The music was so loud that it drowned out any chance at conversation. Sean grinned at the girl next to him, wondering how much money he’d have to spend before he could coax her into leaving the club and getting a hotel room. His roommate Patrick was nowhere to be seen, but Sean doubted he had any reason to feel sorry for him. The last time Sean had spotted him, he’d been grinding against a pretty redhead. If Sean had been in the mood, he would have been on the dance floor too, but tonight, the idea of sweating against a room full of people didn’t seem as appealing as it should.
The girl said something he couldn’t hear, and he leaned down until his ear was next to her mouth. Her lips brushed against him as she whispered something--some mundane detail about her life. Irritation bubbled in his chest, like water beginning to boil. Half because he was already pretty high-strung from a long day at work--the scotch doing nothing to calm him down--and half because he was now stuck listening to some girl whine about her own shitty job when, seriously, who else didn’t have a hard time? They were all at a bar for a reason, obviously. He wished there was an easier way to just go out and get laid. He wasn’t interested in a serious relationship--or one at all. He just wanted to get his dick wet.
She pulled back and looked at him with expectancy, and he nodded, tried to paste a sympathetic look on his face that hopefully satisfied her. Turning away, his attention caught on a sexy pair of legs. The perfect combination of tanned and toned that made him instantly hard as he pictured how they would look wrapped around his waist. Thighs gripping his hips, calves curved on his ass as he rode her against a wall.
The girl tugged on his sleeve. He glanced down at her distractedly, smiled, and then moved closer. Her eyes widened at this but she didn’t resist as he slipped an arm casually around her shoulder and tilted his head like he was listening intently to what she was saying. Over her hair, he continued checking out the other girl, letting his gaze move up her legs to the perfect roundness of her ass, barely covered by the tight, red minidress she wore like a second skin. He was a sucker for mini-dresses--he was a guy, after all--and he was an worse sucker for red ones. And this girl could pull it off, her body curved and luscious, her breasts the perfect size. It drove him crazier that the dress was long-sleeved and didn’t reveal any cleavage. It made his mind do dirty things, picturing her in a million different ways--
But that was when his gaze moved past her breasts and up to her face. He was shocked by a number of different things. First, that she was staring right back at him. The eye contact startled him, and then flooded him with embarrassment at getting caught. He pushed the feeling of guilt aside quickly. Did she think she was going to wear that dress and not get ogled at by a hundred guys?
And then another emotion swallowed him completely. Rage. Complete and fiery angry threatened to consume him. It was intense and powerful and irrational, but he didn’t care.
“What’s wrong?” the girl shouted up at him.
Sean glanced down at her quickly. “What?” He’d forgotten that he was supposed to be listening to her talk about her life.
She mouthed “Are you okay?” with a concerned tilt of her head. Adorable. But he was a little too old for adorable at this point.
He thought of the quickest way to get rid of her. “I need a cigarette!” he shouted, though he wasn’t sure she could hear him over the music.
Obviously she did because she made a disgusted face and stepped back.
Sean glanced up at the girl in the red dress. He felt a jolt when he saw she was still looking at him. This time, there was a smirk on her face that unsurprisingly sparked a fresh burst of anger in his chest. He spun around and pushed his way to the door.
The cool night air did nothing to crush his temper, but at least he didn’t feel suffocated like he had inside the club. Normally he didn’t smoke, but he sure felt like he needed one at that moment. He smiled at another girl leaning against the side of the building.
“Can I bum one off you?” he asked.
She shrugged and handed him her pack and lighter, and he fought off the urge to cough as he inhaled. It had been a long time since he’d smoked. It made him irritable if he did it for too long. He forced himself to hold the smoke deep in his lungs, waiting for the initial lightheaded feeling, waiting for it to calm his anger. The girl gave him an amused look before taking her pack from him and heading back inside. Sean let out his breath through his teeth. Well, there went any chance of him getting any tonight.
His mind turned again to the girl in the tight-ass red minidress. Mandy. Just her name made his fists clench. He didn’t know what made him angrier--that she was there looking hot as hell, or that he’d been caught checking her out. That her long, toned legs made him want to do nasty things to the rest of her body, that he still couldn’t get the image of her red-dressed and curves out of his mind. He was overcome with a mixture of shame and revulsion.
To be honest, he couldn’t quite remember how it all began. They had met a few months ago at a party. Admittedly, he had thought she was hot then too, and they’d been gathered with their friends, sipping wine and having a good time. Then someone had brought something up about the current political condition or something--hell, he couldn’t remember--and she had made some stupid, ignorant remark. What followed had been a heated debate, and Sean couldn’t recall why he had been so angry, just that every word out of her mouth had made him hotter, more furious than he’d ever been. It was the first time he’d ever felt any sort of desire to hurt a girl.
If he didn’t know any better, he could have sworn she was making herself seem stupider just to piss him off. Like she liked getting a reaction out of him. Which made him angrier, because he’d always hated those girls, the ones who acted idiotic just to get attention. And then, it seemed that when she saw how strongly he reacted to her goading, she did it even more, like she liked pissing him off.
When he left the party, he thought he could just forget about her and write it off as a bad night, but then it was like the universe wanted him to be angry all the time because he kept running into her. Strange, how that happened. He had never met her before, but after that night, it was like a miracle that they had never run into each other somewhere because suddenly they were seeing each other all the time. They seemed to have the same friends, know a lot of the same people. He would have named her as some sort of psycho stalker, except she really had been friends with a lot of his own acquaintances. It was just too much of a coincidence.
He knew that the best thing to do was avoid her whenever he did run into her, but there was something wrong with him. Wrong with both of them. Every time they did meet, she’d shoot him a smirk and start up another round of debate that tugged at the core of him. He would get into a fight despite all his resolve not to have anything to do with her. What was worse was that he was immature and petty during these arguments, losing all of the clever retorts he’d come up with every time he was done talking to her. It was like his brain shut down and his mouth took over--only his mouth was an idiot.
“It’s cause you want to fuck her,” Patrick said once. “And you can’t.”
Sean was so shocked that he couldn’t even think of a response. He just gaped at him, then...“Fuck you,” he’d burst out.
Patrick had only laughed because he knew he was right. And the worst part was, Sean knew it too. Because he did want to fuck Mandy, wanted to fuck her so hard that she shut that gorgeous mouth of hers. And he also hated himself a little for being attracted to someone so damn...annoying.
He sucked on the cigarette, wishing it was something stronger that could erase all thoughts of her from his brain. His hand was halfway to his mouth for another drag when the click of heels on pavement stopped him. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted, and every nerve ending lit up. He knew without turning that Mandy had joined him on the patio. He didn’t turn to look at her, wishing his body didn’t feel so damn alive around her. His heart rate had already kicked up a notch and his breath sounded like he’d just run up three flights of stairs.
“Are you going to look at me?” Mandy asked, her voice that soft, annoying twinkle that shot straight down his spine into his groin. “Or are you going to keep pretending like I’m not here?”
He pointedly ignored her.
She didn’t take the hint, walking around him and leaning against the wall where the other girl had been. The pose she struck made her look hotter, her shoulders propped against the bricks, her arched back emphasizing her curves and the roundness of her ass. She knew it. Their gazes met, her smoky makeup giving her a sexy, intense look.
Sean sucked on the cigarette, wondering if the haze he felt was a direct result from the nicotine or just the nearness of her. The smell of her was intoxicating. She wore a light spritz of perfume that was barely there. It was worse than if she had poured the damn thing on herself because it played with his mind, made him want to search for more of it, made him want to move closer so he could find hints of it on her neck, behind her ear, between her cleavage, and all over her body.
He blinked, forcing himself to look at her face.
“Are you still butt-hurt?” she asked, with a knowing, close-mouthed smile. Her lips matched her dress, red and matte. Kissable lips. He tried to gross himself out, thinking about the way the lipstick would stain his own mouth, get all over his shirt collar. But the idea of her red lips imprinting on stark white sheets only made him harder. What was wrong with him?
“I’m not hurt,” he snapped, hanging onto his anger. It was the only way he could think of to not grab her and press her against the wall. If he could stay mad long enough, he could escape without doing something incredibly stupid. “I just don’t like you.”
She grinned, showing off straight white teeth. “Well, I like you.”
He scowled. She hopped onto the ledge that bordered the patio from the rest of the street, letting her long smooth legs dangle, her knees nudging against the side of his thigh. He didn’t move away though he knew better than to let her touch him. His skin felt heated and feverish, his lungs constricting like he’d been running a mile.
“You said a lot of hurtful things too, you know,” she said, though the look on her face looked anything but hurt. She seemed...hungry. Predatory. “Why can’t we just both apologize and get along?”
“We went this long without being friends. I don’t see why we have to kiss and make up now.” He tossed the cigarette, and it bounced off the pavement with a satisfying red spark.
“Hmm. Now there’s an idea.”
He turned toward her, an insulting retort already on the tip of his tongue when suddenly, her legs kicked out. For a moment, he thought she had finally cracked and was going to hit him, but then those toned legs wrapped around his waist and he found himself pulled right up against her. She was stronger than he’d assumed--she looked so slender. But she wrapped around him with an intense and purposeful grip and it didn’t occur to him to push away. In fact, he was too surprised to do much of anything but grip the ledge on either side of her for balance. Then her hands grasped the sides of his face, and her lips were on his. She was kissing him.
Actually, kissing was kind of an understatement. She was practically eating him whole. His mouth opened before he could think to reject her, and her tongue was in, tasting and exploring and--damn, she was a good kisser. Just the right amount of pressure, increasing with every second, then retreating. The perfect cocktease. She knew exactly what he wanted and she wasn’t going to give him all of it. Not yet.
She tasted sweet and intoxicating. Poison, that’s what she was. Her entire existence was like an infectious wound, eating him raw from the inside. If only it didn’t feel so damn good. Already, he’d shifted closer, one arm wrapped around her, pulling her tight so he could grind his rock-hard boner against her belly. He could feel the heat of her through her dress, and she shifted her hips a little so that he fitted right against the apex of her thighs. He groaned against her mouth, his focus consumed with her kiss, the quick darts of her tongue, the taste and wetness of her. Her fingers in his hair, tugging to the point of pain, but strangely turning him on more.
His body was so hot, he wondered if he was sick. Feverish. He sure felt sick. Twisted. He couldn’t fight it, this bizarre way he felt about her. He moved with a mixture of lust and annoyance--he wanted to fuck her, but he also wanted to punish her for the infuriating way she’d pushed herself into his life. All the petty arguments. All the times he’d made a fool of himself because she goaded him.
His fingers were gripping her hips, pulling on her dress against his will. He could practically feel skin when suddenly a whistle broke through the haze of lust.
Pulling back slightly, he glanced over his shoulder. Apparently, they had an audience. A couple grinned back at them knowingly, and Sean looked away, bending his head over Mandy’s neck.
“Shit,” he burst out. Shame washed over him. You would think the embarrassment was enough to soften his boner, but no. He was still rock hard, and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. Not with Mandy around.
“Let’s get out of here,” she whispered, giving his hair one last, erotic tug. He couldn’t say no.