Bad for You by Weston Parker

15

TRISTIN

Ihadn’t been this turned on in years. Dancing with Brittany was setting me on fire, burning away every thought except for those about her.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that we were in public. I held on to that one rational thought as tight as I could. It was pretty much the only thing keeping me from stripping her out of that dress right here and now.

It wasn’t even a particularly tight or sexy dress. Just a light blue T-shirt-looking thing with these little white flowers on it. There was a brown belt cinched around her waist and plain sandals on her feet, but none of that mattered.

This was Brittany I was dancing with. Her soft body against mine and her blue eyes half-lidded with need as she stared up at me. She was what mattered. I wouldn’t have cared if she was wearing a burlap sack. I still would’ve been desperate for her.

The air between us was charged with energy as we ground our bodies together, our gazes locked as we got lost in one another. I’d only had one beer, but I felt drunk, completely intoxicated by the woman in my arms.

One song bled into another, then into another. I was so hard it hurt, and from her blown pupils and flushed cheeks, it was safe to assume she felt the same way.

Eventually, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I took hold of her hands that’d been roaming my chest and bent my head to her ear. “Do you want to get out of here?”

She wound her fingers through mine and nodded. “Please.”

Letting go of only one of her hands, I led her off the dance floor and over to their table to get her purse. We made a quick stop to pick up my jacket at our table. Archer had joined the girls at the table behind ours, and he grinned as he gave me a quick salute.

“See you tomorrow, boss.” He glanced at Brittany, his gaze lingering on our joined hands before he looked back up at me. “Or maybe not. Have fun.”

I rolled my eyes at him when he winked, resisting the urge to flip him off and reaching for the damn jacket instead. Warm air greeted us when we walked out of the bar, but it still felt cool considering how heated things had gotten between us on that dance floor.

While I was eager to see where this would lead, she had a boyfriend, and with what happened after we’d kissed, I didn’t feel comfortable diving in without talking to her first. Which meant we needed to dial things back a notch.

“Want to take a walk?” I asked.

Brittany smiled but looked anywhere other than at me. “Sure. Moore Square isn’t far. Have you been there? Since you’ve been back, I mean.”

“No, I haven’t had much time to go around town yet. I’ve been meaning to, but it’s been a bit of a hurricane.”

She chuckled. “Not even just a whirlwind, huh? A full-on hurricane?”

“Yep. It turns out that taking over a multinational company and moving back in with one’s parents in your thirties isn’t a walk in the park.”

A quiet but comfortable minute passed between us. The glow of the streetlights lit our way, the light mottled in places where it shone through the oak leaves of the trees lining the street.

Our fingers were linked together loosely, and neither of us made a move to pull away. Brittany glanced up just as I looked at her, and our gazes connected for a brief second while we walked.

Her pupils were back to normal, but the heat in her eyes had been replaced by something a lot less pleasant. Apprehension.

“How’s it treating you? Being back. I can’t imagine it’s easy. For someone like you to say it’s not a walk in the park must mean it’s ridiculously difficult.”

“Someone like me?”

She nodded as we turned the first corner away from the bar. “You’re not easily intimidated. Unless that’s changed and you’re the cowering kind now, but it doesn’t seem that way.”

I laughed, considering as I caught my first glimpse of the square that used to be part of my old stomping grounds. The historic park downtown and the surrounding cafés, the market, and shops buzzed with life even at this hour.

There was a lot of nightlife around here, and with the square itself often being the venue where entertainment took place, it was somewhere we’d spent a lot of time back in the day. I still loved the mix of old and new, the cobblestone streets juxtaposed by the modern renovations of the area around it.

“I suppose I’m still not the cowering kind,” I replied to her earlier comment. “I’ve just never thought of myself as not being easily intimidated. When I met your principal and found out he was your boyfriend, I felt pretty darn intimidated. Not by him, but by the relationship you have with him. How is he?”

She stopped walking, her teeth sinking into her lower lip while her eyes darted around like she was searching for an escape. I frowned at the sudden change in her demeanor, but it made sense when she rattled off her next sentence.

“We broke up,” she blurted out. “I broke up with him. You don’t have to feel pressured or anything. He’s an ass. I didn’t do it because you’re back and I’m expecting anything from you. It just wasn’t working, but I wasn’t planning on telling you because I didn’t want you to think…”

There was enough light around between the streetlights and the neon signs for the restaurants and bars all over that I saw how flushed she’d suddenly become. I moved around her when she trailed off, bringing my one hand up to cup her cheek and squeezing her fingers with the other, a grin begging to break free on my lips.

She looked slightly panicked when she finally lifted her eyes up to mine and let her head fall back in the process. “Why are you looking at me like that? This isn’t funny.”

A soft chuckle came out of me as I lifted one shoulder. “It’s a little funny.”

“No, it’s not.” Her eyes narrowed. “How is it funny?”

I stroked my thumb along the soft skin of her face, my eyes firmly on hers. “It’s funny because you know I never do anything I don’t want to do, and yet you’re worried about what I’m going to think about you breaking up with your boyfriend. That it would make me feel like you expect something from me.”

“I still don’t see how it’s funny,” she grumbled, but there was no real fight in her voice or in her posture. “Do you honestly not think that I broke up with him for you?”

“Nope, but is it wrong of me to hope that I had at least a little something to do with it?” I laughed when her eyes went comically round. “Relax, Brit. I’m not putting any pressure on you either. It’s just… that kiss was a great fucking kiss. I’d like to think you feel the same way about it, and if you do, that I might still have a shot here. I didn’t have a shot when you had a boyfriend.”

“What about that other girl?” she asked, brows drawing together in confusion as she made a face at me. “I doubt she’d be happy that you’re talking about having a shot with someone else.”

“What girl?” I made a face right back at her until I remembered. “Oh, Faye. Right. I forgot about her.”

Brittany’s eyebrows shot up so high that I had to laugh again. Before she could say anything, I tightened my grip on her hand and shook my head. “Faye is nobody to me. She’s a woman my mom is trying to push on me. I didn’t even know we were having lunch with her. Selena sprung it on me. I thought we were going to a doctor’s appointment with my father.”

“Selena was there?” Something strange flashed in her eyes when she said my mother’s name, but she blinked it away. “She wasn’t in the photos.”

“That’s because she planned it that way.” I drew in a deep breath through my nostrils. “It’s all about the PR. That’s why she’s trying to push us together.”

“Selena always has been pushy,” she said after a pause, but then she smiled at me again, and the hope in it nearly melted my previously cold, black heart. “So you’re not seeing Faye?”

“Nope.” I laughed and pulled her into my arms, holding her gaze before mine dropped down to her lips. They parted, and the tip of her tongue came out to wet them, leaving them shiny and inviting. “Trust me when I say that you’re the only woman I’ve been thinking about.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Really.”

We surged together at the same time, our mouths meeting in a frantic kiss as her arms looped around my neck and mine wound around her waist. She tasted like salt and tequila, but I’d always been a fan of margaritas. And of her.

“Do you want to come back to my place?” she murmured between kisses, her voice breathy and filled with need. “I know it’s forward, but—”

“I like it when you’re forward.” Our lips came together again, and I dropped my forehead against hers, letting the moment linger before wrenching myself away from her. “Let’s go.”

Since Archer and I had been planning on drinking, I’d left my car at the office. Brittany had caught a ride with her friend, so neither of us had to go back to the bar to pick up a vehicle.

There were plenty of cabs around, and I flagged down the first one I saw. She gave the cabbie her address, and then we were off.

I barely had time to look at her place before her lips were on mine again as soon as the door shut behind us. Any resistance that might’ve been hovering in the back of my mind vanished. I wanted this too badly to even think, let alone to consider the possible repercussions.

In my wildest fucking dreams, I never thought I’d get to do this with her again. Taking it slow and getting to know each other again stopped being an option at the first quiet moan that escaped her.

Neither of us broke away even to take a breath. We were all hands and mouths as we stumbled through her darkened house, presumably heading toward her bedroom. A few times, we crashed into furniture or walls, but I didn’t hear anything breaking, so I figured I could help her straighten up again later.

My fingers found a rectangular metal tab at her side, and when I tugged on it, it turned out my suspicions had been correct. It was her zipper, and it slid free without any trouble at all. I still had to lift it over her head since it had sleeves and not just straps, but that was easy enough.

While I pulled the fabric up, her fingers worked on the buttons of my shirt. She pushed it off my shoulders a few seconds later, and then I toed off my shoes while she freed me from the confines of my pants.

We left the clothes where they fell, both left in only our underwear when we finally made it to her bed. Still without breaking apart, I rolled us so she was on top of me, groaning when I felt the heat of her core through the material still separating us.

Somehow, some way, she felt even better than I remembered, and I wasn’t even inside her yet. My hips jerked, thrusting as my hands tangled into her hair and I held her to me.

Being with her again felt so fucking good that I was already on edge, but there was nothing in this world that could stop or force me to slow down right now. This was happening, and if I had my way, it would happen again, and then again, and then again. Not even just tonight either. Tomorrow and the day after that, and every day after that for as long as she would let me have her.