Page 13 of Degrees of Control

“Then tell me what I wanna know,Hopper.”

“Okay,fine. You wanna know what happened? You were man drafted. Charlie’s on the rebound and she wanted to fuck a guy who was bad news and I suggested, among others, yourself.”

“Seriously?” James stepped aside to avoid a bike messenger. “Christ, Sophia, I’m not a whore.”

“I didn’t see you objecting when Charlie was willing to go home with you.”

Good point.“Who else was included in this draft?”

“Conner, Blair, Michael. Thirty-four others,” Sophia said, her tone smug.

“And yet Miss Charlotte picked me. Don’t you think that warrants a phone number?”

“Not really. I told her you were the sluttiest. Turns out that backfired.”

James gritted his teeth, this was ten times more stressful than his last team-building conference where they’d had to carve a canoe out of a tree trunk. “Well then, how about you give me Charlotte’s number and I can apologize for whatever I did to offend her.”

Sophia snorted. “How about I give you nothing and you shove your apology up your ass so far you cough up random syllables?”

“That’s just unnecessarily rude.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn, I am not teeing up my best friend as your booty call.”

James didn’t bother to deny that was his angle. “Sounds like Charlotte’s after the same thing. Go on, let me be accommodating. I’ll take her out to somewhere fancy and we’ll chat. No big deal.”

There was a long pause and James knew he’d won. He waited with baited breath for his cousin to crumble.

“I will tell you this one thing. Charlie works on High Street and tonight she’ll be in the Humble Ruby café at around six o’clock.”

James was glad Sophia couldn’t see his face right now. If she knew how self-righteous he looked, she’d claw that privileged information back out of his brain. “Thanks, Hopper, you’re a peach.”

“Keep your southern fried bullshit to yourself, James, and know this. Charlie is the sweetest girl I’ve ever met and if you infect her with some kind of disease, you will die. Slowly.”

Without so much as a ‘goodbye,’ she hung up on him. Clearly, taunting her about her childhood resemblance to a frog hadn’t been the smartest move.

* * * *

As James suspected, the Humble Ruby café was a dimly-lit corridor covered with hanging plants and bearded men, the kind of hipster place he normally avoided like the plague. But not today. Today, he was going to infiltrate this hippie hive, find Blue-Eyes and convince her to wrap herself around his dick so he stopped spending every second of his life thinking about fucking her.

He spotted her at once. She was sitting cross-legged in a booth chatting to a guy in baggy cotton pants. She was softer than the girl from the party but prettier too, her thick brown hair and wide eyes made her look like a porcelain doll. At least she looked that way in the face, there wasn’t anything delicate about that body. Her figure had the same pin-up girl lushness James had thought was an alcohol-induced hallucination. She was wearing some kind of exercise gear and it stretched over her curves like smoke, outlining her full breasts and tiny waist. Yeah, he’d be fucking her, there was going to be no two ways about that. She’d be nervous, so he’d take her out, get her nice and relaxed and then he’d do every single dirty thing he could think of to her. Twice.

Their eyes locked and Charlotte’s hand leapt to her hair, like a schoolgirl caught reading dirty magazines. Her expression sent a kick of adrenaline into James’ system. It was the same shy excitement that had gotten him all hot and bothered the night they met. A flush made its way down Charlotte’s neck and into her gorgeous tits and James knew she wanted him. He sauntered over, the challenge of winning this girl over burning low in his belly.

“Hey there, Miss Charlotte,” he drawled, playing up the accent.

She smiled. “Hey, James. What brings you to the neighborhood?”

At least she wasn’t pretending she’d forgotten who he was, that was a good start. If she was nervous, she was hiding it well, her smile was bright, but reserved.

“Sophia told me I might find you here. Buy you a coffee?”

Harem Pants Guy looked like he was experiencing severe neck pain. No doubt he resented the interruption to his game but that was too fucking bad. James gave him a few seconds of pointed eye contact and he scurried off with some made up excuse. James pulled himself into the guy’s vacated seat and examined the girl across from him. Charlotte Bell wasn’t his usual type, that was for sure. For one thing, she was fucking tiny. Had she always been that short? But God, those lips were exactly like he remembered, he could just imagine them pouting at him, swollen and soft from sucking him,‘please, can I have your cock, James? Pretty please? I promise I’ll do anything for—’

“So, what can I do for you, James?”

He jolted back to reality and gave Charlotte his best smile. “Been to any good parties lately, Blue-Eyes?”

She didn’t smile back. Just blinked at him, her large eyes slightly narrowed. She was about to reply when a pink-haired waitress came barreling over.

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