Page 27 of Stepping Up

As our night continued, Nate kept buying the drinks, insisting on paying since, “You’re a single mother, Carl. You do everything for everyone. Let me do this for you.” We chatted as we sipped, sharing stories and laughing like old friends.

The topic turned to Ella between waves of other grown-up things. I almost apologized for it, but Nate stopped me in my tracks. “You’re allowed to talk about your kid a lot. I like hearing about her. Does she have any fun Ella adventures coming up?”

“Just trying to survive the embarrassment of my piss-poor baking skills,” I joked, and when he looked confused, I explained. “There’s a bake sale coming up for her class to raise money for a field trip. She’s got all these ideas for me to make ladybug cupcakes, and she doesn’t believe me that Grammy’s culinary skills skipped a generation. She’s all, ‘baking is just science, Mama, and science is easy!’” I rolled my eyes. “Tell that to my abysmal science report cards back when I was in school. There’s a reason I didn’t go the STEM route in college.”

“I could help,” Nate provided generously, and thanks to the liquor, it took me a moment to catch up.

“With the bake sale?”

“Hell yeah. We’ll blow those other moms out of the water. I’m literally a professional chef, in case you didn’t remember.”

“I can’t really picture you baking, though. Aren’t they different?”

He mimed a knife in his heart. “You wound me, Carl. Don’t underestimate my pastry prowess.”

“Alright,” I agreed, grinning. “Think you can make ladybug cupcakes work?”

“I can do that and more. Just watch me.”

The drinks kept flowing. When was the last time I’d let myself be so relaxed, so unconcerned with the responsibilities I had toward everyone but me? When you fucked Logan, I answered for myself. And that thought, plus the little bit of alcohol, made me giggle.

“What are you gigglin’ about?” Nate asked me with a sly half-smile.

“It’s a secret,” I said mischievously.

“Secrets are meant to be shared,” he countered.

“This is a pretty juicy one.”

“All the more reason to get it off your impressive chest,” he said with a wink and a pointed look at my breasts, and I almost choked on my drink as I sipped it. What a cheeky bastard.

“Alright, fine,” I decided, feeling that babbling slightly-drunk need to tell everyone everything interesting that’s ever happened to me. I let it out in an easy statement. “I slept with Logan.”

I expected a gasp, a scandalized expression, maybe even a classic teen movie “Shut up!” made twice as funny coming from Nate’s mouth. But he just nodded, took a swig of his whiskey neat, and said, “Oh, yeah. I knew that already.”

Before I could even start to sputter my indignant response, the truth hit me like a brick to the face. They were brothers. Of course they talked. Still, I was struggling to catch up to this reality, to process how I felt about Logan sharing this fact with his brother. Unfortunately, what Nate said next only worsened that particular problem.

“It’s fine. I know you and I have never talked about this.” He gestured between the two of us, shrugged in a half-assed sort of way that didn’t really fit with how my brain was clinging for dear life to that this, his first acknowledgement of whatever attraction existed between us that we’d always ignored. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not jealous as hell that he got to touch you first.”

Oh, damn. This wasn’t the same energy as our usual playful flirtation at all. Nate was leaning toward me around the edge of the small table where we sat, and I felt his leg brush against mine like an electric shock. Not an unpleasant one, though. It sent that drunk warmth from my head and chest all the way down to my clit, and I leaned into him a little. I maintained eye contact with him, feeling bolder than I ever had and only partly because I’d been drinking. Something about the way I’d let loose with Logan made the stakes of everything feel a little less dire.

It was only satisfaction, no inkling of fear or worry and no thought that maybe I shouldn’t do this, that zinged through me when I felt Nate’s hand grip my thigh. My bare thigh, since I’d worn a rare dress to work today. His skin on mine felt like a wildfire. Not caring that this was moving too fast or that we were in a bar full of people, or that there was a whole list of reasons I shouldn’t encourage this behavior, I spread my legs a little, giving him easier access to me.

As if he could read my mind, Nate’s expression shifted to a sultry half-grin, and his hand slid upward under the table. I didn’t mean to hold my breath, but when he reached the front of my panties, the air I’d been restricting came out in a huff of surprised arousal. Nate’s smile became more wicked, and he subtly inched himself closer, giving himself a better angle from which to tease me.

It was the faintest, most agonizing friction first. Gentle brushes against the thin fabric covering my folds, just enough pressure that he could start to feel the dampness he was causing after a few passes. Not enough to give me what my body immediately ached, burned for. Trying to take a page out of his book and stay discreet, since this was a public place and we were surrounded by strangers, I shifted forward in my seat. A tiny shift of my hips that brought Nate closer and made him laugh.

“So needy,” he murmured. “Did Logan not give you everything you wanted?”

“He gave me plenty,” I fired back when he pulled his hand away again. I wanted to groan, to grab his hand under the table and shove it into my panties, to guide his fingers to my aching clit myself. “But you’ve left me wanting ever since that day at the playground, and I’m getting tired of waiting.”

It was almost as if Nate had been waiting for me to give him verbal confirmation that I wanted this. Because after he took a second to blink in shock that I'd addressed our almost-kiss, he rewarded me by boldly hooking his fingers into the side of my panties, tugging the fabric away so I could feel the bar’s AC against my hidden flesh, a foreign sensation. When I felt his thumb come up to press expertly against my clit, I did the only thing I could think to do. I claimed his mouth in a kiss, if only to muffle the moan of pleasure I wanted to release.

I wasn’t the type to make out with someone in a bar. Not even when I was newly twenty-one and free of responsibilities or the fear of social ramifications to my behavior for my little girl. But this whole night was fun, free and uninhibited, and deeply Nate. So, I kissed this gorgeous man with reckless abandon, and he kissed me back like he’d been wanting to for a long, long time.

All the while, his hand under the table still explored the wet heat between my legs with expert precision. With the heady combination of Nate’s tongue in my mouth, his thumb massaging my clit, and his index and middle fingers plunging into my pussy, I was right on the edge of coming. Or at least I would be if I could fully let go of the fact that we were in a public place. Instead, I was too afraid of crying out and causing a scene. I had just enough self-control to break away from our passionate kiss, pant for a second to catch my breath, and rasp the words, “Your place. Now.”

Nate’s sexy canine teeth flashed with the full width of his grin. He nodded slowly, withdrew his fingers from under the table, and somehow managed to stick them into his mouth in a way that was deliciously obscene to me but wouldn’t attract too much notice among the people in the bar. Even when he let his eyes close in ecstasy, hummed his deep pleasure, and plucked his fingers out from his lips, licked clean. I was speechless when he looked me in the eyes and said, “Fucking delicious. Now, let’s go back to mine for dessert.”

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