Page 8 of Bad & Bossy

Almost.

Instead, I poured it directly into the drain of my sink.

Over and over again, I emptied bottle after bottle. Thousands of dollars entering the sewage system felt like a goddamn waste. I could’ve given it away, offered it to employees or friends and family, but I needed it gone. I wanted to drink it. I wanted to forget the day and pretend like seeing her hadn’t thrown me for a loop.

But it had thrown me for a loop. I hadn’t expected to see her again anytime soon, and certainly not the day I came back to Boulder. She was unlike anyone I’d ever been with, even if it had only been one date and one extra night together. I’d thought about her often, thought about what had happened between us.

It played again in my head as the bottles broke in my glass pulverizer.

————

“Lottie’s going to kill me,” Dana had said. That part I remembered clear as day. The way she laid back on my queen-sized bed in my barely furnished apartment downtown, her wavy brown hair framing her face, nothing but her bra and underwear covering her body. Her knees were up, swaying back and forth, and I was so transfixed on them I could barely breathe. They’d kept my gaze from her lips—the ones I’d devoured in the elevator on the way up.

She’d always been so fucking beautiful.

The ache in my cock begged me to drive my zipper down and climb on top of her. I’d worked on my shirt instead, though, taking my time despite the buzzing in my head.

“Why?” I’d asked. “Who you sleep with shouldn’t affect her.”

“You were her dad’s client, Cole. Do you honestly think that won’t bother her? I mean, yeah, Brody’s gone now, but she heard enough from him about your… type. Enough to tell me about it.” Her lower lip had folded in beneath her upper teeth, her eyes tracking every movement of my hands. “She’ll think I’ve gone insane.”

“So’s her husband but she still married Hunter, didn’t she?”

“Are you proposing to me on our second date?” she’d laughed.

The sides of my shirt had slid down my shoulders then onto the floor. “Don’t get cocky,” I’d warned, a faint smile forming on my lips. “I’m just saying that it’s perfectly natural for wedding guests to, well, do this.”

I’d climbed onto the bed, her knees falling apart so easily, welcoming me, almost beckoning me.

“If Lottie has an issue with it then she can bitch about it to her horses,” I’d mumbled.

I could still hear her giggle before the sound of her breath catching as I pressed my lips against her jaw, just beneath the little beauty mark between her lips and chin. She’d smelled of salt spray and coconuts, like a piña colada on the beach at sunset. I’d wanted nothing more than to drink her in entirely.

Her chin tipped down, catching my lips on hers. I’d kissed her for the second time, tasted the leftover hints of wine and mixed drinks on her tongue, and savored every second. We hadn’t been roaringly drunk, at least, not anymore by that point. But there was still a lack of inhibitions, a buzz that had settled at the base of my skull and told me it was time for more.

She would be my more that night.

I hadn’t been invited to Lottie and Hunter’s first wedding. According to Dana, it was a quick, private event solely for the benefit of Lottie’s father before he passed. But when they’d decided to have another—one that I would be in attendance for—Dana had reached out to me a few months after our first hangout to ask me to go with her.

And thank fuck she had. She wouldn’t have been in my bed if she hadn’t.

I’d been thinking about her since the moment we’d met at Lottie’s house. I’d barely been able to take my eyes off of her then. Her tanned skin, those far too bright hazel eyes, the way the sun glinted off her flushed cheeks. But there, in my bedroom, she was almost otherworldly.

Her freckles peeked through her minimal makeup. The low light of the lamp on my bedside table coated her in a different kind of warmth, one that made her eyelids heavy and my cock ache. The soft glow of the streetlights outside the window of my apartment filled the room with light blue and yellow. I was grateful I’d sobered up enough by then to remember it, and enough to ensure my driver brought us there instead of to my house in the mountains, too far away. And I couldn’t wait that long.

“Cole,” she’d breathed, her chest rising and falling against my chin.

“Hmm?”

“Are you going to… you know?” She’d giggled as her cheeks turned red. “You’re not doing anything.”

Oh. Shit, she was right. I’d gotten lost in my own head.

“I’m just taking you in.” I could still feel the way my lips had twitched up into a smirk. “And imagining all the ways I'm going to make you scream.”

Her flush had deepened as her hips lifted just an inch, a silent request for something, anything.

The memory halted, and by the time it picked back up, her bra and underwear had been discarded somewhere on the floor, my slacks hung off one foot, and my cock was rubbing against her entrance.

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