Ex-Daredevil by Zoe Lee

Chapter 10

Gavin

Usually my head was clear and focused, but everything my grandma and mom had said was in my head, fucking me up. I hated it, but I was second-guessing myself—until Eliott spotted me as I was walking towards the club and he was leaving it.

His smooth glide lost momentum for a heartbeat before he changed course over to me.

“Hey, Eliott,” I said, meeting his eyes like it was no big deal to meet up with him on his birthday. “Happy birthday. Would you believe I didn’t see your texts earlier because I was at a family thing where it’s more insulting to look at your phone than to be called a Cubs fan?”

I expected a polite chuckle or something.

But Eliott wasn’t like any other man I’d encountered. He just studied me silently in that way he had. He was way too serious, and his damned light green eyes pierced into me as if they had x-ray vision, and made me paranoid that he was hearing not what I said and how I said it, but what I was hiding.

“We’ll just be over here,” Camdon called.

“Gossipping about this,” another of Eliott’s friends added with a laugh.

Eliott put one hand on the wall behind me and slowly leaned towards me like a living sculpture… that planked… vertically. He looked me over as if I were the most delectable man he’d ever imagined, better than any other man he’d ever seen this up close.

“You must be telling the truth,” he murmured, his delicious, faintly cynical voice not betraying any effort being put into holding the position. “If you were lying, you would have come up with a more exciting story to explain why you’re here, but didn’t answer my text.”

His look was unnerving, like it had been the other times he’d raked his eyes over me as if I were a gold trophy and he was there to win, but it also made my heart race.

I was so into this man, even if it would probably never work out in the end.

“Keep eye fucking me,” I suggested, my voice pitched low so that no one could possibly overhear me. I wanted him as off-balance as I was, like always. “I dare you, Eliott.”

Plenty of men got turned on by my smart mouth but were unhappy about it. Plenty of men disapproved of how much I loved pushing buttons but still slept with me. But Eliott was much more complicated than a tough guy who didn’t like that a mouthy guy turned them on. My honest, crude words made his pupils explode, black overtaking light green.

But he didn’t respond. All I did was listen to him breathe. It was deliciously erotic; I remembered hearing that genteelly labored breathing while we were fucking around.

I enjoyed being turned on, even if I couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, and I wasn’t embarrassed by it or by what I wanted to do to him. Seeing his response now made me hope that keeping the texts casual to help him get comfortable with me was working. He certainly didn’t look like he’d turn down a date. So I moved further into his space. My chin brushed his arm still braced on the wall, then my chest and stomach scraped against him until our bulging flies were nestled together forcefully like a sexy yin-yang.

His other hand fisted at his side, his eyes utterly wild now as his body strained against me. “I wish you wouldn’t do this,” he said in his polite, precise way. “It feels fantastic, don’t misunderstand, but everyone’s here to see me. We can’t just… stand here all night.”

“I can’t stay all night,” I said, my mouth dry as sand. “I start work at seven tomorrow morning. I just wanted to… drop in and say happy birthday. Maybe give you a birthday kiss.”

His hips hitched into mine, a little, aborted movement that made me spurt precome because it was a sign that he wasn’t in complete control of himself the way he liked to be. I stroked one hand over the bicep next to my head and then gripped it hard, feeling the heat and the strength beneath the fabric banded around it. He broke, crushing his lips to mine, his jaw springing open immediately so I could give him my tongue again and again.

Someone whistled and he jerked back, his hands falling down to his sides.

He nodded minutely, his eyes locked on my wet mouth, before he raised them to meet mine. “Thank you,” he said a little too nonchalantly. “It’s too bad you have to work early.”

“I think so too,” I agreed, slipping my fingers under his shirt to stroke his hips. “It would be fun to go with you and your friends. Let you try to uncover all my secrets.”

Angling his head to the site, his eyes sharper than before even, he asked. “Would you? Give up all of your secrets, I mean. If I were clever and quick and made a run at them?”

A sly smile stretched my mouth, and I rubbed it over his jaw, sort of stunned by how great it felt just to be near him again, hearing his voice. “You’ll have to try it and find out.”

One of his hands clapped down over mine and his abs flexed as he asked, “Do you want to go on a date with me when you have a night free?”

I would have reeled back in astonishment if my hands weren’t against him and I weren’t already propped up against the wall. “Uh,” I began, my family’s interfering words sending ice to kill the heat Eliott’s eyes and that kiss had created in me. “Is this because you think I’d feel disrespected if you wanted to just screw me instead of date me?”

“No.”

I blinked and realized that he was probably planning to stand there—his stance easy and his eyes steady and calm on mine—until I answered, never mind his waiting friends.

It got my blood pumping and my mind cleared up again, my desires crystalizing.

“I don’t date,” I told him. I admit, I paused afterwards partly to see his reaction. I was relieved when his eyelashes swept down and his mouth tightened, but it made me guilty, so I hurried out, “But I’ll make an exception for you, birthday boy.”

“I’ll make it worthwhile,” he promised and threatened all in one, his voice silky, making me shiver. “It’s too bad you can’t stay, but thanks again for dropping in on my party.”

He slid his lips over mine and then walked back over to his friends, who were waiting with questions and laughter, and watched as they all piled into a car and drove away.

I tipped my head up, my breathing erratic now. It felt like fate that the night I decided to ask him out, he’d asked me out first. I’d tried to play it cool and flirtatious because it was one thing to let him see he turned me on, but it was another thing entirely to show him that he affected me in other, more meaningful ways. Although if the date went well, they would lead to more dates, and if those went well too, I’d have to really let him in. I hadn’t done that with lovers or hookups… ever, really. Always the class clown, never the boyfriend.

But there was nothing better than tackling something new and learning how to do it well.