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6
PIPER
Cannon held out his hand. “Cannon Cage. I’m twenty-five, and my sign is Aquarius. I hate ice cream, but I love cake. My favorite sound in the world is my niece’s giggles, but it makes me mental when she cries and I can’t do anything about it. I love winter and hate spring.”
I placed my hand in his. “Piper Bryant. Nineteen, but I turn twenty in August. I’m a Virgo, and I’m not the biggest fan of ice cream either. Cake is okay, but I’d take a freshly baked cookie over that any day of the week. My favorite sound is…” I trailed off, realizing I couldn’t be as candid about that as he had been without giving a huge piece of myself away. Clearing my throat, I shrugged. “I prefer fall over every other season, but I can’t bring myself to hate any of them.”
“Hmm,” he murmured. “Now I’m going to be wondering what your favorite sound is.”
“You’ll never be able to guess.” I popped a grape into my mouth. “I’m going to be honest here, Cannon. I suck at dating, so I have no expectations of this night ending well.”
He cocked a brow at my confession. “No one sucks at dating. It’s just two people spending time together, getting to know each other.”
“I’ve been on at least twenty dates since I was fifteen, and every single one of them has ended in disaster.”
“Maybe you just haven’t found the right person to date,” he suggested.
“Twenty different dates, with twenty different people. All of them ended in some kind of catastrophe. Those kinds of numbers prove it was me.”
He took a deep swallow of his juice, his gaze never leaving me. “I know for a fact that it wasn’t you,” he said confidently as he set his glass aside. “And I’ll prove it to you tonight.”
“Good luck, but I bet you’ll be eating those words by the end of the night.”
“You want to wager on it, sugar?” I shrugged, and his grin turned wicked. “If you’re so sure, then let’s make this worth it.”
“Okay, but it’s your loss, not mine,” I snarked. “If I win—and trust me, I will—you have to clean my bus for the rest of the summer.”
His snort was full of amusement. “So sure of yourself, but I will be the victor tonight, sugar. When I win, I get a kiss.”
Every muscle in my body locked even as my blood began to heat at possibly having to kiss him at the end of the night. My heart was pounding against my ribs, but I stuck my hand out. “Deal,” I choked out.
His skin felt like it was blazing as it slid across my palm. “Deal,” he murmured.
To distract myself, I picked up one of the sandwiches and bit into it. I could feel his gaze on me, watching my every move, every breath I took. It was disconcerting, and I tried to distract us both. “I heard you had to do a lot of cleaning when you were at military school. Bathrooms are apparently your specialty.”
He picked up a sandwich and took a huge bite. I was quiet while he chewed, waiting to see if he would actually answer. With a heavy sigh, he finally shrugged. “I did get into trouble a few times. I thought if I pissed them off enough, they would kick me out and send me home. But that’s not how it worked there. If you do something wrong, they don’t suspend or expel you. They take away your privileges, then make you run ten miles, rain or shine, and if you really fuck up, they make you clean the bathrooms. With a tiny-ass toothbrush.”
I bit into an apple slice. “How many times did you really fuck up?”
“Enough to have respect for the people who clean for a living,” he muttered, glaring off into the darkness.
“You got into a lot of trouble growing up. I remember your parents threatening to send you to military school more than once, but they would change their minds. What happened to make them finally send you away?”
The emotions that played across his face tugged at something deep inside my chest. But when he looked at me, he gave me a grim smile. “Let’s not talk about heavy shit, Pipes. I want to know about your disastrous twenty dates. One ended in you getting arrested. What about the others?”
Groaning, I leaned back on my hands, stretching out my legs on the blanket. “My first date was so embarrassing. I was fifteen, and you know how my dad is. I wasn’t technically allowed to date until I was sixteen, but I really liked this girl and—”
“Girl?” he wheezed. “How did I not know you’re bi?”
“I’m not bi,” I told him point-blank. “I’m pan.”
“Okay, don’t get mad at me here, but I totally don’t understand what that means,” he said with regret in his voice.
“It’s fine, I’m not mad. I’ve had to explain it to my dad a few times too. He gets confused and doesn’t understand why I don’t identify as just bisexual.” I rolled my eyes, remembering that conversation, but I didn’t hold it against my dad. He was supportive as hell about my sexuality. He just got confused with all the acronyms and…well, everything. “The simplest way to describe it is that pansexuals are gender-blind. Someone’s gender, whether they were assigned that at birth or not, doesn’t factor into my attraction to them.”
He licked his lips. “So, um, you’ve dated girls and guys, as well as girls who were born guys and guys who were born girls?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Well, I went on a date with a guy who was born a girl. I haven’t been out with a girl who was born a boy. I did have a mad crush on someone who was, though. She was the most beautiful chick I’ve ever seen. I wanted to ask her out, but with my record of bad dates…” I trailed off with another shrug.
“Did you just go on dates with these people, or did things go further?”
I cocked a brow at the way his voice was all strangled. “Are you asking if I’m a virgin, Cannon?”
“Yes, damn it,” he growled.
“With all the bad dates, I realized that sex and dating didn’t have to go hand in hand. No, I’m not a virgin.”
He grabbed his glass and gulped down the juice in two big swallows. Dropping it back down beside him, he wiped a hand over his brow. “You’ve had sex with both genders?”
The heavy way he was breathing, practically gasping for air, made me concerned for his health. “Are you having a heart attack or something?”
“Or something,” he panted. “Answer the question, Pipes. Please.”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” he repeated, his voice weak. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
My spine stiffened. “Does that bother you?” I didn’t take him for a homophobe—we did have gay and lesbian couples in our honorary family after all, and he seemed to accept them without question. But maybe I’d been wrong.
It hurt me that he could be. Which was ridiculous. After everything else Cannon Cage had put me through, I didn’t think there was anything else he could do to hurt me in any shape or form.
“Bother?” he wheezed, his eyes blazing. “Depends on your definition. If you mean, am I upset about it? Then no. Some of my favorite people are part of the LGTBQ community. If you mean, am I harder than I’ve ever been in my fucking life? Then yes. I’m so bothered, I’m about to come in my goddamn jeans just thinking about it.”
Heat hit me like a missile right between my legs and spread throughout my entire body in a matter of milliseconds. I pressed my thighs together and desperately tried not to look below his waist to see if he was telling the truth. But my eyes had a mind of their own and, without permission, zeroed in on his crotch.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, unable to look away from the proof of how turned on he was straining along the inside of his left pants leg.
Just looking at his engorged erection covered by his jeans got me wetter than anyone else had ever been able to make me. If he were to have touched me right then, I wasn’t sure how I would have reacted, but I knew in my gut that I wouldn’t have pushed him away. Fuck, if I were truly honest, I probably would have tried to get his cock free so I could lick it.
But he didn’t move, and neither did I. After several long, tense moments where he stared up at the sky while breathing hard, he finally shifted his gaze back to me. “Sorry,” he rasped. “I wasn’t prepared for how hot the mental pictures that flashed through my mind of you with another girl would get me.”
Sweat trickled down my spine. My entire body felt flushed, like I was having a heat stroke. This was bad. For years, I’d been fighting this weird attraction I’d developed to my childhood tormentor. But seeing proof—huge proof—that he wanted me too was fucking with my head.
Clearing my throat, I tried to ignore what he’d just said while a few images flashed through my own head.
Cannon watching me with someone else.
Cannon joining in.
Jealousy gnawed at me just thinking of sharing Cannon with anyone. I pushed the visuals away even as others filled my head and made me so wet I couldn’t help but squirm as need tried to consume me.
Cannon on his knees in front of me. Waiting for me to command him, give him permission to touch, lick, taste…fuck me.
No!
I couldn’t explore that kind of relationship. Not with him, of all people. It would ruin whatever weird truce we had going on.
But now, the fantasy was in my head, and I couldn’t turn it off.
