Red Flags Go Faster Ch 1-7 (Alpha 2nd Draft) (Patreon)

Hey folks. This is just a slightly cleaned-up version of the previously posted chapters. I needed to do a re-read when starting on the next sponsored chapters and figured I would update the current accessible draft here. There were no new big content additions, just some cleaning up stuff.

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The following story is intended to be a one-shot and eventually reach about a full novel-length. I have the entire story planned out already with room for the story to remain spontaneous, so I’m looking forward to exploring these characters slowly over the next few months. The conceit behind this story is ‘What if a girl seems too perfect?’ and ‘Is that a red or green flag?’ I’m also trying out a bit more of a stoic main character, though I’m not sure if I’m hitting that right or not. It’s tough to write!

Chapter 1

I took a sip of my beer, trying not to look back across the bar again at the girl I’d made eye contact with. The place was ‘upscale,’ according to Paul, but all that meant to me was that it felt kind of uncomfortable - the music was a little too loud and had almost no melody, the whole place was both too clean but also weirdly cheap when I picked at the plastic faux-wood decor, and none of the seats were comfortable at all. Plus the drinks were so overpriced they rivalled stadium pricing at a football game.

“My guy, that chick over at the bar is eyeing you up,” Curt said, leaning over and giving me a slap on the shoulder.

“No she isn’t,” I scoffed.

It had only been for a moment, but as soon as we’d made eye contact I knew I was in trouble. Not because of anything she really did. She just smiled. But I knew my brain pretty well; I was going to end up haunted all weekend by that smile. It had been just quirky enough, and just self-assured enough, to be an absolute mind killer.

“Rudy, go talk to her,” Jeanette said. “Maybe you can put that Plus One we gave you to use.”

I smirked and rolled my eyes at her and Curt. It was their wedding that I came up to the city for - we’d all grown up together, along with the Triple B’s; Bill, Brad and Bobby. The fact that Bill and Brad had both dated Bobby, aka Bobby-Jo, but they were all still peas in a pod was some sort of miracle.

“You want me to pick up a girl in a bar like this on a Thursday night, and bring her to your wedding on Saturday?” I asked.

“I happen to like this bar,” Jeanette chuckled.

“Man, if it means you agree to wind down a bit, I’ll let her give a damn toast,” Curt said, giving me another clap on the shoulder. “Seriously, I love having you here, but relax. I’d think you were stressed about giving the Best Man speech, but you got spared that by Ed.”

I smirked again and shook my head. Curt’s older brother Ed was a bit of a dickhead, but he was still Curt’s brother and there had been family pressure since Ed had made Curt his best man a couple years prior. I was just happy to be there for Curt and Jeany and didn’t give one flying fuck about not ‘getting’ to make the speech - I hated public speaking.

The Triple B’s came back from the bar with shots and our second round, blessedly interrupting the train of conversation as we focused on tequila and a toast for the coming nuptials. It took another five minutes before Paul, Jeanette’s younger brother, nodded in the direction behind me. “Don’t look now,” he said. “But she’s coming over.”

“Who’s coming over?” Bill asked, but got shushed by Jeanette and Curtis.

“Hi.”

I turned, sitting at the end of our booth, and looked at the young woman as she flashed me that smile again. It was the kind of smile that could stop a heart dead in its Goddamn tracks. She was a strawberry-blonde knockout with a cute, playful face and slender body that made me think of a farmgirl - athletically thin from choring, but unafraid of a good meal and blessed with that perfect balance of curves. She was wearing a little black dress that clung to her in all the right ways - unless you were her boyfriend and she was in public - and showed off both a dip of nice cleavage and long, slender legs that I thought would look better in cowboy boots than the strappy black heels she had on.

The thing that got me, though, were her eyes and eyebrows. I’d never fallen for a girl’s eyebrows before, so I was thankful they were a package deal. Her eyes were such a light brown that even in the dark of the bar and the annoyingly flashy party lights I knew they were hazel, and her eyebrows were slightly arched and expressive in a way that said she could speak whole conversations in just the way she twitched them.

“So, I was definitely going to come over here to flirt with you already,” she continued, not even waiting for me to say hello. “But now I need you to be my boyfriend for like ten minutes because there’s a creep over at the bar who isn’t leaving me alone.”

“I can do that for you,” I said, taking her hand and helping her up onto the little platform the booth was positioned on.

She flashed me that little million-dollar smile and didn’t just sit next to me at the end of the bench seat, she slid right onto my lap and kissed me before I even had a chance to react. No tongue, just a firm and full press of our lips that lasted a good five seconds. My arm slid around her waist, holding her steady by her hip, and she raised a hand and put two fingers on my jaw, keeping me there for a moment longer before sliding her hand down to press against my chest.

It was a good fucking kiss, especially for having just met the girl. But that didn’t stop me from flashing my friends the middle finger with my other hand with my other  arm stretched across the back of the booth seat behind Curt - except I added a back-and-forth wiggle to it, giving them the signal.

When the kiss ended she pulled away just a little and we were both grinning confidently as she looked into my eyes. I knew why I was confident - getting kissed by a beautiful woman had the tendency to do that to a man - but her confidence after taking a risk that light was infectious, too.

“My name’s Amber, but you can call me Darlin’,” she said. She wore a pair of thin silver nose rings, one at her septum and the other her nostril, so dainty that I hadn’t even noticed them right away at any sort of distance.

“Rudy,” I said, and leaned forward and gave her an extra peck on the lips that made her smile even more.

“Taking advantage of the situation, Rudy?” she asked with a playful glint in her eye.

“Just letting my girlfriend know I missed her,” I said, giving her hip a soft squeeze.

“Well, I missed you too. Maybe for my whole life,” she smirked. Then she rotated on my lap, getting her legs under the table and turning to my friends as she leaned in. “Sorry, I-”

“Hey!” Jeany said, standing up and leaning over Curt with a bright expression as she pulled Amber into a hug. “I’m Jeanette, you’re good with us,” she continued once her cheek was pressed to Amber’s and she was talking into her ear. She winked when she pulled away.

Curtis leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Curtis,” he introduced himself.

Bobby-Jo hopped off her end of the booth and came around, giving the biggest performance yet as she gave an ‘I missed you, girl!’ squeal and hugged Amber from behind, making Amber laugh and glance at me in confusion. “I’m Bobby,” she introduced herself. “That’s Bill and Brad sitting next to me, don’t worry about getting them mixed up, they’ll answer to either one. The confused guys in the middle are Ed and Paul.”

“OK,” Amber said, grinning as she looked over her shoulder at Bobby and hugged her arms. When Bobby let go of her and went back to her seat, Amber looked back at me, still a little confused. “What have I walked into? Are you guys a cult or something?”

“No,” I chuckled. “Just experienced douche-dodgers.”

“Most of us went to college together,” Curtis explained. “Rudy here, when he was visiting, came up with a signal so that any of the girls in our group of friends could get one of us to be her stand-in boyfriend to back off a guy at a bar or a party.”

“He’s always been the thinker and the planner,” Jeanette grinned at me.

“It made sense at the time,” I sighed.

“So I picked literally the best group to make my escape with?” Amber laughed. “Damn. My luck is picking up, I guess.”

“What’s the creep at the bar look like?” I asked her quietly while moving some of her silky hair over her shoulder and behind her ear so I could speak quietly into it. 

She flashed me a look and looped her arm over my shoulder, leaning into me a little more. “Dark hair, dark dress shirt, maybe green? Sunglasses up on his head. He was down near the end where I was standing before, drinking cheap whiskey and I think he had a couple of friends nearby.”

I nodded and leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek before casually stretching and looking over my shoulder in that direction. The other end of the bar was partially obscured, but I spotted the guy. He was talking to another guy, waving in our direction dismissively in a ‘Whatever, she wasn’t worth it anyway’ sort of way as he talked some bullshit to his buddy.

“Looks like he isn’t tunnel visioning,” I said.

“He hasn’t left though?” Amber asked, and I shook my head. “Guess I should stick around then, boyfriend.”

“Happy to help, girlfriend,” I chuckled, coming back from looking over my shoulder and meeting her gaze. 

God, I was in trouble.

“So, other than sitting around waiting to save damsels in distress, what’s a bunch of beautiful people like you doing in a place like this?” Amber asked as she turned back to the group.

“This is our last-minute Stag and Doe,” Jeanette said, hugging Curtis’s arm. “Impromptu, mostly. We’re getting married this weekend.”

“Oh my gosh!” Amber said, lighting up. “That’s so awesome, congratulations.”

The conversation, at least on our side of the table, was quickly dominated by Wedding Talk as Amber asked all the right questions for Jeany to get to spill her guts about the exciting plans and mild drama that had developed over the last year and a half of planning. That had Curt and I pinned between them, but the rest of the table broke into their own conversations. I was mostly quiet, not that any of my friends were surprised by that, and enjoyed the genuine interest Amber showed Jeany, and even the light teasing she gave Curtis at the appropriate moments in the stories and details.

About ten minutes later, Ed leaned in and interrupted a story about the wedding cake and how one of Jeany’s Aunts had tried to do something to their order at the bakery out of spite. That left Amber and I isolated on our end of the booth for a moment as Curtis and Jeany paid attention to his brother.

“I’m not cutting off any circulation, am I?” Amber asked me with a smile, her eyes meeting mine again as she looked at me. She’d been sitting on my lap the whole time, turned in towards the rest of the table, and my hand hadn’t left her hip.

“No, Darlin’,” I said. “I’m good with you right where you are.”

“Mmm, I didn’t realise how good that would sound,” she said with a little half-smirk. “Not much of a talker, are you?”

“Didn’t have much to say,” I shrugged, giving her hip a pat. “All these guys moved out of our hometown and up to the city, I still live back there. I come up when I can but I wasn’t exactly on the wedding planning committee.”

“So if you were closer you would have been in the thick of it with the mother-in-laws?” Amber chuckled.

“Oh, definitely,” I smirked. “I have many deeply held opinions of what makes a good summer wedding colour palette.”

She snorted softly, giving me a close-lipped smile, and quirked an eyebrow. “The fact that you know what a ‘summer wedding colour palette’ would even be says more than you think.”

“I might not be talkin’, but I’m listening,” I said.

“I’m sure you are,” she said, her eyes tracing circles over my face as she took me in. “If all your friends came up to the city, what are you still doing in your hometown?”

“I wasn’t the kind of guy who goes to college,” I said. “I’ve got my own business down there.”

“What kind of business?” Amber asked, then reached down and grabbed my hand from her hip, lifting it up and feeling my palm with her fingers. “Mm, firm and calloused, but not gnarly. You do real work.”

“Heavy machinery,” I said. “Excavation, scraping, earth moving. That sort of thing.”

“So when you’re doing the real work you’re locked up in a little glass box on a big vehicle that could level a house?” she asked. She was still feeling my hand with her fingers, almost giving it a massage.

“Something like that,” I said.

“What’s the thrum like from an engine that big?” she asked.

“First few times I spent an entire work shift in one, I couldn’t sleep after ‘cause I felt like my bones were still vibrating,” I said. “Now? I barely feel it.”

“Do you ever-”

“Anyways,” Jeany interrupted, turning back from talking with Ed. “So my Aunt literally put on a wig and went to the bakery pretending to be my Mom…”

As she continued, and Amber gave her full attention to my friend, the girl in my lap lowered my hand and brought it back down to her hip, flattening her hand over mine until I was holding her like before. Then she pushed my hand lower, just a little, to cup the outer curve of her ass and held it there.

It took effort, and clenching my jaw for a long moment, to not get turned on by that.

The wedding planning stories either got derailed or petered out, I wasn’t entirely sure which, but soon Ed and Paul became the centres of attention as the Triple B’s encouraged them to tell embarrassing stories about their siblings. Ed was the better storyteller, though he and Curtis hadn’t really been that close since Ed was five years older so most of the stories were from when they were kids. Paul’s stories, being only a year younger than us, were more varied since he’d been around a lot more, but he wasn’t as much of an attention hog. Still, both of them had us all laughing as Curtis and Jeanette tried to argue or defend themselves from the silly memories.

After one story that left Jeanette spinning off into a revenge tale about Paul to get back at him, Amber turned and looked at me without saying anything, her smile sweet and utterly content. It was a punch in the heart.

“You’re thinking it’s time to split,” I guessed.

“No,” she said, her eyebrows raising in surprise. “What made you think that?”

“Really?” I asked, equally surprised. “I figured your friends would be waiting for you somewhere around here. The way you were looking at me made me think it was bittersweet.”

“Gosh, I don’t know who fucked with you Rudy, but that wasn’t a bittersweet look,” she said quietly. “That was just me thinking how attractive I think you are. And I’m supposed to be here with coworkers, but one didn’t show up, one fucked off with her boyfriend like ten minutes after getting here, and the last one is a predatory lesbian and picked up a straight chick at the bar and took her to the restroom to fuck, so she’s gone for the night. I got ditched and was gonna leave once I finished my drink before I saw you across the room.”

I opened my mouth, multiple questions coming to mind and all of them getting stuck in my throat because I wasn’t sure how to accept the double compliment. All I could do was click my mouth shut, give her a little half-smile and shake my head. That made her grin and chuckle, and she leaned in and kissed me with another of those closed-lip kisses.

“Woo!” Bobby cheered, echoed quickly by Brad and Bill when they saw us kissing.

“Get a room,” Jeanette teased.

“You got a sister around here somewhere?” Ed asked with a laugh.

That made Amber snort a little into the kiss and she pulled away, one hand lightly on my cheek still where she’d been holding me still as she turned to Ed. “Not for an old geezer like you,” she grinned.

“I’m only 31,” Ed guffawed. “The Half-Plus-Seven rule says I can date a twenty-two-year-old.”

That got groans out of Bobby-Jo and Jeanette, who immediately set to work trying to explain to Ed how a 9-year age gap relationship would not work for him. His argument back was that he was married so it didn’t matter anyway, which only gave them more ammunition for how weird a comment it was.

Amber turned back to me and gave me a short peck, like I’d given her earlier, and then winked at me. “Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have any sisters at all,” she chuckled.

“No sibs?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You?”

“I did. She passed a few years ago,” I said.

Amber’s eyes softened for a moment, looking me over again. “Older?” she guessed, and I nodded. “She loved you, I can tell,” she said softly. “She did a good job being an older sister.” Then she leaned in and gave me another peck, a little more tender this time.

“That might be the best compliment anyone’s ever given me, Darlin’,” I said.

“I’ll keep ‘em coming if you keep calling me Darlin’,” she said with a little smile.

“Alright, we’re all out of drinks,” Curtis declared to the table, interrupting the Age Gap argument that had continued to develop. “Change of venue!”

Jeanette leaned around Curtis, looking at Amber. “You’re invited if you want to come with us,” she said. “We’re heading to Yokels for line dancing.”

Amber brightened again, coming out of the unexpected moment. “Love it, I’m totally down,” she said. Then laughed as she looked down at her dress. “I’m not exactly in my Country Girl outfit, but I’ll make do.” She rotated in my lap, and I had to wonder if she pressed her ass a little more against me than necessary, then she stood to let me up as we were all piling out of the booth. As we headed out of the bar, squeezing between other groups and through the mild crowd that was packing the place, I offered her my arm and she looked up at me with a smile and a quick, playful double lift of her eyebrows as she held onto my elbow. She was almost a full foot shorter than me even in her heels and yet seemed larger than life.

We piled out of the bar and onto the sidewalk into the warm summer evening, the sun just barely set and still heating the horizon, and Ubers were quickly ordered up. Amber was still holding my arm lightly as she chatted with Jeanette and Bobby-Jo, bantering lightly, and I noticed Curtis edging around my other side where Amber couldn’t see.

“Dude,” he mouthed with a grin.

“Fuck off,” I mouthed back, rolling my eyes.

Ed, seeing this, got in on the action. “Duuuude,” he mouthed, giving a couple of small air thrusts to make it even dirtier. My eye roll at that was even harder.

My height ended up having me sit in the front seat of the first Uber that showed up, all three of the ladies getting into the back seat of the sedan. The rest of the guys were following in a bigger van that showed up a couple of minutes later. Being in the front seat, I was cut out of the conversation as Jeanette and Bobby both started to rattle off questions to Amber, getting to know her. I just sat and watched the route on the Uber driver’s phone, making sure we weren’t getting screwed over by him taking some detours or something, and listened.

She was twenty-four, a year younger than our core friend group. She did a two-year associate's degree in business administration, lived on the south side of the city near the river, and was thrilled to have gotten adopted by our group for the evening after her coworkers left her high, dry and being hit on by a creep at the bar. And when Bobby asked when her last relationship was, Amber laughed and teased the back of my neck through the headrest gap in my seat as she said, “Well, I think it’s about a half-hour old or so now.” Then explained she hadn’t had a boyfriend for a little over a year, and that she’d taken it more seriously than her ex apparently had. 

When we got to the Local Yokel, the only country bar in the city that was always a country bar and not just running ‘country night,’ I helped each of the ladies out of the car. Jeanette gave me a meaningful look as she took my hand to stand up out of the car, then came Amber who gave me her slightly crooked, heartstopper smile, and then Bobby-Jo who shot a look at Amber’s ass and mouthed ‘Dayum!’ to me with a grin.

We only had to wait outside for a minute before the other Uber showed up, and then we were piling into the bar. The Triple B’s headed directly for the bar, and I got distracted for a second by Curtis getting me to weigh in on a dumb argument between him, Ed and Paul about something that had happened in a Marvel movie recently. I hadn’t watched any of them since the one where the robot guy had picked up a city and they had to Re-avenge him or whatever.

By the time we got over the tipsy ‘Dude, you have to watch them all! We should do a marathon!’ - all of which I’d heard from them before - I was turning around and found Amber coming towards us with a half dozen beers clutched in both hands.

“Boys,” she said with a confident grin. “First round’s on me.”

The guys were thrilled and accepted the beers, and I took the second last one and held eye contact with her as we both took our first sips.

“Thank you,” I said, leaning in to be heard. The bar didn’t have a live band for the night but they had the speakers cranked up and there was a line dancing lesson going on over on the dance floor for folks who were new to the idea of coordinated stomping and spinning. The place wasn’t as garish as the last bar; it had the right amount of party lights to make it festive without blinding me with flashing lights and colours, the floor was a solid wood that got cleaned regularly but had just the right amount of grime that it wasn’t slippery but also not sticky from spilt beer, and the music had actual words and even some heart behind it. “You didn’t have to, I was planning on making sure you didn’t have to shell out like that.”

She hadn’t lost her grin as she tilted her chin up, stepping a little closer to me as she looked up into my eyes. “I guess it’s a good thing I like to spoil my boyfriend, then,” she laughed and winked, continuing the joke from earlier. Then she took a swig of her beer in a decidedly unladylike way and grabbed my hand. “Tell me something about my boyfriend-for-the-night, Rudy,” she continued, putting on a melodramatic breathiness as she slid a hand onto my waist and threaded her thumb into one of my belt loops. “I feel like we’ve been together our entire lives but I only know the bare-ass basics.”

“What do you want to know, Darlin’?” I asked back, brushing some of her bangs back out of her face so I could see both her eyes clearly. “I’m really not that complicated.”

“You aren’t, are you?” she mused. “In the best way, probably. At least I’ve got a feeling that’s true.” She pursed her lips for a moment in thought, then raised an eyebrow. “Dogs or cats?”

“I grew up with both,” I said with a little smirk of my own, “But the hours I work, and livin’ alone right now, isn’t fair to a dog. I’ve got a big fat cat named Chunk for now.”

“Did you name him Chunk before or after he got fat?” Amber laughed.

“He came with the name, and he was round as a beachball when I got him,” I said, shaking my head at the memory. “He belonged to my old neighbour - guy went to jail a couple of years ago for having shit luck while making stupid decisions. Didn’t have any family in the state so he got the cops to ask me to take the cat. I’ve had ginger fucker on a diet for two years and he’s still living up to his name. I swear that cat knows how to open the fridge and make himself a sandwich when I’m not home.”

Amber snorted, leaning into me and pressing her forehead to my chest as she laughed, then pulled back a little and tossed her hair flirtatiously as she looked up at me with that grin again. “Should my takeaway from this story be that you like ginger pussy then?” she asked playfully.

I groaned, unable to keep from smiling. “God, you are trouble,” I said, shaking my head.

“It’s my unofficial middle name,” she grinned. Then she looked around and saw that my friends had mostly congregated over at a pair of standing tables near the dance floor. The place was starting to fill up more as the ‘official’ line dancing hour was approaching so we were lucky we’d gotten a prime spot like that. “Come on,” Amber said, letting go of my belt loop and grabbing my hand. “Let’s get back to the others. Your friends are fun. And I give you my permission to look at my ass while you’re following me.” She winked and then turned, pulling me along by my hand.

I sighed and shook my head again. Trouble with a capital T. And that little black dress was clinging just so to what looked like a fantastic ass.

We rejoined the group and integrated in quickly, and for a while, I wasn’t even in the same conversation as Amber. That didn’t mean she wasn’t on my mind, or the topic of conversation, though. While my friends, Ed and Paul took turns chatting her up, I was getting interrogated. What did I think of her? Had I really never met her before? Jeanette had come up with this idea that we’d actually met on an online dating app and wanted a better ‘meet cute’ story so we’d manufactured the whole thing - I proved to her I wasn’t on any dating apps, which just got her slapping my arm and telling me I was a fifty-year-old in a twenty-five-year-old’s body. Apparently, I had to get on at least one since I’d been single too long.

I didn’t point out that not being on an app had led to a girl like Amber falling into my lap.

“Dude, Rudy,” Ed said at one point, leaning in close enough that I could smell the booze on his breath. “That chick is so down. If you aren’t gonna jump on that, give someone the signal to move in ‘cause I will literally die if I can’t live vicariously through you tonight.” I had to roll my eyes at that - his wife and their two toddlers were at home and it felt a little classless that he was so amped up about someone getting some sex.

“I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere,” Paul muttered at one point, looking over at Amber. “I just can’t figure out where.”

“In your dreams, bud,” Curtis chuckled, nudging his soon-to-be brother-in-law. “Floating around like a fuckin’ angel.”

An MC, a middle-aged woman who was working behind the bar most of the night, cut in on a mic in between songs and had the dancefloor clear before she announced that Line Dancing night was officially open - and if you weren’t at least stomping your feet in time then you didn’t have to go home, you just couldn’t stay here.

“Let me guess,” Amber said as there was a rush to the floor from half our group. She slid up next to me, running a hand up my back. “My strong, stoic boyfriend-for-the-night isn’t much of a dancer?”

I sighed, draining the rest of my beer and setting it on the table. “That depends,” I said.

“Oh, do I need to bribe you to get on the dance floor with me?” Amber asked with a teasing raise of one eyebrow.

“No, Darlin’,” I said with a shake of my head. “No bribery, blackmail or coercion required. I just need to know if you can keep time because I don’t feel like getting thrown out of here. This is the only bar in the whole city I actually like.”

She laughed, kicking off her heels and setting them up on our table. That dropped her another good two or three inches and all I could think of was how easy it would be to pick her up over my shoulder. “Well, do you trust me?” she asked, backing away from me, grabbing my hands to pull me with her to the dance floor.

“About as far as I could toss you, Darlin’,” I said. “And I think that’d be pretty far.”

She scrunched up her nose and bit her lower lip like she thought the idea of me tossing her around was about as hot as I did. Then we hit the dance floor and Bobby and Curtis made room for us to join the line.

I wasn’t anything special at line dancing - I could do the basic steps, follow some changes and have fun. Jeanette was the ‘fancy’ dancer of our group of friends, and Bill was the only guy who could keep up with her when they were given the space. Curtis didn’t get bothered when the two of them got going since he had two left feet and could barely manage the basic grapevine steps without falling over.

Amber might not have been on the level of Jeanette, and she definitely looked out of place in her clingy little black dress and bare feet, but she could keep up. More importantly, she was laughing and grinning and having just as much fun as the rest of my friends on the dance floor. Whenever there was a break in the line dancing she would turn to me, giving me another flash of her quirky smile as she would reach out for my hand so I could give her a spin or pull her close for a moment. We stuck on the dance floor for a good half dozen songs in a row, longer than anyone in our group other than Jeanette and Bill, before I signalled to Amber asking if she wanted a drink as a Big and Rich song was ending. She nodded and then burst out laughing as I grabbed her hand, spun her again as I pulled her close, and then scooped her up in my arms and carried her off the dance floor to our tables. Ed didn’t dance at all and had been holding down the fort, the others having grabbed drinks while taking a song off here or there.

“You’re good!” Ed said to Amber as she scooped her shoes off the table and slipped them on before I set her down. “And you make Rudy look like he knows what he’s doing.”

“I didn’t see you out there,” she said with a knowing smirk. “Takin’ shots from the cheap seats isn’t a good look, Ed.”

“Oof,” he said, acting like he’d been stabbed in the heart.

We headed to the bar and I let her signal the bartender and she ordered a couple of beers, but I put my hand over hers as she tried to pay again and handed over cash to the guy. She turned to me, giving me a look and rolling her eyes, and I gave her a look back as I grabbed her by the waist with both hands and lifted her onto the barstool behind her. That made her chuckle and she shook her head.

“I told you I like treating my boyfriend, even if he’s a temp,” she teased. “And you and your friends are making this entire night more than worth it.”

“Well, you should know that guys like treating their girls,” I pointed out. “Probably more than being treated, though the attempt is definitely appreciated.”

She laughed again, shaking her head at what was obviously a memory and not at me in particular. “You might think that’s true, Rudy, but I think you’d be wrong,” she said, leaning in and taking a sip of her beer before looking at me.

“I don’t know what guys you’ve been hanging around, Darlin’,” I said, leaning a little closer as well. “But if they’re relying on you to treat them, they aren’t doing their jobs.”

She gave me that smile again, looking into my eyes.

“Hey, buddy,” the bartender said as he was crossing behind the bar in front of us and saw the way we were looking at each other. “If you’re not gonna kiss her, I’ll hop this bar and do it myself.”

“Fuck off,” I said with a smirk, glancing at him, and then leaned in and kissed Amber. I couldn’t hear it over the music but I could feel her hum happily, and this time I let things go a little further, teasing my tongue against her lips only to be surprised when she didn’t tease me back. At least not like that. Instead, she sucked my lower lip between hers and bit me softly. When we pulled apart she was giggling and giving me a stare that made a whole lot of promises.

“God damn, Darlin’,” I said with a heavy exhale, shaking my head incredulously. “I’m not gonna try and say I’ve never made a new friend with a woman in a bar, but this is… something else. Not my usual style.”

“It’s a good thing that we’re already ‘dating’ then, isn’t it?” she pointed out, smiling knowingly. “And to be clear, I don’t usually do this either. Flirt a little, let a guy buy me a drink if I think he’s cute, sure. Maybe a little kiss or two to figure out if there’s actual chemistry or not. I don’t hop into Ubers and go with a guy and his friends to a second location, though. You’re something special and I’m having fun figuring out what that is.”

I blew out a breath and took a swig off my bottle, shaking my head. I didn’t want to ask it, because I partially didn’t want to know the answer or have this whole thing blow up in my face, but I also needed to know. “Ever had an ex tell you that you’re crazy?” I asked.

She snorted and grinned, bubbling over into a laugh. “Once,” she said. “Back in high school after I broke up with him. Ballsy question, though.”

“Had to ask,” I said apologetically.

“And why is that?” she asked.

“If you blew up just at the idea or the word, I’d know you were the kind of trouble I’m not looking for,” I said. “Mostly because you’d heard it before, and too often. And I’d rather deal with that earlier than later.”

“Fair question then,” Amber said, back to that smirking smile. “I’ve known some crazy bitches. Anyone ever tell you that you’re an abusive piece of shit?”

“Only an employee who showed up meth’d out of his mind so I had to fire him,” I said.

“Good reason to fire a guy,” she said.

“Finish that beer, Darlin’,” I said. “I want to take you back out on that dance floor.”

She grinned and tilted her beer up, taking another long draw as I matched her.

We spent almost two hours at the Yokel, dancing and drinking. Jeanette and Bill got spotted in the crowd by the MC lady and recognised from past visits to the bar and were given some space to do a bit of their Country Swing to the cheers of the crowd. One couple tried to imitate them and the lady almost fell on her head when she slipped while getting lifted over his head.

Around 11PM, Bobby-Jo came and grabbed Bill, Jeanette, Amber and I from the dance floor to regroup with the others at the table.

“Strip club time!” Bobby declared, slapping her palms excitedly on the table. “Let’s gooo.”

I’d totally forgotten that Ed and the Triple B’s had been planning that. Jeanette had already had her Bachelorette the previous month and the girls had done a weekend trip up to the Okanagan Valley in Canada for wine tastings and skiing, while Curtis’s bachelor party had been a trip to the Florida Keys for fishing, and then up into Florida proper for wild hog hunting. Neither trip featured strippers or any other ‘wild’ events, much to the dismay of the Triple Bs, Ed and one of Jeanette’s other bridesmaids Staci, a girl her and Bobby had been roommates with in college. None of us were prudes or Jesus-freaks, and we’d been to a strip club or two before as a group (excluding Ed, whose wife was generally against the idea but was ‘allowing it’ for the night), so the Triple Bs had declared tonight to be a ‘rager.’

That all, of course, was going to be hard to explain to this fantastic woman who had attached herself to us for the evening.

“Which club are you guys planning on going to?” Amber asked, almost immediately blocking my need to even start explaining.

“Scuttlebutts,” Bill said. “They have great wings.”

That got a snort out of several of us.

“OK, hear me out - I’ve got a connection at Tripper’s Landing Strip,” Amber said. “I promise it’ll be way better than Scuttlebutts.”

“Fuck it, let’s go to the Landing Strip then,” Bobby said, circling a finger in the air and pointing towards the front door to the bar. “We’re movin’ out!”

Amber turned to me, giving me a slightly abashed look for the first time that was fucking cute. “I promise, I’m really not crazy,” she chuckled.

“I promise I won’t start thinkin’ it until you give me a good reason to,” I said. “But… ‘connection?’”

“I know a couple of girls who work there,” she explained. “And have partied with them and the DJ. So I’ve been there a few times. Why? Would it be a problem if I were a stripper and it was my night off?”

I shook my head. She could be a stripper with her body - not the bimbo, full of fake filler kind, the girl next door kind they made movies about. “Darlin’, I can’t help but think you’d be the highest-earning stripper this side of the Mississippi if that’s what you do for work,” I said. “And I wouldn’t hold it against you, but I’m not sure I could keep bein’ your boyfriend if you were hidin’ something like that from me.”

“Fair,” she grinned. “Relationships are built on trust, after all.”

“Trust, work and making good choices,” I said.

“So, do you still trust me?” she asked. We were following in the wake of the others towards the door and I realised that my answer had changed from before. 

This night was getting weirder and wilder, and despite everyone else telling me that Amber was hot for me, or asking me what I thought of her, I’d still been holding back. This night would end. I’d be busy with the wedding for the rest of the weekend, and then I’d head back home on Sunday afternoon and go back to my regular life, and whatever this thing was between us would be another kernel of What If. The first time I’d made eye contact with her I’d known that I’d be thinking of her a week from now, of that girl from across the bar. A month later? Probably not. Now she wasn’t just a girl from across the bar. Now she was this real, tangible, sexy woman that I was learning more about, and starting to get, and who seemed to get me. Now I wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about her after a week, and I was OK with that. I had to be because I wanted more… time with her. More of her. I was being drawn to that smile, and those eyes, and her laugh at the same time I felt like she was being drawn to me.

I was willing to go down this rabbit hole with her, even if she spelt trouble with a capital T just like she said.

“More and more every minute,” I answered her question, and it must have been the right thing because she paused our progress, looking up at me with those hazel eyes of hers.

“Fuck, you’re sexy,” she said. Then she kissed the tips of two of her fingers and raised them to press on my lips. “Now come on, I gotta make a call or two before we Uber over.”

Chapter 2

“Dude, she’s a stripper,” Brad said. “Come on, she’s gotta be. She has a connection at a strip club?”

“She’s hot enough to be one,” Ed agreed.

I blew out a breath, shaking my head and not engaging with the guys. Amber had ridden with Bobby-Jo and Jeanette again, but Jeany had pulled Curt with them into their car so I was stuck with the boys. That wasn’t something I would usually feel any sort of way about, but if I was only going to get one evening with this woman I wanted to maximise my time with her.

“I swear I’ve seen her before,” Paul said from the back seat of the Escalade that had come to pick us up. He was squeezed back there with Bill, while Ed and I were in the middle bucket seats and Brad was leaning back to talk to us from the front passenger seat while the Uber driver tried to ignore us.

“Have you been going to strip clubs?” Bill asked Paul.

“No, not since the last time you guys took me,” Paul said.

“So are you gonna fuck her, Rudy?” Ed asked me, drumming his hands against his armrest.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know,” I grunted, shaking my head at him. “How about you guys keep your game faces on and leave where my dick is headed out of your thoughts?”

“Oh, come on, buddy,” Bill said, grabbing my shoulders from behind me and kneading them. “It’s been way too long since you got laid. You need to get back on that bicycle and start ridin’ it, shake off that rust.”

“Again with thinkin’ way too much about where my dick is or was,” I grunted.

That got the guys laughing, and they changed the subject for the rest of the ride until the driver pulled us up in front of the strip club. Tripper’s Landing Strip looked like it might have been a Mexican restaurant in its previous life, the outside of the building done up in a sort of hacienda type of architecture except that the interior sported a taller, plain brickwork that must have been an add-on to raise the ceilings. The front door of the place had a red carpet rolled out and two golden lights beaming down on it, trying to make it look fancier than it was, and a bouncer was on hand wearing all black and holding a clipboard.

We got out of the Uber and I thanked the driver, sending him on his way just as the other car arrived. The girls and Curtis piled out and Amber made a beeline for me, scooping her arm around mine and leading me, and the rest of the group, towards the door.

“Hey, Frank,” she said as we approached the bouncer.

“Amber,” Frank said. He was tall, Samoan and built like a brick shed with broad shoulders and the kind of arms that looked like they belonged on an action figure instead of a real person. “Jackie said you were bringing a group, but I don’t know if she knew you meant this many people.”

“It’ll be fine,” Amber said. “Probably.”

He sighed and shook his head, then eyed the rest of us. “I need you two,” he said, gesturing to Paul and Bobby-Jo. “The rest of you are fine.”

Once the IDs were produced and checked, he let us in and we lined up to pay our cover fees. Amber tried to pay for me and I caught her, making her laugh as I took her card from her and held it over her head as I handed the guy working the entrance cash. Once we were through I handed her back her card.

“You know this means I’m going to buy you a lapdance now, right?” she asked with a smirk. We were just inside the entrance and the entire place was lit up with purple lighting, casting a weird glow across us, along with the accompanying party lights and thumping music. If the exterior of the place looked like an overly-stereotypical Mexican restaurant, the inside looked like it could have been built out of a warehouse full of antiques - all the couches looked like they were from the early 1900s at best, the booths were either plush velvet or hardwood that might have been lifted out of a speakeasy, and the bar had two guys behind it wearing bowties. The incongruity of the decor and lighting was strange - adding in the woman who was currently spinning, half nude, on a pole on the main stage and two more on side stages wiggling away for the forty or so people in the place made it feel surreal.

“I’m not exactly a lapdance kind of guy, Darlin’,” I said, moving out of the way so Curtis and Jeanette could follow me in. They headed for the bar, planning to get started on that two-drink minimum.

“Well, are you a boobs or ass guy?” she asked.

I snorted softly and shook my head. “I know a trap when I hear it,” I said.

“Sexy and smart,” Amber laughed. Then she grabbed my hand. “Come on.” She led me towards the bar, and we were soon joined by the rest of the group as we got our orders, along with two of the strippers who were slowly wandering around looking for clients who wanted private dances. I immediately started thinking of them as ‘Schoolgirl’ and ‘Orange Bikini’ based on what they were wearing and never got their names. Ed was immediately flustered, flirting with Schoolgirl, while Jeanette was chatting up Orange Bikini - who had massive fake tits. Knowing Jeany, she’d buy Curt a lapdance from that one since Jeany wasn’t nearly so well endowed and liked to give him a taste of the other side on the rare occasion we were at a strip club before.

“Cheers,” Amber said, handing me a beer and then clinking hers with mine. We only had time to take a sip before her eyebrows raised and she was looking past me. “Hold on,” she said, squeezing my arm quickly and handing me her beer. She slipped past me and stepped away from the bar, crashing into a giggling hug with a tall blonde woman - and she was tall even without the platform shoes she was wearing, so she practically loomed over Amber as they hugged and laughed together. She also happened to be topless except for a couple of pasties covering her nipples and half her moderate breasts, and the lingerie panties sitting low on her hips weren’t adding that much more coverage.

They spoke quickly, and then Amber took her hand and led her to me. “Rudy, this is my friend Fawn. Fawn, this is my boyfriend Rudy.”

Fawn was offering me her hand in a sort of lady-like way until she hesitated hearing Amber call me her boyfriend. “What?” she asked, her voice tinged mildly with some sort of Eastern European accent. “Really?”

“For the night,” Amber chuckled and clarified. “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”

Fawn rolled her eyes and shook her head in a way that told me that, other than the initial shock, this sort of thing wasn’t that surprising from Amber. “Charmed,” she said as I shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I agreed, doing my damndest to focus on her eyes and not her bare chest, or her tight bare stomach. Or her mound pressing against the thin cover of the panties. Or her long, bare legs.

There was a lot of temptation going on.

Amber ordered shots for us, along with Jeanette and Curtis, and I started to lose sense of time. I noticed the Triple Bs all getting lap dances at one point, each of them sitting on a big couch as strippers wriggled on top of them. Ed bought a dance for Paul, and Paul bought one for him despite his weak protests. Jeany bought Curt a three-song dance back in the champagne room, looking pleased with herself when he came back out looking happily shell-shocked.

Then Amber bought Jeany a lapdance from Fawn, whispering to her friend that Jeanette was the bride-to-be of the party. The leggy blonde put on a show, leading Jeanette to a chair and getting most of our group to come over and watch, though Amber and I stayed back near the bar. We weren’t exactly unoccupied though, and had a clear view as Jeanette got worked over. Amber was sitting up on a barstool and I was leaning on the bar next to her when I almost jumped out of my pants as she ran her hand down my thigh. Her grin at that reaction was impish, and she leaned over and kissed me, feeding me her lithe little tongue as we made out for a minute.

When she pulled away she had a gleam in her eye. “What do you think of Fawn?” she asked.

“I think she’s a lovely gal,” I said diplomatically.

“Do you want a lapdance from her?”

“I think I know exactly who I want a lapdance from, and it’s not her,” I said. “But I also think the lady I’m considering isn’t up for sale like that.”

Amber’s grin could have broken her face. “I don’t think so either, but she appreciates the thought,” she said. “The good news is that I’ve got someone else to give you a lapdance.”

When she had manoeuvred it, I couldn’t say, but she gestured over my shoulder and I turned and found a cute, black-haired girl sauntering up to us. Her hair was long, down to her ass, and she was a tight little package with small tits and an athletic body. She was pretty, with big eyes, a slightly hooked nose, and the way she looked at me was predatory in an ‘I’m going to swallow you whole’ sort of way.

She said her name but I missed it, mostly because Amber had squeezed my crotch teasingly right before pushing me towards her with a hand on the small of my back. The dark-haired girl grabbed my hand and started leading me towards the champagne room, and I realised that she was wearing even less than Fawn had been - same pasties, but just a string thong. I glanced over my shoulder and was almost relieved when I saw Amber was following me.

The dance was a whirlwind. The dark-haired stripper might not have had the big assets of some of the other ladies in the club, but she knew how to move. By the end of the first song in the dark, private room, while I kept my hands gripping the velvet cushions of the couch, she had me hard as a rock in my pants just from the teasing dance moves and glimpses of nipple or pussy as she peeled a pastie or her thong aside for little moments.

At the end of the song I motioned for her to lean close, and she did and grinned and nodded at my request.

Amber, who was sitting on a couch about five feet away on the other side of the dark room, shot us a curious look then her eyes went wide and she laughed as the stripper dropped to her knees and started crawling like a cat towards her as the opening of the next song started. She had a small, cute ass that waved sinuously as it moved away from me.

It was almost as hot watching Amber get danced on as it had been getting the lap dance myself. And this time the stripper slowly lost what little she had covering her. The first pastie to come off was playfully stuck to Amber’s forehead, baring a puffy little tan areola and nipple. The second one was put over Amber’s lips, cutting off her laughter.

The thong got shot my way, expertly landing right on top of my head.

She came back to me for the third song and was all over me. The dance was erotic and seemed to last a lifetime and a blurred moment in time. The stripper was lithe and teasing and knew just what she was doing as she went from mostly-visual teasing by dancing around me to dancing on me, grinding herself against my cock through my pants, and running her fingers through my hair roughly to pull my head the way she wanted. Tempting me with her lips coming close enough to feel her breath on mine, but not kissing me.

When the song ended I groaned, leaning away from her as she grinned and laughed, rubbing her hands on my cheeks for a moment before picking up her thong from where I’d set it beside me on the couch and quickly putting it on.

“Have fun, ‘boyfriend?’” Amber asked as she fell onto the couch next to me.

“Wow,” I said to her, then turned to the stripper. “Wow.”

“High praise,” the stripper laughed. Then she looked at Amber while applying new pasties to her little tits that she’d pulled from… I wasn’t sure where. “He was a good boy.”

“I didn’t doubt he would be, but that’s good to know,” Amber grinned. “Can I?”

The stripper smirked and nodded. “One song,” she said, then started heading for the door out of the private room.

“One song?” I asked, having a feeling I knew where this was going and knowing what lines I was or wasn’t willing to cross.

Amber smiled at me, rubbing a hand on my chest through my shirt. “Good boys get rewarded,” she said. Then she pivoted and threw her leg over me, straddling my lap as she kissed me. The song had already started, but all I heard was the thump of my heart in my ears. She broke the kiss to bring her lips to my ear. “I’m not a stripper, but I’m friends with strippers so I’ve learned some moves,” she said quietly. “Right now, though, I just want to feel your hands on me and kiss you like I fuckin’ want to be kissed. You can touch me, Rudy, for one song.”

Our lips locked, and I growled softly as I slid my hands up from the outside of her thighs to her waist, then back to her ass over her dress.

Fuck, it was a great ass. Squishy and firm at the same time. She moaned into my kiss as I mauled her butt, and then we were really kissing and I lost track of what I was doing completely. The alcohol, the too-loud thumping music, the dark room. How fucking horny I was. It all added up to me losing my sense of self as we let our hands explore while our lips merged us into one being for the space of a three-minute stripping song.

Later, I would wish I at least knew what song it had been, but neither of us could remember.

When it ended she pulled away from my lips with a gasp. She’d been grinding her hips against me and I leaned in, kissing her bare chest at the base of her throat as she laughed in sheer pleasure. “Fuck, Rudy,” she groaned. “Fuck. We have to get out of here.”

For a second I thought she meant the club, but then I realised she meant the champagne room. I grunted and stood up, lifting her with me, my hands still on her ass as she clung to me around my shoulders - she kissed me again as I turned and she slowly lowered her legs to stand on the couch, and then let me help her step down to the floor.

“Hold on,” I said, running my fingers through her hair and getting it straightened out. She chuckled and reached up, running her thumbs over my lips where I might have had some of her soft pink lipstick on me.

“Better?” she asked once I brushed her hair back.

“Probably not as good as if you had a mirror, but I think you’re cute and don’t look like you just sucked the soul out of a man,” I said.

“Is that what I did?” she smirked. “I thought it was pretty damn good.”

“I might be hollow on the inside now, but damn right it was, Darlin’,” I said.

She grabbed my hand and led me out and back into the main room of the strip club. Jeanette and Curtis noticed us exiting the champagne room - missing a stripper - and I saw them glance at each other. Amber let go of my hand once we reached the group, winking at me as she headed for the bar where both Fawn and the dark-haired stripper seemed to be waiting for her.

“Hey,” Curtis said as he and his fiancee cornered me alone.

I blew out a breath in response, eyeing them both suspiciously.

“You need to make your move on her, Rudy,” Jeanette said. “Take her back to the hotel. Or go to her place. The chemistry between you two is ridiculous.”

“And don’t argue,” Curtis said, waylaying what I was about to say. “‘Oh, I’m not that kind of guy,’ ‘I’m happy with my life the way it is,’ ‘I don’t need to get set up on a date even though everyone who cares about me can see I’m lonely.’ Go have hot hookup sex with her! Get freaky. Or don’t, be all stoic and bang her in missionary all night like a robot. I don’t care. But fucking do something.”

“And before you ask - yes, we are totally set for wedding stuff,” Jeanette added. “We can get back to the hotel just fine tonight with the group, and there’s nothing that you need to do tomorrow other than show up to the rehearsal dinner.”

“And golfing tomorrow,” Curtis said quickly.

“And you guys golfing tomorrow,” Jeanette nodded.

I looked between them. They were my two best friends - it had been Curtis first, and Jeanette had been my best gal pal but not a ‘best friend’ until after high school, but now they were solidly in that top spot together. If, God forbid, something happened and they broke up, I wasn’t sure how I would handle the whole thing. And here they were, telling me to have sex with a girl I’d just met hours before, on the eve of the eve of their wedding.

“You two realise how ridiculous it is that I’m hooking up with someone two nights before your wedding, right?” I asked.

Jeanette smirked and gave me a punch on the arm. “Go get her, Rudy. She’s hot, she’s fun and she’s interested. You deserve that.”

“Don’t we all?” Curtis mused, and when Jeanette turned to him with a confused look he said. “I meant you, babe. You’re hot, fun and interested in me.”

Jeanette snorted and rolled her eyes, then looked back at me. “Figure it out, Rudes.” Then she grabbed her fiance’s hand and dragged him towards the group, quite possibly intent on wrangling them up to head back to the hotel so that she and Curtis could disappear into their room.

I sighed, shaking my head. The booze was making me second-guess myself, but I knew what I wanted. I was pretty sure I knew what Amber wanted, too. Especially after making out with her like that. And there really wasn’t anything stopping me - all the prep for the wedding was done, I had no duties until the day-of, and I was single and on vacation.

Why shouldn’t I explore… whatever this chemistry was.

“Hey,” Amber said, coming up behind me and hugging me from the side, looking up at me with that crooked, heart-stopping smile and those hazel eyes that made my heart skip a beat. “I’m ready to go,” she continued. “Want to… come to my place?”

I nodded, just a little, and pursed my lips. “Your place?” I asked.

“Unless you feel like driving all the way back to yours,” she said. “But I think I’m a little bit closer.”

“I’ve got a hotel room at the wedding venue,” I said, nodding towards the others.

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow and purse her lips. “Hotel sex?” she chuckled. “That sounds hot, but might make me feel more like an escort than a girlfriend if it’s our first time. Come to my place. I’ll make breakfast in the morning.”

“So now I’m staying over, too?” I asked quietly. My hand had landed on her back naturally as I’d hugged her back, and I rubbed gently as we kept eye contact.

“Believe me, Rudy,” she said with a confident look in her eyes. “After a night like this, and how we’re going to cap it off, you aren’t going to want to drag your ass back to that hotel. So I’ll be making you breakfast.”

“That,” I said, turning so I was hugging her face-on instead of side-to-side. “Sounds fucking amazing, Darlin’.”

“Then I just have one question for you,” she grinned that teasing, confident, mind bending smile of hers. “French toast or pancakes?”

Chapter 3

I sort of lost track of where we were. I wasn’t drunk, but I was heavily buzzed and flying high on lust after everything at the strip club. Amber wasn’t helping - she’d distracted me from some of the excited teasing my friends had been calling to me as my ‘girlfriend for the night’ led me out of the club, and then we’d sat in the back of the Uber together and she’d given me a look. I wasn’t sure how I knew what that look meant, but I did, and I ran my hand over the side of her neck and felt her warm skin under my calloused fingers and palms as I pulled her into a kiss.

She was a biter. Or maybe nibbler was a better way of putting it. She kissed like a fiend and knew just how to rile me up, running her fingers up and down my arms, over my wrists, or the backs of my hands. She made little girlish grunts in the back of her throat at the end of every kiss like she was putting a stamp of approval on it. But the nibbling was her signature. She would catch one of my lips between her teeth and tease with her teeth, tugging softly, before letting it go. And it wasn’t limited to my lips; at one point she broke away and kissed along the line of my jaw, nibbling occasionally there too.

It was hot. I’d never had a girl do that before and I kinda liked it.

We arrived at an apartment building and left the Uber behind, and my eyes were all for her as we moved through a lobby and into an elevator.

She gave me one of those looks again, like she was daring me to do exactly what she wanted. So I picked her up by her ass and pressed her against the wall, kissing her hard, feeling our noses mash lightly as technique went out the window in the name of pure hunger. Her knees pinched to my sides as she squealed giddily into my lips, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

The elevator let out a bing! and lurched lightly under us, heading back down.

We’d missed our stop completely.

By the time we made it back up to her floor again, she was humping at me lightly as we kept making out with her perched up on the handrail of the little compartment. We didn’t miss the door this time, and I carried her out of the elevator before setting her back down. She hauled me down the hallway quickly, passing only a couple of widely spaced doors before stopping in front of one and she quickly keyed her way in through the black door. 

I lost track again. Amber only flicked on a couple of lights that stayed dim. Maybe she did that on purpose to set the mood. My eyes were all for her anyway, and she led me through an entryway and past a kitchen towards the far end of the apartment. She lost her shoes by the door, her bare feet still dirty from line dancing, and I thought that was cute as hell. She lost her dress somewhere in the kitchen, the little black garment getting pulled down to her delicate waist to reveal more of her softly muscled, fit back and the clip for her strapless black bra. She tossed her hair, looking over her shoulder teasingly at me with one of those quirky smiles that made my heart leap out of my chest, and one raise of her eyebrow was all she needed to do.

‘You’re a little overdressed,’ it said.

I laughed, unbuttoning my shirt as I followed her deeper into the apartment and letting it fall off of me. Then I pulled off my undershirt and let that drop as well.

Amber turned, eyefucking me as she gazed at my torso. She was right earlier - I worked. Thankfully most of my friends weren’t the kind to linger around unemployed post-college and they all worked, but most of them were either in entry-level desk jobs or service industry. Jeany was the only one who had landed an ‘adult job’ so far. Unlike them, my job kept me moving and active, even if I spent a bunch of time in the cab of an earth mover. I was always climbing trailers, strapping things down or taking them off of flatbeds, walking back and forth across fields to check levels and distances, and occasionally just picking up a shovel and moving dirt by hand to do some finishing work.

Maybe I wasn’t ripped like a gym rat, but I had the body of a man who put in a real, honest day’s work.

And Amber seemed to like it.

Her grin, and the hunger in her eyes, were contagious and a massive turn-on. The black dress was pooled over her hips and she reached back and unhooked her strapless bra, pulling it off to the side and revealing her tits to match me in being topless.

They were fucking perfect. Over a handful for her, which she proved when she cupped and jiggled them a little at me before letting them bounce free, but probably a perfect handful in my bigger hands. Her areolas were a nice, ruddy pink and just slightly oval, centring around inch-long nipples that were already stiffening. Utterly suckable, totally gorgeous, beautifully bouncy.

Amber laughed, almost a shriek of joy, at the look on my face and backed away quickly into a bedroom, leading me into the dark and toward a bed. I chased her and she let me catch her in the middle of the room, throwing her arms up around my neck and pulling me down to kiss her again as my hands landed on the hot skin of her bare back. She growled into the kiss and I matched her, feeling her tits pressed against the hair on my chest, and she slowly worked us back towards the bed until she must have touched it with her heels.

“Mmf,” she murmured through the kisses and encouraged me to spin with her until I was backed up to the bed. Then she pushed lightly against my chest, wanting me to fall back to the bed, but her lips followed mine as she didn’t want to end the kiss to do it. We finally parted and I sat back, looking at her - her height meant I was only a little shorter than her even sitting.

The only light we had was the dim, golden hue coming from out in the hallway or kitchen or whatever we’d passed through. I had no idea. It was enough. She was stunning. Her stomach was soft but tight, her breasts heavy and wonderful, her shoulders and neck so fucking kissable. Her smile heart-stopping, her eyes piercing and hungry. Her eyebrows speaking volumes.

‘Do you like what you see?’

‘I know I’m hot, but that look in your eyes is everything.’

‘God, I want you so fucking bad.’

She slipped the dress down over her hips, letting it fall to the floor, leaving her in a skimpy pair of black lingerie panties that hugged her waist perfectly. Her mound pressed against the front, hinting at the glory hidden beneath that thin fabric.

‘What now?’ her eyebrows challenged with a quirk.

I started unbuckling my belt, and by the time I had it undone, she was nibbling on her lower lip and reaching down to speed up the process, fumbling with my zipper and then helping me yank my jeans down and off to join her dress on the floor. That left me in briefs and she eyefucked the bulge of my cock in the front - I was hard, very clearly so.

“It’s been a while,” I said huskily with a rueful shrug.

“Me too,” Amber said with a smirk and flicked a finger against each of her stiff nipples.

I sat up and grabbed her around the waist, hauling her up onto the bed and manhandling her around so she was in the middle on her back and I was over her, kissing her again. Her moan was long and full, her hands squeezing my arms and my side and my cock through my underwear when she wasn’t cupping my face to keep me in place. Mine explored as well, and everything I touched felt like it was gold. She was warm, and soft, and feminine. Her moans and grunts told me she liked it when I pulled her thigh up to pinch against my waist, and when I slid my hand up from her side to palm her breast for the first time and hook my thumb over her delightfully stiff nipple.

We made out hard, vacillating between that sheer hunger kiss in the elevator and the more intense, pointed passion in the car. One of her hands scooped into the front of my briefs, wrapping around the base of my cock and squeezing over and over. Her fingers felt electric on me and I stiffened to rock hard immediately. My hand slipped between us, down over her panties and feeling her lips through the thin fabric. Feeling her warmth. Feeling how she was getting wet.

She gasped, a girlish little sound as she had my lower lip between her teeth again. The sound of that gasp could have lived in my head forever.

Amber wanted a change and we rolled over and she was on top, straddling my waist and shifting to deliberately press her mound against my cock through our underwear. She ground against me, hands on my chest as she looked down at me through her messed up hair, looking for all the world like a total slut and a beautiful Goddess in the golden, sideways-cast light from the hallway behind her. Her power was in her eyes as she worked her hips, grinding against me. Then she lowered down and kissed me again, hungrily, before raising up on her knees more and blindly pushing down her panties to take them off, wriggling to strip them completely and then tossing them off the bed.

Then she sat up tall, letting me look at her. Her mound was smooth, with a little clit hood poking out in front as she pressed her softly flushed, slick outer labia down against the bulge in my briefs. She had a cute little rectangular landing strip tuft of pubic hair, trimmed short and the same shade as her eyebrows, pointing the way.

“God, I want you,” she murmured, looking down at me and practically glowing as she watched my face while I took her beauty in.

“I’m all yours,” I promised her.

She reached down between us and pressed her palm to my cock head through my briefs, grinding her pussy against the fabric between us as she closed her eyes and moaned. I reached up and palmed her breasts, pinching both her nipples a little roughly because she seemed to like that. Amber moaned again, louder and full-throated, her jaw dropping - not an orgasm, but close. She was as turned on as I was.

Then she dismounted from me, kneeling beside me as she yanked at my briefs, wanting them off me. I lifted my ass and helped, and cock sprang out as she giggled in delight and got her hands on it before I could even kick my underwear from both legs.

“Yesss,” she hummed, leaning down and tilting it towards her by the base, taking it into her mouth without hesitation and humming at the taste with her eyes closed as she wallowed in the sexuality of the act. Then she rolled her head a bit, pressing my cock into her cheek as she moved her hair out of the way and looked up to meet my eyes.

‘Does this feel good?’ her eyebrows asked.

‘Do you like what I’m doing?’

‘Are you as turned on as I am?’

I grunted, gasped, and shook my head. “Amber, it’s been a while,” I murmured. “Fuck, I swear I’ll be ready for you again, but this is a train that can’t stop.”

She pulled her lips from my cock, slow and deliberate, and started to jack me off. “Give it to me, Rudy,” she gasped, meeting my eyes with that same hunger. “God, I’m fucking leaking, I’m so turned on by you. This cock is fucking- ugh. Not too big, not too small, not too thin, just thick enough to scare me a little bit. To make my lips tell my pussy ‘Get ready, he’s coming!’ and for them to quiver.”

“Fuck, Amber,” I grunted, gritting my teeth to try and hold off as she stroked me with a firm hand. 

“Shoot for me, Rudy,” she urged me. “Shoot for me and I’ll lick it all off of you. Then I’m going to fuck you until we’re both sweaty puddles in my bed and there’s nothing left.”

I came. It wasn’t a massive orgasm despite my warnings that it had ‘been awhile,’ it had come on too fast for that. But it was hard, my chest feeling like it was tearing open and my entire lower body clenching as the first shot rocketed up out of me into the air almost a foot before splattering down onto my stomach. Amber gasped in delight at that and kept stroking me without stopping as another two ropes shot out, lacking quite the velocity but also landing on my stomach before the back end of my orgasm oozed another couple of thick gobs out onto her hand.

No hesitation. Amber ducked down and swirled her tongue around my cock head and then sucked on it like she was open-mouthed kissing me, slurping up the dregs of my cum from my cock and everything that had oozed out. Then she sat up, letting go of it, and making a show of licking my cum off her wrist and hand.

“God, Amber,” I panted, reaching for her and sliding my hand over the top of her thigh as she shifted a little closer on her knees. “God. I can’t believe you’re real.”

“I’m real, Rudy,” she grinned, examining her hand to make it was clean before she bounced away from my hand to kneel between my legs, leaning down to press her tits to my half-hard cock as she dragged her tongue across my stomach and started to lick me clean there as well. “Mmmm,” she moaned as she swallowed another tongue load.

“Amber,” I groaned. “Darlin’.”

She laughed as she licked up the last bit. “Say it again.”

“Darlin’,” I grunted again.

She pressed her hands to the outside of her tits, pressing them together around my cock and starting to stroke me with it.

“Darlin’,” I exhaled heavily, feeling my sensitive cock already responding and firming back up.

“That’s it, Beau,” she moaned, her jaw hanging open in a grin as she stared sex at me. “That’s it. This fucking cock is gonna feel so fucking good. Get hard for me again, Rudy. God, I can feel it getting hard between my tits.”

“Amber, Darlin’,” I groaned, sitting up and pulling her from my cock to come kiss me. She did so, close-lipped, and I appreciated that she wasn’t trying to make me taste what she’d been swallowing. Her hands went to my cock like they were magnetic, stroking me as I continued to get hard. I was holding her face in my hands and I pulled her back a little, grinning. “Call me that again,” I said, mimicking her little game.

“What, Beau?” she asked with a grin.

“Darlin’,” I said.

She licked her lips, hooding her eyes a little, and moving her lips closer to mine. “Beau,” she whispered.

We kissed again and she decided I was hard enough and pushed me down to my back again as she clambered up to straddle me.

Then she hesitated with a groan and broke our kiss to sit up. My cock was standing up, pressing against her clit and mound firmly enough that I could feel the heat of her. Amber’s groan wasn’t one of pleasure this time though, it was frustration. “Hold on,” she said, sitting back a little more. “Hold on. Um- Fuck. Get your condom.” She dismounted from me, pointing me towards the edge of the bed.

I started to move in that direction before my mind caught up with me and I stopped, shaking my head. “Wait- Uh… fuck.”

She raised both of her eyebrows at me. Then she cocked her head to the side and looked pained. “No,” she groaned. “No, God, Rudy- Please fucking tell me you have a condom.”

I grunted in exasperation as I fell back onto the mattress, scrubbing my face with the heels of my palms. “I told you it’s been a while,” I said. “And I don’t do this kind of thing. Especially not when I’m out with my friends before their wedding.”

“No, no nooo,” Amber said, despair washing over her. “Fuck. You could have got one in the strip club bathroom.”

“Darlin’, when we left that place my mind was on one thing, and one thing only. How fucking lucky I was to have met you tonight.”

“Fuck,” Amber said, slapping the sheets with a hand. “Birth control fucks with me badly, so we can’t- fuck.”

We both let out frustrated sighs and for a moment I contemplated running out to find a convenience store or late-night pharmacy. Then I grunted and sat back up, rolling up onto my knees.

And that’s when my heart broke a little, because Amber gave me a silent look, her eyebrows talking to me again.

‘I guess that’s it, then.’

‘He got his. I should have checked beforehand. Now he leaves. My fault.’

‘I thought maybe this guy was different.’

I wasn’t sure how I could read those little twitches, raises and furrows so easily. There was just something about her face that felt so natural to me. So perfectly understandable. And I could see the disappointment and hurt and resignation hidden as she faked a sigh and slumped onto the bed.

Her surprise was real as I grabbed her ankles and hauled her around, twisting her onto her butt and dragging her so that her legs were on either side of me. I leaned down and kissed her again, pressing my chest to hers.

“Mmmf,” she grunted, half passionate and half still resigned. More goodbye than anything.

I pulled up from the kiss, looking her in her gorgeous, guarded hazel eyes.

“Seriously, Rudy,” she said evenly. “We can’t. I’m not risking it.”

“Who said anything about risking anything?” I asked her and then shifted down her body to kiss the middle of her chest, and then a little lower to kiss between her tits. And lower again, on her sternum.

“Oh,” she said softly.

I kissed her again, down her stomach, then next to her belly button, nuzzling it. Then lower.

“Oh,” she gasped. “You don’t have to-”

I raised my lips from her skin, looking at her pointedly. “What does have got to do with it, Darlin’?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said again, quiet, her eyes big. Her eyebrows telling me she wasn’t used to a guy saying that.

I ran my lips and nose through her landing strip, breathing her in, and I finally felt her respond a little stronger as her butt clenched, which shifted her hips subtly. Then she spread her thighs a bit wider, almost hopefully.

My lips travelled lower still, out of her hair and pressing a kiss in the small space between it and the base of her clit hood.

I lowered one more time, getting face to face with her pussy. It was pretty as hell. Her outer labia were a little flushed with arousal, a little puffy. Her inner labia formed a tiny, slightly asymmetrical heart shape around her entrance. I’d only been with a few women but it was a little short to me, a little compact. Her perineum, the space between the lowest part of her pussy lips and her butthole, was perfectly smooth, and that little butthole was flexing nervously between the cleavage of her cheeks as she leaned back.

“You, Darlin’,” I said, looking her in the eyes as I placed my hands on her thighs and slid them towards where they met. “Are absolutely fucking gorgeous from head to toe and every nook and cranny in between. Lay back and tell me what you like, because I’m not leaving this bed until we’re both puddles just like you promised.”

I didn’t give her time to respond, I ducked in and gave her a thick-tongued lick and then got down to the business of eating pussy.

It really wasn’t that surprising to me that Amber’s experience with guys made her assume I wouldn’t go down on her. I’d heard plenty of locker room and construction yard talk about how manly certain guys thought of themselves, and the derogatory shit they said about folks who were frankly better people than they were. Jocks, and former Jocks, were usually the worst, especially in smaller rural towns like where me and my friends had grown up - supposedly big fish in little ponds tended to develop inflated egos and entitled pricks. 

Amber had made it pretty clear she had a type, and I fell into that general category. I knew plenty of guys like me who were Put Your Head Down, Get The Work Done types. Maybe we weren’t flashy, maybe we didn’t try to make ourselves the centre of attention, but we were out there. The problem was we were pretty indiscernible from assholes who talked the talk (often loudly) but didn’t walk the walk.

A real man, I’d decided long ago, eats pussy because a real man knows that if the lady has a good time there’s plenty more good times to be had in the future. My older sister had told me that when I was sixteen and she’d come home, pissed off, after a shitty date. I’d taken that to heart because I’d taken everything my sister said to heart since she was always right about every piece of advice she gave me about high school and girls. Even when I didn’t want her to be.

I’d had three girlfriends since then, and one one-night-stand that hadn’t turned into a relationship. One thing I was proud my exes had never dreamed of saying was that I didn’t do it for them in the sack.

“Ho-ly tits,” Amber gasped, her pelvis thrusting up towards my mouth as I started working on my ‘tricks’ to figure out which little things would set her off. That particular one had been dragging the side of my tongue between her outer and inner labia like a long edge instead of a pointed tip. I did it again on the other side and she gave me the same response, minus the ‘holy tits’ but with the addition of an, “Oh, shit, you know what you’re doing.”

I hummed a chuckle, smiling up at her with my eyes as she looked down at me, her hair messy and her eyes a wild combination of dreamy and penetrating.

When her legs started shaking, I pulled them up over my shoulders.

When she couldn’t stop her heels from digging into my back, I pushed her thighs back to her stomach and munched on her pussy as it pressed between them.

And when she came, held like that, I didn’t give her a second of respite as I added my fingers to the mix, teasing her open with the middle one and quickly adding my ring finger as well. That pretty pussy was the perfect mix of hungry and tight, wanting to resist and accept at the same time.

I lost myself in the process, driving her towards another orgasm. And then another. She tasted warm and thick, almost cinnamon but not quite. Not sweet, not sour. Warm was the thing that came to mind every time I focused on the taste of her as little beads of girlcum oozed out of her around my fingers.

“Stop,” Amber gasped, panting. “Beau, oh my God, stop.”

I pulled my fingers from her, rising up from my position and feeling my back complain a little bit. I’d been down there a while. Her pussy was flushed a deep pink, the entrance to her vagina proper a nice little gaping dark hole flexing and slowly closing. As I got up to get a good look at her, I found that Amber was drenched in sweat. Her hair was sticking to her forehead, neck and shoulders, and it was glistening down her body. She was breathing deeply, trying to catch her breath like she’d been running. Her nipples, still super hard and rubbery as they stood out from her perfect tits, looked a little raw from where she’d been pinching and yanking on them herself.

“Fuck,” Amber panted, blinking as she looked up at the ceiling. “Fuck was that?”

I crawled up next to her and laid down, sliding my arm under her and turning her so she could snuggle up to me. She did, pressing her cheek to my shoulder and her leg curling up over mine as she shook her head and blinked, then focused on me.

“That, Darlin’, was what my ex used to call ‘The Rudy-gon Trail,’ cause once you start riding you gotta drop orgasms like you’re a homesteader dropping shit off the back of your wagon,” I chuckled. Sarah had been a history buff and had a dark sense of humour.

Amber let out a long breath and then snorted at the end, snickering a little. “Really?”

“I’m not kidding,” I grinned.

“You fuckin- God, Rudy,” she sighed, wiping her face. “I didn’t know a guy could do that.”

“Well, I had to make up for the condom thing,” I smirked.

She barked a laugh and rolled her eyes. “Fuckin’ marry me, you silver-tongued sex monster.”

“Ah, I’m not that charming,” I chuckled. “I’m just dextrous.”

She shook her head again and took a long breath, then looked down and grinned as she slid her hand across my stomach and found the root of my hard cock as it stood up at about 80 degrees; not quite as hard as it could be, but close. “Honestly, Beau, that kind of showing deserves some fucking pussy, but I really can’t. I am not safe. So I’m gonna get this thing in my throat.”

“You won’t hear me complainin’, Darlin,” I said. “But a normal blowjob will definitely keep me happy.”

“No, that’s not enough,” she grinned as she slowly got up to her hands and knees and looked down into my eyes before kissing me. She huffed out another breath after she pulled her lips from mine. “Earlier you said I kissed you like I hollowed out your soul. This time I’m goin’ for everything else, and I’m gonna suck it out of your cock. So lay back and enjoy, Beau.”

She was being deadly serious, so I ran my fingers through her damp, sweat-soaked hair and pulled her down into another kiss before nodding. “OK, Darlin’,” I said. “Do your worst.”

“I think you mean do my best,” she smirked. “And don’t worry. I will.”

Chapter 4

My eyes snapped open, sensing something was off. I was immediately disoriented, not recognising a single thing about the room I was in and not remembering how I’d gotten there. Then I saw the dress, a little black thing, hung over the back of a chair, and it clicked into place.

Amber.

I was at Amber’s place.

This was the first time I was even really seeing the bedroom. Light was leaking into the room around the edges of what seemed like three big panels that I pieced together were actually big blinds covering what had to be massive almost floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned most of the wall. There was enough light that I could see the room was neat and kind of spartanly decorated. Two matched dressers lined the far wall alongside a door standing half-open leading into a walk-in closet. The wall opposite the windows had another door, this one leading into the washroom we’d used the previous night, right before we collapsed under the sweat- and sex-damp covers of her bed. Two paintings were the only decor on that wall, both the sort of modern stuff I didn’t really get.

The open doorway out of the room, if you could call it a door at all since it was more just an open concept suggestion of a doorway, led out into another space that was brighter lit from the same direction as the windows in the bedroom, and beyond that was the kitchen where I could see an island, and there were the soft clinking sounds of cooking.

That was when the smell hit me and I groaned and blinked several times.

Bacon. The delicious smell of bacon. And something else. Something baking.

My stomach rumbled in response to the smell, making itself known. I was usually up before the sun, even on a Friday, so by the time we had the sort of light I thought was coming in around the windows it would already be holding half a thermos of coffee and some sort of breakfast sandwich.

“You up, Beau?” Amber asked, poking her head around the wall in the kitchen and looking across the apartment to me. She was further away than I expected. How big was this place?

“Yeah, Darlin’,” I called. “I’m awake.” I started to get up.

“Stay there, I’m bringing breakfast to you,” she called, disappearing back around the corner. Part of me wanted to at least sit myself up, and maybe figure out where my briefs went since I was naked under the covers. But I was comfortable and my brain was currently arguing with my liver over the amount of alcohol I’d drank the night before without drinking enough water.

Then that completely left my mind as a vision of pure heaven came striding out of the kitchen towards me.

Amber was wearing a green apron, and judging by the amount of skin I was seeing around it, only an apron. Maybe it was a cliche, but God damn she made that cliche look good. Bare feet on the hardwood floor. Bare legs. The bottom of the apron ended about two-thirds of the way up her thighs, covering most of her front except for the outward-most curves of her bare hips. It was cinched around her waist and hugged her up to her bust, where the outer curves of her breasts were just barely peeking out from the thin chest tantalizingly. Her shoulders and arms were bare, her neck holding just a thin little silver chain, and she had her hair up in a messy bun so her cute face was being haloed like an angel with a spray of strawberry blonde.

Despite all of that scenery, though, it was that look she gave me that could absolutely ruin me. That cocky, quirky smile that was almost a smirk but not quite, like the fucking Amazon logo. That slight lift to just one eyebrow, like she was asking a question with a perfect amount of innuendo. And the bright glimmer in her eyes that matched the thin silver hoops in her septum and one nostril as they twinkled in the morning light.

“I figured since I promised you breakfast, I should probably follow through, Beau,” Amber said as she carried a wooden tray heaped with a plate of bacon and waffles. Somehow she sauntered as she did it, and part of me wondered if it was a trick of the light or something that it felt like she got slower the closer she got to me, like the world wanted me to experience this utter vision in full slow-mo glory.

“I’d have been thrilled with a slice of toast and a smear of jam, Darlin’,” I said, shaking my head in wonder at the heap of food.

Amber deftly did something under the tray and two sets of wooden legs sprung out, and she set it down over me as I sat up, making a little in-bed table. “Please, Rudy,” Amber laughed. “You’re a working man. I know you need to eat. Hold on, let me grab the syrup. You want coffee? OJ? Both?”

“Both would be fantastic, Darlin’,” I said. “But one or the other is fine.

She rolled her eyes at me playfully and turned, walking away as she looked over her shoulder. “I’ve got both, it’s not like you’re putting me out,” she said. “And after that effort last night, you deserve a king-sized breakfast.”

I couldn’t respond and by the look in her eye she knew it, laughing as she continued to walk away.

No bra, which I’d already known, and no panties. That perfect fucking ass sauntering away, jiggling a little with each step.

“Fuck,” I finally muttered.

The plate was heaped with more food than I could eat by a good margin, some breakfast sausages browned and crispy stacked under the bacon. Thankfully there were two bundles of utensils in napkins so I wasn’t expected to make an attempt at the whole thing myself. The woman cooked like she was serving a family of five.

“How do you take it?” she called from the kitchen. “Wait, no, let me guess. Black as dirt and bitter like a Clint Eastwood character?”

I snorted. “Black as dirt is good, but I’ve got a sweet tooth, Darlin’. Gimme a couple sugars in it, please.”

“Mmm, a sweet tooth, huh?” she asked, looking around the corner of the kitchen, down the hallway and across the bedroom again. “So how does some whipped cream sound?”

“I could lick up some whipped cream,” I said, already knowing that she was thinking where else we could put the whipped cream to use other than the waffles. She flashed me a big grin and I could hear her snicker all the way across the apartment as she ducked away.

When she came back out she was carrying another tray, this one with two mugs, two tall glasses of Orange Juice, a can of spray whipped cream, and a funny-shaped glass bottle of real Canadian Maple Syrup.

“Honestly, I’d make the whipped cream from scratch but I don’t have any in the place right now,” Amber said as she leaned over me and the food tray, sliding the drink tray onto the mattress next to me and maybe-purposefully giving me a peak at the side of her boob under the apron.

“This is already amazing, Amber,” I said, catching her elbow and gently pulling her towards me. She grinned as she leaned in, her smile lazy and pleased as her eyes hooded a little and she pressed her apron-clad tits to my chest before easing into the kiss.

“Mm,” she hummed softly, her lips working before she gave me a couple teases of just a touch of tongue and a little nibble on my lower lip. Then she pulled back, her grin returning. “So you do remember my name,” she chuckled warmly.

“Darlin’, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” I said, still using the nickname she’d asked me to use. “Last night was fun.”

“Good,” she grinned. Then she stood up and reached behind her, undoing the apron and lifting it over her head with a flourish, revealing her gorgeous body to me again. This time with more light involved. She was as stunning and utterly perfect as my fuzzy memory pictured her. Her breasts those perfect just-more-than-a-handful size, her nipples springing out an inch as they were freed from the thick fabric of the apron. Her soft but slender stomach. Her mound with its perfect little rectangular landing strip, carefully trimmed and pointing down towards her plush little lips. She started climbing on the bed, straddling my legs as she dropped the apron to the floor, and she sat between my shins and nimbly crossed her legs as she grinned.

That’s right, I’m not afraid to show you everything, her eyebrows teased.

Take a good look. Stare. I love the way you look at me.

This morning isn’t ending at breakfast.

“So are you a bacon or sausage man?” she asked with a grin, handing me one of the napkin-wrapped utensil bundles and then unwrapping her own.

“Darlin’, please. Both,” I chuckled.

“Mmm, a man after my own heart,” she smirked as she stabbed one of the breakfast sausages with her fork and took a savage little bite out of it, then picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite of that too before winking.

We dug in, Amber insisting she actually spray some whipped cream on my first waffle and drizzling it with the Maple Syrup. Everything was delicious.

“Mmkay,” I said once I had finished the first waffle. “This is really good.”

“Thanks, Beau,” she grinned before popping a forkful of waffle, syrup and whipped cream into her mouth, chewing and swallowing. “Honestly, I like cooking when I have the time to do it right. I hate it when I’m on the run and would rather just grab some takeout, but cooking for someone is…”

I frowned as she hesitated. Suddenly that line I felt like I had right into her brain through the way she looked at me got cloudy. “Nice?” I guessed.

“It is,” she said, her shoulders relaxing just a little as she smiled easily. Then she looked at me hard, her brows coming together just a little. “Rudy, I- Last night you said it had been a while, and I said it had been a while for me, too. I wasn’t lying. Despite what… all this, and that, looks like, I don’t usually invite guys up to my place the first night I meet them. Or make them breakfast in the morning.”

“Or eat that breakfast naked?” I asked with a little grin.

She gave me a look and smirked. “Definitely not.” Then she bit the inside of her cheek and picked up the can of whipped cream, spraying a little bit on one finger and then rubbing it over her lips. “Oops. I think I need some help.”

I laughed and shifted, leaning forward over the food tray as she leaned in to meet me. I kissed the sugary sweet taste off of her lips until she pulled back, clean and smiling. 

“I think you’re dodging what you were going to say,” I said. “And I’m not gonna pressure you to get back to it if you don’t want to, Darlin’, but I think it’s fair that I point it out.”

She sighed heavily, tilting her head to the side as she gave me a ‘God damn it, you’re right and it’s annoying that you are’ sort of look. “You’re going to think I sound like a crazy girl,” she said.

“Sorry, we got into a one-night-relationship within thirty seconds of us meeting, you brought me and over half the wedding party for my best friend’s wedding to a Strip Club to show us a good time, and then we had wildly amazing oral sex. And then you made this amazing naked breakfast. I’m honestly kind of scared for the other shoe to drop here, Amber, and you being crazy would explain… a lot,” you said.

She barked a laugh and covered her mouth, giggling behind her hand as she glared at me. “Fine,” she said. “Maybe I do already seem like a crazy girl. But please just… don’t freak out, OK?”

“I promise not to sprint out the door naked,” I said. “How’s that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Good enough, I guess.” She took a breath and then delayed one more moment by taking a sip of her coffee. “The reason it’s been a while for me is because I’m not looking for casual. I don’t know what this is - maybe it’s just both of us taking a break from being serious about stuff, and we synced up for one night of Wow. But usually, I’m the kind of girl who dates with intention. I want a husband. And fuck if I don’t realise that makes me sound like some cock-hungry Born Again ‘virgin’ just gagging to get a ring on her finger so she can have an excuse to finally give her boyfriend enough leeway to stick it in her instead of dry humping in the back seat of the car. But I’ve known for a long time that I want to be a wifey. I want to take care of my man, and in return feel provided for and protected. That’s why I learned to cook. It’s why I like to work out. Hell, it’s why I taught myself to deep-throat using a dildo. ‘Cause seeing that look in your eye the first time I wedged your cock down my throat was so fucking sexy and satisfying, and seeing you react to me making breakfast had the same damn effect. And I want to do that to- and see that look in the eye of- the man I’ll call my husband. So of course here I am dumping the results of my trauma all over the bed right after I make you breakfast, making myself a total nutcase, and-”

“Amber, Darlin’,” I said, cutting her off and reaching across the tray to grab her hand. She clicked her mouth shut, flushing as she realised how hard she’d been ranting. “I think whoever is lucky enough to put a ring on this finger better know exactly how lucky they are.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but then hiccuped out a little chuckle and sighed at herself, shaking her head. “Thank you, Beau.” She squeezed my fingers with hers.

“Look, I’m not exactly… equipped with the tools some fancy therapist probably is. I’m more of the ‘crack open a beer, stare at a sunset over a lake’ kind of guy when it comes to working my shit out,” I said. “But if you want to talk that trauma stuff out…”

“God, you’re cute,” Amber said, then took a breath. “I’d rather crack a beer and look at a sunset over a lake too. And I didn’t want to… yeah. Trauma dump. But I’ve learned it’s better to just be upfront about stuff before one of us starts making assumptions.”

“Darlin’, are you suggesting that truthful communication might be good for everyone involved?” I asked with a little smirk.

“Fuck off,” she laughed, giving my hand another squeeze before letting go and picking her fork up again.

“Alright, then if we’re both comfortable starin’ out at lakes, what are you doing in this apartment?” I asked. “It’s… fuck, Darlin’, it might be the nicest home I’ve ever set foot in that wasn’t a client’s because I’m digging them a big fuckin’ pool in their backyard. What’s my ‘girlfriend’ do to get a place like this?”

Amber opened her mouth again, then closed it with a sigh as she gave me a look. “You really don’t know who I am?” she asked.

It was my turn to talk with my eyebrows, raising one questioningly.

“You don’t ‘feel like you recognize me from somewhere?’” she pressed.

“I could give you a line about you bein’ in my dreams, if you’d like,” I smirked.

She flashed me that smile again. The killer one. “Part of the reason I like you is because you didn’t try any lines like that, Beau,” she said. Then she shook her head. “OK, I know how this is gonna sound after everything I just said about being intentional about wanting to find a husband.”

“Why do you make that sound like trouble?” I asked.

“Because I know it is, but it’s not as bad as it sounds, I swear,” she said. “Look- Fuck, OK, minor trauma dump, OK? I’m technically an orphan - my parents died in a car accident when I was twelve, and I was raised by my Grandparents after that. But my parents died young, and didn’t get to do so much in life, and the two biggest things I remember about them were how much they loved and supported each other, and how much they stressed over money. So I kind of don’t want to live life slow because you never know when it’s going to get stolen from you. I do have my business admin degree like I told you guys, but that’s not what I do at all.”

“Amber,” I said, letting out a breath as I raised both eyebrows and looked into her eyes. “Have you considered opening with the thing you’re trying to say and then explaining after?”

She looked at me dumbfounded for a moment and then snorted, closing her eyes and she rubbed her forehead and laughed. “Fuck,” she said. “I do sound crazy, don’t I?”

“Maybe just a little,” I said.

She shook her head and looked at me. “I’m a professional cocktease,” she said bluntly. “Which, I mean, I don’t have a business card for or anything, obviously. But I make really good money between sponsorship deals on social media and from OnlyFans subscriptions. I don’t do anything nude or, like, super sexual though. Seriously. I only do non-nude content - the nakedest I get is bikinis or underwear. I never show… all of this.” She gestured to her chest and then her little trimmed bush. “But between posing, dancing, and talking flirty or a little dirty to the camera, I figured out how to hook people online. Now I’m one of the top non-nude models on OnlyFans, and that’s how I can afford this place, and my car and race car, and track time, and going to races and stuff.”

I shook my head slightly, blinking.

“I know, it sounds weird that I’m looking for a good hubby and I flaunt myself online,” she said, gesturing with a piece of waffle stuck on her fork. “But I’m super specific about what I won’t do, and I wouldn’t be ashamed of having anything I’ve put out being on a private Instagram that was just for family and friends. Well, other than the dirty talk, but that’s usually me talking dirty to my future husband - guys love that shit, apparently. Hell, my Grandma follows my Tiktok and thinks the teasing shit is hilarious. And if I do find my future hubby and know he’s the one, and he feels any sort of way about it, I’ll delete it all and burn my presence on the internet to the ground.”

I was still shaking my head, and I was sure I looked confused.

“What?” she asked. “Look, I know, it’s weird and maybe it changes how you think of me, but-”

“No, Amber,” I said, stopping her. “Race car? Track time?”

Her eyes lit up as she grinned at me again.

Chapter 5

I hadn’t seen the living room yet. To be fair, I could have seen it when we walked by it the night before, but my eyes had been a little busy following every move that Amber had been making. The decor in the room felt like it explained a lot about this girl.

First was the big fucking flatscreen and the couch with individual bucket seats, armrests and cup holders which would have been the pride and joy of any man’s house. Then there were the framed posters for NASCAR events, signed by drivers. I wasn’t a big fan of the sport but I recognized some names and locations. I would have assumed they were purchased on eBay or something but the posters had pictures inside their frames of Amber at the events, either posing with drivers who had signed the poster or with a pair of older folks who I guessed were her Grandparents. More framed pictures were scattered around the room, most of them featuring Amber, her Grandparents, and race cars. There were several with Amber wearing driving coveralls in bright red with yellow chevrons, and one prominent one with a slightly younger her up on her Grandfather’s and another man’s shoulders as she hefted a trophy - the same trophy that was in a display case.

The last, big piece of decor was a prominent model car in a glass box. It was a racing car in the same red with yellow chevrons, maybe the size of my torso and intricately detailed inside and out. When Amber hit a switch on the wall the lights came on, spotlighting the major pictures and the model car.

“So you’re sayin’ you like to go fast?” I joked.

“If you ain’t first, yer last,” Amber grinned, quoting the same Will Ferrell movie I’d paraphrased.

“This is really impressive, Amber,” I said, reluctant to step away from the entirely nude woman but doing so anyway, approaching the big photo of her with the trophy and the model car. I looked back over my shoulder at her, as naked as she was, and tried not to eye her up as I met her gaze. “Somehow you keep surprising me, and every single time is an absolute blast.”

“So you don’t care that I can probably drive better than you?” she asked with a smirk. “You don’t feel like I’d be threatening your masculinity?”

“Darlin’, as long as you realise I could do circles around you in a 70,000-pound excavator, I’ll leave the fast and light stuff to you all day,” I smirked.

“That, Rudy,” she said as she crossed the room to me and grinned that killer smile up into my eyes. “Is the sexiest thing a man has ever said to me.”

Then she dropped to her knees, grabbed my mostly-hard cock, and started to blow me.

“Ooh, fuck,” I mumbled, leaning back a little from the sudden rush of pleasure shooting up through me as her lips dragged up my shaft and she sucked hard, her tongue slithering around the head of my cock. I almost pressed a hand to the glass of the model car display and managed to catch myself, bracing on the corner of the base instead. “Amber- Holy-”

“Hmmhmmhmm,” she chuckled in a hum around my cock. Then she pulled off with an audible pop, grinning again. “You like my hair up or down when I’m sucking your cock, Beau?”

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous either way, Darlin’,” I grunted.

“Grab my bun and fuck my mouth,” she said, just a little huskily. “You know I can take you. Trust me.”

I did know she could take my cock. All the way to the root. The end of last night was the fuzziest of all, but I very much remembered how she’d proven she could swallow my entire cock and do things with a blowjob I’d never experienced before. I also remembered she liked things on the rougher side of tender - she liked her nipples getting beat up a little, fingers clawing her ass, and little nibbles all over her body just like she kissed.

So as she looked up at me from her knees, giving me that fucking grin that was going to haunt my dreams for years, I placed my fingers right at the front of her hairline and slid my hand through her hair and across her scalp. I wove my fingers into her hair and then grabbed her messy, sexy bun at the back of her head.

“I’m just saying,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “I don’t know if I’ve met anyone who gives off better Best Wifey Ever vibes than you.”

She laughed, and I used that opportunity to draw her closer and slide my cock between her lips. Amber let me take the lead, working her mouth actively but letting me draw her in and pull her back off as if her neck was completely loose. The combination of active participation and total submission of control was intoxicating and I found my eyes rolling up at little as I dragged her mouth on and off of me, groaning as I silently coached her to focus on the head of my cock for a long moment, then driving deeper.

Her tongue, her lips, even her little nibbling teeth, drove me crazy. But the thing that almost sent me over the edge prematurely were her eyes as I looked down at her and she looked up at the same time. But I held my composure and the corner of her mouth pulled up, smirking a little around my cock as her eyebrow lifted.

Almost got you, they said.

You’ll need to try harder because I’m not gonna make this easy.

Are you going to fuck my throat or not?

I pulled her slowly and forcefully towards me, and she resisted me just slightly to tilt her head a little for the right angle then she moaned in her chest. The crown of my cock nudged around her throat and she made a slick, wet gagging sound as she swallowed it down.

I remembered her doing it; I didn’t remember the exquisite, spine-tingling feeling of it. Now I got to re-experience that feeling and growled as Amber swallowed repeatedly, making a sort of gluck-gluck noise as she worked my cock with every part of her mouth. Then she gasped for air as I pulled her off of me, my cock not even fully leaving her mouth and her lips stringing to it with spittle as she grinned open-mouthed at me.

She gave me a double flicker with her eyebrows.

Faster, they said.

I pulled her back towards me and pushed into her throat again, delving as deep as I could as her nose mashed to my pubic bone and her chin touched my balls. And then, holding her still, I started to thrust my cock, pulling back and then pushing into her throat over and over. The gluck-glucking got louder. Drool started to pool and then spill out the corners of her mouth. Her eyes watered. And she kept swallowing, kept squeezing on my cock and writhing her tongue and sucking with her lips and I almost had a religious experience as I felt this gorgeous woman dedicate herself to giving me the kind of pleasure I hadn’t known existed.

“Fuck!” I yelled, pulling her away from my cock by her hair roughly. She was grinning as she coughed, trying to catch her breath, her breasts heaving and jiggling as her lungs struggled to catch up with the rest of her body. I grabbed my cock and stroked fast, pointing it towards her.

“Come on my tits, Beau,” she gasped. “Come all over my tits. Come on my face. Fuck I want your cum, baby. Come all over my tits and face.”

I groaned. She shot me that smile again. The one that was probably going to be my ruin. I erupted, my balls pulling up and firing off a thick set of ropes as my mind blanked with the searing pleasure of the orgasm. One rope hit her chin and down her neck, but the other four painted her chest and tits, followed by a speckling of more cum as my body attempted to eject what I could only assume was every ounce of semen left in my body.

“Yeees,” she was humming. “Fuck, yes, Beau. That’s so hot, fuck. God, I love it. Paint me with your cum.”

We were both left panting, and I let go of her hair as I stumbled to the side and put a hand on the couch to steady myself. “Amber- Fuck-” I panted.

“Mmmm,” she hummed, slowly running her hands up her stomach to just under her tits, pinching her nipples gently as she looked down at herself, then up at me. “Rudy, that was-”

I interrupted her as my vision settled back into focus and I felt my energy flood back. Turning quickly, my interruption came in the form of hooking my hands under her armpits and hauling her up from her knees. She let out a small yelp and then laughed as I easily carried her two steps over and plopped her down in the middle seat of her couch and got on my knees, pulling her legs open and yanking her butt to the edge of the cushion so that her delicious pussy was ripe and ready for eating.

“Holy tits,” Amber moaned as she grabbed her breasts roughly, smearing my cum all over by accident as she reacted to me diving in and driving my tongue through her pretty labia, testing her slick arousal. My nose pressed against her clit, and I grazed my teeth against the side of her labia as I started to remember the things she’d liked last night. But then she was pressing me back with a foot on my shoulder. “Wait,” she gasped. “Waitwaitwait.”

“What?” I asked, chuckling a little incredulously as I let her push me back but took her foot in both hands, bringing it closer so I could kiss her slender, sexy ankle. She was an utterly lewd mess, smattered with sweat and cum, her hair falling wildly out of its bun. “You know I want to.”

“I know,” she panted and shook her head, laughing breathily. “It’s not that. You need to get back to the hotel for your tee time. Golfing with the wedding party boys.”

I looked at her incredulously, then at the big NASCAR clock on the wall. “I’ve got plenty of time to make you come… a dozen times or more, Darlin’.”

She sat up, pulling her foot from me and taking my face in both hands. “Not if we’re going to get you back to the hotel and give housekeeping a reason to make your bed later,” she said. “All we need to do is stop for condoms on the way. And give me a minute to wash my face and tits of all this cum.”

Maybe she could read my mind like I could read hers through her eyebrows. Maybe it was just a little obvious what I was thinking. Either way, she grinned broadly, knowing I was very, very happy to follow along with her new plan.

Chapter 6

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Amber’s ability to get herself ready in under five minutes. On the one hand, it was fucking impressive and sort of a reflection of how she seemed to handle everything - at speed, with snap decisions. Efficient and without dragging her feet. On the other hand, what did it say about other women? I’d been kept waiting by a date more than a few times and felt it was a little rude. Once, I’d waited an entire half hour beyond the time I was supposed to pick up one date - sure, she’d eventually come out of her place looking great, but what did it say about her that she couldn’t be ready even vaguely on time?

To be fair, Amber didn’t exactly glam herself up - limited make-up, her hair brushed and pulled back into a cute ponytail, and a spritz of perfume on her neck and a swipe of deodorant under her arms. The amazing thing was more getting to watch her do it all - because she didn’t just handle it fast and efficiently, she did it with that killer cocky smile of hers as she watched me in the mirror from her en suite as I got dressed in the bedroom. She wiggled her ass at me, still naked as she worked on her face. She shimmied her shoulders as she came out, giggling at my appreciative groan as she went to her closet. Back to making sure I was looking at her ass as she put on black lacy bra, which was joined by a matching thong. A cute brown vest covered all the important bits and gave her a country vibe, and she only paused to hold up a pair of navy tights and black jeans and asked if I liked a girl who showed off a bit of jiggle for me when we were out, or preferred to watch her do the ‘pull up the tight pants’ dance.

I was a little shocked at how much I appreciated her asking that - as a man, I definitely didn’t mind seeing a hot woman out and around wearing tights that accented her ass. From a ‘she’s with me’ perspective though… there were thin lines between looking good and looking like advertising.

The ‘Tight Pants Dance’ was also a very fun shimmy and shake that had me groaning and laughing equally as she bounced around a bit, fighting with her perky, jiggly butt to get the tight jeans over it. A belt with a chunky country-style belt buckle, a few rings, necklaces and earrings, and a pair of brown cowboy boots finished the look.

We were out the door in under ten minutes from when I’d last had my lips kissing her.

That brought me to groaning again because, once we were down in her building parking lot, she took my hand and led me to what I could only describe as one beautiful fucking truck.

“First generation,” Amber said, clearly loving my appreciation of her sunny yellow pickup. “1975. Still has the manual transmission, but I got pretty much everything rebuilt. She can tow my trailer of my real baby, the stock car.”

“Look,” I said. “This-” I held my hand over the polished, smooth yellow hood. “This is a beautiful truck, even if it is a Ford.”

Amber dropped her jaw and slapped her free hand against my chest playfully. “How dare you, Beau!? What, are you a Chevy guy or something?”

“Dodge,” I shrugged with a chuckle.

“Dodge!?” she scoffed, then tutted and shook her head. “I don’t know how I feel about you anymore. Their first-gen model is so much uglier than my sweet girl here.”

“I don’t buy trucks for looks,” I chuckled. “And, to be fair, I’ve only driven two Dodge trucks in a row because I got them for good deals and needed trucks to tow equipment.”

Her eyebrows said, ‘I guess I can forgive you.’

‘Maybe.’

‘But you’re still wrong, and I’ll show you.’

She gave me that killer smile again and dug her keys out of her satchel purse. “All those big machines you work are manual, right? You can drive.” She tossed them to me.

I caught them, a little surprised, and hesitated before hefting them in my hands with a jingle. “You want me to drive?” I asked to confirm, silently adding the ‘Aren’t you the semi-pro driver?’

“I like when a man can drive,” she said. “Be in control.”

Part of me felt like this was a test, but also not the way that I would have thought if I was going out with someone one of my friends was setting me up with. One of their college friends or something. They would want me to say something like, ‘No, it’s OK, I don’t need to drive’ and show I wasn’t a control freak or something. Or ‘toxicly masculine’. Amber, though…

‘Don’t disappoint me, please,’ her eyebrows said as they quirked just a little even though her cocky smirk didn’t falter.

I sighed and closed the distance between us - just a step - and placed the keys back in her hands before reaching down and picking her up by her ass, lifting her up to sit on the hood of her truck. She naturally looped her arms around my neck as I lifted her, and she ended up looking down at me a little with the height change.

“I was hoping to see how a professional does her driving, Darlin’,” I said, resting my hands on the little strip of skin showing on her hips between her pants and the angled sides of her vest top. “I’m happy to drive if that’s what you actually want, but you’ll probably get us to the closest pharmacy and the hotel faster. I don’t know the city that well.”

A slight pressure with two fingers on each hand was all the message needed to draw her to lean down and kiss me, and for a long moment, I felt like I was in the music video for a country love song. When she pulled away she was giving me a considering look. Not conflicted, but clearly trying to decide something.

“You drive,” she decided to hand me the keys again.

“OK,” I agreed, then lifted her back down from the truck to her feet.

She hooked a couple of fingers into the front of my pants and pulled me back to her as I went to take a step back, so I leaned down for another kiss. 

Fuck, I had it bad for this girl. Not just for the physical either. Her attitude and personality just did something to me. And she was interesting. And that felt like I was stripping off a sweaty shirt after work on a hot as hell day in the middle of summer - I would have thought it would be a weight, but it felt… freeing. It felt like I was dropping something I’d been carrying, admitting that to myself.

I wanted more than just a one-night, or a one-night-one-morning stand with Amber. And not in a ‘I’ll be thinking of this girl for a while’ kind of way. I wanted to make something happen here. And it felt good to want that for the first time in a long time.

When we finally broke apart I looked down at her and maybe she felt something change, or maybe something had been running through her mind as well, but her cockiness was gone as she looked up at me with big eyes and licked her lips, showing a bit of nervousness.

“You OK, Darlin’?” I asked softly.

“Yeah,” she said, frowning for a moment and then that smile came back again. “I’m great. Let’s get going, Beau.”

I walked her around to the passenger side of the truck and unlocked it for her, helping her in and shutting the door for her before circling around to the driver side. There was a moment of snickering from her as I had to move the seat back to fit in, and then I quickly adjusted the mirrors, shooting her a little smirk because we both knew now she was going to have to adjust everything back to her own liking.

The truck turned over with a powerful, clean thrum and it shifted into gear smoothly.

“OK,” Amber said, letting out a soft breath. “You haven’t been bullshitting.”

That made me laugh, and she let out a relieved laugh as well before giving me directions to the pharmacy that would be on the way to the hotel. And then we just… drove and talked. She asked me about the wedding, and we laughed about my friends and what had been going on the night before, and a couple of stories from back in high school. At one point, at a red light, I had my hand resting on the stick shift and she put hers on top, weaving her fingers with mine a little and tracing their sides with hers. When I glanced over at her she gave me a little smile.

At the pharmacy she tried to be the one to go in to get the condoms, but I insisted - there was no way that I was going to let even the perception of me making her buy condoms for us seem like a thing. My cock, my condoms.

She had fun coming in with me, though, and openly flirting with me at the cash to the point that the poor older woman behind the register was blushing and glaring disapprovingly. It was a Friday morning and here we were cavorting when we should have been at jobs or something.

Amber’s laugh once we got back in the truck was warm and full of energy, and she said that I’d been blushing almost as much as the woman had been, even if I hadn’t balked at flirting back or sliding my hand into the back pocket of Amber’s jeans.

“I like that, by the way,” she told me as we headed for the hotel. “A lot.”

“My hand in your pocket?” I asked.

“Mhmm,” she nodded. “On my ass, in my pocket. It’s kind of like…”

“Now you’re blushing,” I chuckled.

“Am not,” she argued and blushed a little harder as she grinned and looked out the window. I let the issue drop and we were pulling into the hotel parking lot a minute later. “Oh, no,” she groaned as I pulled into a spot right next to my truck. “See? Way uglier.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes a little. “It’s a work truck, Darlin’. It’s not for show.”

“Says you,” she countered. “It’s got your business on the side; it’s for show.”

“It’s got my business on the side so people know it’s my truck on work sites,” I said. “I don't think I’ve ever gotten a contract from driving down the highway.”

“Maybe not, but all advertising is advertising,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt and turning to sit with one leg up on her seat so she could face me properly. “You can’t tell me you haven’t gotten a single job from someone grabbing your number off of your truck while you’ve been parked at a job, right?”

“I… guess not,” I said. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Just imagine for a second,” she said. “If your truck and all your equipment was, like, fluorescent green. Anyone driving by a work site of yours would be like, ‘Woah, look at those big, mean, lime green machines!’ And then the next time they need earth moved or something, they’ll think of the first company that stands out - the one with the big green truck and machines.”

I shook my head and sighed. “OK,” I said. “You’re not wrong. I can see how that would work.”

“You’ll learn that I’m right about eighty per cent of the time,” she grinned.

“What happens the other twenty per cent?” I asked with a wry smile.

“I’m missing a key piece of information,” she grinned. “Which isn’t my fault.”

“Great,” I sighed. “Beautiful, cool, and a genius. I’m out of my depth.”

“I dunno,” she said, breaking out that killer smirk again. “I think you’re gonna be at just the right depth. Repeatedly.” She cackled softly as I guffawed at her dirty talk and then she reached over and took my hand with both of hers, drawing my attention back to her. “Can I just… say something, Beau?”

“Of course you can, Darlin’,” I said after clearing my throat.

“I- I told you I don’t usually do… this,” she gestured between us and then at the hotel. “Like, ever. And I kind of said that maybe it was just us both needing something like this at the same time or something. But… Rudy, I just want to be kinda blunt because like I said, I don’t want to live life slow - I’m very interested in you. Maybe this is all this is, and that would be OK, but everything about you so far makes me want to know more.”

Where did that lump in my throat come from? Or the beehive in my stomach?

“Well, since we’re being blunt,” I said, tracing one finger around her palms as she clung lightly to my hand. “I’m pretty damn interested in you too, Amber. In every way.”

“OK,” she said, grinning nervously.

“It’s good to know,” I said.

“It is,” she agreed. We just stared at each other for a long moment, and she bounced her knee lightly. “We should probably go in so you can explore my interests more in depth,” she eventually said with a smirk.

That made me laugh and groan. “You already made a ‘depth’ joke,” I said as I unbuckled as well and we started getting out of the truck. “You need to cycle material.”

“Fine,” she said, grinning at me through the truck and the open doors. “We should probably go in so you can fuck my brains out.”

She started laughing as I started coughing.

Chapter 7

I had never really done a ‘walk of shame’ before - I’d certainly heard about them from my friends, and the argument that it was much more of a girl than a guy thing. Walking into the hotel hand in hand with a woman that everyone knew I’d only met the night before, early enough that it was clear we hadn’t been out and were coming in again, didn’t bother me at all right up until we ran into Bobby-Jo and Brad in the lobby.

That was when I started to understand the ‘walk of shame’ feeling. Especially when they both caught sight of us, clocked us holding hands, looked at each other and started grinning, then looked back at us. All in unison.

“Well, well, well,” Brad said, smiling like an idiot. “Good morning, Sunshine. Have a good night out?”

“Not as good as you, it looks like,” I said as our pairs came together and shifted out of the way of anyone else walking through. “Why do you two look like crap?”

“Because we kept drinking when we got back here,” Bobby-Jo said, rubbing one eye. Then she blinked and broke into another grin, coming forward to wrap Amber up in a hug. “Girl, you are fuckin’ awesome,” she said. “And that outfit is hella cute.”

“Oh, come on,” Amber said. “This is nothing, you girls were all totally smokin’ hot last night.”

Bobby didn’t argue, she just hugged Amber again and then nodded towards the doors into the nice restaurant. “Come on, everyone should be in there.”

My brain stuttered, trying to think of how I could extricate myself from being even more ‘walk of shamed’ by showing up to breakfast in my clothes from the night before - the only saving grace I could think of was that Brad was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, and Bobby-Jo was wearing men’s athletic shorts and a baggy T-shirt which looked an awful lot like they might be her PJs.

“Let’s go say good morning,” Amber said, quick enough on her toes that my hesitation wasn’t noticeable. “Make sure everyone actually remembers me in the light of day. Last night was fun.”

“Sure,” I said, trying not to get annoyed at Brad chuckling under his breath. And ignoring Bobby-Jo trying to catch my eye as we went into the nice restaurant.

We didn’t make it to the two big tables that were reserved for us in the back corner of the place for the weekend, though, because Juliette came scurrying from that direction, spotted us and made a beeline through the moderately busy sitting area.

“Guys,” Jeanine’s younger sister hissed. “Guys!”

Uh-oh, I immediately thought. Juliette was Jeanine’s younger cousin, but for a sixteen-year-old, she had a pretty good head on her shoulders. Considering I was the only one of our friend group who still lived in our home town, I’d been a bit of a pseudo uncle to her when she needed it over the years and had even helped her out with a student co-op job her previous semester - I couldn’t get her licensed to Operate a machine or drive truck, but I’d taught her all the back-end admin of the job, like the scheduling and bookkeeping - the entrepreneurial BS that kept the whole thing running. She was a good kid and didn’t panic easily, but she definitely looked flustered now.

“What’s up, kiddo?” Bobby-Jo asked as we stopped and then shifted out of the way of a server.

“Jeanine is freaking out,” she said. “She got a call like fifteen minutes ago and stepped outside to take it, and we could hear her yelling through the windows. She was out there for like ten minutes, then came back in and just sat down and started crying.”

“Where’s Curt?” I asked, my mind instantly going to worst-case scenarios. She was shouting and angry, so no one was dead, but if she was upset and mad it was possible he’d done something really fucking stupid and I hadn’t been there to stop his drunk ass.

“He’s there,” Juliette said, thumbing back towards the table. “I figured I should go find Auntie Bella?”

“Good thinking,” I said and nodded towards the doors. “Go find her. We’ll check on them.”

Juliette nodded and skipped to it, and we all traded looks before heading towards the drama.

Curtis and Jeanine weren’t the only people at the two long tables reserved for the wedding party and family, and there were several plates abandoned at the tables as Curt’s father, Ed, Paul, Bill, and Jeanine’s grandma were all trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Jeanine was sitting at one of the tables with her elbows planted firmly on either side of her forgotten plate and her face in her hands as she sobbed softly. Curt was leaning in close, rubbing her back and talking quietly to her - they, at least, looked like they had woken up and had a shower before coming down from their room. Ed and Paul not so much, though they were better dressed than Brad and Bobby-Jo.

I blew out a breath, seeing everyone concerned and babying Jeanine as she pretty much ignored them. Amber gave me a quick, questioning look, and I shot her a quick grimace before giving her hand a squeeze and letting it go. Then I moved past my friends to take the seat at the table right across from Jeanine.

“What happened?” I asked Curt.

“She won’t say,” he said, looking over to me in concern and then back to his wife.

“She got in a fight with someone on the phone outside,” Paul started to add, but I waved him off from continuing.

“We got it from Juliette,” I said, then focused on the bride-to-be. “Jeanine.”

I didn’t get anything from her. She just kept quietly sobbing.

“Jeanine,” I said again, more forcefully.

More sobbing.

“She’s too upset,” Curt’s Dad said.

I looked at Paul, who looked at me with a grimace. He was her little brother and had the most experience of all the ways his sister could be upset, but even he was confused.

I wasn’t.

I reached over to the center of the table and grabbed the pitcher of water, flipped over the glass in front of me and filled it with a sigh.

“We tried offering her water, dear,” Jeanine’s Grandma said.

“Not like this,” I grunted. Then I set the water pitcher down and picked up the glass. “The problem isn’t that she’s upset; it’s that she’s still drunk and upset.”

I tossed the entire contents of the glass at Jeanine. Curt saw it coming and backed away in surprise. Everyone else gasped. The ice cold water hit Jeanine from the crown of her head and forehead, down her hands and into her lap.

Everyone was silent for a moment, looking on in shock.

Jeanine lowered her hands, glaring at me. “What the fuck?” she said. Her eyes were rimmed red, and there were tears running down her cheeks, so at least she hadn’t been drunkenly faking it.

“What was the phone call about, Jeannie?” I asked her sternly.

She sniffed hard, and then her lip trembled.

“I’ll dump the rest of the pitcher over your head if you start being a little-”

“Nonono,” she said, shaking her head and sniffing again before wiping at her eyes. Everyone started to relax at that and backed off, lingering to hear what had been the cause of all this.

Curt grabbed a napkin and started drying her off. “Just tell us who called at least, baby,” he said.

“Uuuugh,” Jeanine groaned, shaking her head. “It was the f- It was the lady I booked to do mine and the girls’ make-up and hair tomorrow morning. Apparently, she got double-booked, and the other wedding is huge or something, and her entire team is working it. So she’s refunding the deposit and fucking off and leaving me fucking high and dry. How the hell am I supposed to get someone the day before the wedding!? Everyone good is booked out like half a year in advance.”

Upon hearing the actual cause, I very much noticed that Curt’s Dad, Ed, and Paul all started to back off even more, returning to their seats to get back to their food. This wasn’t a ‘man problem,’ I guessed. Bobby-Jo had already been circling around the table and took the seat on the other side of Jeanine, taking her hand. “We’ll figure something out,” she said. “I mean, I’m shit with make-up, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Men like a natural woman anyways, dear,” Jeanine’s Grandma said. “I’m sure Curtis wouldn’t mind you looking sweet and simple and innocent.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Curt quickly tried to help. “You know I love you no matter-”

“Oh, shut up, Curtis,” Jeanine grunted. “I’m not going fucking naked-face on my fucking wedding day. I’m supposed to look radiant, not simple, Grandma.”

I was pretty sure I heard a “Kids these days,” muttered under Grandma’s breath.

Amber pulled out the seat next to me and sat down. “Um, so- Good morning,” she said.

Jeanine dragged her eyes up from the plate in front of her where she’d been starting to tunnel vision. She looked at Amber in confusion for a moment, her still-drunk mind taking a moment to process, and then her eyebrows raised and she glanced at me, then back at Amber. The corner of her mouth twitched towards a smile. “Hey, A- Amber,” she said, and Amber gave a little smirk of her own and nodded that Jeanine had remembered correctly. “Sorry, I’m not exactly-”

“Oh, stop,” Amber shushed her. “You’re fine. You’re dealing with someone being an asshole. Whoever you booked probably didn’t even double book, they just got a stupid big offer to fuck you over. Look, babe, I know a couple- actually, I know three people who aren’t professionals like who do bookings and stuff, but they are very good at makeup and hair styling. I can make a few calls if you want? See if they’re available?”

“Oh my God, that would be amazing,” Jeanine sighed.

“Whatever it costs,” Curtis promised - which probably wasn’t the greatest idea, but it was hard to fault him wanting to make sure Jeannie got what she wanted this close to the wedding.

“Um…” Amber hesitated. “Just to, uh, be clear… are you guys good with Drag Queens? Because one of them is a Drag Queen.”

Jeanine snorted and covered her mouth, and Curt barked a laugh. Jeanine nodded. “We’re fine with Drag Queens,” she chuckled.

“Why do I feel like there’s a story going on that I don’t know about?” I asked.

“Because there is,” Jeanine said. Then she stuck out her tongue at me, and when I rolled my eyes she reached for the water jug, but Curt stopped her.

“Sorry for getting you wet, Jeannie,” I said. “But you needed some sense knocked into you, and there wasn’t a pool to throw you in.” 

Jeanine gave me a very sibling-esque mocking face. “No pool to throw you in,” she mimicked me poorly.

“Oh, Jesus, I should have thought of that,” Curt sighed, finally remembering the time that I had flashed back to a minute ago.

Amber had stood up, phone already in hand, and she put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a wink as she walked away from the table to make her calls.

“Wait, what time?” Paul asked, clearly interested for purely innocent reasons and not because he wanted the goods on a potentially embarrassing story about his sister.

“No time,” Jeanine said. “There wasn’t a time.”

“Pool party, two weeks before we graduated high school,” Curt offered helpfully. “Jeanie heard she missed out on Valedictorian when we were all pretty drunk and-”

“Oh my God, I forgot about this,” Bobby-Jo started giggling.

“-and she started crying,” Curt said.

“Inconsolable,” I added. “Your sister doesn’t do well when alcohol and sadness get mixed together.”

“Fuck you guys,” Jeanine sighed, but the little smirk on her face said she wasn’t too pissed.

“No one could get her to tell us what was wrong,” Curt continued the story. “And Rudy got fed up, picked her up off the lawn chair she was sitting on and jumped in the pool with her.”

“Ruining my make-up,” Jeanine accused me. “And that skirt I liked.”

“OK, your make-up was ruined from the crying,” I said. “And you ruined the skirt by trying to dry it on high in the clothes dryer for way too long. I had nothing to do with that decision - and the pool worked, just as good as the water now.”

She stuck out her tongue at me again, then sniffed hard and wiped her face again. Then she gave me a smirking look as her eyes flicked from me to Amber standing somewhere behind me as she talked on the phone. “So, Rudy,” she said. “You’re still in last night’s clothes and Amber showed up looking hot. Did you have a good night?”

That question had the intended effect as Curt, Paul, Ed, Brad, Bill and Bobby-Jo all turned their attention on me. And Curtis’s Dad.

“Great night,” I said. “And I’m not even hung over or still tipsy like you guys.”

“He sweat it all out,” Ed said quietly and then giggled like an idiot.

“Did you guys…?” Brad asked, wiggling his eyebrows expectantly.

I rolled my eyes, but all of my friends - and Curt’s older brother - leaned in expectantly for an answer. They almost immediately leaned back away casually, though, as Amber walked back up to the table behind me and slid her hands along the back of my neck to rest on my shoulder. “OK,” she said. “I got a hold of one of the girls and she can come in, and she says she has a friend who can come help too. I’ve got messages to the other two people. Do you have, like, a look-book or photo collage or anything for how you were hoping to look?”

“Oh my God, you’re a lifesaver, Amber,” Jeanine said with heavy relief. “Go grab some food and come sit here with me and Bobby, we’ll go over everything.”

Since Amber and I had already eaten at her place, we each grabbed just a couple of the choicest breakfast items from the buffet - I ended up with a decent looking muffin and a slice of bacon, and she picked out a little cherry danish with her own side of bacon. When she saw our plates she snorted and grinned at me.

“Thanks for offering to help Jeannie,” I said quietly before we headed back to the tables. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“She’s important to you, obviously,” Amber said, then cracked a smirk. “Important enough that you can throw a glass of water on a bride the day before her wedding and she isn’t even really pissed off. Of course I’m going to help if I can.”

God, this woman might be perfect.

I gave her a one-armed hug and kissed the top of her head, and she snaked her free hand around my waist to hug me back before we returned to the tables. Bella, Jeanine’s mom, had arrived and Amber went around the table to join the Ladies as she got the rundown on what they would need, and started feeding that info back to whichever friend of hers would be coming to help out.

It took one look from the guys for me to know that even if I didn’t particularly care about the details of what the ladies were discussing, the only way I was going to get out of answering personal and invasive questions about me and Amber was by sticking close to the women. So that’s what I did, slowly nibbling at my muffin. Bella was eventually joined by her husband, Jeanine and Paul’s step-father, and as Bella was moving by me to join him she stopped to murmur some thanks in my ear and give me a kiss on the cheek for getting Jeanine’s head straight. More of the family started to show up as well, and it didn’t take long at all for forty-five minutes to go by as everyone was chatting and talking. The big news, obviously, was the whole make-up artist betrayal fiasco, but I could tell there was an undercurrent of ‘Who is that?’ towards Amber since she was the only person there people didn’t know from back in our hometown. The only people in the wedding party or either family and who hadn’t grown up in our home town were Jeannie’s old roommate Staci and Yvonne, a friend she’d made in college and who lived in the city. Staci was already present and had spent a summer living in our town, and everyone knew Yvonne was married and had popped out triplets a year ago so she wasn’t expected to come to anything other than the Bachelorette party, the rehearsal and dinner that night, and the wedding festivities tomorrow.

No one brought Amber up to me, but I could tell the whispering was running in circles as word spread that I’d shown up to the hotel with her. Hopefully the guys were remembering to add how she was saving the day for Jeanine and not just talking about how hot she was.

“Alright, men,” Ed finally said, standing up and clinking a spoon against an empty water glass loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Our first tee time is in an hour, so we need to get moving. Especially you bums or old men who need some extra time on the range to get warmed up. Let’s move out!”

Fuck.

I looked over at Amber, but she wasn’t where she’d been sitting a moment before as everyone else started to stand and head out to get ready for the day. Then a hand slid across the back of my neck again, this time up to scratch her fingernails along the back of my scalp, as she sat down in the now-vacated seat next to me.

“Guess our plan went out the window,” Amber said, smirking a little.

“I’m going to tell the boys I’ve got something to do,” I said. “Something important.”

That made her flash me that cocky, killer smile again. “No, you’re not,” she said. “Because you and I both know that you want to be there for Curtis.”

“It’s just-” I started to say ‘It’s just golf,’ but trailed off because it wasn’t just golf.

“It’s not,” she shook her head. Then she put her hand on my leg. “Don’t worry, Beau,” she said quietly. “You’ve got a busy day, and I had plans too. Go do your thing, and I’ll do mine, and I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to help out my friends with the make-up stuff with Jeanine and the bridesmaids tomorrow, and Jeanine is insisting I’m invited to the ceremony and the reception.”

I took a breath and nodded, then let out the breath and shook my head as I put my hand on hers. We were being blunt in the car, and it had felt really fucking good. “I don’t know if I can wait until tomorrow to see that smile again, Darlin’,” I told her.

She grinned and leaned in, whispering, “So take my number, Beau. Text me about your day. Call me. I’ll answer, I promise.”

I believed her.