Deviant Attraction: A Dark and Dirty Boxset

by Bene, Jennifer

  “You live in LA, but it’s not for meditation.” She narrowed her eyes as she spoke, and he met her gaze without flinching. Their staring contest went on for a moment until she started to second-guess herself, and then he cracked. His lips curved up, he cursed, and then he kissed her. His hand was around the back of her neck, holding her firmly against his lips and they were so warm, and his chest was hard against hers, which she clearly hadn’t noticed well enough in their hug. He let her go just as quickly, and she felt stunned.

  “You got me! Shit, Meg, how have you always read me like a book?” He grinned and leaned across to the bartender to talk to him, and then turned back to her. “I’ve lived in LA since 2011, but I’m there for music promotion. I work for a record label and I kind of help them get the right venues, get the word out, make sure events sell out.” Eric shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but she just stared at him. He was still gorgeous, his hair looked like it should be in a catalog, he had an amazing job, and he had just kissed her like she hadn’t been kissed in years, and now he was acting casual. As if the earth hadn’t tilted on its axis when her lips had met Eric Lewis’ again.

  Ugh.

  She tried to compose herself and ignore the mild inferno that was currently trying to cook her from the inside out. “That’s awesome, Eric, I’m really jealous! It sounds amazing!”

  “It’s… okay. There’s really only so much of the fake, plastic Los Angeles crap I can put up with. Tell me about you, same reunion shit. Go.” He had been overly serious for a moment, but then he smiled at her when two more fizzy pink drinks appeared. She laughed when he handed her one.

  “I thought you mocked me for this drink?”

  “It actually wasn’t half bad. Go on, Megster, give me your whole story.” He met her eyes, not even glancing around, and she felt the heat simmering in her stomach move lower. She decided to meet his sarcastic response with one of her own.

  “Well, I went to college for a bit, for a degree in biochemistry, but then decided my real passion was fashion so I dropped out and lived in New York to pursue it. I premiered a line at fashion week, but then decided to get married instead and became a trophy wife in the Northeast. He died last year and I’m now a wealthy millionaire fashion mogul.” Taking a sip of her drink she stared at him over the glass, doing her very best not to break under the stress of lying to him.

  “How much of that is true? Because you look incredibly hot in that dress and I’m tempted to say all of the fashion design shit is right.” His eyes moved over her and she almost choked as a blush burned into her cheeks.

  “Um, same as you, just one is right.”

  “Then I choose fashion design, because you never dressed like this in high school, but you sure as hell know how to pull it off now.” Eric leaned forward, his mouth barely inches from hers, obviously waiting for another kiss, but she lifted her glass back to her lips instead and took a slow drink, maintaining stoic eye contact with him.

  “Wrong.”

  “Dammit!” He laughed and pulled back from her. Just then a blond guy in a gray button-down and jeans almost tackled Eric over the bar. Eric bumped into it but rebounded in enough time to grab the guy with a loud shout, avoiding the catastrophe of knocking over the bottles to his left. “What the—?!”

  “ERIC!” The blond guy yelled as he leaned back with a big grin on his face, and Eric punched him in the shoulder.

  “Colby, you dick! Can’t you see I’m talking to—”

  “Meg Harper?!” Colby turned towards her and she was instantly struck by his baby blue eyes and his trademark, all-American bad boy look. His hair was longer than most and he had to push his hand through it to get it off his forehead. There was a glint in his eyes as he stepped slightly in front of Eric to face her completely. “I haven’t seen you since graduation! Where the hell did you run off to?”

  Eric grabbed Colby by the back of the shirt and pulled him away so they were standing about the same distance in front of her. “She was actually about to tell me that when you interrupted us.”

  “Perfect! Hey, bartender guy! Can you get me a Jack Daniels? Thanks, man!” Colby turned his attention completely back to her, and his eyes gave her an overt appraisal. He had been on the football team with Eric and he’d had so many girlfriends in high school that it used to be a running joke that dating Colby was more a contest to see who could last the longest with him. The longest she’d heard had been two and a half weeks, and he’d spent a week of it on Christmas break with his family so that girl’s reign was probably still being disputed by his long list of conquests.

  “Come on, Megster. Spill.” Eric smiled at her and she sighed and relayed the whole pathetic story as quickly as possible. Two years at Penn State studying biochemistry with the hope of being a veterinarian, but then she’d met David Broadway and fallen in love with him. He was two years older than her and graduating, and when he asked her to move with him to New Hampshire she’d agreed. Left school, and her dreams behind, even though her whole family had begged her not to. While David started working as a business analyst, Meg had bounced from small job to small job trying to figure out a niche in the business world like David had. It had all been like trying to fit into a pair of uncomfortable, too-small shoes. She’d felt confined, restrained, and although David had been Dominant at first, and the sex had been explosive, that aspect of their relationship quickly faded after they were married. Three affairs later and she divorced him, only to discover he was paying for his mistresses on credit cards — half of which were in her name. Just a little over a year ago she’d had to move home to Georgia to live with her parents, and then her sister Cameron for a while, just to make ends meet. Now she was finally in her own tiny apartment and working as a vet tech while she put herself through school to finish her veterinary degree.

  So glamorous.

  She shrugged when she stopped telling them about her lame life and emptied the pink fizzy glass as the guys stared intently at her, then they looked at each other and something seemed to pass between them. For a moment she was about to politely excuse herself to avoid the embarrassment of the two hottest guys she could remember from high school ditching her for being a total loser, but then Eric spoke up.

  “We should find this guy and introduce him to the circle of light. What do you think, Colby?”

  “I think that would be a great idea.” Colby grinned and Meg sputtered, shaking her head. The circle of light had been a hazing thing for the football team where the newbies on the team had to get drunk on the football field and then answer questions, naked, while standing in the middle of a circle of cars with the headlights on full blast.

  “No, no, no! You guys don’t need to even look for him, he’s way up north, and it’s over! It’s seriously over, and I just never want to see him again, okay?” She groaned when she noticed her drink was empty, and both guys shrugged.

  “Well, then there’s only one other solution for what to do.” Colby smiled and looked at Eric who grinned back wickedly.

  “Oh, definitely. There’s only one thing we can do now.”

  “What? Guys… what are you thinking? Seriously, those looks—” Meg felt a nervous energy flood her underneath the buzz of the alcohol in her veins, but then Colby put her empty glass on the bar and they both grabbed her hands.

  “We’re going to dance, Megster!” Eric hauled her onto the dance floor and Colby was happy to pull her along as well. As soon as they met up with the other alumni underneath the flashing lights, Eric moved close in front of her and started to move his hips in a rhythm that had her suddenly very, very wet. “Come on, please tell me you remember how to dance.”

  “I know how to dance, jerk.” It was the verbal shove she needed to start moving her hips to the beat, but she didn’t need any encouragement to press herself closer to Eric’s hard chest. The alcohol had been flowing for over an hour and the other attendees were dancing and singing along to the greatest hits from their years in high school. It was like one giant flas
hback to her senior year, with Eric’s hands on her hips and Colby rocking it out in the open space to their left. He started singing along to All-American Rejects, grabbing the hand of a woman dancing with friends as he serenaded her, telling her he’d keep her his dirty little secret. She blushed and laughed loudly, and soon he was surrounded by the other women who all started dancing and cheering him on.

  “He’s got no shame.” Eric laughed and spoke directly into her ear. His breath against her cheek sent a shiver over her skin.

  “Did he ever have shame? I think he was born without that functional part of the brain.”

  “Well, I was a brain surgeon for a while… I could check.” He was grinning when she leaned back from him and slapped his shoulder. In a flash his hand was around her wrist and he’d flipped her around so she was facing away from him, pressed against his firm chest — only now he had her arm pulled slightly up behind her back. Somehow, he managed to keep dancing, his other hand keeping her hips in beat with his as he restrained her with ease.

  A memory of him pinning her to the narrow bed she’d had in her parents’ house emerged and a frisson of heat pulsed down her spine to nestle itself between her thighs.

  “Now, that wasn’t very nice, Megan.”

  Her mouth went dry as his voice purred out her full name and she was ninety-percent sure that the hard press against the top of her ass wasn’t something in his pocket. She felt seventeen again, excited and unsure about what to do next. She tried to swallow to regain her voice, but all she managed was a breathy, “Eric?”

  “Do you want me to let go?” His grip tightened slightly and a barely audible moan slipped from her before she bit down on her lip. The blush in her cheeks spread, and she felt like the whole dance floor had to know what was going on. It had to be obvious they weren’t just dancing, and she’d always been terrible at keeping a straight face. All it would take was one person glancing over, just one person noticing the vice-like grip he had on her wrist, or the way he lifted her arm just a little higher so her body angled back against his in an effort to ease it. Her anxiety crashed into the arousal humming under her skin, because Eric had been the first guy she’d ever really wanted — the first guy she’d played even the tiniest bit rough with. He’d been the one to make her crave it, to crave more, but it was something she’d never been open about outside of a few relationships.

  “I’ll keep YOU my dirty, little secret!” Colby appeared in front of her, singing at an obscene volume, and Eric instantly released her wrist as Colby continued dancing like some extra from Magic Mike. As he rolled his hips and leaned back, pulling up his shirt to expose a carved set of abs, the women to their right exploded into cheers and hollers. “My turn, Megster! Dance with me!”

  “You seem to be doing a good job all on your own, Col—” Megan was trying to get her hormones under control when he reached forward and pulled her towards him, effectively cutting her off. More hard muscle under her hands as she caught herself against him, and she couldn’t help but feel an inward cheer when the women next to her looked on in envy. He dropped down in front of her and then ran his hands up the backs of her calves, the outsides of her thighs, her hips, her waist, and then he was lifting her arms over her head as the music started to change. Colby stepped closer to her, his body barely an inch from hers as those blue eyes locked onto her own, that manic grin still plastered across his face.

  A downbeat, and then the music was slower, a dark, thumping beat that Colby didn’t fail to catch with each movement of his body. “Come on, Megster.” His hands caught her waist and he pulled her tight against him, his thigh finding a nesting place between her own, successfully nudging the hem of her dress a little higher. She was about to pull back when his fingers traced along her cheek. “I have to say… whoever your ex is, he was an idiot not to notice how gorgeous you are.”

  Against all logic after the events of the evening so far, Megan’s heart rate increased even further. First, there had been Eric’s kiss, then he’d teased her with the dominance she had all but convinced herself she had imagined in high school, and now Colby Warren, the playboy of Whittaker High, was calling her gorgeous. She had stepped through the looking glass, been sucked into some Matrix-like alternate reality, or fallen on the way in and cracked her skull open and she was actually in a hospital somewhere, because this — this couldn’t be happening to her.

  Not her.

  Not Megan Harper, the college drop-out, the divorceé, the scrub-wearing vet tech by day who hadn’t touched make-up in over a year. Shaking her head she tried to push away the arousal tapping at her inner doors, begging her to wake up. “Is that the line you used on all the girls in school, Colby?”

  “Why? Is it working?” He smiled at her like she was part of some inside joke, and she laughed.

  “No, it’s definitely not working on me.” Megan dropped her arms around his neck and let herself sway to the beat. She stopping thinking and her hips picked up the rhythm without much effort, but Colby just licked his bottom lip and tilted his head at her.

  “You sure about that, Megster?” With a shift of his hips his thigh rubbed against the core of her through the dress and she clenched her teeth against the urge to continue that pleasant sensation. Colby was a playboy in high school, and a decade out in the real world had clearly done nothing to suppress his instinct to play with every female in the vicinity. Just moments before he’d had the group of women next to them eating out of the palm of his hand while he had basically humped the air. He had looked damn good doing it, but that didn’t mean that this wasn’t just another one of his games.

  “Stop fucking with me.” Megan grinned at him to let him know she wasn’t mad. “I’m not one of your fan club members, Colby. You don’t have to flatter me with bullshit to get me to dance with you.”

  “I’m not fucking with you, Meg, and it’s not bullshit.” He side-stepped her, ending the inviting friction between her thighs, and then he suddenly bent her backwards in an elegant dip timed perfectly with the music. When he swept her back up her head spun, and he pulled her tight against him. His lips found her ear through the curls in her hair, and his voice dropped, “And you were never a member of my fan club, which I found both frustrating and extremely interesting — but Eric had you, and he was my friend, so I didn’t chase you even though I really, really wanted to.”

  “Bullshit.” She was stunned by his confession for a moment, but then she caught herself; Colby had always been smooth. This was just an act, another one of his ploys to win over another girl to be a notch on his proverbial bedpost. Wasn’t it?

  “Again, Meg, it’s not bullshit, but believe whatever you want.” When he pulled back from her this time, there was less sparkle in his blue eyes. She was about to apologize, but then he spun her away from him, tugging her back just as her arm fully extended. Then, the grin was back on his lips as she faced him again as if nothing had passed between them. His movements became more animated, and he kept swaying them to the music before randomly spinning her. When the song ended she was breathless, dizzy, and laughing.

  Eric appeared next to them just as another dance song kicked off. “Had to steal the slow song, dick?”

  “Hey! It was my turn, and it just happened to be a slow song, but what’s that old saying? You snooze, you lose.” Colby and Eric locked eyes for a minute and then Megan sighed, clapping her hands.

  “Guys, are we dancing or not?” She turned away from them to move to the beat, and when she turned back they were moving again. The odd tension between them seemed to fade as memory lane took them on an extended tour. Every song was met with them laughing and talking about ‘that time when…’ before they ended up just belting out the lyrics along with half the dance floor. During one song the entire reunion was filled with their old classmates singing along. Sometimes they danced separately and chatted, other times the boys took turns stealing her for different moves, or to grind, which she definitely didn’t mind. The woman Colby had danced with earlier sho
wed back up for a few songs and he hung out with her, being completely ridiculous as he sang to her, off-key, at top volume.

  Through it all, they caught up. Colby had never left town, and he worked as a manager at a local data management company. It seemed like such a simple job for such a vibrant guy, but for once Colby was pretty quiet when she prodded him to tell them more. Eric filled the space by elaborating on his job in Los Angeles, repeating that he just felt burnt out on the city, but he also shared that he had a German Shepherd at home named Lola, which was the only thing he missed.

  “I’d love for you to be her vet someday, you know, once you’re Dr. Megster.” He laughed, and Colby high-fived him.

  “I’ve got a lot more years to go before I’m Dr. Anything, but even if I never get to be a full vet, at least I’m doing something I love.” Megan shrugged, swaying to the beat as she tried to ignore the aching of her feet in the heels.

  “You’ll be a vet, Megster, I know you will. Nothing stops you once you put your mind to it.” Colby spun around and then pointed his fingers at her in a cheesy move that sent them all into a round of laughs again.

  “I cannot tell you guys how glad I am you were here, and that you talked to me. I had told Cameron I didn’t want to come because I figured it would be miserable.” She spread her arms. “This is a hundred times more fun than I thought I’d have tonight!”

  “Well, we’re the Whittaker Wolves, we’ve always known how to party!” Eric winked at her, and Colby threw back his head and howled.

  When his howl ended he shouted into the air, “WHITTAKER WOLVES!” and the dance floor echoed it back before another cheer went up. There were so many faces that Megan recognized as she looked around, all of them just a little different, but the same in other ways. A few hundred people who had gone off after high school to live their lives, to grow up, and then they were all back in the old gymnasium screaming their team name at the top of their lungs like they had at pep rallies ten years before.