“D ude, I’m so fucked,” I groan, face-planting onto our table and rattling the silverware.
I feel Fulton pat me comfortingly on the head. “Aw, Gage.
Everything’s going to be okay,” he tries, but his pity is practically tangible at this point, and it’s almost as hard to swallow as the now-cold refried beans merging with the soggy tortilla chips on my plate.
“I had no idea the night was going to end like that. Like, yeah, I’m glad it ended like that, but now I’m headed straight for Caliville, and the brakes on the fucking car don’t work, and I’ve never really fallen for a girl before, and it’s all so scary, and —”
“I’m gonna be honest with you. I heard, like, none of what you just said,” Fulton tells me.
I lift my head up with an exasperated sigh, embarrassment slingshotting through my entire body and making it that much more difficult to sulk in peace. “I think I’m really falling for this girl,” I rephrase, and I’m ninety-nine percent positive that all my admission has done is exacerbate the blush pooling in my cheeks.
This is a big change for someone like me. Someone who’s never fallen for a girl before. Someone who prides himself on being a ladies’ man, when in reality, I couldn’t be further from it. I can’t stop thinking about Cali. I can’t stop thinking about the incredible night we had together, and how it ended on an even more incredible high note with her giving me a glimpse
of the soft, vulnerable side I know is under that cold exterior. Getting physical with someone too early never bodes well in the, um, emotional development side of things. If I was already feeling drawn to Cali emotionally, eating her out—which I don’t regret one bit, obviously—just made everything ten times more complicated.
I know I’m going to keep falling for Cali, and I also know she’s probably not going to fall for me. It hurts, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t just force myself to stop feeling things for her. And I can’t force her to feel things for me.
Fulton scoops up a hearty mountain of cheese, beans, sour cream, and chopped tomatoes on a flimsy tortilla chip, shoving the whole thing into his mouth while my own meal sits untouched, wasting twenty expensive dollars for gas station-quality nachos. I couldn’t eat if I wanted to. Nausea tears through my stomach, accented by those wonderful butterflies that have decided to take permanent residence in my gut for the foreseeable future.
Fulton’s brows pitch upwards. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”
“It is! It’s a terrible thing, Ful. I don’t think she feels the same way about me.” I’m one unsteady breath away from hyperventilating.
“I’m sure that’s not true —”
I lean over and yank Fulton by the collar of his shirt, shaking the table from the sudden hitch of movement, and I bring him so close that our foreheads are inches from touching. I want him to see the lunacy in my eyes. I want him to see the disastrous state of my appearance because Cali’s been haunting me ever since that life-changing night. My hair hasn’t seen a shower or comb in days, I’m riper than a jockstrap, and I’m wearing a jacket with so many mystery stains that it should be a goddamn health hazard.
“It is true. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. And I really, really fucking like her. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should keep investing time in this… situationship…if she’ll never truly be interested.”
Fulton’s shaking in fear, and the volume of our not-so-private conversation has broken through the quiet calm of the restaurant, garnering some particularly hateful evil eyes from the people around us.
“Dude, you’re scaring me,” Fulton whispers, eyes so wide I can see my crazy, disproportionate reflection in them.
“You should be scared,” I hiss.
He gulps and glances down at the death grip I have on his shirt, and I reluctantly release him, slumping back into the booth with another sigh that seems to echo off the brightly painted walls. I’m losing it, and the worst part is, Cali has no idea what she’s doing to me. I’m suffering all by my lonesome. I’m the only person to blame for being in this mess. I just had to make a deal with her for the next three months.
I’ve always kept women at an arm’s length to abstain from growing close to them, probably because of a harrowing loss I experienced in the past. I know firsthand how losing someone destroys a person. But I don’t want to choose that route this time. Cali’s different.
I always felt a surface-level attraction in my past relationships. They were great girls, but I never experienced any deeper emotion for them aside from a few skipped heartbeats here and there. With Cali, I can feel my heart everywhere. In my throat, in my stomach, in the soles of my feet.
Anatomically speaking, I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen.
Fulton sweeps a hand through his hair. “Okay, okay. I can tell that this is really bothering you, so I might have a solution.”
The last bit of my composure nearly boils over like a shrieking kettle on a too-hot stove. “What? Oh my God. I’ll do whatever I have to.”
I just need to…relax. I need to take it down a few hundred notches and realize that I’m blowing things out of proportion. What if Cali does like me, but she just shows it in a different way?
No, Gage. That’s ridiculous. Cali doesn’t look at you like anyone other than a fuck buddy. I mean, that’s what we are, aren’t we? We’re not together. And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to be together. So the smart thing to do would be to nip this thing in the bud before I make our business relationship more complicated.
But I’ve never been very smart. At least, not in the ways it matters.
“Did you bring weed with you?” I ask in a conspiratorial whisper, my gaze darting to where a joint may or may not be hiding in his pocket right now.
“What? No!”
“Ohhh. The harder stuff?”
Fulton deadpans, “No, Gage. I brought —”
I feel the weight of an arm sling over my shoulder, and then my body gets cramped into the furthermost side of the booth when my fucking teammates squeeze in next to me. Three of them, with their stupid, hockey-
built walls of muscle. Physiques that clearly overcrowd the capacity of this booth and squash me into the wall like a sad, little bug.
“Fulton sent us an SOS text,” Kit explains, showing me his phone screen.
Fulton: Help. Gage is losing it in the middle of Taco Bout It.
Fulton: Update: I think he’s going to shank me with a plastic spork.
My lips pinch together to make a psh sound, and I flap my hand. “I wasn’t going to shank him. I was just having a strongly worded talk with him.”
Bristol scoots in next to Fulton, and if you’re wondering, no, he didn’t barge into Fulton’s personal space and flatten him against the wall. “It’s alright, Gage. We’re here to help.”
Kit reaches for a laminated menu and begins poring over the afternoon specials. “Actually, I’m starving. I think I’ll order a carne asada burrito.
Ooh, how are the nachos here?”
A smile teases Fulton’s lips, one of those blatantly clueless and slap-happy smiles that chubs out his cheeks. “Oh, they’re great. You should get the beef-loaded nachos. Those are the best. Though I’d ask them to add their spicy guacamole for a good kick.”
“Okay, but how spicy? Like on a scale of one to ten? I need a seven at best. Anything lower and I can barely taste it.”
“Hmm. Maybe like a six? I know their hot sauce is really spicy. So, like, with the combination of the two, it’ll be a fifteen or something.”
I slowly reach for my spork with murder on my mind, but Bristol just shakes his head and moves it out of my reach like a parent confiscating something pointy from a child.
“Look, I appreciate all of you coming down here, but I don’t need an intervention,” I growl, shoving Kit and his gigantic body over so I can breathe without my lungs being crushed.
Hayes frowns sympathetically. “No offense, man, but you’ve been a bit of a mess these past few days. Clearly something’s up. I went into your room to get a load of your laundry earlier, and it smelled like an opossum died in there.”
Kit nods in agreement. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but you do smell —”
Rage rumbles through me so profoundly that it could’ve been a 7.5
earthquake on the Richter scale. “If you finish that sentence, so help me,
God. I. Will. End. You.” And I mean it. Bristol may have confiscated my weapon of choice, but my fists are just as effective.
“Gage, the first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one,” Casen says, completely ignoring my empty threat as he swipes a chip from my plate.
“This ‘intervention’ will never work,” I counter, doing air quotes in lieu of the middle finger I want to give them.
“Just try it. Maybe you’ll feel better talking about your problems rather than threatening us with the pointiest thing in the vicinity,” Bristol offers, throwing me one of his I’m-your-captain-and-I-know-what’s-best looks. He just has one of those inviting faces, you know? The face of a man you can tell your deepest, darkest secret to and he won’t alert the authorities.
“Fine. I have a problem. A Cali-sized problem. A five-foot-seven problem that I’m going to be stuck with for three months.”
One of the waitresses comes by to take the table’s orders—which end up covering a page and a half of her notepad—and Kit busies himself with working on the appetizer that just so happens to be my abandoned pile of nachos.
“What makes her so different than the rest of the girls you’ve been with?” Fulton asks.
Just thinking about Cali has my blood pressure rising. I’m surprised my brain’s even functioning enough to form a response to that. Usually it’s a hit or miss situation. She gets in my head and ties all my wires together, right after she gets done sucker-punching me in the gut with feelings. “I don’t really know. Everything? She’s just…she isn’t wooed by my status. She doesn’t want to get with me for the fame or the money. She doesn’t suck up to me either. She challenges me, and I guess a very twisted, masochistic part of me likes that,” I confess darkly like a time-weathered alcoholic confessing his problems at an AA meeting.
“Damn, dude. You must have it bad,” Kit mumbles through a disgusting mouthful of chips and cheese.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Hayes ponders me with a crinkled brow, then he holds his hand out.
“Can I see a picture of her?”
“What?” I choke out.
“I’m just curious.”
I fish my phone out of my pocket and go to the Sexy Stilettos website—
which I was NOT stalking—and scroll down to Cali’s professional headshot. I hand Hayes my phone, and he looks it over with concentrated focus. Everyone else at the table leans over to assess the rationality behind my minor breakdown, all murmuring in agreement with themselves.
“Mm-hm,” Hayes concludes. “Just what I thought.”
“What?” I ask, a low-level panic beginning to take the shape of a lead weight in my stomach.
Hayes pretends to shake his head like he’s harboring bad news, and then a chuckle sneaks out of him. “She’s way out of your league.”
I groan and fold my arms over my eyes to block out the teasing looks on my teammates’ faces, slouching further into the booth to hide from the humiliation that never seems to give me a fucking break.
“Don’t you think I know that? She’s beautiful. That just makes it ten times worse.” My words are muffled against my arms, but I’m not ready to face their annoying grins or pitiful stares. So far, Fulton’s “solution” hasn’t fixed anything. The only thing that’s come out of this intervention has been a half-baked plan of revenge for those who’ve wronged me (i.e. my teammates) and the bruised state of my dignity.
If you’re wondering, I’m going to glitter bomb their rooms. Glitter on the ceiling fan. Glitter in their beds. Glitter everywhere.
“They’re being idiots,” Bristol says to me, branching out from the main conversation that all the other guys seem to be having.
“What’s really going on, Gage?”
I slowly begin to move my arms off my face, feeling heat lick the back of my neck. I’ve walked this familiar path of shame before, and it’s a dead end. Actually, it’s a bluff that leads to a very jagged rock at the bottom. “I really like Cali, but she doesn’t reciprocate my feelings…at least, not to the same degree. And I don’t know whether I should see things through with her in hopes that maybe one day she’ll feel the same way, or cut things off completely before she stomps on my heart with her perfect stilettos.”
Would she actually stomp on my heart? Probably not, but what do I know?
“You’re worried if the relationship is worth pursuing,” Bristol summarizes.
“It’s not even a relationship,” I admit, swiping my finger through the condensation on my water glass.
I feel like this is an endless cycle. Me chasing after Cali—her giving me the “just friends” speech. Just because she was vulnerable with me for a single moment doesn’t mean she’s ready to be vulnerable with me in other areas. And of course I’d be willing to wait for her…but there’s a part of me that feels like a giant idiot who can’t take a simple hint. I don’t want to get my heart broken, and I know she has the strength to do it if she chooses.
Hell, she has enough strength in her pinky finger alone.
She’s got me in the palm of her hand, and she doesn’t even know it.
Bristol’s lips nudge into a warm-hearted smile. “I don’t know if this is what you want to hear, but if your girl is worth the heartbreak and the waiting and the sleepless nights of overthinking, then she’ll also be worth the possible love. You don’t know how she feels. Maybe she just needs time, or maybe she’s feeling the exact same way you are.”
My head perks up. “You really think so?”
“You talk about her all the time. It’s clear you really like her. I know you’re scared of wasting your effort and getting your heart broken, but you shouldn’t keep those fears from pursuing a connection that may truly be there. Heartbreak and love go hand in hand with one another. It just depends on whether that heartbreak is permanent.”
Bristol’s right—like he always is. I can’t predict the future. I can’t feel other people’s emotions. I’m only in control of myself. The heartbreak and the waiting and the sleepless nights of overthinking are worth it for Cali.
Everything is worth it for Cali.
Even if she never felt the same way about me, that wouldn’t stop me from being in her life. As much as it would pain me to know she doesn’t reciprocate my feelings, it would pain me even more to stop being around her. She makes me sane. She makes me happy.
“Is she worth it?” Bristol asks, grabbing a chip from the nearly demolished plate on the table.
She is, my heart says. I know she is.
MURPHY’S LAW
CALISTA
“H arder!” I scream.
“Oh, fuuuck. I—I can’t…”
“Don’t be a wimp. HARDER!”
“You seriously want me to go harder?”
“YES!”
Gage is currently on the floor of my dance studio, on his back like a turtle, grunting in pain as I stretch out his hip. His leg is folded at a ninety-degree angle, with me pushing it back as gently as I can to apply pressure to his hip flexor. He’s cussed at me about twenty different times—yes, I’m keeping track—and he’s screamed about five. Whatever he did to sustain such an injury is seriously taking a toll on him. I don’t know if I’ll get him limbered up in three months.
After everything went down, or should I say, after he went down, the dynamic of our relationship has changed more than I expected. Like, yeah, I’m still mean to him, but I also don’t mean everything I say anymore. For example, when he kept whining, I told him to swing a bat into his nut sack, but I didn’t mean it.
I think he’s making me soft, and I don’t like it. I just don’t like being vulnerable with anyone. Throughout my life, I only gave myself a small amount of time to be vulnerable. The rest of that time was dedicated to the responsibility I had to my family. It always felt like everyone else had it
worse than I did—my mother, my brother. It made it that much easier to sweep my emotions underneath the rug.
And now Gage is the first person in forever to have truly seen me so…
unguarded…and I’m scared. I don’t like trusting people with my soul because it’s already so fragile.
Though I will admit, the oral sex was great. It was the first time I didn’t want to rip Gage’s tongue out through his teeth.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he mutters breathlessly.
“I really am,” I say, situating my hands on his thigh to get a better grip.
Screw Gage for wearing a plain T-shirt during our session. It’s distracting. So distracting. Especially being so close to him. I can see every ab muscle of his stomach contract through the material, and his corded biceps flex while he holds his leg in place, outlining every protruding vein and bundle of brawn. Sweaty strands of hair fall into his eyes, giving him this permanent bedhead look that shouldn’t be as sexy as it is. It also doesn’t help that he smells amazing.
With a labored breath, Gage extends his leg, making me withdraw my hands from the very intimate position they were in.
“I need a break,” he wheezes.
I plop into a kneeling pose. “We’ve only been at this for twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, and it hurts like a bitch.”
“You’re a hockey player. Isn’t your pain tolerance supposed to be high?”
“I’m a goalie with about fifty pounds of padding on. Do you think I get hit that much?”
I shrug. “I’ve never seen you play. Maybe you’re a terrible goalie.”
He splays out all his limbs like a starfish, panting heavily and staring up at the sheetrock ceiling. “I’ll have you know that I’m a fantastic goalie,” he boasts.
“Oh, really? Then care to explain the injury I’m trying to help you stretch out right now?”
He lifts his head up only so he can narrow his eyes at me. “Touché.”
I almost laugh at that. See! See what he’s doing to me! I can’t control my body’s reaction to everything he does or says, and I’ve definitely tried to kill every mushy-gushy feeling fluttering around in my heart.
I clamber to a stance and help Gage up with an extended arm, our palms sweaty for two completely different reasons. He throws me one of his effortless, panty-dropping grins, and even with the shot lighting overhead, it’s probably obvious I’m blushing. I don’t blush. Ever. Especially not because of a man. I thought all these nerves would fizzle out by now, but I’m the same mess of hormones I was when we first made our deal.
Then, to rub salt in the wound, Gage lifts up the hem of his shirt and dabs the sweat caking his forehead, giving me an unobstructed view of his glistening, tanned abs. All six of them, each as defined as slates of stone, rippling with so much muscle that it physically shouldn’t be possible to carry that much ammo around. Not to mention that he has the most delicious trail of semi-dark hair traveling from his navel to the unexplored depths below his waistband.
He catches me ogling him, and I only know that because our eyes make fucking contact while he’s having his Zac Efron moment. All that’s missing is a sprinkler soaking him in water.
He doles out one of his look-at-me-I’m-so-hot smirks. “Like what you see?”
I almost don’t dignify his comment with a response. Almost. “I’ve seen better.”
Ugh, I can’t believe he has the gall to be this cocky. There’s nothing worse in this world than an attractive man who knows just how attractive he is.
“Really? Because you’ve been staring at me for an awfully long time.”
“Not my fault you don’t know how to wear a shirt properly.”
Stupid photoshopped-looking abs. Stupid smug smirk. This arrangement would’ve been so much easier if Gage was hideously unattractive. Yes, I’m staring at you, idiot. How can I not stare at you when you look like you’re the lovechild of Rolling Stone and GQ?
“Cali, are you flirting with me?” he teases, and the lower half of me gives a shameful throb. “If you wanted me to take my shirt off, you could’ve just asked.”
I sputter like an idiot because I can’t put into words how much I hated every second of that, and then I resort to the one trusty response that always gets my message across—two middle fingers. But Gage must’ve grown some kind of impenetrable armor over the past few days because he isn’t fazed by it. In fact, he blows me an air kiss.
I’ll take that air kiss and jam it down his throat.
And then he has the audacity to ask me such a preposterous question that it dismantles my entire floating chunk of universe.
“Can I watch you dance?”
I choke on a spit glob in my mouth. “What?”
“I want to watch you dance, Cali,” he elaborates.
He…wants to watch me dance? Nobody’s ever watched me dance before. Well, except for my students and Hadley. In college, I was majoring in dance, and I became really close to one of my contemporary professors during a stressful semester. Contemporary was the first dance style I ever took, and it was then when I realized that contemporary in particular had a way of allowing me to be vulnerable without talking through my feelings.
Dance was a way for me to escape from the stress of my other classes in college—from the state of the family I left behind, which continued to haunt me while I was hundreds of miles away from them.
After my semester with Ms. Katharine, she asked me if I’d ever be interested in being a teacher for a college-level contemporary class. Of course I said yes, so for the next semester, I was a dance teacher on the side.
Teaching others to embrace dance and work through their emotions wasn’t only rewarding, but it helped me understand my own emotions better.
So when my mother got sick my sophomore year of college, the first thing I allowed myself to feel was loss. Not just on account of my mother, but on account of the one outlet I’d grown to lean on—dance. I didn’t want to return to my old life. When I went to college, I thought my mother would get better. I thought I’d be able to have a normal college experience and step into an actual career. But all of that was taken away in the blink of an eye.
My mother’s condition had deteriorated so badly that she was no longer able to care for Teague, which necessitated my return home. And even if my father had stayed, there isn’t a bone in my body that would trust him to adequately care for my mother. He always did things half-assed, even when it came to the well-being of this family—which makes sense as to why he never bothered looking for a steady job to help keep us afloat.
When I told Ms. Katharine that she’d have to find another teacher to take over, she said she ran a dance studio in Riverside that was looking for a new instructor.
She saw how important dance was to me, and she didn’t want me to be without it. It was plain luck that a deal as good as that one fell into my lap
—that I’d be able to help others, help myself (to some degree), and help my mother with expenses. The only catch was that the dance class they needed an instructor for wasn’t a typical style of dance.
That’s when I found heel dancing. It was sexy, different, and combined all the foundations of other genres of dance into one. The thing that appealed most to me, however, was running a class where women, no matter their backgrounds or personal lives, could come together and share in the strength of what it meant to be a woman. That safe space isn’t always available in society, nor is it handed out to those who want it. Safety shouldn’t be a privilege; it should be a right. And I guess it felt like it was my duty to cultivate a safe space for others because Ms. Katharine’s contemporary class had been a safe space for me.
If there’s anything I want in life, it’s to be someone else’s Ms.
Katharine.
And while heel dancing isn’t something I’m ashamed of, I’m afraid to share it with other people. When I dance, all my emotions float to the surface, and everything’s so easy to read from an outside perspective.
Dancing lowers the façade I keep so firmly in place to hide my vulnerability. That’s why I’m afraid to let people look under the surface—
for them to see how broken I really am. And Gage wants under all my fucking surfaces.
“Yeah, not happening,” I rebuke, folding my arms over my chest.
“Why not?”
Why not? Why not? Oh, maybe because I’m an absolute mess of a human being who channels all her emotional baggage into her dancing, and you’ll be able to see just how messed up I am from a mile away. Then, upon seeing said mess, you’ll bolt for the hills and think to yourself, Phew, that was a close one.
“I know you may be used to girls bending over backwards for your attention, but I’m not one of those girls.”
Gage laughs heartily—which isn’t the reaction I was expecting—and my stomach somersaults with a nauseating flutter. “Pretty sure I had you bent over backwards the last time we were together.”
Oh my God. I can’t believe he just said that!
“Plus, you don’t need to vie for my attention when you already have it, Spitfire.”
Curse Gage and his surprising wittiness that does make him more likable but is overall infuriating. I’m not ready to dance for Gage. I’m not sure if I ever will be.
So I rack my brain for a solution to stop the unstoppable—the unstoppable being Gage—and I take a second sifting through excuses and ideas before one presents itself to me. “How about we dance together?” I propose, adjusting the hem of my polyester tank top.
Gage’s composure suffers a quick crack right down the middle, and his eyes enlarge to the size of discs, an unmissable blush scattering over his cheeks. “Dance? Together? Dance together?” he spews out.
“Yes, Gage. I mean, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you can kind of dance.”
“I…it’s just…” He’s scrambling for an excuse just like I was until his darting eyes make a connection with the culprit of this entire lesson. “My hip! Yeah, my hip. I can’t dance because of my hip, but you already know that.” The strangest bird-squawk of a laugh ejects from his mouth.
Damn. He really doesn’t like this idea. So I immediately love this idea.
Before he can feed me more pathetically unbelievable excuses, I divest myself of my tank top, throwing it to the side with a flirtatious wink in Gage’s direction.
Gage’s gone mannequin-still, his gaze now transfixed on my tits like there’s some kind of magnetic pull. A black mini romper gives my boobs a generous push, and the trim of it flares out in ruffled frills just below my butt.
I’m getting back at him for teasing me with all his stupid muscles this session.
How do you like the taste of your own medicine, Gage?
“Fuck,” he croaks weakly, eyes skating over my body with such razor-edge intensity that it makes me shudder.
With a sensual strut, I trail a single finger up his stomach, over his pecs, and across his collarbone. I stalk around him, making sure to keep continuous contact. “Come on, Gage. Dance with me.”
“I…”
I have no idea why he’s so nervous. Gage doesn’t strike me as the type to get nervous. He strikes me as the type of person to fight any nerve-type
feelings like one of those hypermasculine guys who claim they can fight a grizzly bear.
“You’re telling me you don’t like the feel of dancing intimately with another person?”
His chest rises in an erratic rhythm, and if I had to make an educated guess, I bet his heartbeat would break a heart monitor.
When he doesn’t answer me, I come up from behind and nudge my lips against his ear, whispering, “The feel of their hands all over you? The feel of sweat rolling down both your bodies?”
Gage groans so loudly that the noise resounds in the studio, all efforts to resist me slowly dwindling when I lick the small patch of neck just below his earlobe. He’s shivering just from a single touch, so wired with anticipation that I could do next to nothing and still have him begging on his knees—which, if we’re talking about Gage, he’d probably do in a heartbeat.
Since my heels give me some much-needed leverage, I’m tall enough to press my front up against his ass, smooth my hands down his washboard abs, and halt just above the crotch of his pants, which is currently straining with his erection. “The feel of their breath on your skin? How about their body pressed up against yours, where the most erogenous zones rub against each other?”
“Cali…” he growls.
“Are you really going to stand here and tell me you don’t want to dance with me?” I purr, my voice warmer than whiskey.
I can feel his stomach twitch underneath my fingers, and sadistic satisfaction funnels through my entire body in miniature, earth-shattering explosions. Wetness gathers in the gusset of my panties, triggering a needy pulse in my pussy which desperately craves some one-on-one attention with Gage’s engorged cock. I grind the slightest bit into his ass to relieve some of the pressure, and the tiniest noise barges out of him while his ass cheeks clench in tandem.
He grabs my hands to keep them from moving, exerting levels of restraint that I didn’t even know he was physically capable of. The guttural rumble in his throat nearly derails my whole seduction scheme. “If I get my hands on you, we won’t be doing any dancing,” he says lowly.
Promise?
“Show me. Show me where you’d touch me. Show me how I turn you on,” I demand.
Gage turns around abruptly, his dick jutting against my belly, just inches from my slick cunt—just inches from ruining me right here in the middle of the studio. “Fuck, Spitfire. You can’t ask me to do that.”
I’ll give him some credit. He actually looks torn.
“Why? Because you’re a gentleman?” I scoff.
He pins me with an intimidating stare, running his eyes over the sinfully low dip of my cleavage, and his throat clicks with an audible gulp.
“Because I’m not.”
Welcome back, sexual tension. I’ve missed you.
The beginning notes of Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” comes blaring through the speakers, and I start to swish my hips from side to side in time with the beat, simultaneously running my fingers through my hair and letting the volume of it billow behind me.
Gage pulls me into him so there’s no space between us at all, and I hang one arm over his shoulder as I roll my body against his, snagging his boner with my cunt. He pitches forward slightly as he throws his head back, growls of frustration slipping past clenched teeth and puttering out into hushed grunts. I’d turn around and grind on him if I didn’t think he’d come in less than three seconds.
But where’s the fun in playing it safe, right?
Before I get the chance to palm the bulge in his pants, Gage cups my pussy, grabbing the fabric of my romper and rucking it up in his fingers. I gasp loudly, the arm that was once slung lazily over his shoulder now steeling me in my moment of weakness. He pushes the offending material aside so that his fingers can inch their way over the seam of my panties, and my pussy reciprocates with an embarrassing leakage of arousal.
Gage leans into my neck, whispering, “You thought you could just torture me this entire session and get away with it?”
“Not hard when the man I’m dancing with has no self-restraint,” I retort.
“Any man in his right mind would have zero self-restraint when it comes to you.” He nips at my throat, teasing a bite that I know he’s not going to give me, and any resolve I’d planned to weaponize against him dissipates into nothingness. “Now are you going to be a good girl, or are you going to be a cock tease all night?”
It’s taking every muscle in my body not to moan right now. Gage is getting closer to his desired target, and all I want to do is feel his fingers inside me again, stuffing me full, making me gush down his knuckles and scream his name.
All my thoughts are frequent flyers on Arousal Airlines, and I fail to realize the weight of my next response before it materializes in the real world. “That depends. Are you going to man up and actually dance with me? Or should I find someone who will?”
I don’t have time to contemplate the consequences of what I just said before Gage grabs my hips possessively and moves my waist in a figure eight, his freakishly hard dick still fighting to escape the flimsy containment of his pants. He then squats down halfway, his hands migrating from the curves of my sides to the dough of my ass. He smacks my left cheek before settling for a grab, and I emit a gasp at the force of it, nearly losing my balance and tripping over my own heels. I run my hands roughly through his hair to try and regain some control, but I should’ve known it wouldn’t last long as he slowly begins to stand, dragging his nose all the way up my stomach and over the swell of my overspilling tits.
He’s standing over me a second later, our foreheads pressed together, our mouths inching closer at a slow-moving pace, prolonging the tension that’s snowballed within the last ten minutes.
Fuck, do I want to kiss him. So badly. And I don’t want to stop.
But the second our lips brush each other’s, the music cuts out in a staticky wail, and the ringing of my phone fills our ears instead. We’re both huffing and panting, and I’m mopping as much sweat from my face as I can. That’s when I notice Gage staring at me in a way I’ve never seen before. Not due to frustration or annoyance…it seems to be something stronger than all of that. Something that scares me as much as it tantalizes me.
“I’m sorry, I should get that.” I break away from our intimate position with a guilty heart, unplug my phone, and answer the unknown caller.
“Are you Calista Cadwell, Ingrid Cadwell’s daughter?” the speaker asks.
I freeze as my fingers grip the device tighter—as if squeezing it will somehow pacify the panic throwing me for a terrifying loop—and an oily sickness brews in my gut. “Yes, this is she.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Cadwell. Your mother has had a terrible accident.”