A Is for Alpha Male (21 page)

“So a big old “x” through the x-rated skills qualification, huh?” His voice seemed to have relaxed a little, but it was still definitely tight.

I decided to push on anyway, as there was really nothing else I could do. “Oh, yeah. Understatement of the year. He treated them like water balloons he wanted to pop. If I had implants, I swear I’d be in surgery right now due to their rupture.”

“Jesus. Fuck Me,” Danny said, sounding like he was trying to control himself somehow. “Can we stop talking about fondling your tits, Haley?”

“Ten-four. Gaw-tit. Ix-nay on the it-tays. Tits out.”

“Haley.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I should have known when he didn’t know who Kelly “Wet Dream” Kapowski was. If you’re a male member of our generation and didn’t spend your formidable years rubbing it out to a picture of Kelly Kapowski, something isn’t right.”

Danny’s raw laughter filled my ear, and I couldn’t help but feel like I had won an effing award. I loved to make him laugh. Especially when it was such a turnaround from his previous state of mind. It was like climbing a mountain; the greater the challenge, the better the reward. The more dour his mood, the more soul enriching the achievement of earning his laughter was.

“I take it you spent some time with Ms. Kapowski yourself?” I asked, smiling big and wide.

His laughter waned to a rough chuckle that I could feel in every part of my body despite the distance. The only thing that would have made it better was being with him, witnessing it, and feeling it against me.

“Well I didn’t have a cutout or anything, but I am pretty good with visualization from a memory,” he joked.

“I bet,” I said, laughing quietly in an effort not to wake Allison.

We were both quiet for a few long moments, letting our laughter die down slowly and basking in the feel of each other through the phone.

“Where are you?” Danny asked weirdly, his voice taking on a different kind of huskiness.

“In my room. Why?” I questioned, confused as to where else he thought I would be.

“Where’s Allison?” he kept asking questions.

“In bed asleep. I escaped her vengeance tonight, but tomorrow is a new day,” I said.

“Your sharing a room is inconvenient,” he said vaguely, ignoring most if not all of my previous statement.

“Why?” I asked, a small amount of uncertainty making my voice quieter.

I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, and my gut churned with nervous excitement.

His voice was so rough that it sounded like he had swallowed a handful of gravel when he whispered, “He didn’t make you feel good, baby doll. I was going to change that.”

My breath got caught, hung up somewhere in my chest, air ceasing to move in or out.

Did he mean what I thought he meant?

“Danny—” I started.

“You deserve to feel good, Hales,” he added, cutting me off, his voice rasping over the line, into my ear, and straight to the area between my legs.

I was pretty sure I was dreaming, but there was no way I was going to break this spell. Dream Haley wanted to see where this was going. Fuck, so did real Haley.

“How are you going to make me feel good when you aren’t here?” I queried, struggling to get the question around the clog in my throat.

His answering chuckle was as abraded as sandpaper, making him sound so much like a man that I almost couldn’t take it. My breasts swelled, my nipples perked up, and I felt a delicious tremor run through my entire body, the hairs on my neck standing up on end at the newly introduced buzz of electricity.

“A real man doesn’t need to be anywhere near you to make you feel good, baby,” he informed me.

God, with the way I was feeling, I had never been more sure that he spoke the truth.

His next words were soft, so fucking soft, and I could have sworn I could feel the wet heat of his whisper against my ear.

“A woman like you, Hales, so rough around the edges, tough talking and playful, a man can easily make a mistake. Touch you rough and go at you fast. But that’s not what you need, is it baby?”

Holy.

Shit.

Oh God.

I wasn’t sure it was possible, but his voice dropped even lower as he asked, “You want me to touch you soft, right baby? Tease you. Tickle you. Worship every inch of skin I can find. Just barely touch my skin to yours, avoiding all of the places you really need until you’re right at the point of breaking.”

Swear to God, if he kept this up I was going to orgasm, with him nowhere near me and my mom five feet away.

If you would have told me that was possible ten minutes ago, I would have sworn up and down it was bullshit.

“Danny,” I whispered.

“Yeah baby?” he asked.

When I couldn’t get any words to form, stretching the silence and sexual tension between us like a taut rubber band, Danny asked the question to which my body was screaming the answer.

“You need me, Hales?” Danny crooned, so low that it was barely audible. But I still had no trouble hearing it. “‘Cause I fucking need you.”

Oh. Jesus. Christ.

His need was so potent and so raw. I had never felt more powerful in my life. More desired, more wanton, more perfectly suited for someone.

“Dan—” I started to say his name, the only word my mouth had the ability to form, only to be cut off by sheets rustling, fabric scraping against the marginally different texture of another fabric.

The sounds of Allison shuffling around on the bed.

It didn’t dump a bucket of ice water on my arousal, I wasn’t sure anything other than complete and total release could bring me down fully at that point, but it was enough to bring me back to the present.

Enough for me to get my bearings and question how this had happened.

I wanted it. I wanted him. God, I wanted him desperately. But I thought he didn’t want me.

In no time at all, the boundaries I thought Danny had set for our relationship had gone from crystal clear to foggy as a spooky Halloween night.

“What the fuck, Danny?” I asked softly, never having felt more confused in my life.

He groaned and cursed under his breath, and I imagined him scrubbing a hand roughly down the entirety of his face.

“Shit. Shit. Fucking
fuck
me,” he said, most definitely talking to himself, but cursing out loud this time, his carnal desperation still evident and making his words potent with edginess.

“I’m sorry, Hales,” he said vaguely, his voice a heady combination of tight, strained, and rough as all hell.

Sorry?

Sorry he just did that?

Sorry he was stopping?

Sorry for what?!

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Haley. We need to talk.”

I’ll say we needed to effing talk, but I wanted to talk now.

“Danny—” I started only to be cut off again.

“Just don’t set up any dates for tomorrow, Hales,” he demanded softly, and then I had nothing but dead air.

What. The. Hell?

Apparently, I was destined to get absolutely no satisfaction tonight.

Physical or mental.

Cock. Sucker.

LAST NIGHT, DANNY and I had stepped over a line. One that we couldn’t cross back over.

Phone sex was like those tire spikes. The ones in parking lots that are designed to keep the parking lot traffic all moving in the same direction. Except the irreparable damage wouldn’t be to your tires but to your relationship.

Severe relationship damage will occur if you try to reverse your actions. Do
not
back up.

Once you’re in the “parking lot”, you’re committed. Whether you fully intended to pull in or not.

Okay, I think that got my point across, albeit a little shakily.

Bottom line, we could never un-have phone sex.

And honestly, I really didn’t want to. I had more of a physical reaction to Danny over the phone than I had had to any other man in person.

I knew that sounded unbelievable, perhaps even unfathomable, but it was just plain true.

Last night was probably going to make today a little uncomfortable, but I was going to roll with it. Danny and I both had the ability to move on from awkwardness, we had already done it a couple of times in our short tenure as friends, and I had to hope that this time wasn’t going to be any different.

Maybe it would be the catalyst for a change I desperately wanted. Maybe it would push us to the place I so wholly wanted to go.

And maybe it wouldn’t.

Sometimes reality didn’t come with a happily ever after.

But I preferred to make like an ostrich, put my head in the sand, and deal with those challenges when they came. Later.

My parents would have named me Haley Procrastinator Whitfield had they been clairvoyant. Since they weren’t, they stuck with Lilianna for my middle name.

In the meantime, I was going to enjoy this trip with my mom, after I got her to talk to me again, that is. I was going to have fun, experience new things, and meet new people.

But I was going to stay away from other men.

What business did I have starting something with someone else when my heart was already wrapped around Dan Smith like a vine?

About as much business as a cat owner has selling dog food. Or an Olympic swimmer has advertising for downhill ski equipment. Or a nun writing hard core erotica.

Abso-fucking-none.

I realized that that went against the initial goal of the trip, but I couldn’t help it that I had found someone at the beginning of our epic journey.

I was going to keep trying to find Allison’s dream man for the rest of the trip, and when we were done, I was going to go back to Alabama and spend a few days getting things straight with Danny whether he thought it was a good idea or not.

I would just hold off on telling him until he had no choice. Remember, forgiveness is easier to get than permission.

“Plotting your strategy for total world domination?” Allison asked, sneaking up behind me and scaring the living daylights out of me.

I was sitting in the chair in our hotel room, curled into a ball, stuck in the swirling tornado that was my thoughts. She had approached me from the bathroom, where she had taken up residence immediately after waking.

We hadn’t spoken one word to each other since the death glare last night, and I couldn’t help but check both of her hands for knives and shivs, hoping that if she had one, I would be able to wrestle it away from her before meeting my untimely death.

I was far too young and fun to die at the hands of my mother, and she was way too pretty to end up in prison. It would only take a matter of minutes for her to become someone’s bitch, and I didn’t want the responsibility for that kind of thing on my shoulders.

Even if when I felt the burden, my shoulders were draped in white and already toned from supporting my sleek, sparkly angel wings.

“Would you rather kill me or tell me about your date last night?” I asked, really hoping she would go for the talking and leave the murder for later.

Give me time to get my affairs in order, that sort of thing.

“Pros about Will,” Allison started instead of giving me a direct answer. “He was attractive, young looking for his age, and had no man boobs.”

I nodded, settling my cheek onto the top of my bent knee.

“Cons about Will,” she continued, and already, I knew this meant trouble. Three things, only three things, fell into the pro category and we were already moving onto the cons?

Not. Good.

“Everything else. He talked non-stop, literally could not pull his eyes away from my breasts, even while making conversation with me, and sucks on his teeth to get the food out from between them. And I could hear it.”

Ugh. “How much do you hate me?” I asked, tucking my legs even further into my body as a last line of defense.

“Well, I was pretty pissed before, but you look pretty pitiful right now, and it’s kind of taking the wind out of my sails.”

Well, that was a relief. Taking a deep breath, I nodded and tucked my chin down behind my knee, biting my bottom lip in a sawing motion as I did.

“Why do you look like you just found out Santa isn’t real?” she asked, the pitch of her head shifting to the side with her concern.

“Santa’s not real?!” I shouted in fake shock, hoping to bring the mood up rather than down.

She just shook her head minutely and smiled a small, contemplative smile.

I watched as her unnaturally bright eyes flashed, an indication that signaled the end of her reflection.

She had made an assessment and followed through with a decision accordingly.

When she reached out a feminine hand, cupped my jaw, and then moved it to give my thigh a swirling pat, I knew that she had decided I would tell her my troubles in my own time if given the chance to breathe. And that when I did, my feelings would be much more honest and unfiltered than if she forced the confrontation now.

She knew me well. I needed the time it took for thoughts and feelings to ruminate and season. I needed them to settle deep into the pit of my stomach and eat their way through my extremities.

I needed the time to mine through the waste and get to the heart of my issues. For many people, time aided in confusing emotions. But not me.