Virgin Daiquiri

by Elise Faber

  And then I was thinking of all the parts she could press that mouth to.

  And then my dick twitched.

  Fuck.

  She stepped forward and snatched the cell out of my hand.

  And maybe the devil that had her biting me invaded me for a minute, because as she turned away, starting to stomp back into the front room, I couldn’t help calling, “You’re welcome.”

  She froze.

  Spun slowly to face me.

  Fuck, she was beautiful with her eyes blazing like that, the color high on her cheeks, her hair fanning out behind her. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice that she was curved in all the right places, that my hands itched with the memory of briefly having those curves under my palms.

  She strode toward me and jabbed a finger into my chest. “I don’t know what your problem is,” she hissed. “But—”

  I captured that finger, brought it up to my mouth and nipped at the tip. “You’re my problem, darlin’.”

  A shocked gasp paired with her trying to snatch her finger back. “You—y-you—”

  “You’re beautiful, darlin’,” I whispered. “And I liked kissing you way too much. That’s the honest truth,” I added when it looked like she would argue. “But I’m not a good man and that— I shouldn’t—” I shook my head, cutting off the words as familiar guilt came over me again. I hadn’t been able to save Brooke’s brother, hadn’t bothered to look after Brooke. I hadn’t even been able to fulfill my military contract because I’d been injured and—

  Fuck. Enough.

  But just like so often over the last year, I wasn’t able to quiet the thoughts and insecurities.

  Because at the end of the day, all I was good for was mixing a mean Cosmopolitan, pulling a beer with just the right amount of head from the tap, and running the occasional troublemaker from the bar.

  Booze.

  Bouncing.

  Not infiltrating beautiful, innocent women’s lives.

  The anger faded from her face.

  She went quiet for a long moment, that finger in my grip relaxing. But then she shocked the shit out of me by turning her hand and resting it along my jaw, cupping it gently. “You rescued my purse,” she murmured. “You can’t be that bad.”

  My breathing stalled at the gentle touch.

  It was almost more intoxicating than the kiss. Almost.

  “You don’t know what I’ve done,” I murmured, unable to believe the words were coming out of my mouth. “You don’t know what I’ve seen. What—”

  Sympathy in her blue-green eyes.

  Then she rose on tiptoe, and her lips were on mine.

  Heat.

  Sweet as sugar.

  Then the sugar disappeared.

  “Dinner’s at seven p.m.,” she murmured, dropping back down to her feet. “72 Star Ridge. It’s the yellow house on the corner with white trim.”

  She strode away, leaving me with my jaw dropped open, no doubt a shell-shocked expression on my face. But I managed to recover enough to ask her, just before she moved around the corner, “What’s your name?”

  Her feet stopped moving, those blue-green eyes drifted over her shoulder. “Iris.”

  I was still staring after her, thinking that was the absolute perfect name for her when I heard the front door open and shut.

  The click of it closing made me jump.

  Then realize I’d better figure out what I was going to bring to Iris’s house for dinner.

  Because I knew that I might be a lot of things—a failure, a shitty friend, a man who possessed an exceptionally powerful RBF—but my mom had at least raised me to be a good guest.

  So, I didn’t show up at someone’s house emptyhanded.

  And while I knew that I probably shouldn’t be going down this minefield, that it was stupid to inflict myself on a woman I’d known two seconds after meeting her was way too good for me, I also wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to show up at Iris’s with flowers or a bottle of wine.

  Because maybe I’d find exactly the right thing and she would smile at me like I’d hung the moon again, like she had when I’d pointed out her purse.

  And maybe that meant she’d let me kiss her again.

  Four

  Iris

  The knock at the door came precisely as the clock over my microwave turned from 6:59 P.M. to 7:00 P.M.

  He was punctual.

  He . . . was nameless.

  My nerves threatened to swell up and overwhelm me for the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours—well, the last eighteen hours because, yes, I’d been counting down the minutes, alternating between horror that I’d both kissed and invited a stranger to my house and excitement that I’d both kissed and invited a stranger to my house.

  I didn’t take risks.

  Ever.

  Well, that wasn’t precisely true.

  I hadn’t taken risks up until the last month, until thirty-two days ago when I’d surprised Frank at our house for our anniversary, bringing dinner and booze and his favorite homemade cherry pie . . . and he’d clearly forgotten about the significance of the date.

  Seven years I had spent with him. From junior year of high school through college through starting a career. He’d given me a ring. We’d set a date.

  And he was fucking a string of women on the side.

  And he’d given me gonorrhea.

  Fun times.

  But I’d had the antibiotics, had been given the all clear, and I’d decided that I couldn’t live in my small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas any longer. I couldn’t deal with the fact that everyone I knew and had grown up with, people who’d claimed they were my friends, people who’d interacted and talked with me on a regular basis, that not one of them had thought I should know that the man I was going to marry was sleeping with women who weren’t me.

  Well, that was probably because the women he was fucking were the same ones I’d once considered my friends.

  Another knock had me blinking away the past and wiping my hands on a towel.

  I hurried to the door, glancing through the window at the side and seeing that it was indeed the unnamed bartender from Bobby’s.

  He saw me through the glass, gaze drifting from my face to my toes then back up, and I watched as his eyes warmed, his expression relaxed, and he smiled. That smile had me freezing in place because it was huge and unapologetic . . . or maybe that wasn’t quite the right word, because it was more like that grin lit up his face, removed any walls and barriers, and gave me a peek at something soft and vulnerable underneath.

  And clearly, I was delusional if I thought I could read that much from a quirk of the lips.

  Either way, I stood staring at him for far too long because he, still smiling, pointed to the door.

  “Oh,” I murmured, shaking my head slightly and reaching for the knob.

  Doh. It would help to actually let the man whom I invited for dinner into my house. I flipped the lock and tugged open the door.

  “Hi.”

  As far as greetings went, it wasn’t the most original, but it tended to get the job done.

  “Hi,” he murmured.

  Good. We were on the same level.

  Inwardly snorting, I invited him in, taking the little potted Christmas tree he extended.

  “I thought that since you’d just moved into the area, you might not have had time to decorate . . .” His words trailed off as he spun to take in my living room, which had been absolutely plastered with Christmas décor.

  I like Christmas, okay?

  Well, scratch that. I love Christmas, and when I’d moved out of the house Frank and I had bought—thankfully also the reason we’d put off our wedding for a year since our entire wedding fund had turned into house fund—I’d taken all of our Christmas stuff.

  And because I loved the holiday, I had a lot.

  Three artificial trees.

  Twelve nutcrackers in various sizes.

  Glittery wreaths and ribbons and festive
tea towels. Pine-scented candles, strands of cranberries and popcorn, and—

  Oh crap. It looked like my house had vomited up St. Nick. Which might be fine for someone I knew, someone who understood that my crazy extended to strictly this holiday and that I did not, in fact, have a shrine to all things Father Christmas in my bedroom.

  But for this beautiful man, who was gorgeous enough to be gracing the silver screen, who was as sexy as a young Denzel Washington, and who definitely had that hint of his badassness from The Equalizer, me vomiting up St. Nick was less cool.

  I bit my lip when he glanced back, eyes wide. “I don’t think you need that—” he began and reached as though to take it back.

  “No!” I said, clutching it to my chest. “No take-backs.”

  That smile again.

  A curl of heat slid through my stomach, traipsing north and making my nipples bead against the cotton of my bra, but also maneuvering south, coiling between my thighs and dampening the material there.

  “No take-backs?” he asked.

  “Uh-uh,” I muttered, still hugging the tree and neatly side-stepping him, just to make sure he didn’t attempt to wrestle the tiny conifer from my grasp.

  I had the perfect spot on my mantle, and I moved that way, shifting a couple of the nutcrackers to one side, straightening the festive fabric I’d draped there, and then settling the adorable little tree there.

  Smiling, I touched one of the tiny gold globes that hung from a branch.

  “I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use the term take-back since high school,” he said quietly, coming to my side, though his eyes were on my mantle. “Also, not sure if I should be worried by the sheer volume of nutcrackers you own, darlin’.”

  I turned to face him. “What’s your name?”

  Amusement in his deep brown eyes. “Brent.”

  “Brent what?”

  “Collins.” A beat. “And you’re Iris what?”

  “Hannigan.”

  Another smile. “So we’ve got Brent Collins and Iris Hannigan in a house where Christmas exploded, and Iris possesses a shit-ton of nutcrackers that she can use to keep me in check if I get out of line.”

  I snorted. “They’re purely for decorative purposes.”

  His eyes drifted down and back up. “That pretty little apron purely decorative, too?”

  Him mentioning my apron had me gasping and sprinting for the kitchen as I remembered. “My pie!”

  I loved baking and cooking and actually had a commercial kitchen just a couple of blocks away. It was part of the reason I’d moved into this neighborhood, part of the reason I’d put a full year’s rent down on this cottage when I’d seen it. Even if the house hadn’t been adorable and the commercial kitchen being rented from the same real estate company, being able to use my half of the proceeds from the sale of the house Frank and I had owned for something positive had been a major selling point. Being able to bake in a space that wasn’t my own kitchen was another, especially when my contract with the local supermarkets for the last four years had recently expanded, as well as my online sales growing almost faster than I could keep up with.

  What I didn’t do was burn stuff.

  Until today.

  My face fell when I pulled out the cookie sheet with the tray of mini pies I’d baked.

  Four because I loved pie.

  Mini because I figured with only the two of us, we wouldn’t be able to eat four entire pecan, cherry, pumpkin, and chocolate custard pies.

  Four that had now become one.

  Because only the chocolate was chilling in the fridge. The pecan, the cherry, and the pumpkin were . . . charcoal.

  Not over-caramelized. Not golden brown on the edges.

  Charcoal.

  I stared at the once-pretty pies, the handcrafted crust, the lovely wreath decorations I’d cut out and strategically placed on the pumpkin, the Christmas tree on the pecan, the dancing gingerbread men on the cherry . . .

  All charcoal.

  Stupidly, my eyes stung.

  It was only food, only dinner for a man I’d just met, only—

  The cookie sheet and pot holder disappeared from my hand, was plunked onto the counter. Before I could protest to put it on a trivet, I found myself tugged toward the sink, and my fingers shoved under a stream of cool water.

  I hadn’t even realized they were stinging until the cold soothed the hurt.

  But then the hurt was gone, and then the hurt ceased to exist. Because Brent was very close. His scent surrounded me, the masculine spice warming me from the inside out. I found myself taking a deep inhale, pulling the smell into my lungs, wanting to etch it on my soul so I could drop back into this moment any time I wanted.

  Or perhaps, slightly less painfully, I could attempt to bottle it.

  Both thoughts were impossible.

  Both thoughts gave evidence for why I had lost my mind . . . and my filter.

  “How in the world is it fair that you’re so beautiful?” I blurted, staring up at the strong lines of his jaw and nose, the warm amber of his eyes. He was sporting a little stubble today, and I wanted to run my palm over it, feel the roughness catch my skin.

  I was so caught up in the scent of him, in imagining my hands on his face and body, that it took my mind a moment to catch up with my words.

  My eyes flicked to his face, saw his expression was unfathomable.

  Probably looking for a quick exit. Frank had always tended to disappear when I went off on one of my tangents. And my tangents hadn’t been anything like me wanting to etch someone’s scent on my soul or blurting out how beautiful someone was—though Brent was definitely in the gorgeous A-list celebrity bent. They’d been more along the lines of should I risk adding a dash of nutmeg to my apple pie recipe or is that too far out there?

  Brent didn’t reply.

  Shit.

  Strange woman inviting an almost-stranger home.

  Now, I was rambling about his beauty.

  Ugh. What was I going to do next? Offer to wear his skin like a suit?

  I shuddered, the memory of the horror movies that Frank used to subject me to flaring through my brain. Too much. Too creepy. Too . . . much inner monologue when the near-stranger was staring at me, suddenly intent.

  Because of the blurting, you moron!

  So fucking stupid. My cheeks flared hot, my throat closed up, and I jerked my hand free of the water, quickly wiping it on my apron and turning for the counter where Brent had left the cookie sheet.

  I picked up the discarded potholder and snagged the pies, dropping them one by one into the trash.

  Pecan.

  Shit-canned.

  Pumpkin.

  Peace out, mofo.

  Cherry—

  Brent snatched it and the potholder from my hands.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I reached for it. “They’re ruined.”

  “Because they’re a little burned?” he asked, holding it aloft.

  “A little?” I asked. “They’re charcoal, totally inedible, and—”

  He tugged off the burnt crust on the top, dumped it in the trash, then held it out. “Not charcoal, not inedible. See? Problem solved.”

  “I can’t serve that.”

  He dipped a finger into the cherry pie, probably burning it worse than I’d burned mine, but then it was in his mouth, sucking off—

  Sucking. Off.

  Dear Lord.

  I wanted to—

  The sudden bolt of sexual desire that shot through me was so much stronger than anything I’d ever felt with Frank, what had driven me to invite him here, to participate in that kiss in his office, to be obsessed with his scent, his body. Then his finger slid out from between his lips with a soft pop, clean of filling, and I stared at his hand, at the finger, wondering about all of the things those body parts could do.

  But this wasn’t me.

  I didn’t obsess over men’s bodies. I didn’t want to jump them just because they smelled good.
>
  I didn’t kiss strangers.

  I—

  “This is delicious,” he murmured. “We can scoop it out of the crust and eat the filling with ice cream.”

  “I—” A shake of my head. “But my crust. I—”

  “That,” he said, “I think you’re right about.” He broke off a blackened edge and popped it into his mouth, chewing then wincing. “Yup. Charcoal. But, darlin’, just because something gets a little singed on the edges doesn’t mean that it needs to be thrown away.”

  “It does when a girl makes her living baking pies just like these.”

  He set the pie on the counter, the potholder beneath it. “Are you the girl who makes her living baking pies?”

  I wrinkled my nose then admitted, “Yes.”

  A shrug. “Well, I bet they’re delicious.” He dipped his finger into the pie again, and while unsanitary, I couldn’t work up any real disgust or outrage. Not when he licked off the filling again, this time with a moan that made my pussy clench. “Yup. I could see it.”

  “Y-you can see it?”

  He unleashed the smile. “Yup,” he said again.

  “Are you insane?”

  Brent had been reaching for the pie again, finger extended, my thighs already trembling in anticipation of where that digit would end up, when I blurted the question. At my words, he froze, and one eyebrow went up.

  “You’re at my house on the invitation of a woman you don’t know, an invitation I’m guessing you accepted because you’re a nice guy who rescues purses and didn’t want to make a lonely woman who’s new in town feel bad for issuing you an inappropriate invite.” I sucked in a breath. “And a lonely one who all but assaulted you in your office, just because there was mistletoe overhead, and I was desperate to kiss your gorgeous mouth.

  “And then you show up with the most adorable little Christmas tree—which is amazing and cute and absolutely perfect, just like you—but then I burn dessert and it’s my livelihood to not burn pies because I sold fifty thousand of them to grocery stores this year.” I shoved my bangs out of my eyes. “And worse, now I’ve been going on and on about how beautiful you are and thinking about how much I want to kiss you again, when I definitely know I shouldn’t be thinking any of those things because you’re way out of my league.”