Page 8 of Indecent Temptations

"But how?" I asked. "I feel like I’ve gone through most of the likely options for the guys I even remotely wanted to meet up with. I don’t know who else is out there..."

"Yeah, but you’re just talking about the guys that you’ve been with from your age group," she pointed out. I furrowed my brow at her.

"I really don’t want to go a lot older than that..."

"Not older," she replied. "Younger. You could go a lot younger, couldn’t you?”

"Oh, come on, I’m not looking to be someone’s mother," I scoffed. I couldn’t think of much worse in the world than having to attend to some twenty-something who was looking for someone to take care of his laundry as much as he was his dick.

"You don’t have to go that young," she pointed out. "But maybe you could try...I don’t know, just extending the age range by a few years. You could handle that, couldn’t you? It could be fun. And I’m sure there are some guys out there who are looking for something more serious, even though they’re a little younger. Just the same way there are guys our age who are still immature dicks even though they’ve got a few years on us."

"I suppose you have a point," I conceded reluctantly. I couldn’t believe I was even letting myself think about this. Everything that had come through those dating apps had been a disaster so far, and I didn’t see how any of that was going to change when it came to finding younger men.

"You remember those boys at the pub, right?" She reminded me. "They were younger than us, but they were nice."

"And you’re still in touch with your one?" I asked playfully. She grinned at me.

"Hey, I told him that if he ever came through town again, he should hit me up," She replied. "That’s the same thing, isn’t it?"

"Close enough," I conceded, and she reached her hand towards me, palm up.

"What?"

"Give me your phone," she replied. "Let me change the age range for you. It won’t take a second, but I don’t trust you to do it yourself."

"I’m not totally tech-illiterate, you know," I pointed out, but I pulled my phone out and handed it to her.

"No, but you are a cynic, and I can see you being cynical about this," she replied, and she tapped in the code to my phone and went into the dating app. I knew that I could have protested and she would have stopped, but maybe she had a point; maybe I had to try opening myself up to something new. I felt like I had been doing so much of that lately that it was hard to imagine doing it and taking it any further than I already had, but I hadn’t put all this effort in just to trip at the first hurdle and give up when things got a little tough. I had to keep going. No matter what. And if that meant fielding some messages from some guys in their late twenties looking to fulfill their older-woman thing, then so be it.

"Don’t guys from that generation send pictures of their dicks to every girl they like?" I asked fretfully as she handed the phone back to me.

"Well, that’s a quick way for you to weed out the ones who are obviously not worth it," she pointed out.

"I guess you have a point," I agreed, and I looked down a little fearfully at the logo that held the app. I supposed I was going to have to go a little out of my comfort zone to get what I wanted here. I certainly hadn’t found it sticking with what I already knew, that was for sure. Maybe this was a good thing...?

Suddenly, a notification popped up on the app – I had a message. Already.

"Oh, someone messaged me!” I exclaimed, and Mallory clapped her hands together.

"Open it!" She ordered me. I hovered my thumb over the app for a moment, and then glanced at her.

"If this is a dick picture, then you owe me a slice of cake," I warned her. She held her hands up.

"That’s a risk I’m willing to take."

I opened up the app, and clicked on the inbox to see what was waiting for me – and I burst out laughing when I caught a glimpse of it.

"What is it?" Mallory asked.

"You owe me a cake," I replied. "That’s what."

Chapter five

I want you

Ifloppeddownonthe couch, picked up my glass of wine, and excitedly checked my messages to see if he had gotten back to me. There was nothing there, not yet, but I knew that he had his break in ten minutes, and when that came around he would be more than happy to chat me up again.

I took a sip of my wine and leaned back against the puffy cushion of my couch, and I couldn’t keep the smile off my face a moment longer. I couldn’t believe it. I had actually met someone. Someone who made me feel happy and buzzy and like I had something to look forward to when I was coming home at the end of a long day of teacher training. And we had never so much as met face-to-face.

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