by Cynthia Hart
I chuckled. “Why not, April?”
She shrugged, sinking back down onto the bench and grabbing it on either side of her as if holding on for dear life. “Talk is cheap. Haven’t you ever heard that before? From one of your thousands of lovers, I mean?”
I grinned. “My lovers and I don’t do a lot of talking if you know what I mean.”
She clucked her tongue. “No, I bet you don’t.”
“I’m not bragging about that part,” I sighed, not sitting but no longer pacing. Instead, I leaned against the bus stop wall, peering down at her. “I normally don’t spend this much time on the same girl. It’s all… this is all… new to me.”
She sighed, relaxing her white-knuckled grip on the bench by her side. “I’m flattered, Caden, really I am. But if having a simple conversation with a woman with her clothes on is ‘new’ to you, you can see why I’m doubtful about our chances together, right?”
I nodded. “What if I prove I’m serious to you?” I challenged her. “What if I prove this is real, that I’ve changed, that I honestly, sincerely care about you?”
She smirked but took the bait anyway. “How would you do that, Caden? What would that look like?”
“Well,” I offered, suddenly inspired. “We’ve got inventory coming up again in another week. If I don’t bang any other women, hostesses included, during that time, will that work for you?”
She rolled her eyes. “A week, a month, what’s the difference, Caden? A leopard never changes its spots.”
“Not if they’re never given the chance they don’t,” I huffed. “This is me, being real with you, April. I want to change, but not for fun. For you, for me, for… us.”
She seemed to sag, as if suddenly tired of me and all my shenanigans. “You really think there could be an us, Caden?”
“I do if you do, April. I’m willing to give it a shot if you’ll let me.”
Her face remained cast in shadows until, looking up, she grinned. “So you’re going to abstain for a whole week, and that’s supposed to prove you’re a new man?”
I nodded. “If you knew me better, April, you’d know that was everything.”
Her smile stiffened. “I’d like to get to know you better, Caden. I’d like to trust you.”
“So why can’t you?” I insisted, pushing myself off the bus stop wall and pacing anew. “I’ve been nothing but faithful to you since we’ve met. So why are you letting my horn dog past cloud our future?”
She nodded halfway through my dramatic – perhaps even overdramatic – soliloquy. “You’re right, Caden. You broke me down. I shouldn’t blame you for all the girls you’ve screwed before me. I just… hope you don’t screw me, you know?”
It was the first real thing she’d said and, hearing the emotion in her voice, I sank down on the bus bench beside her, clasping her hand tightly. “Honestly, April, hurting you is the last thing I want to do. I guess… I guess that’s why I feel like I’ve already changed. Believe it or not, you’re the first girl I’ve ever honestly cared about.”
She chuckled, on the verge of tears. “Why me, Caden?” she blurted, standing abruptly as if the sudden wash of emotions was too much. “Why now?”
I shook my head, sagging with the realization. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “But now that you’re here, I don’t want to care about anyone else.”
She bit her lip and stared off into the distance, past the bus bench, past us, perhaps even into the future. “So, a week then, huh? And we’ll try again once more?”
“I’d love to try again,” I said. “I’d love to prove to you I’m not the bad boy you think I am.”
“You could start,” she said, nodding toward the Bistro just down the street. “By giving me a ride home.”
Chapter 17 :
April
The motorcycle revved between my legs, a steady hum that found me wishing it wouldn’t take a week before Caden gave me the chance to jump his bones again!
I’d never ridden a motorcycle before, but he was so big and strong and capable – and my grip on him so tight – he made it feel like a station wagon as we steered slowly through the deserted city.
I clung to his back, the smell of soft leather oozing off his jacket as I gripped him tight around his impossibly lean waist. I was suddenly exhausted, not just from the long day but Caden’s sudden rush of affection. I’d honestly never experienced anything like it.
I wasn’t without my charms; I knew that much. I was no shrinking violet, or even a wallflower, for that matter. I’d had guys interested in me before but never like this. And I knew it must have been new for Caden as well. He was the kind of guy who could have had a different woman in his bed every night. Hell, before me, he probably had. Handsome and charming, with a job behind the bar at one of the city’s hottest restaurants, who knows what kind of shenanigans a guy like Caden could get into when he turned on the charm?
Then again, I knew all too well. He’d seduced me only days after we’d first met, and so easily I knew it was just habitual for him. Maybe that’s why I was so unconvinced he could last a week without bedding a new woman.
Then again, he was right: I couldn’t hold what he did before me against what he wanted to do for me. And, apparently, what he wanted to do for me was to become a different man, a better man. Even, against all the odds, he wanted to be my man.
I sighed with contentment, vaguely aware of the twists and turns of the bike as it steered through town and, amazingly, toward my street. It was only when he’d parked in front of my house and helped me off the bike that I peered into his dark chocolate eyes and asked, “How?”
He looked confused. “How what?”
“How did you know where I lived?”
Caden blushed, slightly – always a good look on him – before he confessed. “That night after you left me alone on the rooftop, I came looking for you. After work. I knew which bus line you took, and where it let you off, so I just drove around aimlessly. I think I was trying to be romantic, but then I spotted you, in there…”
He nodded at the living room, the curtains were drawn, Dad no doubt asleep in front of the TV. That is if the new day nurse had given him the right meds, of course. “You were caring for your father.”
“Why didn’t you knock on the door?” I asked.
He shrugged, looking radiant beneath a nearby streetlight. “I didn’t want to intrude.”
If only he knew what my long, anxious nights looked like. The tossing and turning, always expecting to hear a quiet wail or a soft whimper from dad’s room. The boring TV, flickering on the nightstand in my old bedroom. “You wouldn’t have been, trust me!”
“Just the same,” he said. “I’m here now, April. And I’m not going anywhere. That is, if you let me in.”
I thought of the house just beyond the front door, a mess. Of Dad, cranky and irritable and averse to change. Of my own bedroom, stale and unkempt, like my life away from work. “Right now?” I gasped, literally clutching my throat as if being strangled by the thought.
He laughed and shook his head. “No, I meant metaphorically. Like, let me into your life.”
“Thank God!” I blurted, suddenly relieved. “I mean, maybe in a week, when the house is clean, if things work out…”
He seemed to sense the hesitance in my voice, stilling it with gentle hands wrapped around my own. “Listen, April, I don’t want to scare you. Or intrude. If things aren’t right for you now, if caregiving and work are too much, I’ll understand.”
I gazed back at him, amazed. “Are you already breaking up with me?” I snorted.
He laughed aloud, honest and pure. “No, god no, I just… want you to be happy, that’s all.”
I squeezed his hands back. “You do make me happy, Caden. And I’m flattered you think you like me, or love me, or are in lust with me. Any of the above would make me happy.”
“How about all three?” he teased.
I ignored his obvious flattery. “It’s just… you know why I’
m hesitant, right?”
He nodded, squeezing my hand once more before reaching for his helmet. “I do know, April,” he said, sliding it on so that he looked like a superhero with his leather jacket and black mask. The visor up, I saw only his eyes as he explained, “And like you said, talk is cheap. Until inventory, then?”
I chuckled, surprised by his abrupt departure. But maybe I shouldn’t have been. Wasn’t I the one who’d told him I didn’t want to hear his words, just see what he did about us.
“Okay then,” I guffawed, watching him straddle his bike and, without a backward glance, ease off into the night. I watched until his brake light disappeared around a distant corner, then stood alone at the curb. Turning back to my house, I saw the flickering light of the TV behind the curtains, Dad’s silhouette as he slept soundly in his favorite chair.
Suddenly, the thought of the quiet, empty, vaguely smelly house nauseated me and, rather than go inside, I sank onto the curb, sitting on it as I had so many summer nights as a girl.
How strange it was to be back home, suddenly, and alone in the dark. The quiet night stretched around me like a soft, warm blanket, comforting me as my heart still raced with the anxiety, the uncertainty, of Caden’s proposal.
Of course I’d wait a week to see if he proved himself to be a true dog or not. Hell, I’d wait a year if that’s what it took to sleep with him again! I didn’t fear him going back to his caddish, bad boy ways. What I feared the most was that he was legit, that he was sincere, and that he and I could actually be… together.
I knew I could deal with what we had now: a single interlude, okay, maybe two, that I could take out and linger over and even fantasize about long after he’d forgotten about me. But a relationship? With Caden? If that went south, it would really break my heart. And right now, with everything else in my life, that would be one too many heartbreaks for me to endure…
Chapter 18 :
Caden
“Another round?”
Her eyes were smoky and blue, her straight blond hair falling to petite, delicate shoulders. “Aren’t you going to close soon?” she purred, using that come-hither voice she’d adopted ever since I’d turned around to set a coaster in front of her nearly two hours ago.
I’d been entranced then, smitten by her smoldering beauty, but busy as well; too busy to drool over her as I might on other nights. Besides, I’d made a promise and would stand by it, even if it meant the biggest set of blue balls this side of Paul Bunyan’s loyal ox!
“Not if you’re going to have another round,” I teased, watching the hustle and bustle of activity in the background: the servers with their side work, Keisha shutting down the hostess desk, Cliff switching the “Open” sign in the front window to “Closed”.
While the kitchen had already been shut down for nearly half an hour, and the servers and other staff would soon be gone, the bar was kind of an entity unto itself; a no man’s land where, as long as I had fresh ice and booze to pour, I could stay until just before Cliff locked the front door.
“Well then,” she said, sliding the empty glass across the bar to me. “Pour away,” I noted the wedding band on her finger, but ignored it – as I had so many other times before. The bar wasn’t just a room all to itself, but an atmosphere. Like Vegas, whatever happened here stayed here, be it with wives, mistresses, women or girls. Alcohol was the universal language, I’d discovered, for loosening women’s tongues and their libidos.
It would be nice to think that all these women threw themselves at me because of my looks, which I knew to be not half bad, but the simple truth was that I enjoyed talking to them – and they to me. The more they drank, the more they talked, and while tattoos and biceps came in handy to seal the deal, the real aphrodisiac was the simple act of listening when, often, no one else would.
It mattered little tonight. I hadn’t paid enough attention to the wispy, stunning blond all night to put in the time required to seduce her, and not just because I was busy. My week of abstaining from random, one-night-only, alcohol infused hookups was nearly at an end, and my relationship with April just about set to begin. The last thing I needed tonight was a sexy young blond – married, no less – screwing things up right at the finish line.
I uncorked the white wine she’d been sipping all night, our eyes meeting above the gurgling bottle. Hers were intent, hungry, a look I’d seen a million times before, and usually returned with an equally obvious gaze of my own. She wore a soft black slip dress, no bra, her small breasts boyish but appealing as the sheer fabric clung to them endearingly, the rest of the dress hugging a slight, slender frame.
I had to admit, the slinky dress and perky breasts, the slender arms and wedding ring were usually my kind of catnip. Once upon a time, in my “old” life, there was something irresistible about a woman who was so unhappy at home she’d venture out, wedding ring on, to flirt – and potentially fuck – the guy who’d lent her his ear all night. Maybe it was the taboo pleasure of fucking another man’s wife, or giving her something she couldn’t get at home, that was my personal kryptonite. Even now, staring at the ring, then glancing up the finger and the arm, to the face, I felt the old familiar desire to plunder and pillage this wily, wispy blond.
I finished the bottle, slipping it into the recycling bin at my back before sliding the glass across toward her. “No luck tonight, huh?” I teased, leaning back against the beer cooler behind me and crossing my arms over my maroon Bistro shirt, a cocky pose I knew from experience never failed to entice a lady who was already on the fence, interest wise.
She cocked her head, confused, the glass halfway to her lips. “Luck?” she asked, voice low and soft and sexy. I felt it course through my veins, loaded with intent, heavy with desire, rich with promise. I wondered, for a moment, how hard it would be to give such pleasures up for just one girl. Sure, I wanted April – in the worse of ways – but was I too far gone to really commit to one girl?
I know we weren’t getting married, but we might as well have been for how it felt to say “no” to this sexy, stunning blond and her puffy, perky tits! Yet still, I knew even as my cock thickened at the thought of a once-harmless romp, that she simply wasn’t worth it. Not with so much, and someone so special, riding on my dismissal.
“That outfit,” I said, openly admiring her long, waifish figure in the clingy slip dress as I undressed her with my eyes and back again. “The empty chairs on either side of you.”
She rolled her eyes and took a long, lingering sip of wine. Her eyes never left mine. “You think I came here to meet somebody?”
I shrugged, still leaning casually against the beer cooler as we appraised each other coolly. “Pretty girl like you? You can’t possibly be alone.”
Sure, it was sexist. Sure, it was cocky. Sure, it was sneaky, considering she was wearing a fucking wedding ring! But it was also flattering, and her blushing face told me she was eating it up. “I’ll have you know I’m in town on business,” she explained, saying nothing of the husband waiting back home in Denver or Topeka or Tampa. “And walked into the first restaurant I saw outside of my hotel.”
I glanced out the plate glass window behind her, implying the quiet street beyond. “So you’re staying at the Emporium?” I asked.
She nodded, setting her glass down. “How’d you guess?”
I tapped my head and smirked. “Bartender’s intuition.” Then I nodded at her skinny black purse resting on the bar. “That, and the room key sticking out of your purse.”
She glanced at it, casually, before peering back at me. “I have two, you know?”
“Rooms?” I teased, feeling an old, familiar fire in my loins as we began to flirt in earnest. We’d been flirting all night, at least silently. With our eyes, our body language, every time I poured her a fresh glass of wine or asked her if she was ready for me to pour her a fresh glass of wine. But now, emboldened by a bottle and a half and, perhaps, feeling frisky as the Bistro shut down, we were doing it openly.
“Keys, sill
y,” she said, slurring slightly. She was clearly just buzzed enough to make bad decisions, and I was the last chance of the night. “If you’re interested?”
Without waiting for an answer, she slid the key across the bar. It would have been so easy to take it, as I had on so many other occasions. She was in town on business, probably until tomorrow. She was wet and willing, even eager, for one last anonymous romp before she left town. I got a lot of that at the Bistro, businesswomen looking for a little stress relief before their early morning flight. Hell, I knew the lobby of the Hotel Emporium as well as I did my own bar at this point.
And she was fine; fine as hell. Perky and blond, petite and eager, she’d be a hot time in bed. Of that, I had no doubt. Small, puffy breasts in my hands as she rode me, her pubic hair soft and wispy and wet around my thrusting cock.
I’ll admit, the thought had crossed my mind. At least a thousand times over the night, as she sat there drinking and staring and smiling. Even now, my cock thickened at the thought. I glanced past her without replying, at the empty hostess stand.
April was off tonight, had been for the last few nights, and I’d been good all week. So good. Keisha was off, too, and there wasn’t another soul around to tell on me if I quietly snatched the key and slid it in my pocket and followed this wispy blond out of the Bistro, across the street and up to her room to bang the night away.
“Thanks,” I said just the same, sliding it back across the bar. “But no thanks.”
Her face turned, slow and cruel, as she snatched it off the bar. “Your loss,” she huffed, standing abruptly and throwing a crisp hundred dollar bill on the bar.
“Perhaps,” I sighed, amused by her sudden mood swing.
“Oh, trust me, barkeep,” she snapped as if insulting me. “I would have rocked your world like no other woman ever has.”
“What?” I chuckled. “Just before you passed out?”
Her face burned crimson, eyes bugging out as she sputtered, “You… just… how dare you imply I’ve had too much to drink?”