ZEKE (6 page)

“I gotta take a piss.” I stand up from the stool.

“Yeah.” Rusty grabs my shot glass from the counter. “I’m sure ya do.” She smirks at me, letting me go. That’s what I like about her. She doesn’t push. She’s cool like that.

I head into the bathroom, do my business, and walk out to find fuck-me-now waiting for me. With her back against the wall, hungrily gazing at me through long lashes, she takes a slow sip from her straw. A woman looks at me like that for only one reason. I walk up to her, place my palms on either side of her on the wall, and lean in close. “Jenny, right?”

The straw slips from her mouth. “You remember my name,” she says in a sweet, high pitch.

“How could I forget it?” I smile, playing the game as I assess her glossy lips and try to imagine them wrapped around my cock. They’ll do.

She giggles, batting her lashes. “I, ah,” her big blue eyes flash up at me, “heard about your rules.”

I bet she has. It’s not the first time a woman has opened with that line. Fuck enough women and word gets around. Fuck enough women real good and they will come− come to you and then with some tenacious persuasion, come for you. I lower my head until my mouth is nearly touching hers. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” she says in a breathless whisper.

Her fruity lip gloss fills my nose. Chicks smell so delicious. Normally, that shit turns me on, but my dick lays limp in my jeans. Damn Jameson. Right, as if the Jameson is what broke my dick tonight. This is bullshit. I just gotta go for it and taste her lips. Maybe that’ll give my flaccid cock a jolt. I ebb forward and my phone vibrates in my pocket. My cock jumps. I sway back, reach in, and take out my cell. I glance at the unfamiliar number.

My dick jumps again, hoping ...

“Sorry, babe,” I give the cute blonde a false grimace, “but I gotta take this,” I say and head for the back door. My cell continues to ring as I make my way through the back entrance into the hallway. I kick the door close behind me and swipe the screen. “Hey, Picasso.”

“Zeke?” Like a gentle tug on my cock, her soft voice reaches through the line. “How’d you know it was me?”

“Told you, sweetheart, I don’t give out my number and very few people have it. So when the number popped up on my screen, I figured it had to be you.”

“Oh,” she says and then the line goes silent.

I know that I need to keep this going. “So you calling for my services?”

“Yes, the platonic one.” I hear her resistance and her surrender weeded into every word.

“Tomorrow, eight am, I’ll pick you up. Be ready.”

“It’s a date.” I hear the smile in her voice.

“No.” I shake my head. “It’s not a date.”

“Zeke, if you pick me up tomorrow at eight, it’s a date. If you don’t show, then no, it’s not a date.”

I open my mouth to argue but quickly recognize the quiet. I pull my cell from my ear and look at it. She fucking hung up on me. What the hell.

CHAPTER NINE

When I hear the doorbell ring, my heart starts to race. I’m glad Rayna is still asleep. She’d call me out on my giddy state over the fact that Zeke is here to pick me up.

With the understanding that this is a date, he still came. And like the third grade spelling bee, I’m ready, I’m excited, but most of all, I’m scared. It appears that when I’m around him, like all the other women who encounter the man, I fall victim to his charms. The guy touches me without actually touching me. His presence alone makes my heart pump hard and my body heats up. He gets me so hot in a way that no other guy has.

I shake my arms in hopes that everything will go back to normal, but when I pull the door open, I feel the erogenous spell of Zeke Declan cast over me.

Dressed in a light grey tee and a pair of destroyed jeans, he’s gorgeous. His short messy hair falls perfectly around his gorgeous face, stopping at the nape of his corded neck. Just as my eyes make their way to his, the sun radiates upon his face, enhancing the brilliant color of his gold-speckled eyes. The corner of his mouth lifts into a small lopsided grin, and I can’t help but to respond to that adorable, attention-grabbing dimple. My lips turn up. “Hi,” I manage to push out of my mouth, my smile growing bigger by the second. He’s infectious. You just want to welcome him. You want to keep him smiling, keep him pleased, and keep him close.

God, I’m in trouble here.

Nonetheless, rule number two, broken.

“Just to clarify, sweetheart,” he says, making no effort to hide the fact that beneath those hooded eyes, he’s inspecting my heated body, “this is not a date.”

I grin, shamelessly returning his gesture. I begin at his sneakers and take my time working my way back up to those heavy-lidded boudoir eyes. “I don’t see how it’s not. You and I set a time to meet and here you are. Therefore, it’s a date. Why do you have such a hard time calling it what it is?”

He shrugs. “Dates come with expectations.”

“Expectations? Now, you sound like Token. He doesn’t believe in dating either.”

“Token?” His brow lifts.

“My brother. I have five of them—Token, Steele, Nix, Stone, and Crash. Well, Crash isn’t his real name. It’s Kash, but he’s a stunt car driver. Hence, Crash. He used to be a racecar driver until NASCAR suspended him indefinitely. Anyway,” I say not wanting to get into it about my reckless older brothers with the paramount of bad boys, “what I’m trying to say is that I get the whole macho bullshit you’re trying to give me right now. But honestly, men have such misconceptions about what a woman wants or expects.”

His brows draw together as if I’m a book he’s reading and he just ran into a word that he doesn’t know the meaning. Then his chest lifts and he laughs. “Women,” he shakes his head, “You all have a bit of your own misconceptions. I wasn’t speaking of your expectations, Picasso. I was talking about mine.”

“Yours?” My head pulls back, not foreseeing the response.

“Yeah. See, if we were actually to go out on a date, I’d expect you to be a good girl.” He takes a step toward me. “And those illegitimate feelings you have for me, as wrong as you might think they are—I’d want you to accept that they’re not going away.” He moves in closer with another step. “I’d also expect you to behave yourself and not act on those naughty little impulses, the ones you feel when I get too close.” He’s standing right in front of me, our body heat co-mingles, and those naughty impulses he’s speaking of ignite. His head tilts to the side. He scans my face, slow and deliberate, until our eyes reconnect. “I’d expect you to be a lady. I’d expect you to keep your legs crossed. I’d expect you to make it very difficult for me to get into your pants.”

“Really?” Dammit! My voice squeaks with my astonishment. He can’t be serious, can he? I gaze up at him, now the confused reader.

“Really,” he says, glancing at my flip-flops. “Today, I’m taking you to the farmers’ market. They have the best peaches for making pie.”

“Homemade pie?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” I’ve never made a pie in my life, and the expression on his face tells me that he’s reading right into the lack of my domesticated skills.

He grimaces. “Where are you from?”

“I grew up in L.A., but I’ve been living in Manhattan for the past few years.”

“Ah, a city girl.” He smiles, rubbing his chin. “Well, then, I guess we’re going to have to teach you how to make a pie.”

“And by we, you mean …”

“What? You think I don’t know how to make a pie?”

“No. I don’t.” That goes against everything I thought that I knew about guys, at least, the ones I grew up with. Then again, Nix might know how to bake a pie. He’s a single dad. So yeah, maybe he’s honed the skill. But I’m not sure my other brothers have what it takes to bake anything. And with his potent testosterone and sexual influences over women, Zeke certainly falls into the majority of my non-baking brothers.

“Oh, I get it. You see me as a guy who only knows how to make a woman scream every curse word in her vocabulary while making her come. Well, allow me to inform you, Lurlene.” He pauses and so does my heart from hearing him say my name and about how he can make a woman come. “I do have other aptitudes.”

“Such as baking pies, reading, and enjoying fine arts?”

“Yes, those are some of them.”

“Oh-ho, there’s more?” I try to laugh but my brain’s still stuck on just how he would make a woman come. Could he make me come? Oh, yeah. I hold my smile, knowing that he could.

“So much more.” He grins. “Now, those flip-flops will not do so go put on some sneakers.”

I stare at him for a brief moment, astonished that he’s thinking of my comfort. He’s right, though. If we’re going to be walking around the market today, then my feet will certainly be killing me in these flip-flops.

“Get moving,” he says in a firm strict tone, and surprisingly enough, I obey. I guess it must have something to do with that wanting to please the guy. God, how I want to please him, and I hate it! I stomp up the stairs, get my sneakers, put them on, and head back down the stairs. From his titanic sexual presence to his lip-smacking masculine scent, Zeke fills the living room. I just can’t see him with an apron on maneuvering around the kitchen. Though, an image of him with some flour on his nose pops into my head and I let out a laugh.

“Thinking about making pies with me, aren’t ya?” His brows wiggle. Huh, would you look at that—he can pull off cute too. Yep. I’m a goner when it comes to Zeke Declan and his charms. Not that I’m going to let him know it.

“Ya know.” I walk right up to him, stopping only inches from his muscular all-man body. “If we were to go out on a real date, I’d have some of my own expectations, as well.”

“Oh, pray tell, Picasso.” His eyes sparkle with clandestine naughtiness.

“Well,” I say, liking the way his eyes wait on me. “I’d expect you to place your palm on the small of my back as you walk me into the restaurant,” I slowly slide my hand around his hip to the waist of his jeans. “I’d expect you to smile at me from across the table,” I glance at his chest, “make me wonder what you’re thinking while I fed hungrily on the anticipation of it.” I add pressure with my fingers as I pull him almost against me. “And at the end of the night, when you walked me to my door,” I look up into his mesmeric eyes, “I wouldn’t expect you to push me against it and attack me like an impatient teenager.” I stop to take in his intrigued expression. “Our first kiss, it would be soft and gentle. You’d place your warm palm against my cheek and neck.” I lift my other hand and cradle his face. “You’d draw me in close.” I lower my eyes to his mouth. “And you’d watch my lips as they touched yours ...” I pause just before we kiss and look up into his dark hooded eyes.

“Well, in that case, sweetheart,” he says with steady control, “I don’t think that I could meet your expectations.”

“No?”

“No.” He gazes at me, reaching deep inside with those piercing iridescent, steadfast eyes. “For my first kiss with you would never be soft and gentle. And I would push you against the door but not like a teenager in heat. I’d push you against the door so I could press my body against you. So you’d feel how hard you made my cock while I sat across from you in that damn restaurant, while I imagined the ways I’d make your beautiful body twist and move. I’d kiss those lips the way they wanted to be kissed—long, hard, and wet. You’d moan and cry against my mouth. You’d beg me to give you more, so much more.”

I swallow the drool pooling in my mouth. “You’re right.” I run my thumb along his bottom lip, taking a deep breath and trying to overcome the commotion he’s caused within my hungry body. “I guess you couldn’t meet my expectations then.” He’d exceed them. Shit, he’d demolish them. “Luckily, though,” I drag his bottom lip downward with my thumb, “this isn’t a date.”

“Lucky for you.” He licks the lip that I just released from my touch. “And after all,” he smiles, “I’d hate to disappoint you and your expectations.”

CHAPTER TEN

I breathe in the warm summer night air as we slowly move through the canal. For today’s sightseeing excursion, Zeke borrowed a friend’s canoe, and we’re going night fishing. With each stroke of the paddle, I watch the calm water break. It took me a few minutes, but once I got a handle on this whole rowing thing, I fell into sync with Zeke.