by Amber Rides
Not a big deal, you might think. People do it all the damned time, right? Look each other up on social media, track the movements of the people they care about, or are interested in. Not so for someone with my kind of history. Everything I do on the Internet at home is tracked and recorded. If I want to watch cats, playing with vacuums, my probation officer knows. If I want to watch any other kind of pussy, playing with any other kind of appliance, he knows that, too.
This normally didn’t bother me. At least not the way I assumed it would bother so many other people in my situation. I wasn’t a tech-savvy guy. I liked my porn live and I liked my conversations face-to-face. I was pretty damned sure, though, that my probation officer would find it interesting to watch me google a rich-kid socialite. Which is exactly what Melissa turned out to be.
Though before I could get to the girl herself, I had to wade through pages of online articles dedicated to her parents, who weren’t exactly camera shy. The Hanovers’ smiling faces could be found in the media at fundraisers, benefits, and openings. It looked like Melissa had a hard time escaping her duty as the perfect daughter, too. At ninety percent of the functions, she was at their side, stuffed into eye-popping gowns, topped with complicated hair, and wearing a shiny smile. She looked pleased as punch to be standing beside them.
I narrowed my eyes at one of the pictures, swearing that somehow, then older blonde woman beside her was familiar. Of course, after an hour of looking at page after page of Hanovers giving back…Was it any wonder I felt like I knew them?
As I flipped through backlogs of online news, I had to acknowledge that if Melissa was anything other than a spoiled brat, she was damned good at hiding it. Had I been thinking I might find something to the contrary?
Maybe, I admitted grudgingly. Or hoping I would.
Melissa’s own online social media profile was pretty low key, and her privacy settings were high. Though she’d mentioned a boyfriend to me, she’d hidden her relationship status from view, and it was hard to know for sure. I couldn’t even find a phone number.
What were you going to do, Cutter? Show up at her place with a dozen roses? Because that’s the kind of shit a girl like that is used to.
I shook my head, more pissed off at myself than ever. Just fucking great. I’d written off my whole day for what? Some tightly wound little bitch who’d used me to get off in a bathroom.
An annoying voice in my head piped up, reminding me that I’d been the one who’d chased her down in the first place. So I beat that voice down and told it where it could stick its opinion.
Frustrated, I cleared the browser history on the computer’s library. I didn’t want to take that risk that Galini might’ve picked today to check out the GPS history on my ankle monitor. I even grabbed a book on art history to cover my ass, just in case.
There were four people in front of me, and I tried to shoot the harried-looking librarian a friendly smile, but judging from how quickly she averted her eyes, I’m pretty sure I didn’t quite manage it.
I recapped my day mentally as I waited my turn. I faked an illness. I failed to get turned on by some perfectly good T & A. Oh. I also became a certified – but miserably failed – stalker.
Cue the violin.
I wrapped my fingers around a large book on the counter, trying to suppress my impatience as I waited.
What was taking so much goddamned time?
I was about to give up, and nearly slammed the book down on the counter before realizing what it was and held it up instead. A phone book. The big, yellow kind that basically got ousted by the use of online services. Trust a library to have something so antiquated sitting on their counter. I was surprised to see it was embossed with the current year. If I hadn’t been so pissed off, I might’ve laughed.
I dropped it open, flipping until I hit the Hs.
Hanover, M. J. P.
There she was, right in the center of the page. Home phone number. Home address.
“Well, fuck me.”
I said it so loudly that the entire line swiveled to give me a dirty look.
“Sir!” the librarian snapped.
I was also distracted enough that I actually muttered an apology in response. Let me just say that was a first. I never apologize for other people’s over sensitivity.
I plugged Melissa’s details into my phone. Even if I never used them, I’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing I could if I wanted to.
And wouldn’t she love to know that I could get to her, day or night?
I was suddenly in a very good mood. I grinned at the librarian as she gave my book choice a narrow-eyed frown, then eyed me up and down.
“You realize this is an art book?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“As in, it’s not a book about commercial painting.”
Bitch.
But I was too cheery to let her ruin it.
“You one of those commando types?” I asked.
“Pardon me?”
I leaned on the counter and tossed her my favorite playboy smile. “Business on the outside, hotness on the inside.”
Two spots of color appeared in her plump cheeks. “I don’t know – “
I cut her off, loud enough that everyone in a ten foot radius could hear. “I mean, are you wearing underwear?”
“How dare you even –“
I reached into my pocket, pulled out Melissa Joan Portia Hanover’s panties, and tossed them on the counter. The librarian eyed them in horror.
“Might not be your size,” I observed, resting my gaze on her crotch for an extra second. “But you never know. I paint women, by the way. In the nude. I’d like to paint you, I think.”
She gasped, scanned the art book, and handed it to me like it was pornography. Her horror made my grin even broader, and as I exited the library, I actually started to whistle.
I gave Melissa three and a half days to recover. Then I proceeded with my first step in my plan to make her coming crawling. Begging, even.
I called her.
She answered midway through the second ring, breathless and sexy.
“Mom?”
I chuckled. “Not exactly, baby-doll.”
She went silent for a long moment.
“You still there?” I prodded.
“Do you have any idea what time it is, Cutter?” she demanded in a whisper.
“You remember my name. How sweet.”
“It’s hard to forget the asshole who ruined your clothes, your purse, and your breakfast.”
“I do try to be memorable.”
She ignored my mocking tone. “It’s three in the morning. You could’ve woken my roommate.”
“So?”
“What do you mean, so? Most people value sleep. Though I suppose demons like you don’t value it as much as regular people like me. And my roommate.”
“So this roommate…She’s a bitch, too?”
“I’m not a bitch!” Her protest was loud, and she inhaled, then went on in a quieter voice. “Neither is my roommate.”
“Touchy subject?” I teased.
“Just because I care about something more than my own penis doesn’t mean I’m a bitch,” she snapped.
I laughed. “You’ve got a penis?”
“You’re so funny.”
I decided to change tactics. “Tell me then…What do you care about?”
She answered suspiciously. “I care about lots of things.”
“Like?”
“Like being clean.”
“Are you still stuck on getting me to wash your clothes?”
“I can’t say I object to the idea of you elbow deep in soap suds.”
Maybe she meant it to sound disparaging, but I took it as an invitation.
“Naked?” I asked.
“More like in your dirty, disgusting clothes, dropping quarters into a laundry machine.”
“Are we in a fight again?”
“What do we have to fight about?”
“I don
’t know,” I replied. “Maybe we can just fight for the sake of the makeup sex.”
“Sex with you is the last thing on my mind.”
I sensed that it was at least partly a lie.
“Melissa?” I wrapped my voice around her name, slow and low.
“Yes?”
“Before I called…Were you dreaming about me?”
“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sleeping,” she answered, a tiny quaver in her voice.
“Fantasizing then,” I amended.
“You’re pretty full of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Are you saying you haven’t thought about me at all? About the way my hands felt on you? Or in you?”
I said it like a challenge intentionally, daring her to call me out on my dirty mouth.
“Sinks,” she gasped instead. “Every time I see one, I think of you.”
“What?” I replied stupidly.
“Never mind.”
I frowned. Sinks? What did sinks have to do with me? Then I clued in.
“Oh. Sinks.”
She laughed, and even though it was at my expense, it was one of the best sounds I’d ever heard.
“You have a damned nice laugh, baby-doll,” I said before I could stop myself. “You should use it more often.”
My statement was spontaneous. Honest. Shit. I cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Pay me a fucking compliment,” I growled, trying to cover up the fact that I’d actually said something sincere.
“What?”
“I said something nice, now you say something nice.”
“Uh.”
“Oh, come on. Is it really that hard?”
“Fine. You’re easier to talk to on the phone than you are in person.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Really? So far I’ve mocked you. Repeatedly. And called you a bitch. Are you a masochist? ‘Cause if so…I’m up for some kinky stuff.”
“Someone needs to teach you how to take a compliment,” she muttered.
“Someone needs to teach you a few other things.”
I could practically hear her eyes roll. “How did you get this number anyway?”
“The old fashioned way,” I replied. “From the phonebook. At the library.”
“You can read?” she retorted.
My temper flared. “Of course I can fucking read.”
She used my own, earlier words back on me. “Touchy subject?”
“Fuck you,” I said with extra cheer.
“Didn’t we already cover that?”
“Just because I work in manual labor doesn’t mean I’m a fucking idiot.”
“Your perpetual use of the word fuck, as a noun, as an adjective, and as a verb, kind of gives away your education level.”
I laughed. “The fact that I can use it as all three of those, and possibly as an adverb as well, should at least elevate me a little.”
“Oh. So you don’t want me to judge you based on superficial things?” she asked.
I sighed in an exaggerated way, right into the phone so she would hear it. “Are you making a point, here? A fun one, maybe?”
“I just don’t see why you can assume I’m a bitch because I own a designer purse, and not expect me to judge you based on the fact that you’re a painter.”
“I work in a lumber yard, actually,” I corrected. “The painting is community service.”
Shit.
I hadn’t meant to bring that up, and Melissa picked up on it right away.
“The country club needs community service?”
“Forget it,” I muttered.
“Seriously,” she persisted. “If you’re going to do community service, why waste time on the people who already have everything they could possibly want?”
I forced a chuckle. “People like you?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions again. I have what other people think I want. Not what I want.”
“I think I’ve got something here you want.”
“We’re talking about the country club, not about me.”
“I just go where they tell me to,” I informed her. “Service whoever they tell me to service. But you can vouch for that, can’t you?”
“Whomever,” she corrected in a cool voice, ignoring my innuendo.
“Whomever,” I agreed easily. “And I accept your apology.”
“Apology for what?”
“Jumping to conclusions about me.”
“What conclusions? You’re the one who’s been sitting there, judging me!” she replied, exasperated.
“The conclusion that I’m fucking irresistible.”
“More like that you’re a fucking jerk.”
“Melissa?”
“What!”
“When you say the word fucking, I get hard as hell. Almost as hard as when I think about smacking your ass with my paintbrush and the sexy little look on your face when you came against my hand,” I said. “I’m going to hang up now, and let you think about that.”
I pushed the off button on my phone before she could reply, and grinned.
“Don’t worry, baby-doll,” I murmured out loud. “We’ll talk again soon.”
MELISSA
One hundred and thirty-five hours. That’s how much time had passed since my accidental engagement.
And forty-eight hours. That’s how much time had passed since I last heard Cutter’s amused, sexy-as-hell chuckle, sending heat straight to every erogenous zone on my body.
I didn’t know which amount of time seemed liked longer. Either way, the days were dragging by. Going out, coming home, avoiding Shelby and Danny, and unable to ease the perpetual want.
And I couldn’t sleep.
At three in the morning, I was standing in front of my mirror, twisting the ring on my finger, trying to find a way to make it look natural. Any way I turned the stupid thing, it looked wrong. Too shiny. Too big. Too much.
You might be thinking I felt guilty, and that the ring served as a grim reminder that I had betrayed what it stood for before it even landed on my finger. But it just wasn’t true. I didn’t feel bad at all. Not on Danny’s behalf, anyway.
Instead, I felt like I’d betrayed my body by placing the ring on it. Because my body didn’t flip-flop the way my mind did. My body knew what it wanted, and what it wanted was Cutter.
I gave the ring a final frown, then slipped it off and dropped it on my dresser. I immediately felt ten pounds lighter.
But I had no sooner crawled into bed when the shrill sound of my home phone - which my parents insisted I keep - made me jump. I grabbed the plastic receiver with my heart in my throat. I knew it was him, even before he spoke.
“Did you miss me, baby-doll, like I missed you?”
His voice had that honeyed tone again, and my relief at hearing the sound of it was acute. My blood went hot. I couldn’t form an intelligent retort. I could barely form a coherent thought. It was instinct that made me hop up from my bed, glance out into the hall, and then close my door softly. Not because I didn’t want to get caught, but because I wanted him to myself.
I climbed back under my covers, wondering why the frilly, flower-patterned fabric seemed objectionable all of a sudden. Apparently, Cutter made me second-guess even the little details of my life. I suddenly needed leather and lace. Not cotton sheets.
But what would he look like, wrapped in nothing but a cotton sheet?
Oh, God. Those sculpted abs. Those broad shoulders. That tattoo, rippling across his back…
“Melissa?”
Good God. Why did he always make my name sound like sex wrapped in chocolate?
I forced a sigh. “Believe it or not, I have a life outside of your constant harassment.”
“We could change that,” he said roughly.
His cocky tone should’ve made me bristle. Instead I had to fight off an urge to ask how we could change it. My throat went dry. An image of Cutter, tanned, muscled, and overtop of me, filled my thoughts. I actually had to stifle a little moan. My face fl
amed red, and I was ridiculously glad he couldn’t see me.
“Thanks,” I managed to get out. “But I’m all full up on crazy, overly testosteroned men.”
“Testosteroned? Is that even a word?”
“If it wasn’t before, it became one the second your over-sized biceps and over-inflated ego came into being.”
“So me and my muscles have been on your pretty little mind, then?”
“Not in the slightest,” I lied.
I waited for him to call me out on it, unable to dismiss the nagging voice that pointed out that at every turn, Cutter reduced me from a poised, thoughtful girl into this foul-mouthed harlot. Okay, maybe not harlot. But at the very least, my reaction to him was bordering on nymphomania. My mind was irritatingly bogged down by the idea of him in my bed.
But he just chuckled. “What have you been concentrating on, then?”
“Anything else, actually.”
He chuckled. “But you’re thinking about me now.”
“I am not.”
“What’re you thinking about, then, right this second?”
“I don’t remember agreeing to this game of truth or dare.”
“Scared to tell me?”
“Fine.” I scrambled for a believable claim. “I was just thinking that I haven’t heard you swear since I picked up the phone. That’s some kind of record, right?”
“Liar.”
“Jerk.”
“You could just admit you were picturing me naked,” he teased.
“I was not.” Not quite, anyway. Covered in a bed sheet was different than totally naked.
“You’re a bit of a goody-two-shoes, you know that, right?”
“What’s so wrong with having morals?” I demanded
“Nothing,” he assured me. “In fact, it makes this more fun. A less principled girl would already be in my bed.”
“Shut up.”
“Don’t be mad, baby-doll, I like you all sweet and indignant.”
“Why would I be mad? Some guy is stalking me and pretending like he knows everything about me when really he knows nothing. I love that.”
He laughed again. “You’re mad because I like something about you?”
“I’m mad because you’re assuming you know me,” I replied. “Again.”
“I think you mean still,” he corrected.
After a minute, he sighed loudly. “You know, you’re not actually that good, Miss Goody Two Shoes.”