A Sweet, Sexy Collection 1: 5 Insta-love, New Adult, Steamy Romance Novellas (Sweet, Sexy Shorts)

by Kaylee Spring

  I want to say how horrible that is. Express my sympathy. Tell him that everything is going to be fine. But before my brain can interject that not everything is about me, my heart cuts the queue and comes out with, “So you’re not mad at me for going by myself first?”

  Lucas pops back up. “Mad at you? How could I be mad at you for chasing your dreams like I told you to?” Now his fingers interlock with mine and I can feel my eyes moistening.

  “I start in the summer semester. It’s a two-year program, and,” I say apologetically. “Then most people get an internship for at least a year.”

  “Summer is our busiest time,” Lucas says. “I’ll work all of the overtime shifts and not eat anything during the fall months. We’ll spend Christmas together. How does that sound?”

  “And New Years?”

  “As long as I get a kiss at midnight,” he says with a mischievous smile on his face.

  I don’t know what I’m thinking. When I look back on this later tonight, I’ll probably conclude that I wasn’t thinking. But the fact is that some of the best decisions come from not thinking about them at all. Because in that moment, I lean forward, and kiss Lucas for the first time.

  This isn’t the crazy part though. The crazy part is what I say next:

  “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  Chapter 9

  Lucas

  “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  Joy’s words are as fresh on my mind as her lips. Then comes my stupid reply. “Me too.”

  She giggles at this, a blush spreading down her neck. She moves the conversation away with more shocking news. “Since tonight might be our last chance to spend together for a while, I wanted to make it special. So I’ve planned a few things for us to do.”

  “You’ve planned a date?” I ask. “For us? I hate to be all masculine, but isn’t that usually the guy’s job? I mean, at least in the beginning of a relationship?”

  “It’s not our first date.”

  “No, but our first date started in a cemetery and ended at a café that you chose.” I’m keeping my tone lighthearted, but I want her to know that I don’t expect this from her. I don’t expect anything except for her to be Joy. Preferably my Joy, but just Joy is still great.

  “I felt bad about going to Paris without you.”

  “But I couldn’t have gone anyway. I’ve got no money.” After a horrid thought, I repeat this. “I’ve got no money. I can’t pay—”

  “Stop,” Joy says, holding her hand out at the same time. “We’re not in the fifties. Women are equal to men. Right?” Her eyebrows dare me to go against her.

  “Of course, of course! You go girl!” I say in what I hope isn’t a mocking tone. She cracks a smile and I know I’ve chosen my words well.

  “Again, this was all my idea, so I’m paying.” I try to interrupt her but she shushes me. “If you are the kind of man I think you are, that isn’t going to emasculate you. If you want to pay me back, get a ticket to Paris as soon as you can and give me the most amazing night out in the city of love. Got it?”

  I shake my head like I’ve just been scolded by the math teacher.

  “Good,” she says. “Now I hope you’re hungry.”

  “You have no idea,” I say.

  We end up at a nice restaurant downtown where the parking is more than I would usually pay for a decent meal. I try not to gawk when I look at the menu, but my shock must still register on my face.

  “Don’t worry. Even I wouldn’t pay these prices. Madame Anna got us this reservation. She said this treat was on her since you were the man who convinced me to follow my dreams.”

  I let out a heavy breath. “Well, thank you Madame Anna.”

  After a dinner of various French dishes that I can’t pronounce, much less imagine what might be in them, Joy takes me to a drive-in theater that I haven’t even thought of since high school.

  “We’re really in luck tonight. They’re playing Amelie. Have you ever seen it?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s this weird but wonderful French film. If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a Francophile. The decision to finally study in Paris has really brought it out of me.”

  “It’s cute,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. We haven’t really stopped touching since the diner when we both professed our love. And it doesn’t take more than twenty minutes into the movie for us to stop paying attention to the plot and the subtitles. We are too distracted by each other’s bodies.

  It starts out with rubbing our fingers on each other’s palms. Then she leans into me, and I wrap my arm behind her neck. Not a simple action when separated by the middle console of her Honda. I play with her hair for a few minutes, her sinking further into my chest. All I have to do is look down to kiss the top of her head. This rouses her to rise and our lips meet again, but this isn’t the shy kiss we shared in the diner where her father could have spied on us. This is a passionate embrace, hands seeking out patches of skin under clothes, desperate for more.

  Her stomach muscles contract when I begin sucking on her ear lobes. Joy lets out a moan and pulls at me. Our knees keep bumping against the console, our shins smacking the shifter. She is right there but still too far away, so I do the only thing I can think of to get her closer, and lift her over. She happily slides onto my lap, straddling me, her dress pulling up so I can see the smallest hint of her black panties. My dick is bulging, reading to go, and only stretches further when she begins squirming on top of me.

  The movie is long forgotten now. It’s only when we’ve got both of our shirts off that I remember where we are. What we are doing. Why we are here.

  Hormones rush across my brain, hissing at the cells still trying to form coherent thoughts. This is supposed to be our only time together before Joy goes to Paris. Then I’m not going to see her for months. The part of my brain dripping wet with endorphins begs me to stop here. To realize that this may be the last time we can be together like this, so I should just enjoy it while it lasts. But that’s it. It’s not supposed to be like this. I really love this girl. I wasn’t joking when I told her father that I plan on marrying her. Going to Paris together wasn’t a whim either. It was supposed to be the start of a relationship meant to be.

  I try to place myself in the future looking back at this moment. Is this where I want to make love to Joy for the first time? In a parked car at a dingy drive-in theater instead of in a hotel overlooking the Eiffel Tower.

  “I love you,” I manage to get out between kisses.

  Joy smiles as her tongue dashes across mine, rubbing against the inside of my lips as she pulls away to repeat the sentiment. “I love you too, Lucas.” She goes for my belt, but I stop her.

  “Not here.”

  She bites her lips before pulling away. Reality crashes through the windows, and she drags her shirt back over her shoulders. “Then where?”

  This time it’s my turn to smile as I kiss her. “In Paris.”

  “Not tonight?”

  “Not tonight.” I then add quickly as her face falls, “Not because I don’t want to. Tonight has been perfect. Really. You have no idea how much the memories of right now are going to keep me going through, well—It’s going to help me on many lonely nights while you’re in Paris.”

  Joy fakes a gasp and then scrunches my cheeks between both of her palms. “You are so much naughtier than I thought.”

  “Only for you,” I say, which earns a kiss. “Which is why I want the first time to be special. We weren’t planning to even kiss until we got to Paris. We can at least save something for the city of love can’t we?”

  Joy lets out a long sigh and buttons up her shirt. She falls back into the driver’s seat before looking back over to me. “How long until you can buy a ticket?”

  “The end of the summer,” I promise. I thought I could wait until Christmas, but that’s not happening. “Even if I have to rob a bank, we’ll be together by the end of summer.”

  Her hand
slips around mine, our fingers interlocking. “In Paris then.”

  “In Paris.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the little trinket that I’ve been rolling around in my palm nervously. When I pull it out, the ring catching faint glimmers of light, her eyes go wide, but I quickly interject. “It’s not real. It’s not. Remember when we left the diner earlier and I ran back in to use the bathroom? Actually, I was getting this. From one of those little machines at the front for kids. The ones that take quarters and give you a bouncy ball or a capsule with a little toy or a—”

  “Toy ring,” Joy finishes. I’m sure she is going to hate it. Toss me out here and now. Instead, she leans over and pecks me on the lips. “How did you know I was a pink plastic sapphire kind of girl?”

  I try to slip it on her ring finger, but it’s made for little girls and doesn’t fit. It does slide onto her pinky though. “It’s just so you don’t forget me over there. Or our promise.”

  She admires it on her hand. “I’m definitely waiting for you. I mean, a guy who provides for me like this is a keeper. This must be, what, ten carats?”

  “Twelve,” I say, playing along. “Play your game right and I’ll have a matching set of earrings waiting for you the next time we meet.”

  Chapter 10

  Joy

  After a week, the jet lag is finally wearing off, which means no more waking up at 3am. I actually stayed awake until midnight last night, but that was a bittersweet victory. Being kept awake by protesters shouting chants down the streets, spurred on by half-drunk revelers, did not allow the proper rest needed for a full day of study, which is what fills every moment of my days.

  The La Cuisine de Patisserie is one of the top ten culinary schools in Paris. They pump out chefs that go on to found three-Michelin-star restaurants around the world. It is renowned for its student waiting list and intense study schedule.

  Every morning I wake up at five, shower, eat toast and a boiled egg (the blandest breakfast for a culinary student), and then hop on my bicycle. After finding the most direct route to the school my third day here, my fifteen-minute ride consists of yawning between dodging the leftover trash tossed aside by the protesters the night before. Classes don’t begin until eight, but I arrive by six-thirty at the latest. I spend this extra time in the library, reading up on the topics we’ll be covering in class.

  Most of the day is spent in a kitchen designed for students to work in long rows of identical stainless steel counters, gas stoves, ovens, and all of the miscellaneous pots, pans, and utensils. Even if I had watched all of the episodes of those cooking shows popular on daytime television in which the head chef explodes in strings of expletives at all of the trainees, I still would not have been prepared for this school. Madame Anna probably abstained from telling me that the head instructor is more like a stereotypical drill sergeant than a chef.

  “Joy! Do these eggs white present with stiff peaks?” She shouts at me today. We are preparing meringues, and a key point is whisking egg whites until they resemble crisp whipped cream.

  “Oui, chef!”

  She dips her finger into my bowl, breaking the tip off of one white peak. “These are crumbly. Over whipped. You have devastated these egg whites.”

  So every day goes. Ending with sore wrists, eyes that ache all the way into the back of my head, and more reading material that keeps me up until midnight translating French to English. Despite my previous suspicions, I was wrong about the French never staying more than three meters from a bottle of wine, at least in the classroom. At my host family’s home, I can drink cheap red while taking out my stress on egg whites, keeping the radio loud enough in my little annex to drown out the protests on the other side of the windows.

  Lucas has been all too understanding of my lack in communication. The unrelenting daily schedule even in just my first week means we have only spoken two times. And one of those times I actually fell asleep while speaking to him. He stayed on the line for thirty extra minutes according to the call log, which means he probably heard me snoring, a habit my father has mocked me for my whole life. That extra half hour could be interpreted as creepy by some, but I know he was just waiting to see if I would wake up so he could wish me a good night. He sends me daily emails, and I almost hate them because I only have time for single-sentence replies. Tonight, finally, is to be our first video call, something we have both been waiting for all week.

  With classes and sleep and translating my textbooks and occasional communication with Lucas, I certainly haven’t made any friends. My host family turned out to be in the program solely for the money. They have no kids and are rarely home anyway, which is great for my independence, but terrible for my French and social skills. There are two other Americans in the school, but they are a couple that can’t see past each other. Even in the classrooms where we actually sit at desks and have a blackboard at the front, they are ensnared around each other as if the professor were not eyeing them and cursing foreigners under his breath.

  So when I am invited to drinks at the end of class on Friday, I leap at the chance. Chloe, the girl who asks me, is rushing out of class as she relays the message.

  “We’re all meeting tonight for drinks uptown at a place called The Verge. You interested?”

  Half of me wants to scream out yes. That’s the burnt-out side with the candlewick floating in a pool of hot wax. There is nothing more that I need than a night of mindless drinking. Another part of me has been looking forward to sleeping late tomorrow morning. But bar or not, tomorrow is still going to be Saturday, and I’ll sleep late no matter what. What does it matter if I wake up after noon? I’ll text Lucas and let him know I’ll be a little late. We were planning to start chatting closer to midnight anyway due to the time difference and Lucas’s work. An hour or two later won’t make a difference. He would want me to go out and make a friend or two.

  “Sounds great,” I reply. We exchange numbers and I say that I’ll show up around nine.

  The prospect of new friends has me all excited. It’s too easy for me to fall into the rut of being a model student. Without Becca here, I need a few gal pals who will make sure I get a good dose of fun every now and then. Plus, her English was excellent, which means I can ask her about a few translations that have been tripping me up. Maybe we can become study partners. Maybe even go into business together later—Stop. I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Just enjoy tonight and see where that leads.

  After rushing home to change into more appropriate clothes, do something with my hair, and paint my face, I’m ready to go out. First though, I want to send Lucas a little something. So I take a few snapshots in front of the mirror. The first few perfectly innocent with two fingers held up in the peace signal. Then, as a joke, I lower my index finger so it’s just my middle finger pointing up, my tongue sticking out to show my jest. Filled with nervous energy, I get a little more daring and lean forward, showing off my slight cleavage. I want him to know that even though I’m going out drinking with new people, he’s still my guy and I haven’t forgotten our promise to each other. Plus, it’s just fun to tease him, imagining how hot and bothered it will make him. He can’t even reply right now since he’s at work, so I’m sure this is killing him.

  The streets pulsate with life from the protests. As I venture deeper into the heart of the city, I run into more of the shouting crowd than I’m used to seeing outside my window. I don’t keep up with politics a lot, but I know it has to do with tax breaks for the rich and higher tax rates on crops to offset the difference. This has brought a great many people out of the countryside and into the city center where they wear orange vests, wave around large signs, and, occasionally, begin riots that tear through police lines.

  I’m only ten minutes from the bar when the first furious shrieks break through the throng of chanting, punctuated by the shattering of glass. I can’t see where it’s coming from, but I hurry my pace anyway, wishing I had brought my bicycle so I could speed away. My heart is pounding somewhere in the
vicinity of my throat, but it nearly stops when I come out on the main street. The protesters have thrashed the cars parked along the side of the road. One is on fire. Gone is feeling like the heroine in a movie who goes from rags to riches. Now I’m in some sort of dystopian thriller, clearly at the beginning of what can only be a chase scene.

  The protesters pay little attention to me. They are charging a group of police in riot gear. When the police open fire, I instinctively duck behind a post box. A clang on the metal scares me so bad that I scream, but my voice is lost amid those of the protesters as tear gas spreads through their ranks. A rubber pellet about the size of a large marble rolls against my foot. At least they are using rubber bullets. But I can’t imagine how much this would hurt if it hit you in the chest. Or the face.

  When I peek around, the violence is coming my way. I have to get out of here now. Three breaths and I promise myself I will be ready to run. Three breaths. In. Out. In. Out. I wish Lucas were here right now.

  After exhaling for the third time, I leap up and bound down the road, hoping to see my new friend in minutes. Imagining how I will relay this story to them. I should have brought the rubber pellet. That would have made a great souvenir. A thrill thrums through my veins. This is going to be something to tell Lucas too. Maybe make him get here faster because he’s worried about me. Then we can finally have that night at the Eiffel—and this is where my thoughts end. Something strikes me in the back of the head and I am falling. I don’t remember hitting the pavement, but I am looking up at the few stars that poke through the light pollution. Then even those wink out of existence and the street swallows me up in perfect darkness.

  Chapter 11