“Ugly?”
“Well, yeah, but that wasn’t what I was looking for.”
“Gross?”
“True, but no.”
“Cheap?”
On that one he sighed and shot me a glance, telling me I’d hit the nail on the head. Looking back at the road he mumbled, “Ever since I saw her with it, I’ve wanted to replace it. My grandparents bought us Steiff bears from Germany when we were born, so I had a look at their site to see what they had available. I’ll understand if you don’t want to give it to her, but I just wanted her to have something…” he paused and shifted uncomfortably, “better.”
When I didn’t answer him and just kept staring at him, he carefully reached behind him into the footwell and pulled out a bag. Placing it on my lap, he explained, “I don’t want to take something her mom gave her away from her, so it can be an extra bear for her if you want. It’s just the one she has doesn’t look like it would last long either and with it being the only thing she has from Effie, maybe y’all should look at keeping it safe for her so she always has it.”
Slowly, I opened the bag in my lap and saw a pretty box inside it with the word Steiff on it. Lifting the lid on it, I saw a beautiful bear that was the same color as the one Elodie had now. The difference was, as I ran my fingers over its face, it had eyes that you knew definitely wouldn’t come off and choke her, and it was so soft even I wanted to cuddle it forever. The one she had now felt almost like industrial carpeting when you touched it, and if Leo hadn’t had the eyes secured, one definitely would have fallen off and it just wasn’t worth the risk.
What I had in my lap now was a thing of beauty fit for a special princess baby, and Jarrod had bought that for my niece.
When I didn’t say anything, he said, “It was a stupid idea, you don’t have to…”
“It’s beautiful,” I choked out, interrupting him. “It’s the most beautiful bear I’ve ever seen, and it’s perfect for her.”
“Do you think she’ll like it? You can always put the bear Effie gave her in the box or on a shelf, just so that it doesn’t fall apart.”
The thought that had gone into this from this man was mind blowing. Not only was he buying Elodie a bear like his grandparents had bought him (a German bear which to me linked to half of what made Jarrod Kline the man he was), and not only had he looked for something that was just like what she had, but he was looking at preserving what her mom – who’d abandoned her – had given her so that she had it for life because it was so cheaply made.
It all blew my mind.
“She’s going to love it. I’ll speak to Leo to see how we should do it, but I know he’d be onboard with the original purple bear disappearing. Maybe if we arrange it so that you’re the one who gives it to her so she understands how special it is?”
“I can do that,” he replied gruffly, clearing his throat afterward.
Reaching for the hand I’d been holding before, I was the one who squeezed this time. “Thank you so much for this, Jarrod. It’s the most thoughtful gift I think I’ve ever come across. Well, aside from taking me to a gaming and comic convention. And letting me sit on your head.”
“You were on my shoulders, honey,” he chuckled, and then glanced over at me. “And trust me, none of it has been a hardship. Far from it.”
That’s when all of my energy left me at once, and my back hit the door with a thud. “Well, this sucks.”
“What sucks?” he asked cautiously.
“Well, if I ever want to do anything for you, I have to think of something that’s going to kick all of this’s ass. I also want to kiss you and you’re driving so I can’t. See? It sucks!”
It was just as well my back was already against the door, because he flicked a glance at his rearview mirror, swerved off the road onto the gravel, and then undid our seatbelts and pulled me into his lap, kissing me before my ass hit his thighs.
It was quick by our standards, but it was the hottest kiss we’d had so far, which said something. And there, on the side of a road as we made our way home from the best date ever, with a purple bear from Germany beside us, Jarrod took a little bit more of my heart.
What I didn’t realize was that I’d taken a whole lot of his, too.
Twelve
Katy
One week later…
“This is the happiest moment of my life,” Maude yelled across the table to me, making Maya, Isla, Ebru, Sabine, Sonya, Layla, Scarlett, Jose, Tabby, Rose and I laugh.
Yup, we were all here, but the difference was that only me, Maude and Layla had come honestly and hadn’t had to sneak out of our house to do it. How the men all fell for their women having period pains at the same time I didn’t know, but they had.
“I thought that was when you had your face against Jarrod’s naked chest,” Tabby shouted back.
Maude stopped to think about it as she watched a guy on the stage having a shower and then shrugged. “Ok, this is the second happiest moment of my life.”
Putting her finger to her lips, Maya got up and walked through the darkened seating area to where a man in a suit was watching the show. No one else had seen her doing it, so it was only me watching out for her and wondering what she was doing. The man looked over her shoulder at the table as she turned around to point at us. After that, she gave him a hug and skipped back to us.
Leaning into my side she whispered, “Wait for it.”
“Wait for what?” I whispered back, but all she did was shake her head and look back up at the stage.
“Do you know they wear cock socks?” Tabby asked us, her speech slurring slightly after her Sambuca challenge with Maude earlier, so it came out “cocksh shocths”.
Finding this tidbit of information interesting, I tried to think of what kind of socks a man would wear on his pee-pee. I mean, I wasn’t an expert in men’s socks, I stuck to ones with Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, and retro gaming characters on them. They just looked cuter than normal ones to me. But I knew that Jarrod wore these thick ones that had what looked like extra padding on the soles and had a thick part that went up his ankle. Would that be suitable for a penis? Then a mental image hit me of one of the handsome, built guys on the stage pulling a sock on with the Cheshire Cat grinning on it over his schlong and I burst out laughing getting the attention of the table.
“Don’t mind me,” I snickered. “What kind of socks do they use? Like those sneaker footsy ones?”
“I dunno,” Tabby shrugged, eyes on the stage. “All I know is that when they do something where they have to pull their speedos off, they have it all tucked away in a nice little cocky socky house.”
“He looks like he’d wear a penis sock size twelve,” Maude guessed, nodding her head at the handsome blonde on the stage. “Maybe even a thirteen.”
“If he keeps jerking it around like that, he’s going to need one of those socks they wear on construction sites,” Maya muttered beside me, making me burst out laughing again.
And then it happened, something funny to everyone else, but a total nightmare to me.
“I hear there’s a blushing virginal bride in the audience,” the MC said into his microphone as he pointed at our table.
Looking behind me and seeing a wall, I turned back and glared at Maya. “That better not be me,” I hissed.
“Oh, it’s not,” she confirmed, grinning widely before she turned around and muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t hear over the round of applause that filled the room.
“Maude Crew, where are you darlin’?” the MC asked, still staring at our table.
This didn’t call for non-swearing swearing, this called for the mother of cussing. “What the actual fuck?”
Before I could stop her, she was up on her feet with her hands in the air, screaming. “That’s me, that’s me.”
“Well, get your beautiful ass up on the stage, babe. We’re gonna give you something you’ll never forget,” he told her, jumping off the edge and running up to hold his arm out to
her.
Rather than say something like hi or that Maya was a big fat liar, she yelled, “Is your cock sock a size twelve or thirteen?”
“Oh, fucking shoot me,” I muttered, sinking lower in my seat.
“Here, have a drink,” one of the girls said and pushed a pitcher and a full shot glass over to me. “It’ll help numb the pain.”
And on that note, I shot back whatever was in the shot glass, and then stuck three straws in the pitcher and went to town.
* * *
“You know,” I told Maya, leaning drunkenly into her side. “I read that strippers are like really smart.”
Equally as drunk as I was, seeing as how we’d been competing to see who could down their pitcher first, then we’d timed what was quicker – two straws or three - then we’d done something else, and now I was sloppy. Sloppy, I loved that word, it should be used more.
“My name’s sloppy,” I snickered, holding my hand out to her.
“Mine’s blottola,” she giggled back.
“We need a lady up on the stage,” the MC said this time. Maude had been up, she’d ripped the dudes pants off and screamed, then he’d rubbed all over her and got her to run a soapy sponge over his chest and back… After that I’d started drinking more because I was still feeling pain, so I missed out on what happened, but whatever it was the crowd screamed louder than they had all night. Now, they needed another poor, sloppy chump. “Is there a Katarianne Crew in the crowd tonight?”
Nudging me with her elbow harder than was necessary, Maya pointed to the stage. “That’s you he’s calling.”
“No, it’s not. My name’s sloppy!”
“Katarianne Crew, we know you’re out there gorgeous, and we also know you’re as beautiful as your name. Now get up on the stage.”
Maya shot up out of her seat and started pointing at me. “She’s here, she’s here.”
There was no way you could miss her doing it, but there was definitely no way you could miss it when everyone else at the table stood up and yelled it too.
At the same time, three men jumped off the stage and jogged across the floor to me.
“Hey, babe,” a guy with black hair said as he got to me. “Time to make you soar.”
Through the drunkenness, I heard the word ‘sore’ not ‘soar’, easy mistake but totally different meaning. So, I did what any sane woman would do when a stranger said he was going to make her sore.
“I’m not into the red room of pain,” I yelled, trying to back away from him and hitting a hard lumpy surface that grunted. Pointing at Maude I added, “Pick her, she’ll let you do anything to her.”
“Aiyeeeee,” Maude screamed, jumping up and down. “Hell yeah I will.”
Shaking his head and grinning, the guy picked me up and carried me up to the stage.
“I don’t like pain,” I told him. “I’m a gamer. That means I like my laptop, my Xbox, games with weird characters in them, cheese balls, Cheetos, and food that you can eat that doesn’t make a mess.”
“Cool,” one of the other guys who’d jumped off the stage said as he walked beside us. “What games do you play?”
So I listed them. In a room where women were paying money to see the guys strip, and those guys were carrying me to the stage to whip the bejesus out of me, I listed all the games that I loved to play – and bonus, I ended up getting one of their gamer tags to add on Xbox because he played one of the games, too.
After they got me settled on the stage, I was trying to figure out which way I could run and my chances of getting to a door while I was seriously intoxicated, when the door I was staring at opened and in walked a bunch of pissed off Townsend men, Montgomerys, a sheriff, a tattoo artist, a deputy sheriff, a Jarrod, and three Klines who tripped over their feet and burst out laughing when they saw me sitting on the stage.
I was just about to point at them, scream, and run to the girls at the table when I remembered how they’d all stood up and fed me to the lions only minutes earlier. Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest and grinned at them.
The girls mistakenly thought I was having fun and started grinning back at me until the men arrived at the table. Even with the bright lights shining in my eyes, I could see their faces drop when they realized they were busted. This meant, though, that I also saw the expression on Jarrod’s face when he saw me sitting on stage. He wasn’t pissed – at least, not that you could see on the outside – he was what I’d guess was vaguely amused by my predicament. Then, his mouth slowly broke into a grin which confused me until two men wearing towels walked in front of me and cut my line of sight to the table off.
“Are you ready, gorgeous?” One of the soapy wet guys asked me, closing what little distance there was between us.
“No,” I answered honestly, because I really wasn’t.
“We’ll be gentle,” soapy number two assured me, but this just made my blood pressure go up even more.
My eyes flicked from soapy one to soapy two and back again. “Please don’t whip me. I’m not sure what my friends told you, but I’ve got a really low tolerance for pain. This morning I accidentally hit my toe on the leg of my bed and I cried for an hour.” Which was a lie, kind of. I’d only hopped around and whimpered for five minutes, then I’d spent twenty making sure it wasn’t broken. It should have been broken if you ask me, but those freaky foot digits always survived.
Soapy one looked at soapy two, and then they both burst out laughing. “We’re not going to hurt you, babe,” soapy two chuckled. “When we’re done with you, you’ll be feeling the opposite of pain.”
This I highly doubted.
Then they started loosening the towels. A tug here, a slide of a finger between the fabric and their skin there, another tug, then another, and before I knew what was happening, the towels were off and resting over their crotches meaning that the audience got an unencumbered view of their naked asses. Still, just in case they were going to drop the item onto the floor, I covered my face with my hands.
The audience went crazy around us, but I was struggling to join them in their naked hottie enthusiasm. I just wanted to go home, eat chips, and maybe watch Netflix with Jarrod - I was that basic!
A pair of hands gently gripped my wrists and lowered my hands and I realized I had a hottie number three now in the mix. “You don’t wanna miss this bit, darlin’,” he growled in my ear.
Blinking to get my eyes to focus, I looked to the side and saw that the audience was now standing up at the stage waiting for the finale. A movement in front of me got my attention, and in the next second, the towels went flying off to the side and the stage went dark as the lights cut out.
That didn’t mean I didn’t get to see something seeing as how they didn’t cut off soon enough. I could now break the news to Maude that a cock sock was just a plain black skull cap for the penis and balls. I could also tell her that hottie number one had put it over his balls, too, but hottie number two was letting his vegetables roam free.
It was too much for my brain, so I blindly stumbled to the edge of the stage – not caring if I fell to my death now – and went to jump down. Just as I’d committed to the jump by tipping forward, a strong pair of hands grabbed me around the waist and I was being lifted through the air until I was gently placed back on my feet and terra firma. I knew those hands, and I knew that cologne, so I launched myself at the owner and wrapped my arms around him, freaking relieved that the torture was over.
I felt the rasp of stubble on my cheek before Jarrod chuckled, “I doubt they’ve ever come across a woman who’s hidden from them when they’ve done that, baby.”
Tilting my face so it was in his neck, I was inclined to agree with that. “It was the worst moment of my life.”
With that, he straightened up and burst out laughing, getting the attention of some of the women who were now making their way back to their tables from where they’d been standing getting a closer look at naked, soapy butts. A small group of them stopped and stared at Jarrod with their mouth
s open and their eyes wide.
“Please tell me you’re one of the stage guys,” a blonde lady asked hopefully.
“Sorry, but no. I’m just here for my girlfriend,” Jarrod told them, shaking his head and holding me closer.
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars to get soapy,” blonde lady’s friend said, reaching into the purse that was dangling by a short strap on her wrist. “No, make that two hundred.”
I felt it as the muscles in his back that my hands were lying flat on tightened up. “No, but thank you for the offer.”
Not to be deterred, she said to her friends, “How much money have y’all got in your wallets. We’ll put it together for him.”
“Oh, good idea,” a redhead agreed as she dug her wallet out of her clutch. “I’ve got four hundred,” she told them, and then leaned in Jarrod’s direction and winked, “in ones.”
Deciding now was the best time to quit this, I tugged on his hand. “Come on, let’s get back to the table. I need a lot more alcohol than I’ve had.”
Blowing out a relieved breath, he walked us quickly toward where the men were now all sitting with the girls. That kind of shocked me because I was certain they’d hustle them out of the building, but instead they were sitting with bottles of beer.
Dropping my hand, Jarrod put his arm around me and tugged me into his side. “Was it that bad, baby?”
Shooting him a look that said it all, I decided he needed to know exactly how bad it was for me. “Maude was up there a while ago, and to numb the pain and embarrassment of it, I downed pitchers and shots. Then, Maya and I did some experiments on the speed of consumption via straws of the contents of pitchers. I was happily sloppy until I was taken on that stage and now I’m sober. Their skull cap wrapped penises sobered me up. To get over the pain I’ve just endured, I now need more alcohol, but I’m not sure there’s enough to get rid of the image burned into my retinas of construction socked cocks.”
Jarrod listened to all of this quietly, and when I was done he just blinked, then blinked again, then blinked again. I was just about to move around the table to where my seat was when he threw his head back and burst out laughing again, the cords in his neck standing out sexily as he did it. I vaguely noticed that the table had gone quiet as he did this, but I was enjoying this show too much to acknowledge why that might be.
Talk Flirty To Me: Cheap Thrills Series Book 4 Page 14