ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1)

by Abigail Stark

  “Dad’s on his way home,” she said simply.

  “I wasn’t looking for him.” I walked towards her, climbing onto her bed. Her eyes widened, and she backed away from me.

  “What do you want?”

  Her hair was up, and she had no makeup on. I leaned into her, gauging her response. She didn’t retreat. I reached for her glasses, plucking them off her face. She let me.

  “Adam,” she said quietly. I looked at her. She didn’t say it, but I saw the question in her eyes.

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  I leaned into her and kissed her lips. Her hands immediately went to my hair, holding me to her. I moved closer, prompting her to uncross her legs. I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in so our bodies connected. Reaching into her hair, I pulled the elastic free, so it fell around her shoulders and down her back.

  She smelled sweet, like flowers, and fruit. She even tasted sweet. I held her by her nape, pressing into her, so she lay back on the bed. I settled comfortably between her legs. I pulled away, wanting to look at her underneath me. I ground my hips into her and saw the reaction on her face. She wanted me. My fingers found her hair. Fuck, it was so soft. She looked at me.

  “You should go,” she said evenly.

  Go? Her face, our bodies and my cock thought otherwise.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to fuck you, right here in your childhood bed.”

  Her eyes hardened.

  “Is that it?”

  Her hands pushed against my chest; she wanted me to move. I got off of her, kneeling between her thighs.

  “That’s not enough?”

  “No.”

  Shit. I knew it. It was too good to be true. It was a boyfriend, husband, girlfriend; it was something. There was going to be some sort of vague, stupid reason why this visit was just about to go south.

  “I can’t be with you if that’s all you want. You can get that anywhere. It doesn’t have to be me.”

  “I want it to be you.”

  “I want it to be me too, but—” She scooted away from me, backing up to the headboard. I leaned forward putting her between me and the wall. I held her nape and kissed her again.

  “Stop,” she said avoiding my advance. What the hell?

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t. I don’t want you to do that unless you mean to continue.”

  “Oh, I mean to continue,” I growled. I kissed her neck. She retreated again.

  “Not like that.” Fuck, it wasn’t a boyfriend. It wasn’t even a husband. It was worse; it was her fucking morals. I sat back on my heels. Was it worth it? Did I really want it that bad? Pussy was pussy. She was right, it didn’t have to be her, but something kept me there, waiting for her to state her terms.

  “I can’t do this with you unless you’re serious about me.”

  “You can do whatever you want, Dana.” I pressed against her again. “And I know what you want. We both do.”

  “If you kiss me again, it’s going to be because you are serious about a relationship.”

  “Relationship?” My hard-on died an instantaneous death. He was out. Done. Would I ever get hard enough to penetrate a vagina again? Not if the girl said something like the insanity Dana was now speaking.

  “Yes, relationship,” she repeated. She was mocking me.

  “You want a fucking proposal?”

  “No. I want to know that you are committed to me. And I to you. I won’t have sex with you unless I know that it isn’t the only thing you want from me.”

  The last time somebody had disappointed me like that, was probably my good-for-nothing dad. It felt like a punch in the gut. Was she... was she rejecting me? What do you say to that? I had nothing.

  I put a hand on her thigh and ran it up until it nearly covered her pussy through her jeans. Her face said she wanted it. Her hitched breath and flushed cheeks did too.

  “I can’t make you any promises Dana. I can just guarantee giving you what you want. What I also want.” I slipped a hand under her sweater and ran it up her soft, warm skin. She stopped me and then did the unbelievable. She got up and walked towards the door.

  “There’s beers and fresh lemonade in the fridge. I know Dad won’t mind if you have some,” she said.

  She opened the door, and the woman walked out without even a glance over her shoulder.

  9

  Dana

  In the entire fifteen years that Mimi and I had been friends, there were exactly zero recorded instances when I had managed to keep anything a secret from her for very long. Maybe I looked different when I was trying to hide things. I didn’t know, but somehow she always knew. After the expected interrogation following Adam and I rolling up to the bookstore together on his bike, she had watched me like a hawk.

  She would do this thing when she was upset with me where she’d give me food. I was sitting in my room. I had it decorated in the style of Mimi James because I had let her do it for me. The walls were the harshest white you had ever seen, to reflect the light, she had told me. I had this huge shelf that ran the length of the room across the windowless wall; the one thing I had specified she include.

  I was becoming a bookseller after all. I did indulge. It was pathetically stocked however because I hadn’t managed to make it from LA with my entire library. I had sort of left in a hurry. Mimi walked in and slid a plate of something with loads of leaves, some red shit that looked like pomegranate, and some sliced vegetables onto my bed stand. I looked at her, removing my glasses.

  “Hey Mimi, what’s this?” I asked.

  “Salad bowl. What happened between you and Adam?”

  Shit. She was really mad today. Usually, she would let me taste the food and lie to her that I liked it before railing me. She was a fantastic chef. I just didn’t do salad bowls.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have plans tonight?”

  “No. Nothing special. I was probably just going to go by my dad’s, or the shop.”

  “The auto shop?”

  “The very one. Yes.”

  Mimi watched me silently. I didn’t have to look at her to be able to tell the way she was looking at me.

  “Dana.”

  “Yes, Miriam?”

  “Look at me.”

  I looked up. Her face was hard. Her blue eyes were cold as ice.

  “We went to the shop together not too long ago didn’t we?”

  “I remember; you drove us there.”

  She was quiet again. She didn’t even have to say it. I knew what she wanted to say. I knew what had made her that mad.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Adam Holloway?”

  “Hm, I’m not familiar.”

  “Dammit Dana, have you two fucked already?”

  “No, we haven’t done anything already. It isn’t like that.”

  “Isn’t it? Because you could have fooled me.”

  “Okay, we might have kissed but don’t do this Mimi, I know you don’t like him. It isn’t that serious; I just think he’s attractive.”

  “Whoa, back up to the part where you two have kissed.”

  “It’s just harmless flirting Mimi; not a big deal.”

  “There is no such thing as harmless flirting with a guy like Adam, Dana. And it’s not a flirtationship if you guys have crossed into physical territory already.”

  “Mimi... the last several months of my life have been like something off TRUE CRIME. I’m finally here, settling down, living with you... things are good. This guy who I think is really hot is interested in me. I’m not going to apologize for feeling like I should be able to enjoy that.”

  “Dana,” Mimi sagged. Why was my mom so worried about me finding a man to live with? Mimi was even more frantic about my wellbeing than she was. She crawled onto the bed and wrapped her arms around me in a hug. There was nothing matronly about her in the physical sense, b
ut she always gathered me into her bosom like a middle-aged woman when trying to comfort me.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “So you’ve told me. I can handle myself, Mimi. Besides, we already talked, and it isn’t going to turn into anything.”

  “You talked? When?”

  She settled beside me on the bed. I had been dying to tell her this story but had been hesitating because I thought she’d be mad. I was right; she was mad—at least a little bit. She was more worried, and at the moment, curious.

  “The day we went to the shop… I was at Dad’s that night. Adam is helping him restore this old car, so he’s there sometimes. I was upstairs, and then someone just barged into my room. It was him.”

  “Was he looking for you?”

  “He must have been because he crawled onto the bed and kissed me.” Mimi pulled a face, obviously grossed out. She put a hand up.

  “Okay, you can stop there.”

  “He pulled my glasses off and pushed me down onto the bed—”

  Mimi put her fingers in her ears.

  “Nope. Skip ahead to the part where you were talking,” she said. I laughed at how uncomfortable she was.

  “Mimi, I have to listen to you and Anthony having sex from your room. You think I enjoy that? What do you have against the guy anyway?”

  She sighed, grabbing the salad bowl and plucking a cucumber slice from it.

  “I told you he’s friends with Anthony’s brother, right? Lawson. His twin. They work together at the auto shop. Long hair. Dirty face. Anyway. He told me that Adam has a record. A criminal record. He was in prison a while ago on some charges.”

  My eyes widened.

  “What charges?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’m not sure but looking at him it sure isn’t insurance fraud or any other white-collar crime.”

  “No, that’s what Anthony would go to prison for.”

  She smiled.

  “Yeah. A nice minimum security place that allows conjugal visits and has no fence.”

  “He didn’t kill anyone, did he?”

  “If I tell you he did will you leave him alone?”

  No.

  “Yes.”

  “He killed someone. My cousin. Stabbed him right in the eye.”

  “That’s awful,” I said, humoring her.

  “He’s a hound, Dana. Please don’t get involved with him.”

  I shrugged, picking through the vegetables in the bowl between us.

  “I won’t. When he was on top of me—”

  “Please, Day, the safe-for-work version.”

  I smiled.

  “Okay, after he kissed me he wanted to keep going, but I told him the only way I would let him was if he were ready to make a commitment to me. He said the only thing he could and was willing to give me was his dick, so I told him to fuck off.”

  “Wow. So he just walked in and laid one on you?”

  “He was saying all this stuff, Mimi. ‘I want you, Dana. I want to fuck you right here in your childhood bed’.”

  Mimi’s jaw dropped, horrified as she laughed at my impression.

  “He wanted to do what? Oh. My god. What a maniac.”

  She was right. He was a maniac. A maniac who had done hard time too, apparently. Was I awful because I still wanted that crazy ex-con in my bed? What kind of damaged, sick girl hears that about a guy and still wants him to take her down? Even after seeing him with that girl at the shop. Leopard print. Her whole chest was spilling out when we walked in, and she had looked at us like we were interrupting their private time.

  I won’t lie; the night that he had come up to my room and kissed me had fueled more than one hot, sweaty session with my vibrator John Dillinger. When he pushed me back onto the bed, I had felt something long and hard pressing into my thigh. His stubble scratched my skin, and his kiss was rough, passionate. He wanted me, and I was ready to let him give it to me. Whatever he wanted. Anything he wanted.

  But then he told me all he wanted was my pussy, and it was like my entire vagina dried up like one of those cracked riverbeds. I went from Escondido Falls to the Mojave Desert in two seconds flat. It was like when SpongeBob would go to Sandy’s air bubble house and completely dry out, gasping for water. Desiccated. Dry. Parched.

  That was that then. Wasn’t it? I couldn’t let him use me for my body. I had more self-esteem than that. The therapist my mother had made me see after the incident in LA had made sure of it.

  Later that evening, Mimi dragged me out to a bar with her and Anthony.

  Third wheeling was never fun, but Mimi always made it worth my time. Anthony was a detestable toad, but she loved him. That was the one respect in which I thought her taste was terrible, but I would trust her judgment. The bar was a hair away from being seedy while still having enough men in suits to look sort of respectable. It was called The Bridge.

  I sat on one of the high bar stools sipping a margarita. And then I spotted him. Adam. He was here. The way our eyes met he had to have been staring at me before I noticed him. He was sitting at a table with someone whose back was to me. The third person at the table wasn’t so much at the table as she was on his lap. Her arm was draped across his shoulders, and she was saying something to him. Not very well mind you because she was using her teeth, nipping his lobe and licking the shell of his ear.

  Suddenly… curiously I didn’t want to be in the room anymore.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked Mimi.

  “Over through that corridor, past the bar. You need me to come with you?”

  Anthony’s hand was wrapped around her waist. I looked at them and smiled, shaking my head.

  I didn’t need to pee. I walked into the bathroom and saw a couple of other girls in there. I made my way to the mirror and had a long hard look at myself.

  Goddammit, Dana.

  In order of intensity, I felt embarrassment the worst, followed by betrayal, and then jealousy. All things I had no right to feel given the situation and agreement he and I had come to the night he had kissed me. The pit of my stomach burned, and I felt like crying. Not because I was sad but because I was stupid. I had told him to leave. He had been ready that night to give me what I wanted, and I had said no. I had no right to be mad.

  Mimi had been my ride to the bar, but there were Ubers out this late, right? I wanted to get out of there. Away from Leopard Print and away from him.

  I heard the door open, and a girl say that this was the women’s bathroom. I looked up through the mirror to see Adam standing there. He asked—no, told—her and this other girl to leave. They sort of stumbled out, awkwardly, not knowing how to challenge him. He closed the door softly behind them.

  This was it. This was how I would die. The crazy ex-con who I rejected would strangle me to death in a public bathroom.

  “Dana,” he said.

  “This is the ladies room,” I interrupted.

  “Your father asked for you today.”

  “Did he?”

  I turned and faced away, looking at him through the mirror.

  “He ask you to tell me that? I can call him later. You might want to hurry and get back out there. Your girlfriend is probably missing you.”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “You might want to tell that to the girl out there who was gnawing your ear off.”

  “She isn’t my girlfriend.” He advanced on me, stopping close enough for me to feel his presence without touching me. “Turn around.”

  “No.”

  His hands swooped my hair over my shoulder, so it fell on my chest, exposing my neck on one side. He kissed it lightly. I swallowed as his scent surrounded me. My pulse quickened.

  “Look at me.”

  I looked in the mirror at the man behind me. His hands snaked their way around my waist and held me tight. They began a slow trip down my body, traveling over my hips and down to my thighs. I was wearing a dress. A few more inches and his hand would meet bare thigh, free to venture
back upward.

  “No. Stop,” I told him. “You can’t come in here and touch me like the woman you came with isn’t right outside.”

  “I told you she isn’t my girlfriend.”

  “And I’m not either.” I turned my head so he wouldn’t see my tears. I wiped them away angrily as they ran hot, down my cheeks.

  “Dana, I told you I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t do relationships. Why are you acting like this is a surprise?”

  “Because I’m the kind of girl that does Adam. I told you that. I’m not surprised at your behavior. I’m just shocked that you would come in here after me after we established that this would not work.”

  “I saw the way you looked at me. I saw how you looked at Natasha. Look me in the eye and tell me that you aren’t as attracted to me as I am to you.”

  “So that what? Nothing is coming of it, so what’s the point? You said yourself you don’t do relationships.”

  “It doesn’t have to get that deep Dana. We are both adults, and we both want something from one another. There is no reason why we can’t have some fun.”

  “I’m not like you Adam. I can’t—” the words that Mimi had said to me were coming out of my mouth and the realization that everything, all the hot, raw, overpowering things I felt for Adam, were unwanted by him. The feeling hit me like a ton of bricks. I cried then. Really cried. Turned my back and sobbed.

  Mimi had been right. She had been right. She had been right. I wasn’t like him. I loved with my entire body. My entire being. I couldn’t separate love and physical intimacy. If that was what he needed to consider pursuing me then why was I trying to beat the dead horse?

  I had lost all sense of Adam’s presence until I felt his arms around me. His scent filled my lungs as I gasped through my crying. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him. I could feel his chin on the top of my head. Our bodies were flush; the heat from him engulfing me. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but it just made me feel worse.

  How could he hold me like that after telling me he didn’t want me in as many words? No, that wasn’t true. He wanted the part of me that was between my navel and upper thighs. He did want me, but not the way I wanted him to. Not the way I needed him to. I let him hold me despite what I was feeling.