Page 4 of You Again
I was in the middle of a heartbreak. I didn’t need to notice how good another woman felt in my arms right now. I was trying to make a point of how men could be good and faithful. My dick getting hard for another woman, hours after the woman I truly cared about had stomped all over my heart, was probably not a good look. But then Red stumbled again, and my other arm had to come around to steady her.
It accidentally ran across her ass.
Her thick, plump, wide ass.
Where Red was petite up top, she was packing some serious weight in the hips and ass department, and a vision of her bent over had me reeling.
“Are you okay,” I asked begrudgingly. She was assassinating the integrity of men all over the world, but I didn’t want her crashing to the floor in her passion for her fight. Compassion got the better of me when I realized she wouldn’t be here drinking so early-shots of tequila, no less-unless she was nursing a broken heart, too.
Love fucking sucked.
She pulled out of my arms and her face turned red. “Of course, I am.” She looked over at the bartender, and the poor bastard walked over slowly and possibly frightened for his life. When he got to us, she said, “I need my bill, please.”
I wasn’t sure what compelled me, but I said, “It’s fine. Add her drinks to mine.”
Red whirled around on me. “You think picking up my tab makes you right? Because it doesn’t,” she said. “I did everything I was supposed to.”
“What?”What was she talking about?
“After working my ass off at work all day long, I came home and cooked. I cleaned. I did the laundry. I did the shopping. I paid the bills. When Arnold brought work home, I didn’t bitch. I encouraged him to move up in the company and chase his ambitions.”
Arnold?The was crying over a man named Arnold?
“Sure, we argued from time to time, but I wasn’t a nag.” The bartender placed our combined bill on the counter and Red reignited the rage that had been easing when she reached into her purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and slapped it on the counter. “Keep the change.”
This time I jumped off my barstool. “What? Oh, fuck no.” I wrestled my wallet from my pocket. “Do not take her fucking money,” I warned the bartender. “I said put the drinks onmytab.”
“I don’t need you paying for my drinks,” she spat. “I don’t need a man for anything.”
I slapped my credit card on the bar and shot a look at the bartender, demanding he take it, and he did, leaving the hundred on the counter. I looked back down at Red, who only came up to my chest. “Except for dick,” I pointed out.
She didn’t even flinch. “They have stores for that,” she pointed out. “And silicone doesn’t judge, or nag, orfail.”
That hit a nerve.
I’d never been insecure about my capabilities in the bedroom before, but knowing Whitney had gone elsewhere for satisfaction, well, it still plagued the back of my mind.
My ego and dick demanded satisfaction like I was fighting for my honor on an eighteenth-century dueling field. “I don’t fail in the bedroom,” I bit out.
Her green eyes narrowed in challenge. “Neither do I,” she tossed back.
The bartender handed me back my card, but my eyes never left Red’s as I signed, what I hoped looked like my signature, and stuffed the card back in my wallet and replaced it in the back of my pants.
I looked down at the stunningly angry woman in front of me and knew we’d both been hurt by people we were supposed to have been able to trust, and we needed validation that it wasn’t us. We needed reassurance that we hadn’t been the problem.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I wasn’t going to call her Red while I was balls-deep in her.
“Henley,” she answered warily. “What’s yours?”
“Dash,” I answered.
We stared at each other a full minute before I finally asked, “Your place or mine?”
Henley didn’t miss a beat. “The hotel across the street.”
Six hours later, Henley had snuck out while I was passed out from exhaustion.
