Jane
“That man is getting on my last nerve.” I grabbed at a T-shirt from the rack angrily and cursed under my breath as it fell to the ground. “Calm down, Jane,” I lectured myself as I bent down to pick it up.
My heart was racing and my face was flushed, and more than that, I was disappointed. I’d actually thought that Tate and I were really getting to know each other, but no, of course, I’d been dreaming. He was just a pig whose mind was filled with thoughts of sex twenty-four seven. When he’d given that money to the homeless man, I’d seen a different side to him. A caring side. A side that thought about other people. I’d been wrong. What an asshole. I was fuming. I walked over to another rack and started looking through the yoga pants. Why the hell had he asked me about myself? And whoa, I’d been surprised that he’d shared so much about himself and his family. Of course, I’d known he was rich from googling him, but I hadn’t known that he’d grown up in the South and that his family was so privileged. He had to be from old money. Old—white—Southern money. There was nothing progressive about that.
But can you blame him for that? a voice whispered in my head.
“No,” I answered myself out loud. I took a deep breath and exhaled. This was starting to get complicated. Mentally it was getting harder and harder for me to compartmentalize Tate into little boxes. This was about more than just sexual attraction and him being a pig. I was more invested than that, though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I mean, where could this possibly go? He was my boss. He didn’t believe in love and marriage from what I could see. He was a manwhore, and he came from a completely different world than me. If his dad didn’t like his sister’s fiancé because he was a democrat, what would his family think about me? I’d never fit into that world. Not that Tate had even asked me to. Most probably, all he wanted from me was sex, and eventually, he’d find some blue-blooded Southern princess and end up with her.
As I grabbed a pair of sweatpants, I shook my head. Nah, I couldn’t see him in that situation, either. He might be an asshole, but he was stubborn. I was pretty sure that no one could make him do something he didn’t want to do.
By the time I got to the checkout line, I was feeling a little calmer. My plan for the gym was still in my mind, and I was going to go for it. Why should he be the only one to make me uncomfortable? I was going to have a little fun with him as well.
“Did you get lost?” He asked me as I exited the store with my bag.
“Pardon me?” I looked at my watch. “I was gone eight minutes. In that madhouse. Do you see how packed it is? You’re lucky I was only eight minutes.”
“If you’d let me come into the changing room with you, I know what we would have spent eight minutes doing.”
“Ouch, that doesn’t say much about you, does it?” I pouted my lips at him. “They have medication for that, you know.”
“Medication for what?” His eyes narrowed, and then he burst out laughing. “Ah, you’ve got jokes. I’m not saying I’m an eight-minute man. I’m just saying that there are some circumstances when you want to pound it out quickly.”
“Well, I’d rather not be with a man that wanted to, and I quote, ‘pound it out.’”
“Don’t tell me—you like to be with a man that spends an hour on foreplay and then another hour making love to you in a bed of rose petals with John Mayer songs playing in the background?”
“No comment.”
“No, I want to know,” he said as we started walking back down Market Street. “What sort of lovemaker do you prefer?”
“That’s none of your business.” No way in hell I was going to tell him I was a virgin.
“Or do you prefer it hard and quick?” he asked, his blue eyes laughing at me. “Do you like it from behind?”
“You’re asking me if I like anal?” I raised an eyebrow. “That is so inappropriate.”
“No, but if you want to answer that, I’m cool with it. I was wondering if you were into doggy style.” He winked. “I’ve heard from some women that doggy style hits a spot that missionary doesn’t.”
“Why don’t you talk about it with those women, then?” I ignored the jealous butterflies in my stomach. “I’m sure they are more interested in having that conversation with you than I am.”
“Hmm, I have a question for you.” He licked his lips.
I groaned. “What now, Tate?”
“Well, it’s not a question, really. I just want you to tell me something about yourself that you’ve never told someone else, or that only a few people know about you.”
“Huh?” I blinked in confusion. That was so far out of left field that my mind went temporarily blank. “Are you also going to share something with me that few people know?”
“Sure, I wouldn’t have asked you if I wasn’t willing to share.”
“I don’t want to know your cock size, either,” I said, and.
“Well, that’s not really a secret.” He winked at me. “I’m pretty infamous.”
“Oh, no!” I patted his arm and gave him a sympathetic smile. “It’s that small?”
“Small!” He burst out laughing. “If you only knew, my dear.” He grinned, and I blushed because the truth of the matter was that I did know a little bit. That little lap dance I’d given him had been enough to show me that he was packing in ways that most men weren’t. I might not have had sex before, but I’ve seen cocks in person and in videos.
“So, you would tell me something real? Not related to sex?”
“But aren’t all the best things related to sex?” He grinned and then before I could reply he said, “But yes, I agree to tell you something not related to my prowess in the bedroom.”
“I don’t trust you.” I pursed my lips. “If I agree to this, you have to go first.”
“Okay, I trust you, so I will go first.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “In fact, I’ll tell you two things to show just how trustworthy I am.”
“Go on, then.”
“Firstly, when I was young, I took part in Civil War reenactments with my grandfather.”
“Oh wow, okay.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Cool?”
“Surprisingly enough, it was quite cool.” He chuckled. “Don’t judge me. But I enjoyed it. We reenacted the Battle of Johns Island near Charleston.”
“I have to admit that that means nothing to me,” I apologized. “I don’t know much about history, let alone the Revolutionary War.”
“The Civil War and the Revolutionary War were different things.” He laughed out loud. “We fought the Revolutionary War against the British to gain our independence, that was 1775 till, I think, 1783. We fought the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, and that was a fight between the Union and the Confederate states, or as people like to refer to them today, the Northern and Western States vs. the South.”
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded. “That had something to do with slavery, right?”
“Essentially.” He nodded. “The Southern states weren’t happy with the abolitionist movement to free slaves and felt that States should be able to decide for themselves if they wanted to keep slavery.”
“Hmmm.” I didn’t say what I wanted to say because I didn’t want to offend him.
“You look pissed off.” His eyes pierced mine. “I don’t think slavery was a good thing, Jane. Not at all. I’m glad it was abolished when it was. In fact, I think it never should have happened.” He sighed. “I know you might look at me and see a man from the South, a very handsome man with golden-blond hair that shines like the sun and cornflower-blue eyes that you can get lost in, but I don’t want you to prejudge me because of that. I’ve known my own struggles. We all have.” He paused as if he wanted to say something, and then sighed again. “I don’t want you to think that just because I enjoyed taking part in the reenactments that I thought slavery should have existed for longer than it did.”
“I never thought that.” As I said it, I realized that was true. For all of his flaws, I truly didn’t think Tate was a man who held antiquated ideas about people. “To be honest, it sounds like an interesting experience. When I was younger, I went to Renaissance fairs with my best friend, Violeta, and those were fun too. I celebrate learning about and from our past. Nothing is ever black and white.”
“You’re right about that.” His eyes crinkled as he stared at me. “I would have liked to have seen you dressed up as a bar wench.”
“Tate, I was twelve when I went. So unless you’re a pedophile, I highly doubt you would have liked to have seen chubby little Jane in a bar wench outfit.”
“Touché.” He threw his head back and laughed. “I wouldn’t mind seeing tight-body current Jane in one, though.”
“I don’t have a tight body, and even if I did, you would only be seeing it in your dreams.” I wrinkled my nose at him.
“How did you know what I dreamed about?” He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes in response. “Okay, I owe you one more fact, and then you have to tell me something.”
“Yeah, I guess that was the agreement.”
“So, this is something I don’t normally share with people, but … I like to write.”
“Write?” I stared at him. “Like books?” For a few seconds, I wondered if he was talking about the notes we’d been writing.
“No.” He shook his head. “A book is too advanced for what I do. I like to write short stories.”
“Oh, really?” I was surprised. “What sort of short stories?”
“Just whatever I can write in ten minutes.” He laughed. “It’s something that helps me to de-stress.”
“Any particular genres?”
“No.” He shook his head and then he smiled awkwardly. “I’m not a good writer or anything. I just do it for fun.”
“That sounds cool. I’d love to hear one sometime.” The words were out of my mouth before I had time to think. Why had I told him I wanted to hear one? He would read far too much into it.
“I have one on my phone if you’d like to hear it.” He smiled. “We’re almost at the gym, but maybe later sometime?”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
“So now it’s your turn. Tell me something no one really knows about you.”
“That’s hard.” I chewed on my lower lip. “I’m pretty much an open book.”
“Not to me, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” I stared at him for a few seconds and then said. “I like to paint, usually with acrylics, but I’m interested in learning oil painting as well. I’m not good or anything,” I said quickly, lest he think I was some sort of Georgia O’Keefe or Frida Kahlo.
“I bet you’re better than you think.”
“I doubt it. I just like to sip a glass of wine and paint something. It helps me to relax.”
“Sounds fun. We both have these creative extracurriculars. We should do them together sometime.” He sounded genuine in his suggestion.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe we can meet up and do some writing and painting?” he asked almost shyly. “I’d say you could come over to my place, but I feel like you might end up in my bed and then you would think I only invited you over to fuck.”
“Tate, does everything always go back to sex with you?”
“Of course not.” He grinned. “So will you come over to my place to write and paint?”
“No.” I laughed. “You’ll have me trying to be your nude model or something.”
“Maybe I want to be your nude model.” He winked, his blue eyes laughing at me. “I could be your six-foot Adonis.”
“What if I said yes?” I said suddenly. “What if I said, yes I want you to be my nude model and I want you to do whatever I ask of you?”
“Is that a real question? I’d be in so fast.” He looked at me hopefully. “Was that a real ask?”
“No, Tate. I do not want you to be my nude model.” I rolled my eyes at him, but heat rushed through my body at the thought. I was lying through my teeth. I would absolutely love for Tate to model for me. I’d love to study his cock under the pretext of needing to examine it for my painting. Honestly, it wouldn’t matter how long I stared at it, my painting would still look the same. I enjoyed painting, but I wasn’t good at it. I probably had the artistic skills of a first grader. Not that he knew that, of course. I could pretend I was creating a masterpiece.
I smiled to myself at the thought.
“What’s so funny?” Tate’s eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.” I gave him my most innocent smile. “Is this the gym?” I asked as we stopped outside the Equinox facility.
“Saved by the fitness bell,” he said. “You were thinking naughty things about my cock, weren’t you?” He leaned forward and whispered, “It’s okay, you can tell me.”
“You wish, Tate.” I pushed past him and headed into the gym. Maybe this hadn’t been my best idea. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to join Tate in the gym and tease him slightly, but now I wondered if the person I was going to be teasing most was myself.
“Meet you by the treadmills in ten minutes?” Tate asked after I’d finished signing my temporary fitness pass.
“Sure,” I said with a quick nod. “So, there are separate changing facilities then? I know you mentioned a coed steam room before.” My mind was racing. How was I going to slip the note inside his bag?
“There are coed and male and female changing rooms and lockers. Do you want to use the coed?”
“What do you normally use?” I asked him, curious.
“Honestly?”
“Let me guess, the coed?”
“Actually, no. I usually use the male locker rooms. Most guys here use the coed rooms hoping to get lucky, so most of the time the male rooms are free.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I do use the coed sauna and steam rooms though.”
“I’m sure.”
“Maybe we can go in the steam room afterward?”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ll think about it.” I already knew that I was going to go into the steam room, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him know that. To be honest, I had no clue what I was doing, and I wish I’d asked Magnolia her opinion before I’d just volunteered to join Tate at the gym.
“Okay, well, this is the locker room.” He pointed to a room on the right. “You can put your bag in one of the lockers. All of them have free locks. I’ll leave my bag by number fourteen. My bag doesn’t fit in the locker, so I place it by the side.”
“You’re not nervous someone will steal something?”
“No.” He chuckled. “The membership here is expensive and exclusive. No one needs to steal my dirty drawers.”
“Okay, then.” I shrugged. But inside I was dancing with glee. His bag was out in the open. The letter writer could very well be someone at the gym, and from the looks of it, there were plenty of women here who wanted to get to know him.
“This is the ladies changing room.” He stopped. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Okay.” I walked inside the room. I was going to place the note in his bag before I met him by the treadmills. Then we could work out and hit the steam room. Hopefully, we’d be working out for a good hour or so and that would leave ample time for a mystery woman to slide the note inside his bag.