Crazy, Stupid Sex (2 page)

“Okay,” he said.

Damn this was awkward.

But she was pressing on. She had her
Flirt
profile all set. She had “10 Tips to Land a Guy,” and she was going to do just that.

* * *

Caleb Anderson had watched the thin, awkward redhead approach three different men and bomb out in the last ten minutes.

It was like watching an overeager puppy try to make friends with cat people. Sad. It was sad.

Of course, he was a thirty-five-year-old man in a bar on a Friday night hoping to pick up a stranger for sex, so he imagined he was a little sad, too.

But his chances for success were much higher than hers. So there was that.

He could hear her voice carrying over the music. She was loud. Everything about her. From her steps in her stilettos to her laugh, was damned loud.

“These heels are making me blister.”

Oh man. She was so awkward.

“Really, I never wear shoes like this.” She was still talking about her feet. And now bending down to pull a shoe off. She was wobbling, but caught herself on the bar before she face-planted onto the glossy marble floor.

The guy she was talking to seemed willing to overlook the awkward. At least for now. Probably because the girl had a fine rack on her, at least it seemed that way from his vantage point.

Might be one of those lying gel bras. False advertising at its most insidious.

And now her shoe was off. And her weirdness officially trumped her rack. The guy she was talking to was zoned out now, his gaze on the blonde across the room.

Caleb had assessed the blonde already. She was boring. She wasn’t awkward, but there was nothing special about her. Her legs were nice, but he’d had a lot of blondes with nice legs. He could see exactly how the night would go. He could take her back to his place, take her to his room. She’d wrap those legs around him and they’d both work their way to orgasm, while the blonde did her best not to sweat her makeup off.

He liked the ending, but the journey just didn’t excite him much.

Damn.
Sex was starting to get boring. He really did need a hobby. One beyond picking up women in bars, apparently.

The redhead wasn’t boring. She was weird. But she wasn’t boring. Sex with her? He couldn’t predict that. And that interested him.

Caleb got up from his table and walked across the bar, his eyes on her. She was trying to get her shoe back on now, and she was oblivious to the fact that she’d lost her audience.

She looked up, her hair spilling over her shoulders, all glossy and sexy, her lips drawn into a pout.

For the first time since he’d seen her, hot surpassed weird as his primary descriptor. Her eyes were still on the guy who was now very much trying not to look at her. He’d never seen a woman as pretty as her strike out so hard so many times in a row.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.

She looked up and her eyes went wide. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“I had one.”

“Only one?” he asked. He’d sort of imagined she was a little tipsy. If she was sober then she was extra weird.

“Yeah, just the one. I didn’t want to get drunk.”

“No, I can see why you wouldn’t,” he said.

“I was talking to Jeff here,” she said, looking back at the man who was no longer looking at her.

“You were done talking to Jeff,” Caleb said. “Or rather, I think he was done talking to you.”

“I think he’s playing hard to get,” she said, arching a brow.

“I think he can hear you,” Caleb said.

The woman stepped away from the bar and lowered her voice. “Well, he was.”

“Men don’t play hard to get,” Caleb said. “Men want to have sex. Every guy in here by himself wants to have sex tonight. Hell, every guy in here with a woman wants to have sex tonight, their odds just aren’t as good as the guys who are alone.”

“You think so?”

“I know so, Evie.”

She frowned. “How do you know my name?”

“Evie, Evie James, you’ve introduced yourself very loudly to several men in here since I walked in. I observed.”

“Well…I…I…that’s just annoying,” she said. “Eavesdropping, I mean. Eavesdropping is annoying.”

“This is where you ask my name,” he said.

“I’m not sure it is.”

“Yes, it’s polite. Caleb Anderson. And your pickup techniques aren’t working.”

“I’m doing research,” she said, her tone sharp. “For an app.”

“An app?” he asked, interested now.

“I’m an app developer, that’s what I do.”

“See? That’s interesting. Your heel blisters aren’t.”

Freckled cheeks turned deep red. “But they hurt.”

“Sorry. Want me to rub ointment on it?”

“Having a man rub ointment on your feet is nowhere in the guidelines.”

“Guidelines?”

“I have these guidelines. I’m using them to make the app. For
Flirt
magazine. Yeah. That one. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s like…a big deal.”

Now, that was a twist he couldn’t have predicted. But then, this was the hangout for people who worked in that arena. Which he knew, not because he did, but because it was a good place to pick up businesswomen who wanted to blow off steam.

He knew the magazine well. One of the many glossy-paged ponies in his father’s media stable. It had been enlightening to him as a teenage boy discovering women.

It had been like being behind enemy lines.

Part of the empire that would have been Jill’s. Now it would be his someday as the sole surviving heir. He didn’t like to think about it much anymore. And the connection almost sent him walking back the other way.

He didn’t need any emotional baggage; he just needed a little fun.

But Evie James was interesting. And the desire to be interested was stronger than the desire to turn away.

“The women’s magazine with all the sex tips?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the one.” She leaned in, one eyebrow arching. “And I’ve been reading up.”

Evie was starting to wonder if she really was drunk. A feeling of desperation was making her behave like an ass, and she knew it, and now this guy was talking to her. This guy who didn’t even look like he could possibly be real.

He looked like he’d stepped off the pages of some business magazine. Perfectly cut suit, expensive watch and shoes. And his haircut had not cost eight dollars.

No, his dark hair was perfection. She wanted to run her fingers through it. Or pull it. That was one of the sex tips she’d read. Some guys were into that.

And now he was talking to her. She wished she were in a business meeting. Then it wouldn’t matter how hot the guy was, she would know what to say. She would know what to do with her hands.

She wouldn’t be so sweaty.

She was beyond competent in every other area of her life and she just didn’t know how to do this.

The damn app needed to be able to flirt for her. Give a command, and it would do her bidding. But that was asking a bit much of artificial intelligence.

Siri, I’d like to get laid…

There are ten horny, sexy men in your area.

Not likely.

“So, what’s in your app?” he asked, leaning on the bar.

“Nothing finalized yet. I mean, I’m not writing all the content, I’m programming it. Though I am taking some things straight from articles. You can create a profile that helps customize your fashion and flirt type. It has…hot spots, to help you find the right kind of guy for you. You know, athletes, businessmen. You can send messages. There’s quick dating tips and…sex tips.”

“Sex tips?”

“Yeah,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Sex tips. Fifty of them.”

“Fifty? I’m going to have to hear about those.”

Evie took a deep breath and leaned in a little, ignoring the fact that she wobbled on her heels a bit. Ignoring the fact that she was so nervous she could hardly breathe. She had nothing to lose. Three unsuccessful attempts already and she was starting to feel like a failure.

It was time to lay it all on the line.

“What if I showed you instead?”

Chapter Two

Steps five through eight had effectively been skipped. She’d moved straight to step nine: The Proposition. The only thing after this was Closing the Deal. And that was a thinly-veiled euphemism for “letting him put his penis inside you.” Which was not her desired end result, but, really, this should provoke him to suggest a deal-closing. Which would technically mean she was a rousing success and could go home and put on her flannel pajamas.

In theory.

Her dating history wasn’t super illustrious. One man. She’d been with one man, and they’d hooked up in high school, and back then, her standard for a datable male had been A) breathing and B) not oblivious to her existence. Jason had been both of those things, and so one night they’d sort of ended up sitting at the same table at a popular burger hangout and the rest had been history.

She’d given him her V card as a matter of course. He’d asked her to prom, he’d brought her a corsage. And he’d gotten a hotel room you could rent by the hour. He’d done the expected things, so she’d done the expected things.

And thus it had gone on.

Well, that wasn’t her anymore.

She didn’t need a relationship. She didn’t want one. Hell, she was a woman at the top. A blinking multimillionaire by age twenty-seven, and no one had helped her get there. It was all her.

She was in charge. And she was going to have Caleb the annoying bar hottie to demand she show him her sex tips!

“You want to show me your sex tips?” he asked. His lips were curved into a half-smile, and rather than looking uncontrollably aroused he looked…amused. That wasn’t what she was going for.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Yeah. That’s what I said. You. Me. Sex. Tips.”

“Tell me something, Evie.”

“Okay.”

“Why is it you’re out to pick up a man tonight?”

“The app.”

He shrugged. “Okay, you win the prize. You’ve picked me up. Now you don’t have to follow through. Your methods worked. The app is a stunning success.”

She frowned. This was supposed to be sweet victory, and yet, in the moment it rang hollow. “You seem so into it, far be it for me to doubt whether or not I’ve scored,” she said dryly, “but I sort of doubt it.”

“But say you had. And that it all worked. Do you want to follow through?”

She blinked. She looked around the bar, at the guys she’d struck out with. If they’d asked her to go back to their place she’d be back at her place alone drinking a Moscato. She for damn sure would not have said
yes.

But Caleb asking if she wanted to follow through?

The idea was tempting in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

“I…the data is skewed because you know about the app,” she said. “I can’t ever be sure.”

“Sure you can. I would like to take you back to my place and have sex with you, Evie. What’s your answer?”

She opened her mouth and nothing came out. And that’s when she realized, she was seriously considering naked touching with a stranger. And she’d been warned about strangers. No matter how much candy a guy claimed to have in his van, she knew better than to go with him. She knew that.

Yeah, she was nervous as hell. And if any of the other guys were standing where he was? She would be saying game over. Flirt level: Awesome, achieved. No sex required. Just as planned.

But now? Now she was looking at this guy, the hottest guy she’d ever seen, and thinking
why not?

Because this wasn’t about an app, or a flirting experiment. This was about demanding something other than mediocrity. Something better than a guy she got naked for just because he was there and it was expected.

She wanted a guy who would tear her clothes off like she was a present on Christmas morning. And she’d never had it. She’d never been able to ask for what she really wanted. And any time she’d tried, Jason had just acted like she’d asked him to hide a body, not go down on her. That list of sex tips? She would have been too embarrassed to leave it on Jason’s pillow, much less verbally ask for any of them.

And what was that? She was a professional woman who had total control over her life, and yet she’d never asked for what she wanted in bed. She’d never pushed for excellence there, even when she demanded it in all other areas of her life.

“Okay, you want the truth?” she asked.

“Depends.”

“On?”

His smile widened. “If I’ll like a lie better.”

“I don’t lie well. I’m honest. Painfully so. It’s part of the awkwardness, which, I am aware of, by the way. It works for me in some settings.”

“If you say so.”

“
Forbes
says so, actually, but that’s beside the point.”

“
Forbes
has never said anything about me,” he said.

“Don’t feel bad. You’re young yet. Make something of yourself and maybe someday you’ll be as important as I am. That point aside, though,” she said, taking a deep breath, “here’s the truth. I just got out of a really long-term relationship. Like, if socks were as old as that relationship, throwing them out would have been the obvious thing to do.”

“Socks?”

“Metaphorically, it actually holds up well. It stunk and it was full of holes. Again, much like old socks. And then I lost the asshole in the wash, so to speak.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, long-term relationship. So done with it. So done with him. And I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I know how to turn a few lines of code into a fortune, but I don’t know how to get a date. And I am…desperate for sex that’s more exciting than lukewarm oatmeal.
Desperate.
So…I’m sure I broke a cardinal rule by confessing my desperation, but—and this is a big
but
—I probably won’t be pursuing that non-bland sex with a stranger from a bar. Sorry.”

“Confessing desperation is probably a serious rule-breaker, you’re right.”

“No doubt.”

“I’m sure you’re supposed to be playing aloof. Hard to get. Like Jeff over there,” he said, gesturing to the man she’d made a pass at only a few minutes earlier.

That thought made her feel a little dizzy. She’d only been in the bar for an hour. She’d talked to four men. And she was going to go home with the fourth one if he was into it.