Page 95 of The Auction
He looked at me again like I was nuts, then picked up the pen in his left hand, (holy shit did I know he was a lefty?), and scratched out a few words and handed it back to me.
“Anything Jules doesn’t want,” I read. “You suck. I’m serious. What if I said I wanted to shove a giant sized dildo up your butt?”
He took the napkin and the pen back, scrawled another sentence, then pushed it back to me.
“Giant sized dildos up my butt,” I read back to him. “You’re a comedian.”
“No, this is stupid. Sex isn’t something you write down on a list. You play and experiment and figure out what you like through trial and error,” he said. Then leaned over with his elbows on the table while he looked me dead in the eye. “You might write down on that list that you don’t want anal, and five years from now, you might be gagging for it. My point is, you don’t know until you try.”
I also leaned forward, my elbows on the table too, while I met his sharklike eyes. “Creed, I’m telling you right now, I’m never going to be gagging for your giant dick up my ass.”
He laughed like I’d said the funniest thing he could imagine and then abruptly he stopped, his gaze looking over my shoulder.
“What?” I said, trying to find where his eyes wandered off to, because it better not be another woman.
“Stay here,” he said, and then pushed back the chair just with the force of his ass because he was quickly moving through the patrons to the other side of the bar.
Quick side note: I was not astay herekind of girl. But my conditioning under Herb also lent itself toward stealth.
After a few seconds of pretending to obey, I got up and made it look like I was headed to the bar, only to casuallystart walking around it, heading in the direction Creed had gone.
Except he must have been better at the whole stealth thing, because even as I searched for him among everyone, people both familiar and not, I couldn’t find him. And given his height advantage, that was saying something.
Had he gone out the front door?
“Juliette, you looking for Creed?” Jackson was waving me over to the bar. “He went out the back, I think. Down the hallway with the restrooms. Some big dude was with him.”
Shit. Did that mean Tank was back?
“Thanks, Jackson.” I gave him a wave and then made my way down the hall toward the restrooms.
Nothing to see here. Just a girl going to the bathroom. Who got a little lost. Who opened up the door to the alleyway just a smidge because she was cautious about such things.
Creed and the big dude Jackson mentioned were just outside the back entrance. There were a couple of smokers hanging out back, but neither man seemed to mind. Creed’s back was toward the door and Jackson was right, the other man was big, but it wasn’t Tank.
Still. I could see the buzzed hair around the edge of his ball cap. His face looked super serious and his shoulders were massive. He was older than Creed. At least by fifteen, maybe twenty, years. His face more weathered, skin more creased. Maybe because he’d seen more things.
Put it all together, he smelled like more military to me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Creed muttered.
“Didn’t have an address. Just the name of the town. And only that because the damn fool was drunk. Said you fell in it.”
Pretty sure thedamn foolwas Tank and I was theitin that sentence.
“Something like that.”
“Been coming here off and on for the past few months.”
“Months?” Creed repeated, clearly surprised.
“You’re not the only one of us who had thoughts of getting away from it all. Montana, Wyoming, Idaho. I can’t swing a cat in one of those states without running into one of us. I just keep weaving back and forth until I find someone who wants the work.”
“I don’t. Want the work.”
“Hear me out, at least.”
“Sir,” Creed said, in that voice I knew all too well. It was his,hear me, because I’m not saying it twicevoice. “All due respect. I think I’m better off not knowing what my options are.”
