Sweet Seduction

by Anthology

My eyes met hers.

  “You are sure,” she hissed, sucking air in through her teeth. Charlotte was nothing if not tactful and cool under pressure as long as she was dealing with someone else’s crisis. She was clearly weighing her judgment. “I know you were thinking about doing this, but...him?”

  I just nodded, then shrugged. “It has to be someone, right? He’s nice. Kind of rough in an appealing way. Non-judgmental. Not at all hard on the eyes.”

  “No, not at all,” Charlotte said, interrupting me. She rolled her lips in as if fixing her lipstick. I knew she was curating Tyler, taking him in. Biting her lips and assessing him like a specimen. Was he Maggie worthy? She was deciding.

  “And he doesn’t talk. No feelings to worry about. Easy peasy. How many guys get a one-night stand offer from a chick?” I said, my tone far lighter than my heart. My palms began to sweat. My face, too. I felt a drop trickle between my breasts. I’d worn actual lingerie today, with a bra and panties that were made in this decade and that matched.

  Just in case. Just...in case.

  She snorted. I took the moment to drink some more. The fuzzy warm blanket coating my skin made my idea seem so much better. Fucking brilliant, in fact. Sleep with a friend of my best friend’s boyfriend. He couldn’t be a total asshole to me, right? He had as much invested in being decent to me as I had in getting him to help me just get this over with.

  Reboot my sexual self. Defragment my clit. Clear my hard drive. Something like that. Damn, that Champagne was good.

  “Don’t ask Liam that question,” she said in a sour tone. Oh. Ouch. Her turn to chug a Champagne flute.

  Darla walked over with two plates in her hand, pieces of celebratory cake the size of lion paws resting on them. “Eat,” she ordered. Darla was the band manager and Trevor and Joe’s girlfriend. Brash and big, blonde and bold, she was a tour de force and had no filter. I liked her. She, Trevor and Joe were in a threesome that Liam mocked endlessly, but it worked for them. More power to them.

  I watched Tyler and licked my lips. Charlotte took both plates and handed one to Liam, who took it absentmindedly and returned to his conversation with Trevor. They were discussing electric guitars the way Charlotte talked about vibrators with Amy.

  Charlotte returned her attention to me, her mouth full of cake and her eyes full of questions.

  See, I don’t do this. That whole seven year thing happened for a reason, and the reason is that I don’t do this. But there are only so many therapy sessions and web searches and nightmares and group therapy sessions and late-night rescue sessions with students at the college where I’m a Resident Director that you can manage before you go out of your mind with wanting to get the Big Fucking Deal Moment of your trauma history out of the way.

  And fucking Tyler would accomplish that.

  I figured.

  Was it a good plan? Was it a safe plan? Was it a rational plan?

  Probably not.

  But when you’re trying to escape from the internalized identity of That Gang Rape On Campus Girl, you stop caring after a while.

  After about seven years.

  Tyler

  The chick with the multi-colored hair was giving me the eye. And the creeps. But mostly the eye. I knew that look. That was the look of a nervous but desperate woman who wanted sex.

  I didn’t play that game.

  I was here because Darla called me and said that I should come. I didn’t play in the concert, but I came tonight to watch and because Darla asked me to join the engagement party. Sam was a cool guy. Amy was the kind of girl who looked down on me for the three years I was in high school, but she wasn’t like that to me. She was just that kind. The kind of chick who thought she understood anything about the world she could put into a neat little box.

  Eventually they learned. I guessed. I guessed they learned the world doesn’t work that way. I didn’t know any women like that up close, so all I could do was guess.

  “Hey, Maggie!” Darla called out, walking over to her with two plastic cups of Champagne. Maggie. That’s right. I sucked at names.

  I didn’t suck at faces. She’d stuck in my mind since the first time we met. She was carrying a blow up sex toy doll.

  You didn’t forget that kind of thing.

  Long, dyed hair. Three or four colors. She had eyes that were so fucking blue they must have been painted on. Fake lenses. A ton of piercings and a nasty scar up one cheekbone. That made me pause. What the hell happened to her? You don’t get that kind of mark from living a pampered life like most of the people at this party.

  Maybe I misjudged her.

  I didn’t fuck chicks who came on to me like I was something you try on, like a dress at a store in the mall you thought it would be fun to slip into for a minute. A disguise. A distraction. I’d been offered plenty of tester pussy. Like getting spritzed at the perfume counter at the mall—here’s a sample. Check out my scent.

  They liked to get their turn on the bad-boy inked-up dude ride. And then they went home to their perfect houses in the suburbs, where Mommy and Daddy paid for everything and expected them to live cookie-cutter lives.

  Been there, done that, had the memories of uncomfortable looks when I asked for a second date burned into my brain like a brand.

  I was the guy you fucked so you could tell your friends you had a bad boy.

  I wasn’t the guy you brought home for dinner.

  Maggie, though...that scar. The hair that looked like something out of a My Little Pony commercial. All those studs in her nose and ears. Women who made themselves look like that did it to filter out the world.

  So did guys.

  “How’s it going?” she asked. Darla handed me a beer and walked away, a satisfied smile on her face. I had a hard time with words but not with facial expressions. More than one woman here wanted to see me with Maggie. I felt like a gazelle being watched by a pack of lions on one of those nature shows my dad left on after he passed out from his nightly twelve pack. The gazelle at the watering hole during a drought, being looked over by the pack of hungry lions.

  Cougar, actually. Maggie’s a good five years older than me.

  “Good.” I drank my beer in one long motion, trying not to choke. Her eyes raked over my arm as I lifted it, widening, then going back to normal. Whatever normal meant.

  Leave. My internal warning system told me to get the fuck out of here. Do not engage. Do not touch. She was Charlotte’s best friend and you don’t taint the waters when your only paid gigs come from this chick’s best friend’s boyfriend’s band.

  I was normally damn good at listening to my inner warning system.

  It was hard to listen through that much color.

  Her hand landed on my bare arm, two fingers pressing with a feather-light touch against one of my tats. The brush of her fingers made my thighs clench, my throat tighten, and my heart speed up double, as time itself slowed down.

  “What’s that?” She gave me a smile so bright it lit up half the world, her eyes guarded but clear. So clear.

  “An arm.”

  She poked hard with those fingers and nudged me. Making excuses to touch me. My body responded, too. Of course it did. The very small number of words my brain could hold at the same time became even smaller. She smelled like soap and sweat, like sweet wine and kisses.

  I couldn’t sleep with her.

  Her finger traced a slow line on the border of my tat, following the labyrinth pattern with a kind of aimless wandering. She was using any excuse she could find to touch me and to keep touching me. I looked at her face, her eyes tipped down, her upper lip tucked between her teeth as she tried to breathe nice and steady.

  Her pulse fluttered on her neck. She swallowed every few seconds. I narrowed my eyes and really took a good look.

  This wasn’t a bad boy fuck pass. She wasn’t slumming. If it had just been that I’d have doubled up on my no.

  Damn it, she had something way deeper going on.

  And so did I.

  Bzzzz.
>
  I jumped, my ass suddenly tingling. She stumbled slightly, her shoulder brushing against my chest, her scent filling me with a madness that made me need to kiss her. What was she doing? What was I doing?

  I shoved my hand in my back pocket and pulled out my phone. Looked at the screen.

  Double fuck. A text from dad. I scanned it:

  Got puled over and stuck n county only had to beers need bail.

  Dad wasn’t the best speller, but his English writing skills weren’t exactly his biggest problem.

  “Ah, fuck,” I muttered.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” Maggie said in a voice that would have made me laugh if I didn’t have a seventeen-year-old brother back home, two thousand miles away, who was about to be abandoned.

  And my savings account was about to go to bail out a dad on his third DUI in two years.

  We were standing by the rooftop door and she yanked my arm, hard, pulling me behind the brick wall, away from the crowd. My phone almost fell out of my hand but I stuffed it in my front pocket. Her mouth was hot on mine in seconds, my back against gritty brick, the push of my shoulder blades against solid rock registering as her teeth banged against mine.

  My brain turned into a pile of ribbons, shiny and slippery and tied in knots. Her hands roped round the back of my neck and she tasted like every drunk girl I’d ever fucked.

  I didn’t want her to become just another drunk girl I’d fuck.

  That mouth, though. She pulled away, her eyes on my lips, and went for a second kiss, this one less awkward. Warmer, filled with something more than the fumbling of a wasted chick. My hands slipped around her waist and her fingers played with the curve of my ears, trickling down to my jaw line.

  She touched me like she hadn’t touched a man in years.

  Bzzzz.

  “Shit!” I rasped, pushing her gently away, reaching in my front pocket and pressing the power button to turn the fucking phone off. Turn the problem off. Turn my dad off. Chicks like Maggie didn’t get involved with guys with fucked up lives like mine. Dad’s arrest, my rescue, my brother’s need.

  Everybody wanted something from me.

  “Tyler,” she said in a voice filled with longing. A very hard part of me softened. Not the part I wished would go soft, though. I shifted myself in my pants, willing the erection way.

  Don’t need a boner when duty calls back home.

  “Uh, Maggie, I gotta go.”

  “Home?” She bit that lip again and my hands itched to grab her and kiss her. For me to kiss her this time.

  No. Women like her don’t get guys like you.

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ll come home with you,” she said, her words a little hazy. I reached out and touched her chin, tipping her face up. Eyes burning with desire met mine.

  I’m sure mine burned, too.

  With a layer of rage underneath.

  That rage built so fast, like a molotov cocktail, flaring up inside. She was there. She was in front of me. She became the target. I had to protect her from it, but she’d get licked by the flames no matter what.

  “I’m not into necrophilia,” I spat out, turning away. Those ribbons in my brain spilled out, unraveling like a kite string as a huge gust of wind hits out of nowhere.

  “Huh?” Hurt and fear made those blue eyes the color of an unreal sky.

  “You’re two drinks away from passing out, and I don’t do that to chicks. Not my style. I have a thing about that. I like my women awake when I have sex with them. Call me crazy.” Deflect. Turn it around. Make her pissed off. Make her walk away. Then I could just go back to nothing. Forget she ever existed.

  Even as my arm ached where she’d touched me. The same fingers that seconds ago were touching me pulled back, like she was about to hit me.

  She was white with fury but said nothing. Just stood there, her eyes filled with a bunch of pain caused by me. Me. Fuck.

  So I spelled it out. “You’re drunk. Try me again some time when you’re sober.”

  And then I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do.

  I walked away.

  She ran past me to the rooftop door, yanking it open so hard the handle caught my crotch as it ricocheted. I folded in half, the wind knocked out of me.

  Guess I deserved that.

  At least my boner was gone.

  One less thing to worry about as I called the bail bondsman back home.

  I had him in my contacts list already.

  Chapter One

  Two months later

  Maggie

  There is a point where a person gets sick of watching a video of a naked man hanging from a third-story window with a chicken attached to his ass.

  It is, roughly, the thirteenth time in a row.

  Of all the days for Charlotte’s car to die. She asked me to give her a ride into Boston to visit Joe Ross, the bass player for the band Random Acts of Crazy. Charlotte’s boyfriend Liam is the lead guitar player and back-up singer. The group is about to start a national tour in about five months, and is known for a few crazy on-and-off-stage antics, but this latest one took the cake.

  Er...the chicken.

  “Turn that fucking thing off,” Joe screamed for the thirteenth time. Liam cackled and hit Replay. Joe flailed, as if he were going to hit Liam, but he just looked like a T-Rex with casts on his arms. In the unfortunate naked incident with the chicken and the gerbil (yes...gerbil), Joe managed to break his wrist and ulna, along with various other bones.

  But that’s for later.

  Right now, I was trying very hard not to find a coffin and hurl myself into it, because Tyler was here, too.

  “Frown,” Joe said, using Tyler’s nickname. “Make him shut that shit off.”

  “BAWK!” screeched the chicken from Liam’s phone.

  Frown just shrugged, his face a slab of granite. I avoided looking at him, but my skin prickled. I became hyperaware of my breathing and hated myself for it. I held my breath but quickly realized that was silly. I had to breathe, even if it felt impossible around him.

  Men didn’t do this to me. Not since The Incident seven years ago. Seven years of therapy made me ready to get back on the horse of sex and relationships and all that, but it didn’t mean I walked around in a constant state of arousal.

  Except when he was around. And I hated him for it.

  Tyler was the substitute bass player for the band, and with Joe about as able to play bass as he was to juggle flaming bowling balls, it was clear the national tour scheduled to start in the fall was going to be in jeopardy unless—

  “You ready to fill in for Joe?” Darla asked, barging in, holding a sheaf of papers and a bucket of fried chicken. She wasn’t looking at Frown, so her question perplexed everyone.

  Liam snickered at the chicken. “Tactful,” he said, doffing an imaginary hat at her, then reaching for the bucket.

  “You didn’t actually...that’s not really...” Trevor asked, his voice filled with horror.

  Darla gave him a withering look. “No, I didn’t slice, dice and deep fry Miss Mavis, you asshat.” Mavis was the chicken Trevor stole—twice—in two separate incidents over the course of two years. Not the same chicken, of course. They just kept naming each new chicken Mavis. Whenever he took peyote he stripped naked, ran away, stole chickens and either tried to marry them or make them run for president.

  (Do you have any idea how stupid I feel even trying to explain this?)

  Liam fished a chicken drumstick out of the bucket and took a juicy, loud bite. “Joe, your mom sure can grow a mean chicken.” Charlotte whapped him, hard, with her purse.

  “What?” he said, his voice filled with protest and dark meat.

  “Have a little discretion,” she shot back.

  His eyebrows shot up, eyes twinkling. “Discretion? Discretion? Joe, Trevor, Darla and their new sex partners, Mavis and Fluffy the Gerbil—or whatever it’s called—were caught having sex on video and it’s gone viral. You seriously think I’m th
e person with a discretion problem here?”

  I told you the gerbil would be explained.

  “I did not have sex with the chicken. Or the gerbil,” he added quickly. “No one had sex with any animals.”

  One corner of Frown’s face twitched. Did I just hear the Hallelujah chorus sing? Because that little quirk means Frown had...feelings. Actual emotions. His lack of affect could make a person want to shove a Furby in his pants while lighting his shoes on fire just to see if he’d react. Finally, something churned inside that tatted-up monolith of a man.

  Man.

  My body burned again, eyes creeping over his arms, now crossed over that massive chest. His black t-shirt was tight, stretched across rolling pecs that spoke of hard labor. This was a body honed by sweat, tears, and necessity. He moved when he needed to move and he stayed still when inertia ordered his body to do so.

  Damn him for being so hot.

  And damn him for rejecting me when I tried to sleep with him a couple of months ago. You don’t forget that—ever. Asking a guy to get slick and sweaty, naked and raw, and being told no.

  As if he could read my mind, those hooded, dark eyes clicked up so suddenly I thought he was a cyborg. They locked on mine and I couldn’t look away. A rush of adrenaline surged through me like I was touching the third rail, like I was licking an electrical outlet, like I was standing in a puddle in a lightning storm and holding a twenty-foot metal pole. The force of his look was both grounding and shattering, and curse him for not saying a single word with his mouth.

  Those eyes had a thousand languages in them, though.

  “Grocery store out of red?” he said to me. Of all the words he could have chosen to speak, he chose those?

  “Huh?”

  His chin jutted up. “Your hair. Seen it orange. Seen it purple. You got about four more flavors of Kool-aid to blow through before you start doing repeats.”

  I looked pointedly at the colorful sleeves of his forearms. The skin popped with more color than the entire aisle of flavored drinks at the store.

  “Speaking of color.”

  He looked down, keeping his eyes on his own skin for so long I started to feel a pinprick sensation behind my eyeballs, in my breastbone, along the slope where my breasts brush against my biceps. Watching him examining his tats made eternity feel like a blip. I’d touched that color once. Stroked the lines and inhaled his scent. The memory filled more than enough dreams these days.