AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Twilight?” I asked before it clicked. Because, really, there was no reason for it to make sense that quickly.
“You know, Twilight,” Cassie explained. “Favorite movie to teenage girls all over the world and the catalyst to several thousand vampire fetishes. Thatch is wisely Team Edward. Kline, here, is trying to make a case for Jacob.” She scoffed.
I laughed once, almost harshly, before both Kline’s and Thatch’s eyes shot to me. They didn’t look happy.
Looking from face to face, I met each of our party’s eyes with disbelief before my gaze landed back on my best friends. My adult, male best friends. “You’re serious?”
“Fuck yeah,” Thatch boomed before turning back to Kline. “Bella and Edward were fucking destined for each other. Jacob was only there because he was pining for the combination of their sperm and egg. You can’t fight lifemates, Klinehole. You just can’t.”
“Jesus,” I said to myself, but all three women laughed. The sound of one caught my attention in particular. Rough but sweet, Winnie lost herself in that moment with her friends, and I hated myself thoroughly for denying myself the opportunity to watch. But I was getting in deep, so much so that I was starting to worry I might never be able to pull myself free. Winnie Winslow’s quicksand was strong, and it was only wise to hold myself safe from that. Right?
“I think I need a drink,” I muttered to Cassie, my eyes meeting hers as she put a hand to her stomach and smiled.
“Me too,” she agreed, and I frowned.
“I said I needed it, not that I was going to do it,” she protested easily. “But you have to live it for me. I’ll order shots.”
Fuck. I hadn’t done shots since college. “I don’t know about—”
Tears pooled at the corners of her unique eyes immediately. “No shots?” she asked, sounding like I’d told her her baby had no toes.
I buckled more spectacularly than a Pilgrim.
“Okay, shots. I’ll do shots.”
Winnie reached over and squeezed my knee as immediately as Cassie’s tears dried right up. Satisfied, she turned back toward Thatch and leaned around him to get the attention of the waitress. I wasn’t even sure what her gesturing was supposed to mean. To me, it looked like she was milking several extremely large cows, but the waitress seemed to understand.
I’d been played like fuck, but the feel of Winnie Winslow’s hand on my leg without persuasion or invitation mended my ego immensely. “Don’t feel bad,” Winnie whispered, pressing the tips of her fingers into the meat of my thigh. “She’s really good at hormonal manipulation.”
I glanced down to catch sight of her hand on me, and, embarrassed, she moved to pull it back. I moved faster, though, pressing the palm of my hand into the back of hers and sealing it tight to the denim fabric at my thigh.
Leaning over slightly, I whispered directly into her ear. “Uh-uh, Win. If I’m going to spend my night at the sleepover from hell, discussing chick flicks and doing brightly colored shots, the least you can do is put your hands on me.”
She blushed, and the color on her cheeks looked so good, I decided to push it even further. “Though, if I had my way, you’d move that hand about five inches to the right.”
Truth be told, I’d have been even more thrilled if we’d moved both of our hands about eight or so inches to the left—to the inviting space right between her legs.
As her throat worked to control her reaction to my last comment, I gave her more, groaning roughly before stating, “That inch of skin is sexier than anything I’ve ever seen.” Easing my hand off of hers, I ran just the tip of my pinkie finger from the outside of her thigh in, right along the top of her boot. “God, Win, it makes me want to do things to the skin I can’t see.”
“Wes,” she murmured softly, her breathing completely unsteady.
“Touch it, eat it…fuck it. I’m gonna make you feel so good.”
The whole not-sleeping-together-because-it’s-not-a-good-idea thing was a distant, fleeting memory. When it came to Winnie Winslow, I had none of my normal self-control—and I’d finally realized it wasn’t worth the wasted minutes I spent fighting it.
I could use that time to fight with her, tease her, touch her…taste her.
She was my new oral fixation, and it’d been entirely too long since my last hit. I’d deal with the consequences of the end of it when they came. And there would be emotional consequences—for both of us. Of that much, I was sure.
“Is that what I looked like?” Thatch asked Kline, and the way he said it pulled my hazy attention from Winnie.
“Like you were high, drunk, stupid, and seconds away from lifting a leg?” Kline replied conversationally.
Thatch nodded. “Yeah.”
“Then, yeah.”
I wasn’t sure I completely understood their conversation, but I knew it was about me, so I rubbed on some middle-finger ChapStick and then watched as my finger bird flew away in their direction. They just smiled and chuckled to themselves like a couple of clucking goddamn hens.
“Oh, yay!” Cassie squealed as the waitress leaned over to set a full tray of neon shots in the center of the table.
“Fuck, Cass. What level of unconscious are you trying to make me achieve? Almost dead or completely there?”
“They’re not just for you. They’re for everyone.”
“Um, no,” Georgie denied immediately. “I’m ridiculous when I’m drunk.”
Every single head at the table started shaking.
Kline laughed. “You drunk is probably one of the best things ever invented, Ben.”
Every single head at the table changed direction and nodded enthusiastically.
“Come on,” I urged her with a smirk. “You can’t let me do this alone.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re my boss!”
“Oh, okay,” I teased, raising my hands in mock surrender. “Drinking with the boss is bad, but sleeping with him is all good.”
“I’m not sleeping with you!” she nearly yelled, and we all laughed as Kline pulled her closer with an arm around her shoulders. Realization dawned as she tipped her head back to look at his face.
Not this boss. That boss.
“Ah, fuck,” she breathed in defeat.
Winnie laughed loudly, and I couldn’t help but watch again. Her face was open, amused, and relaxed, and I felt satisfaction from the knowledge that she hadn’t had this not too long ago, before taking the job with the Mavericks. She’d been working eighty-hour weeks with no downtime whatsoever and taking care of a young daughter on her own.
She’d been a doctor and a mom, but tonight, she was free to be just a woman.
An unbelievably sexy woman.
“Take the shots already!” Cassie complained.
“All right, all right,” Georgie grumbled. “Calm your spawn, for fuck’s sake.” She reached forward and handed us each a shot. I honestly didn’t even know what I was getting ready to swallow, but I was too ready to get it over with to care. “Bottoms up, kids.”
“To the baby,” Winnie toasted cheekily, and I laughed. Only a Kelly baby would have a toast before shots dedicated to it in utero.
“To the baby,” we all recited dutifully, and then tipped our rainbow-colored glasses back as one. The green, apple-flavored liquid burned a little as it slid down my throat, but it went easily otherwise.
Winnie coughed and sputtered a little around her yellow one, choking out, “Lemon,” as I rubbed a hand across her back soothingly.
Just as I started to relax, the waitress returned with a second tray.
“What the fuck?” Kline asked Cassie.
She shrugged shamelessly. “Four more rounds coming, Big-dick. Saddle up.”
“Smooth Criminal” played over the speakers of the pub’s sound system as I danced and pulled Winnie deeper into my arms. After five rounds of shots, we were all feeling pretty relaxed, me more so than the rest. Winnie hadn’t been able to handle past number three, and thanks to tears and a tantrum from a pregnant woman, I added her two to my five.
Considering how drunk I was, math wasn’t exactly my specialty at the moment, but I knew that made way more alcohol than I’d consumed at one time in over a decade.
“Winnie, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay, Winnie?” I sang, slightly altering the song as I swayed our hips back and forth together. She laughed and held on as I spun us around and made the room blur. I’d been singing along to every song that came on, and I was probably having more fun than I’d ever had before.
Her skirt seemed to be getting shorter by the second, a helpful trick of my unbelievably turned-on imagination, and her hair fell around her face in loose waves. Her lips were bare and her eyes were open, and I only wished I’d been sober enough to understand what I was seeing inside them.
As Paula Abdul started to warn of a coldhearted snake, I glanced to the jukebox to see Kline and Thatch hovering near it in a nearly hysterical fit of glee. But I was feeling too good, and Winnie was feeling even better in my arms, so instead of retreating into my shell, I sang to Winnie and told her to look into his eyes as I held hers with my own, and then ordered her not to play the fool.
When I asked if she thought he thought about her while he was out, I knew everything in my body said I thought about her all the goddamn time.
