TALLY:
I handed my coat to the fresh-faced cloakroom attendant, who sent me a shy smile before his gaze became surgically attached to my cleavage. My confidence picked up as he handed me the ticket, his cheeks shining like beacons in the club’s half-light. I smoothed my palms down the plush velvet of the vintage minidress I’d found in my local branch of American Retro. Tucking the ticket into my bag, I smiled at the poor kid. Good to know the three hours I’d spent debating my wardrobe options for this evening had not been entirely wasted.
My phone pinged and I whipped it out of my bag, grinning when I saw the text pop up from my partner in crime, aka matchmaker extraordinare Sam Grady.
“We’re in one of the booths on the left in the American Bar. Hope you’re looking hot because Brent certainly is. S x”
I headed down a wide stairway, the walls expensively upholstered in dark wood and velvet wallpaper, tapping out a reply while doing my best to ignore the knot forming in my stomach.
“Stop salivating, he’s my date, not yours. And I’m in 90s Dior—so let the enslavement begin. T x”
But as I stepped into the darkened bar and walked past the booths, listening for Sam’s greeting, the knot swelled and pushed into my throat. After close to six months of disaster dates, it was incredible I could still feel anything at the prospect of meeting a new guy. So, what the fuck was this knot doing in my tummy? Because it was getting uncomfortable. Excitement, maybe? After all, this was a date with actual prospects. The anticipation of flesh-to-flesh contact with another human being, and the promised endorphin rush of good hard sweaty sex, had caused me to waste a good hour debating the appropriate knicker etiquette for tonight – red lace panties, silk thong or commando.
“Hey, Tally, is that you?”
I stopped dead at the sound of Sam’s deliberately nonchalant tone, my heels sinking into the deep-pile carpet — and eased a breath out of constricted lungs. Pasting on the surprised smile I’d been practicing in the mirror all evening, I spotted Sam standing beside one of the booths. I scanned the rest of his booth as discreetly as possible. A pair of muscular forearms – with a couple of unreadable tats – rested on the table, but the rest of Sam’s companion was hidden in the shadows.
“Sam, fancy meeting you here.” I winced at my overly bright tone.
“Yeah, fancy.” The twinkle in Sam’s eyes dazzled me with conspiratorial glee. “Hey, Brent, this is Tally, a girl I know from way back,” he added, being deliberately vague about our connection, as we’d arranged. “Tally, meet Brent, a pal from my college days.”
I dragged in air, trying not to hyperventilate as a tall man appeared from the shadows and unfolded himself from the booth.
Holy shitola.
I sucked in a breath, nearly choking on the drool that collected under my tongue, as he reached out one large, tanned hand. “Tally, hi.”
Sam had said his friend was ruggedly handsome. For a gay man into art and design, Sam certainly wasn’t into flamboyant overstatement. Brent O’Neill wasn’t ruggedly handsome. He was ruggedly awesome.
Firm fingers folded over mine as my gaze met eyes so blue they were almost translucent, the brilliant aquamarine reminiscent of the Caribbean Sea filtered to death on Insta.
I stared at him, momentarily transfixed, the calluses on his palm sending goosebumps sprinting up my arm as I noticed the bold angles and contours of his face.
Muscular shoulders stretched the seams of a white shirt and tapered down to the lean waist of his charcoal-gray suit trousers. Despite wearing the standard uniform of a well-heeled city dude, with his height — he towered over me even in my heels — and those mile-wide shoulders, he had the aura of a Navy SEAL rather than a tech bro.
The brutal buzz cut added to the impression of raw, all-American masculinity, accentuating his blunt features and making my fingers itch to caress the soft spikes of hair covering his scalp.
Fuck me. He certainly had a physique better suited to hand-to-hand combat in a war zone than booting up a hard drive in Mayfair.
I struggled to re-inflate my lungs, before they collapsed entirely, and say something that didn’t involve whimpering, but then his deep unfathomable gaze roamed down to my cleavage, insolent and entitled — and the supply of oxygen to my brain cut off entirely.
Given that my bust was clad in sequined velvet precisely for the purpose of drawing the male gaze, I couldn’t exactly be outraged by the bold assessment, but that didn’t stop heat flaring across my chest as the knowledge in his eyes made me wonder if Sam had managed to keep his mouth shut about my intentions. Because Brent was already giving off serious I-want-to-jump-you vibes and I hadn’t even managed to open my mouth yet.
“Great to meet you. Why don’t you join us?” His wide, sensual mouth quirked on one side, and he gave my hand a gentle tug.
I cleared my throat. That was supposed to have been Sam’s line.
“Um, thanks.” I went to slide into the booth next to Sam, but Brent the Magnificent’s large hand touched my hip, sending a jolt of shock and awe up my spine. And stopped me in my tracks. “Take my seat. I was heading to the bar. What’s your poison?”
“A daiquiri.” He brushed past me, the spicy scent of clean male sending my senses into overdrive as his hand slid off my hip. The familiarity unsettled me a little. Either the guy was super tactile, or he was already staking a claim. And while my nipples weren’t objecting, the rest of me felt a bit dazed. After two years without a ride of any description, maybe I’d overestimated my ability to jump back on the horse — or rather, the stallion — this quickly.
Had I actually requested a huge dick? What had seemed hopelessly arousing in the cab on the way over now seemed overwhelming. Why the heck hadn’t I thought this through a lot more carefully?
Brent lifted a finger to Sam. “Another IPA, buddy?”
Sam glanced at his watch, not at all subtly. “Actually, I’ve gotta shoot.” He gave me a peck on the cheek, as if we were old buddies. The faker. “Real sorry not to get the chance to catch up.” He patted my waist. “You wanna hang out with Brent for a while?”
The knot in my throat grew into a boulder.
“You’re leaving already?” I glared at my now ex-new best friend. What was he playing at? He might as well have put up a sign saying, “woman in need of shagging, this way.” And while it was clearly true on a physical level — given the way my clitoris was throbbing in time with my frantic pulse — I hadn’t planned on being quite this obvious. Yet.
“Yeah, I’ve got tickets for a drag show in Shoreditch.” He winked. He actually winked at me. “I give you guys full permission to trash talk about me behind my back.”
Trash talk about him. I was going to eviscerate him – for leaving me in the lurch so quickly. What the hell had happened to his promise to play gooseberry for twenty minutes before he did a runner.
“Well, thank you,” I said dryly, trying to stem the panic and convey my displeasure without alerting Brent. I needed to ease into this. Not get kicked into the deep end. “That should take all night, given the amount of dirt I have on you,” I added, in case Sam hadn’t got the message that I was not pleased with his sudden deviation from our carefully worked out plan.
Brent’s gruff chuckle rolled up my spine like warm chocolate sauce — decadent and scarily delicious. “Great, I’m always looking for more dirt on Sam,” he murmured. “One daiquiri coming up.”
As soon as Brent was out of earshot, I grasped Sam’s upper arm. “Are you bloody nuts?” I whispered furiously. “He’ll figure out it’s a set-up.”
“So what?” Sam’s grin widened. “From the way he was checking out your rack, the hunt’s already on.”
“Yes, but…” But what? I glanced over my shoulder to watch Brent the Magnificent stroll to the bar. He was precisely what I’d ordered. So why the heck was I panicking?
But then I watched him draw the barman’s attention away from the other patrons waiting to get served with a lift of his index finger. And a tremor went through my sex-starved body. A weird combination of arousal, anticipation and extreme panic.
Brent wasn’t an alpha male, he was an alpha wolf — and for all my big talk last week, I was completely out of practice at handling one of those. Because the last time I’d hooked up with one, he’d ended up ripping me to shreds.
Was there such a thing as a too-hot date?
“Hey, chill.” Sam touched my nose, drawing my attention back to him. “Flirt with Brent, have some fun. If you don’t want to jump him, give him the brush-off. He’s a big guy. He can take it. He won’t push — trust me, I wouldn’t hook you up with that kind of asshole.”
“Okay…” I said, quelling the sudden urge to ask exactly how big a guy Brent was. That kind of speculation had gotten me into this fix in the first place. “I guess I’m not worried about his control…” I sighed. “I’m more worried about my own. I don’t want any emotional fall-out from this.”
While I’d been ready to get back on the hook-up express for a while, I was so not ready for the emotional rollercoaster that had gone with it last time. The fact was that my instant, over-the-top reaction to Brent was reminiscent of my first response to Jamie. But more so. Even Jamie hadn’t managed to brain all the blood from my brain to my clit in ten seconds flat.
Sam’s eyebrow lifted. “Tally, trust me.” He gave my shoulder a friendly squeeze. “That’s not going to happen. Not with Brent. So, control’s got nothing to do with it.” His gaze drifted past me to the bar. “You need to get laid. So go for it. And give me all the details tomorrow.” The wicked twinkle returned with a vengeance. “As payback for all my hard work.”
I choked out a laugh — the anticipation and arousal finally edging out the terror. I was totally overthinking this. Fine, I was hopelessly rusty when it came to flirting with someone I actually fancied. But surely riding stallions was the same as riding a bike — once you knew how, the skill would come back naturally as soon as you got back in the saddle. And given that I was already clear that if anything happened between Brent and me it would simply be sex, and only sex—what could possibly go wrong?
“Cheers, Sam.” I squeezed his fingers, stupidly grateful not only for the pep talk, but for the fact that my new bestie had apparently delivered the perfect guy to blast my libido out of mothballs without causing any collateral damage. “I promise to give you a blow-by-blow account tomorrow.”
“A blow-by-blow, huh?” Sam laughed, saluting me as he walked backwards. “Cool.”
I settled into the booth once Sam was gone, and admired Brent’s exceptional arse as he pulled his phone out of his back pocket to pay for the drinks. While he was handling the order, I let out a careful breath, the swelling in my throat now accompanied by a delicious swelling in my clit.
Lifting my iPhone off the table, I snapped a photo of him to keep my fingers busy. Rubbing my thighs together to stop the persistent hum of arousal, I felt the gusset of my thong rub against my engorged clit.
Bugger, maybe no knickers had been the correct knicker choice for tonight after all.
