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In the driver’s seat of my car, I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to get myself together. “You dipshit,” I told myself. It seemed incredible to me now that the sexiest blonde I’d ever seen had actually walked into my apartment two days ago. That she’d stripped for me. Looked at me. Touched me. Kissed me. That she’d practically begged me to fuck her, and when I had… When I had, it had been something. It hadn’t been awkward or weird or out of sync. She had fit against me like we were two puzzle pieces, and she’d come so hard I’d felt it. It had been fucking perfect.
Right now, it felt like it had never really happened.
I ran a hand through my hair, then drove back to Shady Oaks.
My apartment complex dated from the sixties, and it was built like an old-school motel, a low building circling a central courtyard, the stairs and the corridors open to the sky instead of enclosed. In the center was a dried-out pool that no one had used in decades, now full of dirt and leaves. It was far from downtown, and it was cheap, and my neighbors were mostly dirtbags and low-level criminals of some kind, but that was fine with me. It meant that no one ever bothered to be neighborly. Devon had passed his apartment to me when he moved out into his big house in Diablo, and now the place was mine.
I climbed the stairs, my grocery bag perched in the crook of my arm, and headed down the open corridor to my door. It was afternoon now, brisk, the sun winking in and out from behind the moving clouds. I raised my gaze and stopped.
The blonde was standing in front of my door. She was dressed different this time—jeans, a t-shirt beneath a loose dove-gray cardigan. She’d traded out the stiletto heels for flip flops. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she watched me.
I paused for a second, taking her in in shock, and then I started walking again. Her gaze flicked down over me, noticing my limp. I always got this way when my leg got tired.
I came closer and looked down at her. She raised her eyes up to mine, and I saw she had no makeup on—not a trace. Her hair, which was just past shoulder length, didn’t have any hairspray in it, and it blew softly in the breeze. In the sunlight, completely naked of makeup, her face was even more beautiful than before.
See ya, she’d said, and she’d let the door close behind her.
“Hi,” I managed.
“Hi.” She bit her lip. “I need to talk to you.”
I blinked. I couldn’t imagine what she had to talk to me about, but then I remembered Helen and her lecture. “I need to talk to you, too.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
I put my key in my door and let her in, then walked to the kitchen to put my groceries down. I turned to find her standing in the middle of my apartment, her fingers hooked into the pockets of her hip-hugging jeans, looking around as if she’d never seen the place before.
“You have a lot of books here,” she observed.
I snorted a laugh. “You didn’t notice that last time?”
“I guess not.” She swiveled slowly, looking around, and it was all I could do not to bark at her, ask her what exactly she saw. Did my place look pathetic to her? Like the apartment of a guy who lived alone and never got laid?
I banged my groceries a little hard on the counter, because I was nervous, and she jumped. Deciding it was best maybe not to scare the shit out of her, I slowed down. I turned my back and discreetly emptied my pockets of the annoying fucking condoms, tossing them in the silverware drawer. Then I made myself walk calmly around to the other side of the counter and lean on it, watching her. “What do you want to talk to me about?” I asked her.
She suddenly looked uncertain. I had never seen a sexier woman. It came off her like a scent, was in every way that her body moved. Even though she wasn’t dancing, even though she was in a roomy t-shirt and sweater, her long legs encased in worn jeans, her painted toes in flip-flops, she was ridiculously, naturally sexy. I had no idea what the hell she was doing here.
She didn’t answer my question, so I said, “Since you already know mine, why don’t you start by telling me your name?”
She lifted her chin and her gaze snapped on mine.
“It’s Gwen,” she said. “And I came to tell you I’m not a slut.”
Chapter 5
Gwen
The words just hung there, like we could both see them. I am not a slut. Well, fuck it. I’m not. And for some reason I couldn’t figure out, it was important to me that he knew.
The guy—Max, his name was Max—looked genuinely surprised at that, then his brow furrowed. “Okay,” he said. “I never said you were.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m just making it clear, okay? I know what I do for a living, what it looks like. What it looked like when I was… here.” I blew out a breath. “You might think I do that all the time. But I don’t, okay? I’ve never done anything like that before.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, and the motion made his biceps look like something you’d put in a porn made just for women. He was looking at me, not with judgment, but with a soft sort of curiosity. “I didn’t think you were a slut,” he said. “I didn’t think you did that all the time.”
“No?” I scoffed. “What did you think I was, then? A stripper who shows up and fucks her customer?” I made the words sharp, hurtful, because that’s what I do. I bring the hurt before anyone can bring it to me.
But Max just shrugged his big, hot shoulders. “I just thought you were a woman who wanted to be fucked,” he said, his voice rough. “And you didn’t fuck a customer, by the way. Someone hired you, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.”
