Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  "I don't have time for a social life," she said. "I have a dual concentration, and I’m working for two professors this semester.”

  "Everyone has time for some kind of social life," I said, knowing it was true. She was busy, but so was I, and I still managed to get out of the office.

  "I don't," she said.

  I took her arm as we crossed another street, enjoying the way she trembled at my touch. I wasn't going to give up.

  "Then it's not me you don't like," I said. “It's dating in general."

  "I haven't been on many dates,” she admitted. "But they've always been a waste of time."

  "That's because you haven't gone out with me."

  She laughed. My ego might have suffered from her laughter, but the sound was unexpectedly beautiful, her cool voice transforming into something as clear and crisp and gorgeous as her gray eyes. I wanted to make this girl laugh again, to feel that sound falling over me, the joy and delight suffusing her, chasing off her restraint. I wished I'd been looking at her eyes when she laughed. I had a feeling they would be as alluring when she was amused as I knew they would be when she was aroused.

  "There’s nothing I can say to change your mind?" I asked. She shook her head. Maybe it was my self-confidence talking, but I thought she looked a little regretful.

  "I'm sorry,” she said, actually sounding like she was sorry. “I know this is difficult for you, since it seems no one ever tells you no, but I really do have to decline. I don't have time to date, and I'm not interested in being your flavor of the week."

  "Hey, it's not like that," I protested, even though, with other women, it was exactly like that. Emily came to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk and turned to face me, her eyes narrowed.

  "It's not? You're looking for a girlfriend?"

  I shifted my weight and fought the urge to squirm under her assessing gray gaze. Normally, people only saw what I wanted them to see—Tate Winters, the youngest male in the Winters clan, successful businessman and killer with the ladies. I liked to keep things on the surface outside my family. I'd learned the hard way that when I let people in, they were usually only interested in digging for scandal or money. Emily seemed to see more. Her eyes studied me, and somehow, I knew she knew that the Tate Winters everyone else saw was a front.

  When I didn't answer, she said, "I thought so. Look, you seem like a nice guy, and it was very cool of you to come over and straighten out the whole mess between Holden and Jo. But I'm not going to sleep with you, and I don't have time for a relationship, even if you were interested in one, which you're not. Going to dinner with you would be a bad investment of my time."

  She turned back toward her apartment and started walking again, leaving me behind. I caught up and walked beside her in silence, running various arguments through my mind and rejecting them. I thought about offering to sleep with her outside a relationship—that was an efficient use of her limited free time—but I got the feeling that casual sex was not on her agenda. Offering it would probably not improve my case.

  That left me in a unique situation. Sometimes, when a woman said she wasn't going to sleep with me, she was playing a game. I didn't know Emily well enough to say this with certainty, but I was pretty sure she meant exactly what she’d said. She had no intention of sleeping with me. We were both working under the assumption that I didn't want a girlfriend. Was I sure about that? I'd never wanted one before.

  I walked beside Emily in silence, sneaking glances down at her, watching the way the light played over her gleaming hair, how her hips swayed with every step, her round tits jiggling just enough to tease my imagination.

  I didn't know if I wanted a girlfriend. I did know I wanted to pry this woman open and find out what was beneath her cool composure. I needed to know everything, inside and out—what she was thinking, what she looked like naked, how to make her laugh, how to make her come.

  We reached her building, and I walked her up. I left her at her door, saying only, "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Emily."

  I was tempted to try to kiss her goodbye, but I held back and was rewarded by a flash of confused disappointment in her striking eyes when I left without pushing for more.

  She had one thing right, I thought as I walked back to the club. If all I wanted from her was a fuck, then I was wasting her time. What she didn't know was that if I decided I wanted more, she didn't stand a chance.

  2

  Emily

  I closed the door to the apartment I shared with Jo and flipped the deadbolt, listening as Tate's footsteps echoed down the hall. I leaned my forehead against the wood and drew in a deep, slow breath, trying to slow my pounding heart. The entire night had been way out of my comfort zone. At first, I'd been carried along by emotion. Tate had showed up to confront Jo when he thought she'd dumped Holden, and since Jo had spent the last few days crying over Holden dumping her, I'd been furious at the sight of him.

  Then, once we’d figured out what had really been going on, we'd all been pissed with Jo's teammate, Darren, and had gone off to confront him. Distracted by the drama, my anxiety had been pushed into the background—right up until Tate had asked me out to dinner. For a split second, my heart had leapt in my chest with a flare of excitement and joy. Tate was hot—gorgeous like I’d only seen in movies and magazines, with deep blue eyes, thick, dark hair, full, kissable lips, and an athletic build that said he knew how to use his body. Yum.

  He was also very smart. The gaming company he ran with Holden had developed one of my favorite games, and the industry was rife with rumors over their new, top secret, projects. Hot and smart. I had no plans to fall for any guy, but if I did, it would be a man exactly like Tate. A second after he’d asked me out, my breath had frozen in my lungs, and the joy in my heart had turned to terror. I couldn't go out with Tate. I couldn't go out with anyone, but I definitely couldn't go out with Tate. Prickles ran down my arms, my nerves firing off as fear mounted in my chest. I’d tried to force myself to breathe, to fight off the ringing in my ears. It was a losing battle. It had been a while since I'd had a panic attack, but sitting in his car with my emotions out of control and his blue eyes demanding an answer, I'd felt one threatening. I’d forced myself to breathe and said, “No, thank you."

  No, thank you?

  I’d heard my own voice as if from the end of a long tunnel. No, thank you. Was that what I’d said? I was such a ridiculous dork. I wasn't surprised that he looked shocked. For one thing, I doubt any woman had ever turned him down for a date. And second, who said No, thank you when someone asked them out? Apparently, I did. I didn't have a lot of practice. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had asked me out.

  A part of me wanted to go to dinner with Tate. Wanted to go desperately. The part of me that had a killer wardrobe, even though I never went anywhere but home and school. The part of me that still dreamed of more than professional success. That still believed in fairy tales.

  The part of me that wished I were a different girl. In the last few years, I’d managed to get the worst of my anxiety under control. I'd had to figure out how to handle it if I wanted to pursue my Masters degree at Georgia Tech. If I ever wanted anything resembling a real life. I couldn't do that if I never left my parents’ house. With determination and a lot of hard work, I'd done it. I was a year and a half into my Masters program, and in all that time, I’d only had one anxiety attack. It hadn't even been a bad one.

  I reminded myself that compared to my life a few years before, I was already living my dream. I'd come so far from the reclusive shut-in I’d been in high school and college. But I hadn’t come far enough to get tangled up with Tate Winters. He was so far out of my league, it wasn't funny. I was a 23-year-old computer science geek, a virgin who had never been on a proper date. Tate had slept his way through the most beautiful women in Atlanta. He was gorgeous, successful, wealthy, and notorious. Even if I thought he was interested in me—not just for sex, but in getting to know me—I could never handle the attention that came with th
e Winters family.

  I'd been doing well in the last 18 months, but a lot of that was due to careful planning. If I avoided crowded places, got to lectures before the room filled up, and talked to people I already knew, I was mostly fine. I'd had severe anxiety, combined with agoraphobia, since I'd been a kid. Since the shooting. I’d walked away undamaged on the outside. What had gone wrong inside my head took years to fully develop, and once it had, I’d become a prisoner of fear.

  Medication had never helped much, but I’d found a therapist while I was doing my undergrad online, living at home, who helped me find ways to manage out in the real world. I was getting better. Sharing an apartment with Jo instead of living at home was a major accomplishment. Ditto for attending my graduate programs in person.

  But I wasn't anywhere close to taking on a boyfriend, much less equipped to deal with a man like Tate. I'd done the right thing by turning him down. I knew I had. If I'd taken him up on his invitation to dinner, I would only have been a disappointment. I wasn't beautiful or sophisticated, and I had no experience with men. When I got up the nerve to try a relationship, I'd start with someone I knew—maybe one of the guys from school.

  A little voice in the back of my head piped up to remind me that none of those guys had ever made me shiver with a simple touch. At the memory of Tate's strong hand on my arm as we crossed the street, I shivered again, my nipples tightening, an ache rising between my legs. He was out of my league, and the idea of going out with him was impossible, but Tate Winters was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. Every time I thought about him, I wanted what I couldn't have.

  Straightening, I tried to think about anything other than Tate. At least I was alone. Jo had been all cuddled up to Holden when I’d left Mana. I was pretty sure she wasn’t coming home anytime soon. I loved Jo. She was the ideal roommate and my best friend. Even so, after the drama of the evening, it was a relief to be alone. Deciding to take advantage of my solitude with a bath, I put on a soundscape that I used to ease tension and turned the taps on hot. Our apartment wasn’t luxurious by any means, but the tub was a little bigger than average. Perfect for me. I loved taking baths.

  Anxiety was a bizarre condition, I mused as I poured lavender scented bubble bath under the streaming water. Most people were afraid when they were alone. Jo had confessed that when she’d first moved to the city from her small Midwestern town, she’d been freaked out to be alone in the apartment. I was the opposite. I felt the safest on my own. It was people that cranked my anxiety levels into the panic zone. Being in the club earlier, I’d thought I was going to lose it. A night on my own and a relaxing soak would go a long way toward calming me down. After a good night’s sleep, I might even be back to normal.

  I climbed in the tub and lay back, letting the hot water soothe my tight shoulders. I tried to think about school, but the vision of Tate’s blue eyes invaded my mind. I couldn’t believe he’d asked me out. Remembering the look on his face when I’d turned him down, I laughed. Poor Tate. He clearly wasn’t used to hearing the word no.

  My amusement died as I thought about how much I’d wanted to say yes. It wasn’t just that he was hot. And I didn’t care about his money or who he was. Actually, I would've liked him more if he'd just been a normal guy.

  I'd grown up in Atlanta, and I knew who Tate Winters was. His parents had died a few years after the shooting that had sidetracked my life, and I had vivid memories of watching the Winters children subjected to a media hell storm in the wake of losing their parents. I knew from bitter experience what that was like. Being stalked, the flash of lights, the shouted questions. The way the reporters would pop up out of nowhere and refuse to leave you alone. A part of me thought that it wasn't so much the shooting that had messed me up, but everything that had come after. Watching Tate, his brothers, and his cousins suffer the same terrifying attention, my heart had hurt.

  So I knew who he was. I knew there was a lot more to him than just the good-looking playboy splashed across the Style section of the paper. His company, WGC—Winters Gaming Corp.—had made two amazing games, and there were rumors they were developing a new type of physics engine and had made advances in emerging gaming that would turn the industry on its ear. Yeah, there was a lot more to Tate Winters than what he showed on the outside.

  It was foolish to wish that I could have the brain and the body without everything else that came along with being a Winters. He was who he was, and that was his whole package. But I wished I could have said yes. I let my brain slide into a fantasy where I did say yes. A fantasy where Tate took me out and we talked all night, and then he took me home.

  I wasn't a complete innocent. Well, I was. I'd barely been kissed. Embarrassing, I know. I was 23 years old, and I should have been on my second or third boyfriend by now, at least. I just . . . I was always so busy trying to pretend I was normal, trying to manage the anxiety, that I never had the chance to actually be normal. Boys were one stress too many. I'd been mostly okay in the few years after I survived the shooting, gradually becoming more and more shy, then fearful, but it hadn't seemed dangerously out of the ordinary at first. I'd never been very outgoing and always remained on the quiet side, like my parents, so none of us noticed that by the time I was 13, I rarely wanted to leave the house, even to go to school.

  By the time I should've been going on my first date, my agoraphobia had gotten so bad that I was being homeschooled, isolated from my peers, with boys the last thing on my mind. It took years of trying, changing therapies and changing doctors, before we hit on an approach that really worked. I'd hated every second of it, but in the end, I was here at Georgia Tech, doing a dual concentration in the computer sciences department focused on graphics and intelligent design in gaming. People spent years trying to get into this program. Not only was I here, but I was living in an apartment and not with my parents.

  I was doing it. I was living life, a great life, a successful life. I was going to finish my program and get an amazing job. My dreams were going to come true. I just didn't think I had room in them for a guy, much less a guy like Tate. My life was a perfectly calibrated balancing act, and Tate Winters was a wrecking ball.

  I thought about that fantasy of a date, about what would happen after he brought me home. Would I want him to go slow? To seduce me? Despite the hot water, my nipples tightened. My legs fell apart, one knee knocking against the side of the tub, and I was grateful once again to be alone in the apartment. I slipped my hand between my legs and stroked one fingertip over my clit, thinking about Tate.

  He wouldn't have to work hard to seduce me if we ever got that far. Just the thought of him, and I was wet. I raised one hand to cup my breast, squeezing my sensitive nipple between my fingertips, imagining my hands were Tate's. He'd had big hands, not a surprise since he had to be a few inches over 6 feet, with broad shoulders and a strong build. His hands—the memory of how they felt holding my arm as we crossed the street—made me shiver.

  I wanted to feel those hands on me, just once. I swirled my finger around my swollen clit, then dipped it inside, pressing the heel of my palm down on my clit. I was tight, not a shock, since my fingers were the only thing that had ever been inside me, and at the thought of Tate touching me like this, my muscles clamped down even tighter. I might not ever have gotten this far with an actual man, but I was no stranger to the pleasure my body could bring me. I was inexperienced, not a prude.

  Too aroused to fight it anymore, I let my head loll back and pushed another finger inside me, grinding my palm down hard, imagining I was with Tate and those weren't my fingers—it was his cock fucking me, pounding inside me, filling me up, making me come. I cried out his name on a gasp as the orgasm washed through me.

  I'd needed that. It had been a while since I've made myself come, and usually, an orgasm like that would hold me for a while. I squeezed my legs together in the cooling bathwater and realized, now that I had Tate on my brain, my own hands weren't going to be enough.

  3

  Tate


  Proving that I had good manners, I knocked on Holden's door before I let myself in. That, and I knew he probably had company. I liked Josephine, but I didn't think Holden would appreciate my seeing her naked. I waited at least a minute, maybe two, before knocking again, this time a little harder. Holden hadn't come into work all day. It was late afternoon. They couldn't still be having sex. Eventually, he answered, his mismatched sweatpants and torn T-shirt suggesting that maybe they had in fact still been having sex. Or at least, they had still been in bed.

  I wasn't going to let that stop me. I was on a mission.

  "What are you doing here?" Holden asked as I walked through the open door and into his kitchen.

  "Sorry to interrupt," I said. "But I need to talk to Jo."

  Holden shook his head. "No way. Jo's busy."

  "Do you think you can let her out of bed for five minutes?" I asked. Heading for the fridge, I said, "I can get myself a beer and wait."

  "Tate, you're my favorite cousin, but if you don't get the hell out of my apartment, I'm going to kill you."

  Fortunately, as I straightened from the open fridge with a beer in my hand, I heard footsteps at the end of the hall. I just needed a few minutes with Holden's girl, and then I could get out of their hair.

  Josephine walked up to Holden and tucked herself into his side as she said, “Hey, Tate. Did Em get home okay last night?"

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. Her forehead wrinkled in concern.

  "Is she okay? Did anything happen?" Jo asked, worry weighing down her voice.

  "She got home safely. I walked her right to the door," I reassured her.

  "So, what's up?"

  "I want her number," I said.

  "Did you ask her for it?" Jo raised her eyebrows as if she already knew the answer.