Right now, I’m an angry bodacious bull and Jace Heart is my matador dressed in bright crimson running away from me as I charge at him.
“How the fuck did you skip over me seeing her naked?” He asks as he sprints around my bedroom, trying to get away from me but that just makes me see a brighter red as he runs out of the room.
“YOU SAW HER NAKED?!”
I take another long sip of my lemon water for the seventh time since we’ve been seated at Supérieure Nourriture, the latest fine dining French restaurant just twenty minutes from campus. The restaurant is the style of a candlelit dinner with basic golden candelabras at the center of each table.
My palms grow clammy as I look back up at Cleo, rubbing them against my thighs. I don’t know what the hell my problem is. She and I haveshared a bed togetherand now I can barely form the proper words to speak to her.
Cleo’s wearing a red satin thigh length dress that clasps in a halter formation around her neck. Her long brown hair is in its signature style with half of it up and the other half down with two tendrils of hair to frame her round face.
Today, her bow of choice is on her shoes. The tiny cream bows were the first thing I’d noticed when she’d walked in front of me into the restaurant.
She shifts awkwardly as the waiter approaches us once again, asking if we’re ready to order, to which Cleo asks for another five minutes to decide.
I twist the tie around my neck and frown at its tightness. Why did I even wear a tie? It’s not like we’re at the Met or something. I exhale deeply, a feeling of bottomless dread rumbles my stomach as realization dawns on me.
I’m completelybombingour first date.
“Do you feel stuffy too or is it just me?” a soft voice asks, catching my attention. Cleo’s leaning across the table, her red painted lips formed in a small frown as I nod.
“You want to get out of here?”
The question causes me to wrinkle my nose but then an idea hits me, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before.
I give the woman in front of me a small smile before nodding, happy with my forming plan. “I think I know a place, let’s get out of here.” I grin, standing up from the stuffy table to hold out a hand for her.
Cleo’s eyes brighten as she looks up at me from her spot before she clutches my hand and jumps out of her seat.
That’s exactly how I found myself standing inside of the local Summerfield pizza shop, Pizzeria Pizza (Cliché, I know), smiling from ear to ear looking back and forth between my Jeep where Cleo sits in the front seat and to the guy making the pies I’d ordered.
I watch as Cleo films me through the windshield with her vlog camera and give it a small wave before turning back to the pizza guy.
“Hot date?” He asks, watching the exchange as I let out a low chuckle.
“The hottest.”
Once I secure the pizza, I work fast to get Cleo and myself situated in the car and to our destination. She’s grinning from ear to ear as she takes a bite from aslice of cheese pizza in one hand and another from her strawberry donut in the other.
During the car ride over, we laugh and talk about the semester. We even sing a few One Direction songs until we reach the final stoplight before our destination.
“Put this on your eyes for me,” I say, keeping my eyes trained solely on the road as I hand her my tie.
I can hear her breath hitch as she takes the tie into her hands but Cleo, the confident girl that she is, would never let me see her off-kilter.
“You kinky bastard, I didn’t know you had a thing for blindfolds.” She giggles.
I smirk at her implication and place my hand on her exposed thigh.
“Oh, Princess, there’s so much about me that you don’t know,” I tease, pulling into our destination, the smell of sea salt permeates the air as I exit the car first, leaving all of our belongings inside. I prop my phone up on a wooden plank near the car, hoping to get everything on film as I let Cleo out of the passenger side. She’s definitely going to want footage of whatever happens here and I’m more than happy to do this for her.
I unbuckle her seatbelt for her, her warm fruity scent is intoxicating as I lean over her, but I suppress myself. This is about Cleo, not my horniness. Lifting her out of the car in a bridal carry, Cleo gasps from excitement as I set her down in the sand.
Her jaw drops at the sound of waves crashing in the distance and the smell of saltwater crowding our senses. I’m about to tell her to take off the blindfold but she eagerly does it before I can.
“Oh my… Blake, you didn’t!” She jumps excitedly, looking back and forth between the ocean and me. Her eyes sparkle like small stars as she smiles, I can almost see her inner child smiling up at me as she throws her arms around my neck pulling me into a bone-crushing hug.
“Do you like it?” I ask as she pulls back from my neck, resting my interlocked hands on the small of her back.
