Page 51 of Hardcore Vanilla
"Pleased to meet you," he said, keeping his voice within normal levels as he held out his hand.
Sharon's aunt took it, although she shot a disapproving look at Sharon first. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Standish."
From her tone of voice, she didn't think it was nice at all. Sharon ignored that completely.
"Jake's a former soldier and now he's a construction worker," she said, beaming at her aunt, who dropped his hand like it was a hot potato. Jake's spine stiffened.
Okay, it was one thing to run interference for her cousin after she'd been asked to, but he did not appreciate being dragged into it. Especially since the way she said it... It wasn't exactly disrespectful, but he was proud of his service and his rank and he didn't like the little emphasis Sharon put on both of his job titles. Something about her tone made it sound like she was challenging her aunt with both of them.
"Construction?" The older woman's lip curled as she looked him up and down with new eyes. "Are you a manager?"
The question was almost a challenge, and he realized that Sharon had just offered him up as a sacrificial victim to her aunt's displeasure, just to distract her. Sharon's mother had just reached them as well and she looked at him rather than speaking, her head tilted to the side as she awaited his answer. His suppressed irritation was quickly turning to justified anger, but he kept a tight lid on that emotion because it wasn't going to serve him to show it.
"Not yet," he said, practically holding himself at attention under the two women's scrutiny. "I work for LD Construction and Remodeling now, but I've only been there for a few months."
"He's got great muscles," Sharon interjected, beaming and again speaking much more loudly than she needed to. More than one person turned to look. As if to demonstrate, she let go of his arm and tried to wrap her fingers around his bicep while Jake seethed with irate tension.
He wasn't the only one. Sharon's mom was back to looking like she was sucking lemons while her aunt looked downright appalled.
"Could you at least try to be ladylike for once in your life?" she hissed at her niece.
All things considered, Jake couldn't help but empathize more with Sharon's aunt than with Sharon at the moment.
He didn't know how he had suddenly become Sharon's sacrificial goat, but he didn't like it. Especially because he couldn't imagine her treating her ex this way. Brian was pretty easy-going from what Jake had observed, but he wouldn't have tolerated this.
Was that the answer? Did Sharon respect him less because he wasn't going to spank her for bad behavior?
Would she have chosen a different route to distract her aunt if Jake was a Dom?
Asking himself those questions made him feel even more incensed at the whole situation. Yeah, he wasn't a Dom but one of the biggest things Patrick and his friends emphasized about BDSM was communication and consent.
Sharon hadn't been particularly communicative with him - she hadn't even informed him what she was going to do - and she definitely hadn't gotten his consent before throwing him in her aunt's way.
"Shouldn't a lady appreciate a man's muscles?" Sharon asked, just as loudly as before, with a high-pitched fake giggle that grated on Jake like nails on a chalkboard. "I appreciate a man who is good with his hands."
It was all Jake could do not to cringe as she rubbed her hands over his arm.
"Have you been drinking?" her mother asked, her tone veering toward shrill.
Rolling her eyes, Sharon linked her arm back through Jake's while he did his best to pretend he was invisible. Or at least, not a part of this. More than one person in the room was now looking at him with a kind of pity, as if wondering what he was doing with someone like Sharon.
While that did make him want to jump to her defense, just a little, he also couldn't blame them. At the moment, he was kind of wondering what he was doing here too. He'd signed up to be her date, not to have her talk down about his job or try to show him off like he was some kind of trophy beefcake that she'd picked up to taunt her family with. A blue-collar trophy, since they apparently had a problem with that.
He grit his teeth, looking anywhere but at the little vixen who was pressed up against his side.
******
"No, but that's a great idea," Sharon said cheerfully, deciding that she'd held off Aunt Lorraine long enough for Melinda to escape to wherever it was her cousin had been trying to escape to. She had probably just needed to get out of her mother's sight for a bit. It was obvious that tonight everything was being done to Aunt Lorraine's specifications, whereas Melinda and Mark were completely in charge of the reception tomorrow.
That was why the rehearsal dinner was filled with people who weren't part of the wedding party or immediate family; because Aunt Lorraine hadn't had control of the reception. Mark's family was much more relaxed than Melinda's, and Melinda had refused to accept a dime from her parents for the wedding, because she'd wanted to be able to do things her way. The compromise had been to let Aunt Lorraine have full control of the rehearsal dinner, which was basically like a mini-reception.
"Come on, Jakie-poo, let's go get something to drink," she said, tugging at his arm and pulling him away.
The man had stiffened up from the moment she'd called out to her aunt, which had set off Sharon's already bubbling temper. Yeah, she'd seen he was embarrassed just because she'd called out, and the combination of his judgment plus her family's had sent a little devil raging through her. There was a small part in the back of her head that disapproved of her deliberately prodding him at the same time she was engaging her aunt and mother, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.
The look he seared her with when she called him Jakie-poo would have had her shaking in her high heels if he'd been a Dom. Her ass would have been grass. But Jake was mostly vanilla.
Hmm. Vanilla with sprinkles sounded a little too soft for how bossy he was... He was like a harder vanilla. Tough vanilla? Concentrated vanilla?
