the ease of long practice and pull on his hand, making him stumble—then turn and punch him in the nuts.

  He goes down like a sack of rocks, his cries drawing everyone around us. I kick him again and again, until someone pulls me off him.

  I snarl viciously at him, at everyone, a red haze covering everything. Dammit. I’ve let Jet out of the cage.

  And the police are coming.

  Twisting out of the guy’s hold, I bolt through the crowd, run until my lungs give out and the stitch in my side turns into a tattoo of pain.

  I don’t know where I am. There’s an endless avenue in front of me, mostly empty. I bend over, panting hard.

  A crumbled piece of paper falls out of my hand. The business card. It’s hardly readable anymore, but I can make out the name and phone number.

  Nothing to lose, right?

  I lost it all already, long ago.

  Chapter Four

  CANDY

  Title: Kitty Trouble

  From Candy Boys (Blog Serial)

  With a possessive growl, J-Two drags me on to his lap, and his greedy hands roam all over my luscious curves. “Who’s been a bad girl, huh?”

  “Are you going to punish me with your huge rod?” I whisper, raking my nails down the tattoos on his chest. “Lash my kitty?”

  “If you give him your kitty,” J-One drawls from behind me, sliding his monster cock between my thighs, “I’ll have your ass.”

  I can’t believe I just met Jethro Connors.

  And invited him to apply for Annie’s position.

  OMG. What was I thinking?

  …right, I wasn’t thinking at all. Seeing a hunk like him in the flesh can do that to a girl. He’s way hotter in person than those blurry pics implied.

  Way sexier.

  Cute, in a wild, bad boy way with his spiky black hair and dark eyes, and that fuck-all raspy voice… Electric. He’s a vibrating string, a fey-like creature, savage and graceful and hot as hell.

  He’ll never apply for the position, right?

  “You won’t believe the resumes I’m getting for Annie’s position,” Donna is muttering from her desk in the back of the shop. “Holy shitballs.”

  “What?” I call back, distracted.

  “Oh. My. God. It gets worse.”

  Satisfying my curiosity is better than obsessing over Jethro. Besides, Donna’s been doing this for an hour now. I can’t take it anymore. It’s still early on a Wednesday morning, and a customer has yet to walk into the stop, so I wander to the back and stick my head into her office.

  “Say what?”

  “The resumes. Have they even read the job description? Do they even know what a bookstore is? I really wonder.”

  “Gimme.” I lean against the doorjamb and stick my tongue out. “Don’t be selfish, share the fun.”

  “You’ll regret ever asking,” Donna mutters ominously, but clears her throat and adjusts her glasses on her nose, her curly ginger hair sticking out in all directions. “Here we go. ‘I am incredibly intelligent and when my peers were playing, I was reading books. I own eighty-five books and several comic books.’”

  “What? Eighty-five?” I am outraged. “I hope she means paperbacks and has thousands on her ereader?”

  “One can only hope. Improbable, though, I mean, look what she wrote in her extra activities: ‘I give good head.’”

  We dissolve into giggles.

  “Maybe she meant something else.” I sigh.

  God, I really want to know if he applied. You know who. Jethro.

  Hey, I’m not cheating on my other fantasy boyfriend. I just want him to get a job. I want him to be… I don’t know, less sad and angry at the world than he was that day.

  And it’s not like Joel came back for more books. See?

  “Here’s another one: ‘I love books and stories and can clean and answer phones. Here is my phone number.’”

  “So?”

  “Her references are Maxim’s Exotic Dancers Club.”

  “Fie! No more!” we cry together. Then burst out laughing like maniacs.

  I’m wiping tears from my eyes. “Poor girl.” I sober up. “Maybe you could give her a chance. So what if she works at that club? Maybe she has no options. Maybe she loves books.”

  “Maybe. Though, the resume pic…”

  “She put in a pic? What for?”

  I go lean against her desk, and we both squint at the pic of a girl in what looks like a silver corset with thigh-high boots and feathers in her hair. “Do you think she’d plan on coming to work dressed like that?”

  “It would sure attract more customers.”

  “Of the wrong kind.”

  “Hey, money is money.”

  She gives me a mock-shove and scrolls down her screen, frowning. “Okay, here we have a guy. Looks good. Oh wait, wait. Under qualifications: ‘Black belt in karate, and I can bake a mean lemon pie.’ What do you think, Candy?”

  “I like men who can cook. He’d go nicely with the other one who can give mean head.”

  “We can’t hire two. Besides, they’d go join Annie in Vegas and get married. With him baking mean pies and her giving mean head… it’d be a marriage made in heaven.”

  “Amen.”

  I re-read the guy’s info. Could it be…? Nah. It’s not him.

  And I shouldn’t feel so let down.

  “Ah, well. Give it a few more days.” I push off her desk, still struggling with that weird sense of disappointment. “Someone worthwhile will report in.”

  No reason why he should have applied for the job. He’s a bartender for God’s sake. Who knows if he’s ever even opened a book in his life. If he kept the card I gave him or chucked it into the trash the moment I walked away.

  Who am I kidding? He probably never even considered applying. He probably never gave me, or the business card I passed him, a second thought. Why would he?

  Brylee was right. Real-life guys can’t hold a candle to my virtual boyfriends. Isn’t that why women are all over my blog? Why they spend their time reading and commenting and holding discussions about whether J&J like their whiskey neat or if they switch when they fuck each other?

  Because they totally do. Fuck each other, that is. It’s a new development in the story I’ve been posting online. It had all started quite innocuously, actually—the story of me meeting these two guys and then starting a relationship with them—but it mostly consisted of them having sex with me, not each other.

  Though they’d obviously watch when one of them did me, and jack off. Yeah.

  But soon I’d added scenes where they touched each other. Kissed. Jacked each other off. Gave each other blowjobs.

  Boy, that’s hot. Hmm…

  And the more I delve into my own sexuality and discover what excites me, the more women I discover who like the same.

  I stop at a shelf and stare at it blankly. Wait, what was I thinking about? Or more to the point, what was I doing?

  Oh yeah, I was going to change the display of our romance bestsellers. So that’s what I do, new scenes to be written popping up in my mind, until I stop, whip my notebook out of my back pocket and jot some ideas down.

  Holy crap, this scene is going to be hot. Really hot and dirty. Can’t wait to write it and escape into the story once more.

  ***

  He straddles J-Two’s legs and whispers in a seductive, growly voice, “Take off your pants. I want to see how excited you are. Then I’m going to push you on your back, make you hold on to the headboard and put my mouth on your big, fat d—”

  “Oh Jesus Christ!” Donna cries out from her office, and I drop my pen. Gathering it up, glancing around me to make sure Godzilla hasn’t attacked us and that no customer has walked in while I was busy writing my personal porn, I walk to the back.

  “More resumes?”


  “You bet. Listen to this one. ‘Why you should hire me: I’m the best in town.’ Best in town, what? Also, his email starts with ‘hotbarman.’ Like I said, Jesus Christ.”

  My heart stops for a long moment. Could it be him? “You should totally interview him.”

  “Why on Earth?”

  “Because, ah, he’s the best. In selling, I bet he means. He sounds confident. That’s good, right?”

  “Right.” Donna shoots me a dubious glance. “And he can probably mix the best drinks in town, too.”

  I grin at her. “Better than lemon pie, or giving head.”

  “You do know your logic is messed up, right?”

  “Isn’t that why you hired me?”

  She shakes her head.

  “What’s his name?” I hurry around the desk and try to see over her shoulder, but she closes the window immediately.

  “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  “Come on, Donna. Just lemme see—”

  “Get back to work. Girls these days.” She giggles and has no idea what she’s putting me through.

  Frustrated, I return to the front of the store and my display.

  Is it him? Would he say such stuff on his resume? Maybe the email was a code for me to recognize it’s him. And he sure seemed cocky at the concert.

  Something is bothering me about this, though. Maybe how blatant it seems to be? How simple? I thought he gave off more of a complicated vibe. Darker. Wilder.

  And that’s where I have to remind myself—again—that I don’t really know the guy. And that even if he is hot, he may be shit at selling books. Won’t that be crappy? Working with him could be uneasy as hell, especially if I get a girl-boner every time I see him. And what about Joel?

  Now I’m kinda hoping it’s not him.

  This is driving me up the wall. Hey, didn’t I decide he hasn’t applied? A fantasy he will remain, and now I’ll write that scene and I—

  The door chimes as it opens, letting in a gust of wind and a tall man dressed in a dark blue Tee and running shorts. Running shoes, shapely calves, a broad chest, a wide grin and bright blue eyes…

  Ohmygod.

  He’s back.

  ***

  “Hello,” he says, and I nod dumbly at Joel Kingsley, or J-One, as he enters and fills the whole damn shop with his hawtness.