I sat cross-legged on the wooden table in the underground tasting room, the twinkles from the chandelier bouncing off rough, dark rock. Nolan poured a generous amount of red wine into a glass, swirled, sniffed, and swirled again. The rich ruby liquid splashed across his wrist like blood and dripped to the floor.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and I saw the perfect opportunity for payback.
Before he could wipe the mess on his jeans—gross, but also typical Nolan—I gripped his hand and brought his wrist to my lips. Our gazes locked as I slowly licked a five-hundred-dollar Syrah off salty skin.
“Fuuuuuuck.”
“Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.”
He leaned in, but this time I knew what was coming and blocked him with an arm. “Nuh-uh-uh. Over breakfast, remember?”
“You’re a little sadist.”
Or possibly I’d just bitten off more than I could chew, started panicking inside, and needed time to google the answer to “Help, what do I do next?” The flirting was fun—this was flirting, right?—but I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a diving board, a hundred feet in the air, daring myself to take a step into the unknown.
Maybe I’d slip gracefully into the water and surface with adrenaline and sweet, sweet satisfaction coursing through my veins.
Or maybe I’d give myself whiplash, bruises, and several fractured vertebrae.
I closed my eyes, trying not to let the toxic memories overwhelm me. My parents yelling at each other. Uncle Porter inserting himself where he didn’t belong. Ruby, lying bloody and broken after tangling with a man she thought she could trust.
Straight men were bad news. Okay, not all men, but at least thirty percent of them, and monsters didn’t always have horns and a tail. Sometimes they made Thirty under Thirty and won industry awards. Sometimes they carried a badge, rescued kittens, and played hero on the local TV news. Sometimes they made you coffee and changed the lightbulb in your bedroom and lent you their sweater when you were cold.
From the outside, you just couldn’t tell who the devils were.
I opened my eyes, which was a mistake. The bulge in Nolan’s jeans was right in my line of sight, and I knew what that meant.
Pain.
Jez had seen the blackmail video. If any harm came to me, she’d make sure Uncle Porter paid. She’d also made disparaging comments about the size of his equipment, news to me because when Porter was ramming his dick in my ass, it had felt like the Washington Monument.
And Nolan? Officially, his dick scored nine out of ten, although I wasn’t sure whether the rating was for size or skill. I should have asked more questions when I walked in on Ruby, Jez, and Ruby’s friend Tina ranking the men of Blackstone House over coffee, but I’d been too horrified-slash-fascinated to say a word. Whatever, now Nolan was standing a foot away with a literal log in his pants, and blood rushed in my ears. That thing was never going to fit. I’d end up in the hospital, and the doctors would ask more awkward questions, and I’d have to sit on one of those donut things, and?—
Nolan raised my chin with a finger. “Alexa?”
“I’m scared,” I blurted.
His breath hitched. “Of me?”
“No. Yes? I don’t freaking know! This all feels weird, and I don’t like it. Maybe you should just date Marielle.”
“How the hell did we get from foreplay to ‘maybe you should date Marielle’ in less than sixty seconds? And for the record, I’m never going to date Marielle.”
“That was foreplay?”
“It sure felt that way to me.”
“Oh.”
He cupped my cheek with a hand. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on in that twisted mind of yours.”
“I don’t like straight dicks.”
“Well, good news. Mine has a slight curve.”
“What?”
“I mean, it’s not like a banana or anything. Your G-spot will love it.”
