“Holy shit. A head wound. You probably bled everywhere.”
“Oh, yes. Auntie wrapped me in a bed sheet she didn’t like too much and pointed a finger at me after she’d buckled me in the car. ‘Don’t you dare bleed on the upholstery,’ she said in her no-nonsense tone.”
I laughed in spite of the seriousness of Navy’s face. “If there was ever a saying that explained Isabel so precisely, it’s that.”
“Exactly. So, anyway, got a handful of stitches and my aunt rubbed an aloe vera leaf across my eyebrow for weeks after the scab crusted and fell off. Must have worked, because it’s only really visible up close.” Navy gestured to how close we were. “Like this.”
“Okay, but you’ve left me hanging.” The bartender deposited our shots and left. Navy wrinkled her brow as she stared up at me in confusion.
“What?”
“Did you get blood on the upholstery?”
“Hell no. She put the fear of God in me. Really, smart idea for you to have us leave her car at your place. The last time I had copious climaxes, I was sick everywhere.”
“Oh, that happens to me too. Every time I climax, it’s like I’m the little girl from the Exorcist all over again.”
“Shut up,” she said, choking on a laugh. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Not that kind of climax. This kind.” She tossed the shot back without waiting for me this time.
“Look at you, so greedy for that climax that you won’t even let me finish mine.”
Her cheeks burned brighter, her smiles were easier, and her laughs more boisterous. Man, in all the years she’d stood in as my DD, I’d really missed out on this uninhibited Navy, hadn’t I? Navy with her thick hair down, her eyes bright and glossy, her rosy lips spread in a near permanent smile. And when she leaned in to speak to me over the music, her hand braced on my upper thigh as my nose inhaled her hair conditioner, my dick twitched. And that was even before she said, “Guess you gotta catch up.”
Fuuuuuck. Was she flirting with me? I pulled back just a bit to get a gauge on her expression. She was always so easy to read, as long as I was looking directly at her. And the way her smile tipped up on one side, the way her heavily lashed eyes went all heavy-lidded, I assumed that she was flirting with me. But was it real flirting, or the kind that friends do? And a supplemental question flit through my brain: did friends flirt?
I decided not to question it too much.
“Well, if these delicious drinks might make you sick, perhaps we should switch. Maybe order some fries too to help soak this up?”
“Good idea. But we don’t need fries. We had pizza.”
“Correction: I had pizza. You took a couple bites, but you’ll need some sustenance.” I waved for the bartender’s attention.
“Okay, fine.” Navy scooped a lip balm from her bag and rubbed it across her lips.
Jesus, it was just lip balm. Not even colored. Were her lips always that rosy red, naturally? And why the fuck was lip balm application so erotic?
“What do you want?”
“Uh… what?” Unlike Navy, I was only approaching a gentle buzz. I was still lucid, but around Navy—this Navy—I felt like I was underwater. Words were processed much slower, hell, my senses reacted even slower when she leaned across me to signal the bartender, that small hand of hers braced inches from my dick. Which twitched, again. If she looked down, she’d come eye-to-eye with the one part of my body that wasn’t slowly reacting to her.
“What do you want to switch to?” she asked as the bartender made his way closer to us.
“Uh.” I wracked my seemingly pea-sized brain for something that would continue the buzz and not make us sick. “Can we get some fries? Lots of ketchup. And two sea breezes.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s fruity,” said the bartender. “You’ll like it,” he said with a wink to Navy.
“Yeah, I know she will. That’s why I suggested it. And the fries. Lots of ketchup.” I said it more forcefully than necessary, judging by the way two pairs of eyes slid in my direction. Great. Now he’d probably spit in my drink.
“Please,” Navy added, sweet as a ripe plum. “You okay?” she asked me, pressing her cool hand to the side of my face. My face was warm from the booze and the embarrassment of the boner that was straining against my pants, and Navy’s hand felt like nir-fucking-vana.
“Peachy,” I said, forcing a smile. What was fucking happening? Were we flirting? Was this a thing? Why did Navy suddenly seem so much more… I don’t know what the word I was searching for was. She was always beautiful, but this was something different. My reaction to her wasn’t purely friendly, no. It was something else. Something more. Something I’d never entertained before.
It made no fucking sense. I mean, I’d be lying if I’d said that the warm weight of her body against mine during the countless times we’d platonically cuddled had never elicited that kind of reaction from me. But usually I was able to ward it off with a gentle reminder that Navy was my friend. Apparently this time, my dick was bound and determined to embarrass me with its poorly timed erection.
The bartender placed two pink beverages in front of us, giving Navy a straw but not me. Maybe that was his subtle way of sticking it to me without hocking a loogie into my drink. I’d take it. “Fries will be up in a minute.”
Navy gave him a grateful smile and pulled the paper liner off the top of the straw and held it between the tips of her pale-pink painted nails as she took her first sip.
Shit. I chose the wrong drink. I couldn’t watch her drink from a straw, her mouth puckered and her cheekbones all pronounced from the long suck and not keep my dick in check at the same time. This was gonna be a disaster.
“Do you really need that straw?” I asked. I was a selfish dick.
“Makes the alcohol go down faster,” she said with a wink in a grin. Oh, no. It wasn’t just the straw. It was her, all of her. It didn’t matter if she used the straw or not. I was a goner.
I brushed her hair so that it tucked around her ear. She had a pretty earlobe, I thought absently. Except, who thinks that? Psychos, probably. This veered into Silence of the Lambs territory. Good thing I didn’t have a small, yappy dog or a basement.
“Fries,” the bartender said, sliding them toward us like we couldn’t identify the shoestring shape. This was Idaho, land of potatoes. We’ve all seen a French fry or two.
“My turn,” she said, snapping me from my thoughts. She popped a fry in her mouth. Good. Hopefully, this would offset any potential Exorcist style vomiting later.
“For what?” I asked, half afraid of her and half intrigued.
“This,” she said, her thumbnail gliding down the side of my neck.
What was it about the slight bite of a fingernail into sensitive skin that set the rest of my skin afire?
Oh, yeah, it was the sensitive part of that sentence.
I wasn’t usually such an idiot.
“Uh…”
Yes, I was.
Her fingers circled my skin, and had I ever felt such an exquisitely delicious touch to any part of my body besides the obvious one? There must have been a billion nerve endings in my neck because what she was doing to my body was totally abnormal for me.