Page 14 of Our Little Cliche
Manwhore!
Dirty, sleazy motherfucker.
“I’m-I’m,” she stutters, realizing what I had done. Her face quickly changes from a cold induced flushed shade of red, to a blushed peach like her bag. It’s cute. She’s adorable.
A smile splits the side of my face. “A nice drink to warm you up, then?” I nudge my head toward the bar behind me. She bites the bottom of her lip and smiles.
“Oh, um. Yeah—” She holds theyeahfor a moment in hesitation, looking at the bar, then at the spilled clothes before coming back to me again with a defeated expression. “—Nah, sorry. I’m just here to meet… someone, but thanks.” She takes a nervous step back.
Someone else?
My jaw tenses.
Who?
Something inside of me didn’t like that idea. Jealousy? No, that didn’t seem like the right word, I’m not the type. Protective? Maybe, but why? I don’t even know the girl.
She scurries to collect her belongings from the floor, with no realization of her surroundings as she hasn’t noticed I’m squatting beside her. “You have good taste,” I say, handing her the black laced thong with a book that’s written by one of my good friends,Izzy Wentworth. Her facial reaction changes from a frazzled, peachy tone to a pale whiteI can’t believe he said thatcolor.Fuck, I meant goodtaste in literature! Not the… lingerie.In a panic, I recover, quickly adding, “The book.”
“Oh. Umm, yeah. She’s my favorite author.”
“She’s a good friend of mine.”
Her eyes widen with excitement. “You know her?!”
“Yes. She and I met in college, the both of us studied literature together.” I don’t mention that I’m an author since she reads books like Izzy’s, the poor girl would be fucking traumatized if she read mine.
“Wow, that’s amazing. Oh, cheers.” She takes her stuff from me with a skittish giggle. When our fingers collide, static electricity shoots lightning bolts through my veins, right down to my length, then to the tips of my toes, tingling my brain in its aftermath.
Who is this woman?
“Thanks again, and sorry about all…” She gestures her hands to where the clothes spilled, then to me. “This. Have a good one.” She clears her throat and stands, attempting to step to the other side of me at the same time I shift aside for her. And then again, bumping into each other each time before I finally grip her by the shoulders to halt her.
She draws a crisp inward gasp, holding her breath for a beat or two before erratically picking up the pace. I raise my brow in adon’t hold up on my accountkind of way when she looks at the bar again and doesn’t move. I have no idea what it is about her that’s got us both frozen in time, but eventually she turns on herfeet, and I get a scent of her. Not perfume. Not body soap.Her. And it stains my brain like a negative photograph.
I’m standing there all dopey looking with my shoulders hunched over, and my eyelids halfway down, breathing her in deeply like an aphrodisiac. No, like a vampire—high on the scent of blood. Sending even more electric waves buzzing in my brain and a vibration to pound in my chest. It’s intense. Captivating.
How can someone smell this…
This…
Luring?
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it reminds me of the first morning pour of an espresso: that compelling smell that caffeine addicts feed off of, and I know here and now that Ineedmore of it.
Of her.
“Another time then, miss…?” I say, holding the end of the sentence in question as an attempt for her to address her name, but she doesn’t.
She looks over her shoulder back at me, with a soft smirk, “Maybe.” I watch her hips sway as she saunters away to the bar.
Lord have fucking mercy.
A large grin purses on my lips, because now I’ll get to enjoy thinking of her when I write my book. I’ll make sure to change a few things when I get home tonight, to have the main characters meet exactly like we did.
It’s not like she’ll ever read it, she’s for sure the cliché romance type, so she’ll never know that I only gave heroneof the laced thongs I had collected from the floor. There may be a possibility that she misplaced the other.
A red one.
