Instead, I clear my throat. She drops her feet to the bottom of the pool with a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” she grins. “I couldn’t resist.”
“I can’t resist you,” I rejoin, but the joke is half-hearted because she’s climbing out of the pool, and I’m having trouble breathing. Water streams off her firm, curvy body as she walks towards me. She seems so casual, so open about being naked, and then I wonder if it’s because she is always like that or if it’s because she trusts me and feels comfortable with me.
The thought gives me a little puff of pride, with a simultaneous jolt of affection, and I’m determined to keep her comfortable around me, no matter what the cost. Even if it means keeping my inner Romeo caged up for the time being. I’m sure she has guys claiming to be in love with her all the time. The last thing she needs is her co-worker doing it.
“Do you want a towel?” I ask.
“Yes, please.”
I go fetch her one, but—I can’t help myself—I don’t hand it to her. I towel her off myself instead, drying her limbs before I stand up and dab gently at her face.
She’s smiling. “Full service pool. I like it.”
“It’s not the only thing that’s full service. Come on inside.”
Without bothering to scoop up her clothes, she follows me, and while I talk, I try to drown out the voice in my mind that’s screaming she’s almost naked she’s almost naked, under that towel she’s naked. I’m around naked women every day; it shouldn’t be something that affects me. But it’s Devi, and so it does. Not only because her body is delicious and perfect, but because this marks the first time I’ve seen her completely naked in person since Real Playdates all those years ago.
Somehow, I manage to keep it together—at least on the surface. “So, I have a little something special planned for our oral scene tonight. Do you have any plans late tonight or early tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” she asks, and her cheeks darken. “Um, no. I’m pretty much completely free until morning.”
“Excellent,” I say, walking backward into my room. I re-emerge with a bag stuffed full of shit—film equipment but also clothes and toiletries and a giant-ass sleeping bag hanging off the side. “Our scene might be filmed late at night. Is that okay?”
She swallows. And nods. “More than okay,” she gets out.
God, I want to fuck her right now. Watch that delicate throat move as I take a nipple into my mouth. Watch that mouth part when I finally push inside of her.
Patience, patience, I coax myself. All good things come in time.
“I don’t think you can handle it,” I say doubtfully an hour later. After Devi dressed and I packed the car, I decided that I needed hangover food—stat—so I took her to a bar on the edge of the suburbs. Ungentrified, unglamorous, without even the cozy, warm feeling of a dive hangout. Nope, this place is as cheap as it is soulless, and that’s why I like it. No lawyer bros on lunch break, no hipsters basking in a “genuine vibe.” Russell’s caters to one clientele and one clientele only—people willing to put up with surly service and scuffed drywall for cold beer and the best wings in the city.
Right now, Devi Dare, in her naive innocence, thinks she can handle a dozen wings on her own.
“Why don’t you start with a half dozen?” I suggest diplomatically.
She looks up from the laminated menu. “This is not my first wings rodeo, son.”
“Devi, I only like to tell women what to do in bed. But I’m telling you, a dozen is too many.”
She smirks at me. “Want to put money on it?”
“I can think of things more interesting than money.”
“Like what?” Her eyes are sparkling.
“Okay, if you can’t eat all the wings, then I get to take you to the most arthouse, painfully subtitled movie playing right now.”
“And if I can eat them all?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. What’s something that would be totally new to me?”
She thinks for a moment, looking at the ceiling and slowly tapping her mouth with one, slender finger...
….And that is how I end up on Venice Beach two hours later walking towards a small psychic’s shop.
Devi leads the way down the boardwalk, her fingers laced loosely through mine as she half pulls me forward. “I can’t believe you doubted my ability to eat wings,” she huffs, the breath catching in her throat the precise same way I’d like it to when I’m fucking her.
Even her scoffing is sexy. Jesus, I have it bad.
“You just seem so healthy,” I argue. “Like the kind of girl who only eats chia seeds and that kind of shit.”
She giggles as a gust of wind blows her hair around her face, and fuck, she’s so young. I know eight years isn’t the biggest difference in the grand scheme of things, but it feels big right now. It feels important.
Worse, it feels exciting.
“I eat pretty healthy most of the time,” she admits. “Mostly because my parents are always dropping stuff by. A fresh batch of kombucha or leftover kale from their co-op or whatever. But at least once or twice a week, I eat something terrible and amazing. Like a triple cheeseburger. Or a dozen wings. After all, this ass won’t stay thick on its own.”
She gives her ass a playful smack. I almost perish on the spot.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I think balance is important, right? A little bad sprinkled into good makes everything so much more interesting.”