Always For You (Books 1-3) (10 page)

“
Liking
the view?” she asked, catching my gaze. My usual answer would be
some sort of sexually loaded remark that would either get her panties
wet or me a slap in the face. Not tonight though, despite her obvious
flirtations.

“
Oh,
sorry,” I said, looking back up into her eyes. “So – tell me
about your – job.”
God
that was strained.

She
looked almost disappointed that I hadn't sleazed over her tits,
leaning back again. “Oh, I work in a beauty salon babe. Nails,
that's my
specialty.”
She stretched out her fingers onto the table, telling me about the
different patterns on her nails.
Fuck
it was boring.

“
Oh
yeah nice,” I nodded along. I don't know why I was feeling so high
and mighty, I was only a barman.

“
So,
do you like being a barman? I bet you get a lot of attention, a
gorgeous man like you.”
God
she was obvious. I could take her home right now, fuck the cocktails.

I didn't quite know what to say. This
girl was being too easy. She was begging me to take her to bed. “Yeah
you meet a lot of interesting people I guess. So did you grow up
round here, have much family?” I was just checking off the
questions now. Work, check. Family check. Next up, pets? Hobbies? I
felt drained already.

Was
dating really supposed to be this hard?
Maybe
I just don't have any shared interests with this girl, with women in
general.
But I suppose I thought that when Brad dragged me into that double
date with Grace, and I enjoyed talking to her. She was interesting,
the girl sitting in front of me was certainly not. At least she was
hot, really hot. The typical sort of girl I'd go for: tight top, tan,
and above all, easy.

I was determined to keep this date
going, let it run its course. “Another drink,” I asked as I saw
her once more suck up the last of her cocktail.

“
Love
one babe, lets have sex on the beach this time.” She said it with a
glint in her eye, her tongue sliding provocatively along her bottom
lip. I couldn't help the image hitting my head as I walked to the
bar, her small frame bouncing on top of me down on the sand. The
beach wasn't far...

No, Cain. Not this time.

She was making it very hard though.
There seemed to be one thing on her mind, like there usually was with
me. She probably looked at me and thought, “nope, that guy's not
boyfriend material.” I didn't blame her for thinking that. I wasn't
really.

“
Sooo,”
she said a little later, “I live just down the road.” A familiar
jolt shot through my body. “And my housemate's away.”

Damn it.

“
Great,
that sounds – great.”

“
You
don't wanna come back?” she asked, noticing the doubt in my voice.

Oh I wanted to come back alright. I
wanted to give her a night she'd never forget. “Of course I do.”
My voice remained torn, it was so obvious.

“
Way
to convince me.”

She
looked like she was hurt, as if I was rejecting her.
Screw
it
.

“
Come
on then, let's go,” I said.

Two hours later I was stood staring in
the mirror, hair and beauty products all over the place. Everything
was clean and pink, pretty much the opposite of my place. I walked
out into the bedroom and saw her there, lying naked on top of the
covers. She was so damn hot.

“
I
gotta go,” I said, reverting to type.

She looked at me, disappointed.
“Really? How come?”

I had no answer. “I've got things to
do early tomorrow morning. Need to get back to my place.”

“
Sure,
OK,” she said, sitting up and dragging a sheet around her body. She
walked up towards me and gave me a kiss. “You've got my number.
Call me.”

I'd given up by now, this was going no
further. “Sure,” I said as I walked to the door, the word falling
flat. There was no truth to it, and I couldn't hide that fact, didn't
care to.

Yet another single serving.  

July
2
^nd
2013

Grace

My flat was so much nicer than it had
been a few months ago. Back when I was in the heyday of my drinking
and drugs binges, I'd leave it days on end without cleaning. Katie
tried to keep the living areas in order, but my bedroom became a
mess, empty bottles and dirty clothes thrown around everywhere.

Now it was in good shape. It was kind
of a metaphor for my life. I'd cleaned up my flat like I'd cleaned up
my life. Chase was a large part of that. His support, his
understanding, his frankly beautiful face and body. That shouldn't
have been relevant, but it was. I was so attracted to him it hurt. He
had become my new drug, my new obsession. It was a lot healthier than
the last one.

He'd come over the night before, in
fact, rocking up to my door in yet another tailored suit. He seemed
to have a whole wardrobe full of them. I'd got past the point where
I'd want to talk about the past, vent my feelings to him. I didn't
want to burden him with all that, put him off. So, I gave him what I
thought he wanted, what any man wanted. I gave him me.

We'd been sleeping together for a month
or so now, and he was just as confident in the bedroom as he was
everywhere else. He took charge, took control. He knew exactly what I
wanted, how I wanted it. He used his tongue like a professional,
hitting all the right spots. He fingers were like rods of lightning,
sending shivers up my spine.

He left me wanting more every time.
Satisfied, delirious even, but wanting more. The contrast with Tom
could hardly have been more stark. By the end of our relationship
he'd become so timid, so bashful in bed. It was routine, boring,
dull, and never lasted that long. Same positions, same places, same
foreplay. Boring.

Chase was exciting and new. He touched
me in ways that Tom had never done, knowing exactly how to draw
maximum pleasure from me with as little effort as possible. He'd be
down there, between my legs, an artist with his tongue. Tom was more
like a builder, crashing and fumbling around.

I guessed that Chase had had plenty of
experience, that he'd practiced on plenty of women. I thought it was
impossible for that not to be the case. I didn't even need to bring
the subject up to find out, it was him who ventured forward to find
out my number.

“
What's
your number,” he'd asked casually as we lay there naked on my bed.

I felt a little ashamed to say it.
“Two,” I said sheepishly.

“
Two!”
He sounded surprised, and happy, like any man would. “Including
me?”

I nodded.

“
Jesus.
Makes me feel pretty special.”

“
Well
I was with my last boyfriend since my teens, so only slept with him.”

“
Oh
yeah, when did you break up?”

I
thought for a second, tracing my mind back. “Around February time,
maybe six months ago.”
Shit, had it been that long?

“
Really,”
he said, a surprised look on his face. “And you never slept with
anyone since then, when you were doing drugs?” He was so open and
forward.

There were a few missing memories in my
head, but none where I'd have slept with someone. I think I'd know if
I'd done so. “Yeah, no one. So how about you? What's your number?”
I wasn't sure if I wanted to know.

“
Hmmm.
It's definitely less than fifty.”

Fifty!
“You don't know?”

“
Well
to be honest Grace there's a few nights that have completely escaped
me. More than a few actually. Drink and drug cocktails can fuck you
up royally. Sometimes I'd wake up not having a clue what had
happened.”

“
So
how many do you actually remember?”

He thought for a moment, his nose
scrunching up slightly, eyes squinting as he thought. “Forty-odd.”

Christ. That was more than I was
expecting.

“
Uni
was wild,” was his explanation. “And I've pretty much always been
single, too busy for a girlfriend usually.”

My
heart dropped a little with his words.
I
guess he didn't want anything serious with me then.

“
But
I've grown up a bit now. Could do with a more settled presence in my
life.” His words carried a weight. “I dunno, maybe you'd want to
be that person?”

I tried to play it cool but my heart
was singing. “I guess I could audition for the part, at least,” I
said, my tone joking.

“
Well
alright. Let's do it.”

Cain

I never found myself in the park.
Never. It was too nice a place for me, too sunny and happy, families
everywhere. I hated that.

Today I had to be there though, it was
the new me. Apparently. I'd been on a couple of dates recently, none
of them ending particularly well. Well, not the way I wanted at
least. I'd met them all behind the bar, taken them all out to drinks.
They all went like the first one, back at mine or back at theirs.
Maybe I was giving the wrong impression, that all I was looking for
was a one night stand. It was an impression I'd spent my life
building, so I guess it made sense. Old habits, it seemed, really did
die hard.

I'd decided instead to meet a girl in
the daytime, somewhere outside. No drinks, no music, nothing. Just
the two of us out in the open. So I'd chosen the park for a walk.
Just a stroll and a chat. You know, like a normal person. I was
trying my best to be one, hard as it was.

This girl was cute, not the usual
smoldering hotness I went for, but still attractive. Maybe that would
make it easier, maybe I'd spend more time looking in her eyes and not
at her double d's. I guess not drinking would make it easier, or
harder, depending on how you saw it.

The conversation flowed a bit better
than usual. Flowed to the extent where I thought, “hey, I could
actually hang out with this girl again.” She only had a mom after
her dad had died serving in the army, so we had that in common – a
parents death. I never liked talking about family, or lack thereof,
but this girl had also suffered a bit, so I gave her a bit more than
I would others.

There were no sexual innuendos being
thrown around this time. No suggestive looks and glances. Nothing
that would lead us back to my flat within the hour. I had to ask
myself as we walked whether I actually wanted to. With the other
girls I'd seen I'd wanted to rip their clothes off. With this one, I
didn't get such an urge.

She was a lot more innocent, a lot more
conservative than the rest. More like Grace. Even her name, Emily,
had an innocence to it. I'd certainly never known a slutty Emily.
Most of the girls I hooked up with were called Misty or Candy. It was
like their parents named them knowing they'd grow up to be
promiscuous. If I ever had I daughter, I'd name her Mildred or
something. Then she'd never date.

We walked for an hour chatting away
pretty happily as I fought the urge to lead her towards a bar or back
to mine. It was such a habit – to take girls home – that simply
walking and talking under the hot summer's sun felt almost entirely
alien. It was probably what college guys did with their girlfriends
and girl-friends every day: walk and talk, chat about the world. My
life felt so empty at the thought.

But hey, here I was, an outsider in
this alien world, walking along just like anyone else. Sure, I
probably stuck out a little, what with my shaved head and tattoos,
but that was nothing these days. Most people had a tattoo tucked away
somewhere – that was another thing I'd found out from my many one
night stands.

We must have looked like a bit more of
an odd couple though – Emily with her pretty blonde hair, jean
shorts and light pink blouse. Me with my ripped jeans, black vest,
and inked skin. She didn't seem to give a shit though, which was
cool. Most girls like her would only talk to me when they were drunk,
wanting a taste of the 'bad boy' to make their prim and proper
parents angry.

When she left I didn't even try to kiss
her. I wouldn't know where to start and stop. A peck on the lips?
Kiss on the cheek? Full on tongues? Better to ignore it for now. She
asked me to give her a call – they always did – that maybe we
could go for dinner sometime. Dinner, that would be another new one.

I actually wanted to though. I could
have kept talking to this one, kept talking without having to resort
to the physical stuff. I wanted to see her again, find out more about
her, see what happened from there. Progress, my therapist would say.
If I had a therapist, that is. I probably needed one.  

August
25
^th
2013

Grace

Things had been going really well
recently. Not only with Chase, but with dad as well. We'd been
patching up our relationship over the past few months, the both of us
finally able to talk in depth about mom, about how he felt about it
all, how he'd met his new partner as he moved through his grief.