Adrian Lessons (12 page)

“I’ve never been on a date before that involved three different briberies,” Cleo notes.

“Clearly you haven’t been going on the right kind of dates.”

“This is my first date that included streaking across Fenway Park,” she admits.

The inside of the club is dark and pulsing with music, bodies, heat. I could have taken Cleo to the most expensive club in Boston, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for her to know just how rich I actually am. People treat you differently when they find out how much money you have. If Cleo likes me, I don’t want it to have anything to do with dollar signs.

I want to ask. Does she like me, or is she just being nice to someone who had a high school crush? Does her condition at the beginning of the night, that this will be our last date, still stand?

I do something easier. I pull her against me. She looks up at me, the lust still clear in her eyes, making her gaze languid.

“Follow me,” I say.

I buy us each a shot, just to loosen up, and then we move onto the dance floor. We start slow, a few inches apart. The way we’re looking into each other’s eyes is more intimate than the way everyone else here is grinding. The music is so loud that we couldn’t hear each other if we tried to talk, but we don’t need to. She’s saying everything with her eyes.

I want you.

She moves closer, her hand sliding over my chest, and bucks her hips against mine in time to the music. The simple motion gets me rock hard.
Jesus.
An unconscious smile appears on her lips as she feels my length against the curve of her inner thigh.

“You’re so goddamn sexy,” I breathe into her ear.

Her response is to grind her hips against mine, hard, and repeat the motion, rocking her body into mine like we were fucking standing up. Her smile is wicked now. She’s punishing me for leaving her unsatisfied at the park.

Well, two can play at that game.

Bodies are pressing in all around us, the air thick with movement and sound. I move my hand up her chest and rub the place where I’m certain her nipple is beneath her shirt. I’m rewarded by a shiver running through her. She grabs my hand and leans into my ear.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she whispers. “It’s my turn to torture you.”

I have no idea where this sexy side of Cleo just sprang from. Something about running naked across Fenway Park seems to have released it. Although it could have come from under the floorboards for all I care. What matters is that it’s here.

She turns so that her full, lush ass is pressed up against my crotch. Then she moves, grinding against me, slowly then faster. I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life, and I’d like nothing more than to shove her up against the club wall, rip her clothes off, and take her right here.

But good things come to those who wait.

Even so, I’m not sure how much waiting I can stand. She grinds up and down on me. She’s right—her dancing is a weapon of mass destruction. And it’s destroying me. I groan, gripping her hips, knowing how torturous this is since I’ve decided there will be no release for me tonight, but unwilling to pull away.

Her skirt has hiked up over her thighs. A simple hand movement and I could stroke her slit. She deserves to feel what I’m feeling right now—that desperate desire for more. My hand drifts lower.

“Bad boy,” she says, turning, and then she’s grabbing my hardness through my pants.

I kiss her savagely and groan into her mouth. Her tongue explores me, hungrily. I’ve never felt this kind of sexual chemistry with anyone before, and it’s both delicious and agonizing. I ache to plunge into her. To feel her hot, wet folds pulling me in…

“I’ll be back,” I mutter, breaking away and squeezing her hip before slipping out of the crowd, toward the bathroom.

No, I’m not going in there to jack off. What kind of loser do you think I am?

I do think about it, though.

But there would be no point. Jacking off would only make me hungrier for the real thing. So I take a quick leak, rinse my hands, and leave the tiny, smoke-filled room only to be mauled right outside the door.

“Hey, baby,” a blonde girl purrs, wrapping herself around me. She’s hot, exactly the type I usually go for, but somehow she still leaves me cold. “Wanna have a good time?”

“I’m all right, actually,” I say, extricating myself and heading back toward the dance floor.

Where I find that I’m not the only one getting unwanted attention.

“I saw you dancing with that other loser,” some fuckhead with a lip ring is saying to Cleo, backing her up against the wall. “I like a girl who knows what a man wants.”

Something hardens in me—and no, not the thing that’s been hardening all night. I stride up and give the loser a shove. “Why don’t you back off?”

He sneers at me. “Why don’t you tell your sl—”

Before the word can get past his lips, my fist smashes into them. He crashes backwards onto the floor, yelping like a child. I crack my knuckles, tilt my head to the side, and that’s all it takes. He scrambles backwards, disappearing into the crowd.

I glance toward Cleo, expecting fear or distaste, but her eyes are shining.

“That,” she says, “was hot.”

I slip my arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. “I’m the only one allowed to hassle you on the dance floor.”

I sense another shiver run through her. I’m like an instrument attuned to the nuances of her body, what it wants, what it needs. I know I could coax more pleasure out of her than she could believe. But I can’t. Not yet. I have to convince her she means more to me than just another lay, and that means waiting.

Just then, Cleo makes that a whole lot harder. Among other things.

“Let’s go,” she says, tugging slyly on my hand. “Marie’s gone for the night. My apartment’s empty.”

Fuck.

~11~

CLEO

He doesn’t even take one
step
into my apartment.

He claims that he has to get up early in the morning. I barely hear him. A slow burn crawls over my face and eliminates all conscious thought. I mumble a goodbye—at least I think it’s a goodbye, I might have just quoted something from
Arrested Development
instead—and close the door.

Then I sink to the floor, without even the strength to chuck my pants—or skirt—across the room.

“I am an idiot,” I moan at the refrigerator, since the closet’s all the way in the other room.

The fridge wisely says nothing.

“I basically threw myself at him all night and he still didn’t want me. What’s wrong with me? Do I have a third boob that I’m not aware of? Possibly on my forehead?”

I could ask you, but you’re just a reader. I could be a sentient toenail clipping whining about not getting fucked by a giant clam and you wouldn’t know.

Actually, I could probably lie and tell you that he came into my room and we had sex until next Easter, but I’ve never been good at lying.

The thing is? I do know what’s wrong with me. It’s not a third boob. Most guys would probably be turned on by that anyway. It’s just
me.
The fact is, he saw what I had to offer and didn’t want it. And I was so inexperienced that I thought he did.

I’m too depressed to stand up, so I make like a legless tarantula and roll across the floor all the way into my room.

The worst part is that I thought I was succeeding at being sexy.

He’s probably in his room now, wiping his forehead in relief and placing me in the category of all the things that seem like a good idea in high school and turn out to be really, really dumb. Like straight-across bangs. Or stealing beer from your mom’s fridge. Or watching
Glee.

I owe him an apology. I dump everything that’s in my purse onto the floor, retrieve my phone, and type out the longest text in history:

Hey, I’m sorry I basically sexually harassed you tonight. I wish I could claim that Marie drugged me again but that’s pretty obviously untrue. Maybe you’d believe I was on crack? Let me know. Anyway, I don’t blame you for not wanting to do me. The last man on earth probably wouldn’t want to do me and then humanity would be rebuilt as half-man, half-squirrel creatures. I guess I will blame my sexual repression, because I’m twenty-two years old and a virgin and all, and actually I’m probably the only twenty-one year old virgin in history so I probably deserve a statue in my name, in some really lame place like Arkansas. I don’t know why Arkansas was the first thing that came to mind. I don’t have anything against Arkansas? I’ve never been there? I guess what I really want is to find out if it’s possible to even send a text this long? Sorry again. I didn’t mean to be Glee.

I hit
send.
Miraculously, it goes through. Verizon should have some sort of filtration system to weed out texts that are this stupid.

Time to sleep off the humiliation. I peel off my skirt. “Sorry, skirt. You were supposed to be torn off by the Sex King tonight. Maybe next time. And by next time, I mean maybe I’ll donate you to Goodwill and you’ll get torn off while on someone else’s body, because it’s clearly never happening to me.”

I pull on my ugliest pair of Snoopy pajama shorts, because I deserve Snoopy pajama shorts, and am flopped sideways on my bed when someone knocks.

“You’ve reached Humiliation Station, please board the first train departing for Pity City,” I yell randomly, assuming it’s Marie knocking to make sure I’m not screwing Adrian on the floor. The floor has no idea what an opportunity it’s missing. When the door doesn’t unlock, I haul myself to the kitchen and twist the knob.

I barely have time to open it before I’m being kissed ferociously, passionately, a hot mouth sucking the life out of me and simultaneously breathing new life in. That life, in particular, surges to the space between my legs. When Adrian breaks away, I’m gasping.

“I’m not having sex with you tonight because I need to prove to you that I care about you more than that,” he says, his eyes burning. “I want our relationship to last longer than tonight, and I’m afraid that if I give you what you want tonight, you won’t come back for a tomorrow. But don’t you
dare
think it’s because I don’t desire you.”

And suddenly he draws me close, his hand slipping inside my incredibly unsexy Snoopy shorts, finding my slit and stroking it briefly. My knees nearly give way. He takes my free hand and presses it to the shape of his cock.

“Feel how much I want you,” he grits out.

I moan and rub myself against his hand, a warm ache flooding my stomach, but he pulls back with a wicked grin and a “Sweet dreams, Cleo” before shutting the door.

I’m left sinking to the floor, half out of my mind.

And the Snoopy shorts fly across the room.

~12~

CLEO

“So, in this scene, Jonathan walks into the living room holding up the whipped cream. Just like that, Adrian. And Amelia’s lying on the couch. He says, ‘You look so sweet. But I think I have a way to make you even sweeter.’”

“Marie,” I chide. “He’s not going to literally read your lines out loud. That’s pushing it.”

Marie harrumphs. “Fine, then. Do your thing. I’ll sit back and take notes.”

Marie is loving this. True fact: if there’s anyone in the universe who’s more repressed than me, it’s Marie. She doesn’t even watch porn. Except for this. And the sight of Adrian leaning against our kitchen counter, a thing of whipped cream in his hand, turns me on more than any porn I’ve ever watched.

“We have to take off our clothes,” I say, not slyly at all. Well, maybe a little slyly. “We’ll ruin them.”

Marie glances at me. “Are you okay with that?”

“I like how you automatically assume I’m okay with it,” remarks Adrian.

She lifts an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“I’m okay with it too,” I say. Marie blinks. I haven’t told her about Fenway Park yet.

“All right, then,” she says. “Strip.”

Marie has no idea what she’s doing. After last night, she’s playing with fire. And by fire, I mean a metric ton of sexual repression.

I slide my shirt over my shoulders. My heart pounds a lot less than it would have before last night, but I still feel like I’ll need a cardiovascular checkup after this. But when I see the way Adrian stares at my strategically pink and lacy bra and panties, like a starving man who’s come across the world’s biggest cheeseburger, my heart calms down.

Although maybe I should think of a sexier food to compare myself to. Seared tuna?

Ain’t nothing sexier than seared tuna.

“Christ,” Adrian finally mutters after a good half minute of staring. He runs his hand through his hair.

I’m not
saying
my grand plan is to make him so worked up he’ll have to satisfy me. And then I can move on with my life.

I’m not
saying
that’s my plan, but if it were, I’d be an evil genius.

“You too,” I smirk, trailing my fingers down my bare waist. “That shirt looks expensive. Wouldn’t want to mess it up.”

Not taking his eyes from me, he pulls his shirt off, back over front in that casual way boys have. I gasp. Doves zoom overhead, sprinkling golden confetti. A chorus of angels sing. Okay, not all that actually happens, but it’s the first time I’ve seen him shirtless.

And that chest deserves some fanfare.

His torso is tan, lithe and strong, the hard contours of a six-pack-verging-on-eight-pack begging to be licked. Every ounce of him is sculpted, refined. Just looking at him floods my abdomen with tension. There’s a swirling tattoo on the left side of his ribs, but I’m too busy thinking about how I want to mount his torso on my mantelpiece like a serial killer to dwell on it.

My roommate looks between us, her eyes narrowed. “You two seem to be getting along much better today.”

If by ‘getting along’ she means ‘staring at each other with enough sexual tension to hoist the Titanic from the bottom of the sea’ then yes.

“Remember, guys,” says Marie, settling back with her notebook and a bowl of popcorn I didn’t know she had. “Last time was more about the romance between the characters. Their first kiss. This is purely sexual.”