He glances around the mostly empty diner before turning back to me with a terse nod. “All right.” He pulls out his wallet, sets a hundred-dollar bill on top of the check the server left and slides out of his side of the booth. “Come on,” he says, jerking his head toward the door.
“Wh-where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” He tips his head again. “Come on, Feisty.”
I slowly inch toward the edge of the booth. “We can’t go back to my place,” I say. “I don’t want Cam or Jess or Harlow to know about our bargain, either. If we do this, then we keep it a secret from everyone. That way it won’t be weird when it’s over.”
He points a finger toward the door and demands, “Outside.”
“Okay, okay.” I scoot out, keenly aware of how close we are as I slip past him. I glance up at him over my shoulder. “Can you at least give me a hint where—” My words end in a startled yipping sound as he slaps my ass and says, “Walk. Door. Now.”
“Fine!” I say, my cheeks flaming as I hurry toward the door, trying to decide what’s more mortifying—the fact that Ian just swatted my ass like a toddler in public?
Or the fact that I kind of liked it.
Chapter 16
Ian
I hope the cooler night air will clear my head, but by the time we’ve walked the three long blocks to my friend Chet’s building, my thoughts are still a gnarled mess.
Evie might always have a plan B, but right now I barely have a plan A. All I have is a vague hope that calling Evie’s bluff will get me out of my present predicament.
I could always just say “no,” of course.
At least theoretically I could.
But in reality, some insane part of me is looking for an excuse to do just the opposite, and when I let myself into the building with Chet’s key fob, I’m secretly hoping Evie will surprise me again.
“This isn’t your building,” she says, shooting an anxious glance my way from the corners of her eyes.
“No, it’s a friend’s building.” I punch the button to summon the elevator. “I’m watering his plants while he’s out of town. But he won’t mind if you come up with me, and we take in the view from his deck.”
“So that’s why we’re here?” she asks as the doors open and we both step inside. “To take in the view?”
I hit the number twelve and lean back against the elevator wall as the doors glide closed. “No, that’s not why we’re here. We’re here so you can speak freely without an audience.”
She swallows, her throat visibly working as her fingers flutter at her sides. “Okay. So what? You just want me to say the word ‘orgasm’? Because if so, I can obviously say it. I just said it right now.”
I smile and slowly shake my head. “Nope. Not going to cut it, Evie, and you know it. It’s not the word I’m looking for. It’s the word in the correct…context.”
She narrows her eyes on my face. “That’s an evil smile, Ian James Fox.”
I smile wider and she crosses her arms with a huff.
“Fine,” she says, nodding as if psyching herself up to jump off the high dive as the doors open and I lead the way out of the elevator and down the hall to Chet’s place. “I can do context. You just wait and see. I’m going to give you more context than you can handle.”
I stop in front of his door and turn to her with an arched brow. “I don’t know, Feisty. I can handle a lot of…context.”
“I don’t like that nickname,” she says, her breath coming noticeably faster as I open the door and motion for her to lead the way inside while I turn on the lights. “I’m not feisty, I’m… Oh, wow. This is…” She glances back at me as she wanders deeper into the large open loft with the floor-to-ceiling windows that take up one entire wall of the apartment. “What does Chet do for a living? Because I think I might want to do that.”
“He’s a photographer but not for a living. Mostly, he just thoughtfully invests his trust fund and collects rent from the properties he inherited from his grandmother,” I say, laughing as Evie blows a breath out through her lips. “Though he swears life as a trust fund baby isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Right, poor rich boy with his poor-rich-boy view.” She steps closer to the windows with a sigh. “Wow. So pretty. Sometimes you forget how beautiful the city is at night, all lit up.”
I stop behind her, studying the way the soft lamplight reflects off her curls. I’ve always wondered if Evie’s hair is as soft as it looks, and I might be mere minutes from finding out. If…
“What are you?” I ask softly.
She turns, her arms still locked tight across her chest. “What?”
“You said that you aren’t feisty, you’re…”
“I’m determined,” she says, lifting her chin. “And braver than you give me credit for. And I’m going to prove it. Right now.”
Lips turning down at the edges, I nod. “Okay. Lay it on me. I’m ready.”
Pulling in a breath, she drops her arms to her sides and breaks into a long, breathy fit of laughter. “Sorry,” she says after a bit, clearly fighting to pull herself back together. “I don’t know why this is funny all of a sudden.”
“Me, either,” I say, grinning as she continues to giggle. “This is very serious. This is your shot, Olsen. Your one chance to convince me you’ve got what it takes to make all your kinky dreams come true.”
“They’re not kinky dreams,” she says, still laughing. “I don’t want you to tie me up and put umbrellas in my butt. I just want to have some nice, normal, fun sex with a friend.”
“Umbrellas in your butt?” I ask, laughing now, too. “What the hell? Did someone try to do that to you? No wonder you’re scared of sex.”
“I’m not scared of it, I’m unfamiliar with it and intimidated by it. There’s a big difference,” she says, sniffing as she presses her fingers to her cheeks. “And no one tried to umbrella my bum. That was one of Harlow’s college boyfriends. He had a very active butt fantasy life. She let him put a finger in there once and apparently it was all umbrellas and shampoo bottles and chocolate bars with the wrapping still on after that.”
I wrinkle my nose. “And she let him do all that? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’ll never be able to look at umbrellas, chocolate bars, or Harlow the same way again.”
“No, she didn’t,” Evie says, grinning. “But she did keep dating him for a few more weeks, just to see what he would come up with next. Cam printed up Butt Stuff Bingo cards and we had a group chat every Sunday night to see what Trip had suggested the night before. It was pretty fun actually. But then Harlow ended it because it was just getting too weird and she was a little traumatized by the time he suggested sticking a frozen cob of corn up there.”
“Valid,” I say. “But there was nothing wrong with him asking for what he wanted in the bedroom, either. How else was he going to learn they weren’t on the same page?”