I take a deep breath. “I’m gonna bag a dragon.”
She sings the song all the way through checkout, adding lyrics and making the cashier blush deeply as she rings us up. She sings it all the way home, too, and my stomach fills with butterflies at the thought.
How do I approach this?
Hey Bastian, want to come on me again?
Ugh…
How do you become friends with benefits?
twenty-five
Friends with Benefits
The truck ride back is filled with music and way too much Boogling on “How to ask for casual sex.” Most of the articles just say “Go for it! Be honest, up-front, and set boundaries.”
Honest. Up-front. Boundaries.
I’m asking for casual sex.
We’re pulling into the gravel drive at the back of the shop well before I’m ready to face Bastian, but it’s too bad. I hop out of the truck and linger on the passenger’s side as I hear Drew and Bastian coming out to help unload the content.
I look down at my phone again, at the article titled “No Strings, Only O’s.” The woman who wrote this probably has the most incredible body count because she doesn’t have a single confidence issue to speak of. Maybe I could just pretend to be her.
I’m confident. I have a huge body count, and I can get sex whenever and wherever I want. I am a sex goddess. Everyone wants to have sex with me.
“Cait?” Bastian calls, snapping me from the mantra.
I look up with a “Hmm?”
He’s just as charismatic and gorgeous in his human form, wearing that sly smirk that says he knows what’s going on in my head.
“What are you reading back here?” he asks.
I stuff my phone in my pocket. “An article.”
“On a sexual deviant?”
I scowl. “No…”
He raises his eyebrows and murmurs, “Everyone wants to have sex with me?”
Bouncing ballsack butt fuck. I really,really, need to learn to keep my inner monologue,inner.
“We should move stuff,” I say, gesturing to the back of the truck.
I hurry around the back and grab a box with cute knickknacks and then hustle toward the shop, my face on fire. Bastian’s hum of laughter behind me sets a flock of birds free in my stomach. They’re angry birds. Squawking loudly and shitting everywhere, making a mess of my insides.
I keep my head down as I move through the hall into the main shop—and then my heart stops.
It’s unrecognizable.
The wood is polished with a dark, chestnut glow. Gold accents every shelf. So. Many. Shelves. All of them are perfectly imperfect, different shapes, sizes, and widths. The ramp on the left is threelevels, all at the right shallow grade for a wheelchair. It has traction strips at the bottom…
Beside the ramp is the darkened entrance to the explicit romance section. There’s an artfully cut plank of wood resting on the floor beside the opening, just waiting for my personal touch.
It looksexactlylike my Pindmess board. My vision that I stayed up countless nights cobbling together.
