Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe) (5 page)

Our pasta hadn’t arrived yet, but the bread had. Adrian unfolded the burgundy cloth and set a warm bun on my plate without asking, before serving himself.

“Did you have that Impostor Syndrome?” I asked.

“Nope. I guess that makes me an asshole, because I thought I deserved every bit of success.”

“Was there a girlfriend? You said you had a big house and you felt lonely.”

He looked away. “There was one or two. Mainly one.”

“And?”

“There’s nothing fun about getting your heart ripped out, and it’s not that special of a story. You’ve heard it before. Boy meets girl, boy becomes successful man, girl likes shopping, man goes broke and gets dumped.”

“Any girl who dumped you over money isn’t worth having. I mean, you do have terrible taste in music, but you have other great qualities.”

He laughed. “I never did convert you to being a Led Zeppelin fan, did I?”

“I tried to like the bands from your shirts. Boy, that sounds really immature now that I hear myself saying it.”

He finished gobbling down his first bun and reached for another for each of us. He certainly wasn’t afraid of carbohydrates, though his lean frame would say otherwise.

“Why Led Zeppelin?” I asked.

He laughed. “Honestly, I listened to the same music as everyone else, you know? I mostly wore those shirts because nobody else did, and I thought it made me seem interesting. The shirts and the lip ring were a disguise. A kid’s gotta do something to distract everyone and distance himself from his dad, the cop. My plan didn’t work that well, though.”

“I never thought of you as a cop’s kid. You were just Adrian. With your spider legs and your floppy hair, always reading Stephen King books at lunch.”

“Ouch.”

“You were cute.”

He nodded, smiling at the memory. “The up side to being a loner is you don’t get much peer pressure. I never even smoked so much as a cigarette, let alone anything more interesting. A lot of cop’s kids are way more rebellious.”

“Do you think people expected you’d snitch to your dad?”

He smirked. “The irony is that thanks to my dad, I knew who all the dealers were and where the bootleggers operated. I had it all, but didn’t know what to do with it.”

“You could have been the most popular guy in school.”

He nodded, his expression wistful. “And you could have been valedictorian, except for some bribe money.”

As I let these revelations wash over me, Adrian flicked at his lower lip with his tongue, which took me back in time, to watching him flick that piercing he used to wear in his lower lip.

“When did you take the lip ring out?” I asked.

“The first day I started working after school. I arrived in Seattle, by bus, and saw a bunch of skinny kids with piercings hanging out on the sidewalk outside the bus station. When I walked by, they nodded at me like I was one of them.”

“Street kids?”

“Yes. But I
wasn’t
one of them, because I had an internship and an apartment lined up. I slipped the lip ring out about two blocks later.”

“Did the hole completely close up?”

He took a drink of his root beer using the straw, then said, “I’m not dribbling, am I?” He patted his chin, pretending he wasn’t sure himself. “It closed up after two weeks.”

“I wish I could have kissed you back when you had the piercing.” I gave him a flirty look. “Just to satisfy my curiosity.”

He squared up his shoulders and gave me a smoldering look, his blue eyes blazing with interest. “We’re adults now, Peaches. You don’t need an excuse like curiosity. If you want to kiss me, just kiss me. No labels, no restrictions.”

We were interrupted by our dinner arriving, hot and fragrant with fresh parmesan cheese. My cheeks were flushing from all the talk about kissing, and I felt nervous about what might happen after dinner.

I pushed away my half-empty glass of Diet Coke. “I’ll get a vodka and soda,” I told the waitress.

“Make it a double and I’ll have the same,” Adrian said.

We silently dug into our food, eating and exchanging goofy looks. The drinks arrived, and we stared into each other’s eyes as we started to drink.

His eyes crinkled, and he didn’t set the glass down, so I didn’t set mine down either. I won the drinking contest, setting down the glass, empty except for ice, first.

“Liquid courage,” he joked.

“Courage for what? Are we going on a crime spree after this?”

“Thanks to some recent intel from my dad’s cop buddies, I’ve got a few ideas.”

I shook my head, a perma-grin plastered on my face. “What am I getting myself into?”

“A bunch of trouble we should have gotten into five years ago. You know, I didn’t even have fun at prom.”

The vodka sent delightful swirls of relaxation through my body. “You never came to prom.”

He made a funny face. “Oh, I was there. For all of ten minutes. You were having such a good time with your friends, and Jett Spencer.” He frowned. “I had this whole speech figured out, and I was going to tell you about Brie rigging the vote, too. But you looked so happy, and I wanted you to be happy, even if it was with Jett Spencer.”

“Fuck me with a ten-pound box of fucks, but you need to stop dropping these bombshells on me, Adrian.”

“Black Sheep Books is closing down.”

My jaw dropped open.

Adrian grinned.

My jaw remained in the ajar position.

He explained, “The owners have been in the red for two years, and they’re calling it quits. On behalf of Gordon, I’m negotiating taking over their inventory, rather than having them liquidate and glut the local market.”

I whispered, “I hate those sheep fuckers.”

He nodded, looking sly. “I know you do. That’s why I wanted to tell you the good news myself.” He rubbed his hands together. “Negotiations are going well.”

My head was buzzing with vodka and the intoxication of Adrian’s attention, plus this delicious news.

“I hope you stick it to them,” I said.

“Oh, they’re going to spread wide for all the things they’ve done, like poaching employees.”

“You’re going to bend them over that negotiation table, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to spank that exposed ass. And after we’ve had our way with them, we’ll be back on top.”

I licked my lips. “My panties are so wet right now.”

Adrian pretended to gulp-swallow with nervousness. “Negotiating makes me hard, too.”

“You’re a dirty boy.”

He gave me a devious look. “You don’t know the half of it. We could move Peachtree into their space and take over a fifteen-year lease at below-market rent.”

I groaned. “How big is it?”

“Oh, Peaches. It’s big. So big. Think of the things we could do with all that space.”

“In-store readings. More staff picks. A modest used books section.”

His eyelashes fluttered. “Three thousand square feet, plus a below-grade stock room that isn’t counted toward the triple net.”

“Sweep these dishes off the table and take me now!”

He laughed, then growled at me, “Don’t think I won’t.”

As we stared into each other’s eyes, I grabbed his hand and brought it to my mouth.

Starting at the tip of his thumb, I swirled my tongue one around his digit, then plunged it halfway into my mouth.

Adrian’s eyelids widened, and he sat up straight in his chair. I gently sucked his thumb as he held completely still, his breath frozen.

His thumb tasted salty and fleshy, and my mouth watered around it as I took him deeper.

He let some breath out, muttering swear words softly. I grazed my teeth over his fleshy thumb, then bobbed my head and took him in to the hilt. I wrapped my lips tightly around him and gave a powerful suck.

He tilted his chin up with respect and gave me a nod.

I withdrew his thumb slowly, dragging my lips tightly along the surface, then gave the tip a soft kiss.

“Yum,” I said.

“Good staff meeting. Should we get the rest of our pasta plates to go?”

“To go where?”

“Somewhere we should have gone five years ago.”

CHAPTER 5

Rollerskating.

Adrian Storm took me to the Beaverdale Rink so we could go rollerskating.

“I haven’t been here in years,” I said as I laced up the rented skates, white with four blue wheels on each one. The arena scheduled times where people could rollerblade, but Saturday night was for the old-fashioned style of skating only.

“They’re actually busy tonight,” Adrian said, peering through the plexiglass shield from where we sat in the bleachers, putting on our gear. I had bare legs due to my pretty orange dress, so I opted for the kneepads, just to be careful.

As I pulled on the kneepads, I shot Adrian a lusty look and said, “These might come in handy later.”

“They dim the lights in the bleachers after nine, and they send the little kids away.”

“Yes, I know. You act like I’m the one who lived in big cities the past five years.”

He chuckled. “Of course. Then you’ve probably heard that sometimes people go for a romantic skate and take a little detour into the bleachers to… catch their breath.”

“I bet they do.”

He stood up and took my hand. “Let’s skate. I can’t wait to see that fancy dress swirl around your beautiful legs.”

As we walked down the bleacher steps carefully, I looked at Adrian’s legs and tried to think of a compliment to give him, but the black roller skates made his long legs look even longer, and all I could do was giggle at his spider legs.

“What are you giggling at?” he asked. “You’re drunk.” He pointed up to the posted regulations. “Look at that:
Inebriated patrons will be escorted out.
”

We reached the rink surface. Adrian proceeded to windmill his arms and, from a dead standstill, wipe out on his ass.

People kept rollerskating in a circuit, paying us little attention. I helped him back up carefully. “You’re the drunk one,” I teased, slinging his arm over my shoulder.

The music changed to an Abba song, and a few people skating the circuit cheered. Adrian considered this busy for the rink? We weren’t alone, but the place wasn’t exactly crowded, either. A dozen little kids were racing around as fast as their parents would let them, and another forty people were skating around at a more leisurely pace. A good portion were white-haired seniors, with big smiles on their faces.

Adrian and I started skating, both of us a little rough at first, but getting into the flow. Soon we were skating along smoothly, holding hands like most of the other couples, and Adrian got cocky enough to drop my hand and skate ahead to do a spin for me. He actually pulled it off, causing me to say, “Not bad, Mr. Storm.”

He came back to my side, put his arm across my shoulder, and used his free hand to tilt my chin toward him. He kissed me as we skated past the speakers. I kept my eyes open for balance, but he closed his, getting that dopey, sweet look guys get when they can’t believe they’re kissing someone.

The lights dimmed, the music changed to a romantic folk rock song, and the small kids filed off the rink. Adrian kept kissing me, and our skating speed slowed and slowed.

I noticed a very grown-up feeling I was having between my legs. Miss Kitty was purring.

We came to a standstill near the gate we’d come in through. My purse was checked into a storage cubby back at the skate rental counter, but our shoes and leftover pasta boxes were sitting up in the bleachers.

I pulled away from Adrian’s succulent lips and glanced up toward our pile of stuff, halfway up the bleachers and barely visible. “We could take a break and finish our dinner,” I said.

He reached up and touched my ear. I’d forgotten I was wearing earrings. My earlobe pinched as he fiddled around with the earring, probably looking for the backing and not realizing they were clip-ons. The first one fell off into his hand, and he’d barely touched the other one when it did the same.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re recreating lost teen experiences, aren’t we? Let’s go up into the dark bleachers for some good, old-fashioned necking.”

“Necking! You sound so old-timey.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and ran his fingers down my neck, then along my throat to my collarbone.

He murmured, “Your heart’s beating fast.”

“From all the rollerskating,” I lied.

“Nobody’s looking. Quick, let’s get on up there.”

I pushed open the hip-height wooden door, freshly painted but dented from decades of hockey games. In the winter, rollerskating switched to ice skating and hockey games, and the arena would be packed every Saturday night with hockey fans and parents.

We climbed up, stepping sideways so we didn’t murder ourselves on our roller skates. We grabbed our things and proceeded up higher and higher, until we were in darkness. I could barely see Adrian’s face, but I found his lips easily.

We kissed, sitting next to each other on the flat wooden bleacher step. I took his lower lip in my mouth and felt carefully with my tongue for the tiny scar from his lip ring.

He pressed his tongue hungrily into my mouth as one hand came across and landed on my bare knee.

He moved his lips away from mine, and over to my ear. He took my earlobe in my mouth and gently sucked it, the way he had my thumb. My skin prickled all over, and I felt myself begin to glow with sweat.

Moving down my neck, he licked and sucked and gently bit my skin until I was moaning. I could hear the crackle of his saliva as he sucked my neck, let go, and held it again with gentle pressure.

At the same time, his hand moved slowly up my leg with trepidation, like the hand of a young guy trying to get to third base for the first time.

I whispered, “Adrian, are you trying to get to third base?”

He pulled his hot mouth away from my neck, the saliva evaporating and cooling my neck suddenly. To accentuate this, he blew air gently on my neck. I shuddered with pleasure at the sensation.

In the shadows, I saw him lick his lips, then say, “It would be a crime for me to skip second base.” His gaze was directly on my peaches, looking luscious and heaving from my rapid breathing.