“Nice to have more realistic romance with real life relationship hang ups, problems and worries. Where the heroine is not always a good girl. She drinks too much, parties too much and screws around . She don’t fall madly in love as her eyes meet across the room or in this case as she see’s him watching her. It touched a little on how sometimes the pain inside causes us to do stuff like cut ourself just to feel. Or to drink to much to forget, or to screw anyone just to feel good for a little while. Harlan and Kelsey were ever bit as hot as they each accept that things can work out if only you open yourself up
Very good book 4 legs up” ~ The Smut Sluts
My timing was perfect.
I made my way through the crowded tables of Vantage Sports Pub to the patio where my friend waited. I made it to the plastic deck chair waiting for me mere seconds before the waitress arrived with a fresh pitcher of frozen margaritas.
“How was Jamaica?” Dee McDonald asked as my butt hit the chair.
I thought of Marco and the secluded beach escapade. “In a word … delicious.”
Dee was the manager of an Irish pub near the University and my best friend for the past fifteen years, ever since we met in college. Only two years apart in age, and both working in the hospitality industry, we understood each other in ways that only close friends, and other waitresses could. But even Dee only understood that part of me. She didn’t get that I was always searching for- well, searching.
Hell, even I didn’t really know for sure what it was I was searching for. I just knew there had to be more to life than what was in front of me, and I wasn’t going to find out what it was by living by someone else’s rules.
“Only a masochist would go to the Caribbean in August,” Dee said, distracting me from my thoughts.
The server set frosty glasses on the table and Dee poured us each a margarita from the pitcher while I answered.
“It was cheap, and not much hotter than this. Plus, the occasional afternoon thunderstorm cooled things off nicely.” I eyed her. Dee’s brunette hair was streaked blond and cut in a short bob. “And how were things in McDonald-land while I was gone? I like the new haircut by the way. Very playful and summery.”
“Thanks! Last week work sucked, and Jason fell asleep on the sofa every night, but the weekend was great. We got the backyard landscaped and the basement is almost finished. Oh, and Jason picked up a bunch of fitness equipment, including a cross trainer, so instead of meeting at the gym we can work out in the basement if we want.”
I ignored the twinge of longing at the mention of comfortable married life and focused on the second half of what Dee said.
Jason was Dee’s husband, and gorgeous as that man was, I didn’t want to be working out in any basement.
“Sweetie, you’re forgetting that one of the reasons I work out at the gym is so I can drool over all the hot male hard-bodies that hang out there. What fun would working out in your basement be?”
“Jason will be there, and I know you think he’s hot. He thinks you’re pretty too, so you two can just drool over each other.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get real. Jason can’t see anyone else when you’re around. Not that he’d drool over me anyway.”
It was Dee’s turn to roll her eyes. “You get real, you’re like a cross between a fifties pin-up model and the modern Goth Girl. If Marilyn Monroe was a thirty-something right now, she’d look like you. Well, with black hair. The point is, all you have to do is smile and bat your eyelashes and men drool over you.”
“Yeah?” I couldn’t help myself, Dee had hit a sensitive spot. “First off, I’m not a goth, I just happen to have a unique sense of style. And second, is that why I’m thirty-five and still single? Because I’m so pretty that all I have to do is smile and men drool?”
“No,” she said and waved her hand dismissively. “You’re still single because you want to be single. Anytime a guy tries to get closer to you than your bed, you sabotage the relationship.”
That was because when men found out how much I enjoyed sex that was all they saw. They stopped seeing me as anything more than a real life blow-up doll, and I wanted more than that. I deserved more than that.
“If I wanted to be single, I wouldn’t have put that stupid personal ad online,” I muttered.
“How’s that going anyway?”
“It’s not.” I watched over Dee’s shoulder as the couple at the table behind her leaned together and kissed. It was a slow, seductive kiss, with the guy cupping the woman’s cheek in his hand as he looked into her eyes. It was the kind of kiss I dreamt about.
“Kelsey?”
“Huh?” I tore my gaze away from the couple and focused on the conversation. Where were we? Oh yeah, the online thing. I drained the last of my margarita and made light of it all. “After chatting online to more guys than I thought possible, I gave it up as hopeless about a month ago.”
“Hopeless? Really?”
Well, except for Randy. But Randy wasn’t a boyfriend, he was occasional … exercise. He filled a need, that was it. But I didn’t say that. Dee might be my closest friend, but there were some things even I preferred to keep private.
“Yeah, only a few of the men were interesting enough to actually meet for a drink. And of course, the ones I’m attracted to aren’t interested in me, and vice-versa. It’s easier to just stick with what I have.” Which is a lover who was happy to come when I called, share a drink or two, fuck, then leave.
“What about the gym?” Dee asked.
“No one ever hits on me at the gym.” I caught the waitress’s eye and she nodded. Another drink was on the way.
“Maybe if you didn’t wear headphones someone would try to chat you up.”
“I tried that actually. And you know what I noticed?”
“What?”
“That everyone else was wearing headphones.”
Dee shook her head and I laughed.
“What about the grocery store?” Dee said determinedly. “You love to cook and I know you hit the market at least twice a week.”
I waved my hand. “Urban myth.”
“Ha! You’re just too damn picky.”
That got to me.
“I’m not too picky,” I snapped. “I just know myself, and what I need to be happy. So you’re right, I am single because I want to be.”
“What do you need, then?”
Tequila had loosened my tongue enough that I didn’t even think about it. “I want someone who will see below the surface and be in love with me. I want someone who wants more than to see me happy. I want someone who wants to make me happy.”
“I want someone that makes me want to please him. I know it’s almost archaic but I want someone to cook for. Someone to sit on the couch and veg with as well as someone I can give a look to who’ll be able to read it. He’ll know when I want to kill him, and when I want to ravish him. Or when I want him to slam me against the wall and have his way with me.” And I want him to accept that sometimes, he alone won’t be enough for me.
Dee’s brow puckered. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting the fantasy, Kels. But you have to understand that not everyone gets it.”
“Did it ever occur to you that not everyone gets it because not everyone is willing to wait for it?”
Dee stared at me blankly. I’d shocked her. Shit, I’d shocked myself. My façade was cracking and emotions were starting to leak out. I had to stop that. Now.
All I’d ever really admitted to myself was that I’d rather be on my own than waste my time in a relationship that wasn’t everything I wanted. Everything I needed. Self analysis was good, sometimes it even helped, but I did not need anyone thinking I was some lonely chick who needed a man to make her life complete. I worked damn hard to convince everyone who knew me that I was completely happy with every aspect of my single life. I worked even harder to convince myself.
The shock in Dee’s eyes had faded and I could clearly see concern building. Shit.
Relief swept over me when the waitress set a fresh jug of margaritas down. Dee grimaced. I poured myself another.
“I work in a nightclub, Dee. I see people fucking around and cheating on their partners all the time. That’s what happens when people settle, and I’m not going to do that. I have to believe there’s someone out there for me. Someone who will love the hyperactive, outgoing, and flirty me, as much as the somewhat dark and twisted me. If there isn’t, then I don’t want anyone.” I grinned at my friend. “Not on a permanent basis anyway.”
Dee laughed and shook her head. “That’s probably best. It’ll happen when you least expect it, it always does. Besides, you’re too busy traveling all over and playing sex games with your bed buddies to settle down right now. If you weren’t single you wouldn’t be able to do that. You certainly wouldn’t have been able to pick up some stranger and fuck him on the beach in Jamaica.” She winked at me. “Lucky bitch. How was it?”
I choked on a mouthful of margarita. “How do you know I even did that?”
“You said you were going to, and you always do what you say you’re going to. Now stop stalling and tell me how it was. I’m a boring old married woman, I need to live vicariously through you.”
“Boring maybe, but not old,” I stated firmly. “I’m older than you and I’m not old. So that means you’re not old yet, either.”
Dee raised her glass and tilted her head. “Point taken.”
The waitress came by to check on us and I ordered a couple of tequila shots.
“One shot, and that’s it,” Dee warned. “The last time we got into the shooters, Jason wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the weekend. Funny how he gets mad at me when I have a few drinks, yet every time he comes home from playing golf, he’s hammered.”
I bit my tongue and took another sip of frosty lime loveliness. Dee had no idea how much I envied her relationship with Jason, and I wanted to keep it that way. There were times when booty calls and bed buddies were fun and exciting, but there were also times when coming home to an empty apartment sucked.
The waitress dropped off the tequila shots and I was quick to reach for mine. “To a man who loves you,” I said and raised my glass in a toast.
Dee raised her glass and clinked it against mine. “To living out the fantasy of fucking a stranger on a beach.”
For the next couple of hours Dee and I talked about work, clothes, Jamaica, Marco, and our hopes for the upcoming hockey season. The pub crowd thinned as time passed and people moved on to whatever plans they had for the evening. Just after four o’clock, Dee announced it was time to go.
“You go,” I replied. “I’m going to stay a while longer.”
She dug some cash out of her wallet and put it on the table beneath her empty glass. “Must be nice. I get to go home and cook dinner for a man who’ll probably just fall asleep on the couch the minute he’s done eating.”
“So wake him up,” I said, tired of her whining.
“Easier said than done, my friend.”
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people complain about something, yet do nothing to change it. Like a wife complaining about her husband falling asleep on the sofa. As far as I was concerned, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And the easiest way was sometimes the best. “Use sex. He’s a man, that’ll wake him up.”
“Use sex? Hell, I’d be thrilled to have sex tonight. It’s been almost a week, and last time it was barely over before he started snoring.”
“That’s sad.”
“Tell me about it. We had sex more often before we were married. You’re single and you have more sex than we do.”
That really is sad.
If I were married, you’d bet the man would be giving it to me every night. Otherwise divorce would be inevitable - unless he didn’t mind me having sex with others. I could probably live with that.
I gave my head a shake. It was time to focus on Dee. “So liven it up.” I told her. “Wake him up in a way he’ll never forget, and maybe he’ll be a little more energetic for the rest of the night.”
Dee’s eyes lit up and she leaned forward, her purse still clutched in her lap. “Tell me, Oh Wise Wild One, how should I do that?”
Excitement rippled through me.
I loved sex. I thought about sex all the time. Positions, scenarios, certain people, combinations of people, different ways to masturbate, different kinks. Over the years I’d found that there were few problems or issues that either alcohol or sex couldn’t cure.
Temporarily anyway …I was still working on the long term cure.
Mind you, falling asleep on the sofa sounded short term to me. “Do you guys ever role play?”
Her brow puckered. “Role play? As in the Naughty Nurse and her bedridden patient?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s one type of role playing. You guys ever do anything like that?”
“We tried it once, but I couldn’t stop laughing.”
Dee and I have been friends for a long time, and while she wasn’t as … open as I was, I remembered our drunk partying nights pretty clearly. She wasn’t as angelic as her big brown eyes led people to believe either.
“After dinner, tell him you’re going to the bedroom, and be sure to give him the look.”
“The look?”
“Yeah. The one that says ‘Follow me, I’m horny.’”
“Oh, that look.” Dee laughed. “Okay. Got it.”
“When you’re upstairs, find some sexy lingerie - matching bra and panties, garter and thigh high’s, baby doll nightgown - whatever you have that you know gets him hard and will make him drool.”
A secretive smile spread across Dee’s lips and I knew she instantly had an outfit in mind.
“If he hasn’t followed you into the bedroom by the time you’ve changed and are ready, then go get out the vacuum.”
“The vacuum?”
“If he’s asleep on the sofa, it’ll wake him up. If he’s not, he’ll still notice you. Just go about the cleaning, as if you had on sweatpants and a T-shirt. Bending here, stretching there.” I gave her a stern look. “But ignore him.”
Dee’s eyes were round and she was grinning like an idiot. “Oh my God,” she said. “That will drive him absolutely nuts.”
“There you go.” I nodded. “The rest is up to you, but I suggest if you have to take out the vacuum, you make him work for it.”
We shared another chuckle and Dee jumped up. “Okay, I’m outta here. I’ll call you.”
“I’m gonna want details.”
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Tempt Me With Darkness
