“Hi, Mike. I’m Julia,” I said in anticipation that he might actually realize who I was once I told him my name.
Mike and my brother Rob had been fairly close friends growing up. Rob was seven years older than me and I was very much a child when Mike had been to our home. The last time I remembered seeing him was when he came home for Christmas break during my Junior year in high school. I’d tried to find reasons to be in the same room as him and Rob and my other brothers but I was always relegated to leaving the room. I was pretty sure Mike Cooper didn’t even know I existed. And as I waited for him to recognize me, it was clear he did not.
“Well that’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl,” Mike said as he shook my hand lightly. “How about I get you a drink and you come sit with me at my table for a little bit?”
“Still pretty generic,” I teased him.
“It is, but the problem is that I would really like to talk with you and we certainly can’t keep standing here in this mess of people.”
“I’m heading back to the couch,” Teddy busted right between the two of us. “Yeah, I’ll catch up to you later.” He winked at me and then looked at Mike. “Good catch.”
“Well, you have his approval so I guess I have no other choice but to say yes,” I shrugged and walked up to the bar beside Mike. I was about to tell him what I wanted to drink when he leaned into the bartender and placed the order himself.
I had no idea what he had told the man but we left the bar without our drinks. Mike slipped his hand down to hold mine and I followed him to the far back corner of the club where he had a private table.
Holding hands in a club like this wasn’t exactly the same as holding hand normally. It was a necessity to ensure you didn’t lose the person you were following. But, his hand was strong and firm while also being extremely soft. He didn’t act like the surgeons I’d met in clubs before; they typically had an attitude about them that was fairly distinctive. I wracked my brain trying to remember what type of doctor Mike had become, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what my brother had said. In all fairness, it had been several years since we had talked about Mike. When I first moved to New York Rob had brought up that his friend also lived there.
“Our drinks are on their way,” Mike said and held his hand out for me to slide into the small booth.
Mike sat down right beside me instead of across from me. At this point, it didn’t seem romantic; more a little pushy. If he really didn’t recognize who I was, then he was basically just sitting with a stranger and trying to get laid.
Guys in New York weren’t all jerks. I’d met plenty of decent guys, the problem was finding any decent guys who I also found attractive and had a connection with. In the twenty-first century women no longer had to settle for a man who was only half of what she was looking for and I just didn’t feel like dating around with men I knew weren’t a good match.
A few guys here and there seemed promising, but the spark fizzled quickly and I jumped back into concentrating on my career. So far, there was a definite spark with Mike, but nothing too outrageous and a lot of my emotions about him were probably just a girlhood crush that I still carried over.
“Oh my God, Julia, you need to come with me,” Kendra said as she approached the table and stood over the two of us.
“Kendra, this is Mike,” I said.
“Hi, Mike, I promise you can have her back in a minute, I need her.” She was insistent and reached for my hand to pull me out of the booth. Mike had no choice but to move out of the way.
He was polite and smiled at the interruption but he was clearly annoyed. Kendra wasn’t the type of grab me away from situations though so I was a little curious to see what was going on and why this was such an emergency.
“Ten minutes?” Mike asked Kendra and me with a playful raised eyebrow. “After that, I’m stealing her back.”
“Yes, ten minutes is good,” Kendra said and yanked me off into the crowd behind her.
“What was that all about? He’s super cute, you can’t really be this worried about me sitting with that guy?”
“No, nothing about him. It’s about Sarah, she um…” Kendra stopped dead in her tracks.
I looked around trying to figure out what was going on. There was a crowd of people around us and when I looked at the couch where we had all been sitting I saw what the emergency was.
“She’s not!” I yelled and my hand flew up to cover my eyes.
“Yeah, I’m sure the cops have already been called, or maybe they will let her finish?” Kendra shrugged.
Sarah had taken her new boy toy to the couch we had reserved. She was riding him, screwing the hell out of the guy, right there in the middle of the club. At first, I wasn’t sure I actually believed my own eyes. Sarah was extremely sexually free, and she’d been known to have a voyeuristic side, but this was extreme even for her.
“Where’s Teddy?” I asked.
“There,” Kendra pointed to Teddy standing about ten feet away talking to a man wearing purple shoes. They actually looked like an adorable couple with their matching styles.
“Should I stop her?” I asked, hoping the answer was no.
“Yeah, because I sure as heck am not going over there. She’s going to get arrested. Why does she do this stuff?”
“I don’t know,” I replied and reluctantly made my way over toward the couch. I was almost there when three police officers came down the steps and moved in on Sarah and her new friend.
There was no big commotion. No yelling or any sort of scene at all. One of the officers just stood next to the couch and both Sarah and her man looked up at him. For a minute I wasn’t sure they were even going to stop having sex, but they did and as Sarah stood up and slid her dress back down, a few people clapped around the two of them.
Both Sarah and her guy were being handcuffed when I hurried over to see what I could do to help. I wasn’t a rule breaker like she was, I was terrified to even be by the police officers, but she looked calm as could be.
“Do you want me to call someone?” I asked.
“Yes. Teddy has the number for my attorney. Which precinct am I going to?” she asked the officer.
“Just around the corner,” he replied.
“Okay,” Sarah shrugged. “Just have him meet me there.”
The officers walked her away before I could clarify where she was going so I really hoped Teddy knew what was going on and how to help her. Teddy was in the middle of full-on flirting mode when I interrupted him. He hadn’t even realized what was going on at all.
“Sarah was just arrested for having sex right there on the couch! She said you have her attorney’s number. Can you call him and have him meet her? The police officers said they were taking her just around the corner.”
“Wait, was she having sex with the police officer?” Teddy laughed.
“No, this is serious.”
“Yes, I can handle it, just a second,” he turned back to his friend and basically ignored me.
I didn’t know what to do. Teddy was likely to totally ignore what was going on and not call her attorney until tomorrow if he and this guy hit it off. I waited impatiently off to the side as Teddy and his guy friend talked for what seemed like forever.
It was nearly twenty minutes before Teddy finally exchanged numbers with the guy and came over to me. By that time I was close to screaming at him I was so frustrated, but the one problem with being friends with your boss was that you couldn’t scream at them even when they were being a jerk.
“Teddy, come on. Just call her attorney already,” I said as Kendra found her way over to us. “Where were you?”
“I got caught up.”
“What is going on with the two of you? Our friend just got taken to jail; you really don’t have anything better to do than flirt with people? She needs our help,” I said in a panic.
Teddy laughed and Kendra just shrugged her shoulders. I was at my wits end with these two and about to just go over to the jail m
yself if one of them didn’t start helping our friend.
“She got arrested three weeks ago when we were out together,” Teddy said when he stopped laughing. “This happens to her more than you would think. Is this the first time you’ve been with her when it happened?”
“What? How have I never heard about it?”
“Maybe she didn’t want you to know what a pervert she is,” Kendra laughed.
“So what’s going to happen? Does she have to stay in jail for a long time?”
“No,” Teddy patted me on the back. “They will book her and she will pay a fine. Her lawyer will go down and either they will drop the charges or she will get a day in court. Then her lawyer negotiates a fine or community service and it’s all over with. It’s really not a big deal. Calm down.”
“Really?” I asked a little bewildered by what I was hearing.
“Yeah, she will be just fine. I’ll text her attorney. I’ve got his number. Go back to having fun. Where is that hot guy that was hitting on you at the bar?”
My heart stopped when I realized how long I’d been away from Mike. He probably thought I had totally ditched him. How embarrassing it would be to even go back over there at this point.
“We will figure it out,” Kendra said reassuringly as Teddy walked away texting on his phone. “Don’t worry. I’m sure he will still be over there.”
The two of us walked back to the table where we had left Mike. Instead of Mike, there was an equally handsome blonde haired guy sitting there with a woman. They were eating strawberries and drinking champagne, probably what Mike had ordered for me.
“Well, I ruined that.”
“He’s still around. Let’s go find him,” Kendra said.
“No, actually, I think I’m just going to go home. I’m exhausted and I don’t want to date right now anyway. I’m ready to just get pregnant and be a mom. How about I meet you back at home?”
“Sure, I’ll text you if I find someone to play with this evening and I’m not coming home. But are you sure? This was supposed to be your night to celebrate.”
“I know, but it really is just fine. I like being at home,” I laughed.
Kendra was looking at me when her eyes darted over my shoulder. I felt someone walk up behind me and knew it just had to be Mike. Kendra smiled so big that there was no other possible option. Kendra winked and then turned to walk away.
Slowly I turned around.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been ditched before the first drink,” he smiled down at me.
Chapter 2
Mike
She didn’t respond to my playful quip and instead just stared up at me like I’d actually caught her in the middle of something. Up until that look, I had honestly thought she just got caught up with her friends or something. Now I was beginning to wonder if she had intended on ditching me.
“Yeah, I guess I’m not great at ditching people,” she mischievously touched my bicep and leaned in close to me. I leaned down so she could say something in my ear. “My friend was caught having sex on one of the couches. Sorry. I got distracted taking care of that.”
“Best excuse ever,” I said. “But I did give our drinks to my friend. Should we get some more or go dance?”
I really couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew Julia from somewhere. She was being much too nice to me to be a girl I had slept with and forgotten, so there had to be some other explanation as to why she looked so darn familiar.
Her long brown hair was curled slightly and pinned back to show off her neck, a neck that I desperately wanted to kiss. Sometimes when I met a woman there was a good amount of chemistry between us but with Julia, it was dripping off of us. Her sequined red dress hugged every curve like a professional race car driver.
She smiled at me while contemplating which of my offers she wanted to take me up on. I was happy to go buy some more champagne and strawberries if that was what she wanted, a good conversation with her was certainly on the menu. Or if she wanted to take me for a spin on the dance floor I was up for that as well, it would give me the opportunity to feel her body against mine.
“Dancing first, then drinking,” she finally decided.
Sometimes I don’t know what comes over me when I’m around a beautiful woman, but I grabbed her and lifted her off the ground a few inches as I carried her out to the dance floor. She was light as a feather and her lips were oh so close to mine. It would have been the perfect opportunity to kiss her if I hadn’t just met her an hour before and been looking for her in the club most of the time since I’d first talked to her. No, I had to restrain those primal emotions, at least for the time being.
“Wow, okay then,” she laughed and threw her head back. “That’s a bold move.”
“You deserve a bold move.”
I didn’t know much about this girl but there was something drawing me to her like I hadn’t been drawn to a woman in a very long time. In college, maybe, there had been Lisa, but even that was short lived when our professional drives got in the way. This girl excited me and not just the physical excitement that was bulging in my pants. We started to dance to the house music.
The dance floor was much too loud to be able to communicate effectively. It gave us the opportunity to use the physical charisma between us as a barometer for our communication. The music thumped and I did my best not to let Julia feel just how excited she was making me with her sexy hips and flirty dance moves.
I didn’t get to be one of the most eligible bachelors in New York City by being bad with the ladies. I knew how to be kind, sweet and attentive. Often though it felt like a game I was playing, and it was becoming an old game. Women knew who I was, usually. They had seen an article or watched a story on television. Julia didn’t look at me like those women did though. Her gaze delved much deeper than I was used to; it made me slightly uncomfortable, she made me feel off my game.
As we dance I kept a few inches between the two of us until Julia took control and slid her delicious ass right up against my body. There was no way to hide my excitement and I prepared myself for her to move away quickly. But instead of moving away from my hard member, Julia pressed her ass against me even harder. She looked back at me with a mischievous smile and I was done. At that moment I knew I was going to be bringing Julia home with me.
I couldn’t behave another minute longer and grabbed her hips to hold her there against me. My normal suave etiquette was barely holding on as my desire for this girl throbbed harder and harder. Even as I gripped her and held her against me, Julia continued to dance seductively, enticing me to continue with our little game.
“You’re killing me,” I mouthed when she turned around and pressed her body against me.
I felt her soft breasts pressed into my body and let my hands move down the open back of her dress. When I reached to curve of her ass I was nearly able to stop myself, but I couldn’t. One of my hands slid into the top of her dress and I cupped her perfectly formed ass in my hands. This girl was delicious.
It didn’t matter that the club was playing upbeat music, Julia and I were dancing to our own music. She slid her hands around and pulled the back of my shirt out of my pants so she could let her fingers glide up and down my back.
Chemistry was the only way I could describe what was going on between the two of us; sexual chemistry. Our bodies were made for each other. Honestly, I’d met women that I’d wanted to manhandle like I was with Julia on the dance floor, I just hadn’t met a woman who actually reciprocated the level of lust I had.
We danced for nearly an hour in the hot sticky dance club. Neither of us was phased by the environment as we kept our eyes on each other. She would smile sweetly up at me but then her smile turned into desire and I’d feel her hands exploring under my shirt. I half expected that she was going to grab onto my erection right there in the middle of the club, but she never went quite that far.
“Can I steal her for a minute,” Julia’s friend yelled as she came up and joined us on the dance floor.
I didn’t believe it was going to be for a minute, but I nodded my head in agreement. This time I followed the two women off the dance floor and kept my eye on them. Julia’s friend said something in her ear and then pointed to a good looking guy standing nearby. The two women hugged and then Julie came back over to me. It was the perfect opportunity for us to take a break and I motioned for us to go back over to the table I had reserved in the corner.
Julia reached down and held onto my hand as I guided us back toward the table. Her delicate fingers fit perfectly into my hand and I squeezed them playfully when we approached the table and I saw Taylor sitting there with a woman.
“He’s my friend, let’s join them,” I said loud enough for her to hear me.
Coming to the clubs was fun because the women were always ready to have a good time, well most of them at least. But it did make it really hard to have a conversation with someone like Julia.
“Wow, I think I saw him in a magazine,” Julia said.
“Maybe,” I couldn’t help but laugh since the magazine she had seen Taylor in was the same one I was in, but I wasn’t about to admit that to her.
Women were lovely, I enjoyed them in all aspects of my life and truly cherished the female form. There was a limit to my understanding though and when women became pushy or rude to each other in an effort to talk to me, it really bothered me. I noticed a group of women watching Julia and me as we sat down at the table. I gave them a quick glance and then slipped my arm around Julia’s shoulders as I introduced her to Taylor.
“Taylor, this is Julia,” I yelled so he could hear me.
“Hi Julia, this is Star,” he said as he introduced his blonde bombshell that had been sharing the champagne I’d left for the two of them.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Taylor said and reached over to shake hands with Julia.
We had barely finished the introduction when the group of four young women made their way over to our table. Surely they didn’t plan on interrupting our dates I thought, but then I realized they definitely planned to do that.
Built for Pleasure Page 2