“Cool down walk?” I suggested, thinking it would be good to catch up.
She glanced at her watch. “Yeah, I’ve got thirty. How have you been doing? Found Mr. Right yet?”
My thoughts immediately went to Mr. Wrong, the orc I’d left sprawled naked in his bed this morning. “No. Had a nice date last night, though.”
A nice date that I’d left to go bang Eng. What the hell was wrong with me?
“How about you?” I asked.
Stephanie stepped onto a treadmill, hit the green button, then cranked the speed to a slow jog. “I’ve learned a hard lesson about trying to combine work and romance. Oil and water. But you know I’ll make the same mistake again and again, because that’s how I roll.”
I grimaced in sympathy, setting my speed for a brisk walk. “With your hours you’ve got to combine work and romance if you ever want to see the guy.”
Stephanie was a one-person company, so when she had a job she was on it pretty much twenty-four-seven. It made sense to want a boyfriend who could help with demolition, or laying tile, or whatever.
“I tried to date shifter construction guys, thinking we’d be more compatible. Nope. Things explode within six months.Iexplode within six months.”
“You’re picky about your work. I get it,” I said.
She sighed. “I should probably just stick to work and Tinder some booty calls in between jobs to keep me sane. Give up the whole Mr. Right idea, you know?”
“Booty calls do have their advantages.”
Her head snapped around, her eyebrows raised as she looked at me. “Okay. Spill the beans. There was some big old satisfaction in that statement, and you’ve got this smug smile going on right now. Was last night’s date better than nice?”
“The date was nice, but we left after a kiss because I saw a guy I thought was a one-night stand. I went back to him, and we ended up at his place.”
Stephanie smashed the stop button so she could pivot and focus her full attention on me. “I need more details on this. A hit-it-and-quit-it was good enough that you ditched a promising date to give it a second go?”
I stopped my own treadmill. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Was it as good the second time?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yep. And the third and the fourth, and the I-lost-count time as well.”
“And why isn’tthisguy Mr. Right?” Stephanie had a little smirk curling up one corner of her lips. We’d exchanged enough stories about our dysfunctional love lives that she could most likely guess.
“The guy is a total asshole. Total. Asshole.”
Stephanie shrugged. “Yeah, but so are you.”
“Hey!” I laughed.
“I say it with love, and as a fellow asshole. So…awesome in bed, but a loser outside of the sheets.”
I sighed. “I wouldn’t say a loser. I know nothing about him because any conversation is pretty one-sided, although last night he slipped and actually spoke more than two words to me that revealed he might actually be smart with a sharp sense of humor. Basically he’s made it really clear he’s not interested in me, though. I’m not at all the sort of woman he wants. At all.”
Stephanie winced. “But you’re clearly the sort of woman he wants to screw. And he’s got to be into it, because you would not tolerate a pity-fuck.”
“Oh, the sexual attraction could broil a steak,” I assured her. “It’s not pity-fuck, it’s more like a hate-fuck. We wore each other out last night. I’d probably still be there banging away if I hadn’t had a five-o’clock PT this morning.”
“So you’re both sexually compatible, and you don’t know enough about him to like or dislike him besides the fact that he was rude to not think you might be outside-the-bedroom material.” She frowned. “Why is that? Why reject you right off the bat like that? He’s not racist, is he?”
I snorted, thinking Eng was one of the least concerned men when it came to race I knew—probably because he was an orc. “No, he made it clear that he wants a quiet, obedient, submissive woman who he’ll marry, take home to his parents, and ignore outside of delivering a regular supply of semen for the production of offspring.”
Stephanie stared at me. “So he’s a time-traveling medieval prince? Henry VII? Completely financially dependent upon controlling parents?”
She wasn’t far off. “From what I can tell his family is wealthy and there are expectations about the sort of person he will marry and what that marriage will look like. I think it’s less aboutthe money than about him being raised to accept the duty and responsibility put on him over any of his own personal interests or wants.”
