She leans forward, hands on hips. “Until today,” she says triumphantly. “Girl. Spill.”
I hear Toni chatting with Allie, and the door to the shop jingling. We’re momentarily safe, but Allie will have a fit if I tell Madison everything without her knowing.
“Okay, fine, but we’ll have to fill Allie in later.”
“Of course,” Madison says, waving her hot pink fingernails at me like little magic wands.
“So he, uh… hmm. Where to begin. He’s been hitting on me since yesterday.”
She nods. “Yup. The man is as into you as a throbbing dick in heat.”
I make a face. “Really? Really, that’s the best analogy you could come up with?”
Her eyes turn to slits.
“Okay so he’s into me. Him and his… throbbing dick, I suppose.”
She snorts.
I tell her about heading to his apartment, his sexual-innuendo-laden flirtation. “And,” I finish with a flourish, “he, um, seems kinda kinky.”
“Oh, girl,” she says with a dreamy sigh. “He so is.”
“How do you know?”
She grows sober. “It’s in the eyes.”
“Kink? Is… in the eyes?”
“Oh yeah.” She nods with the wisdom of someone who’s been tied up and spanked to orgasm on more than one occasion. “There’s like a… feral sort of hunger there you don’t see with vanilla guys.”
“You just made that up.”
“Nope. Give me ten guys in a lineup and I’ll tell you who knows his way around a pair of nipple clamps.”
I immediately imagine myself stark naked with little tasseled pasties covering my nips, and it isn’t hot, it’s sort of terrifying.
“Okay so he flirted with you, he’s got feral eyes that indicate he ain’t vanilla, move this along,” she says, clapping her hands at me.
I roll my eyes. “So he kissed me last night.”
She gasps. “Tongue?”
“Eventually, yep.”
“Eventually?” she squeaks. “Like there was more than one kiss.”
“Oh, honey,” I say, leaning back on my stool which is a lot harder than one might think. I wish I had a cigarette so I could smugly blow out a smoke ring. “Oh yeah.”
She grins. “I bet he smells fucking divine, like that Geir Ness guy from Norway.”
“How do you know how Geir Ness smells?”
“I once did a shoot in Epcot and he was there, like in person, selling his manly cologne.” She sighs. “But he’s too skinny, not my type.” She waves her hand. “Go on.”
“So yeah, he smells amazing.” I proceed to tell her everything, including how he took off his shirt when he had to open Toni’s door, how he cooked me dinner, and eventually, the pinnacle of the retelling (one might say… climax?), how I ended up sprawled over his desk while he made me come.
“Over your panties?” she snickers.
“Yep.”
“Do you have, like, day-of-the-week panties, honey?”
I growl at her.
“I’m not as virginal as you think,” I protest, thinking that climaxing while sprawled over his desk counts for a certain level of redemptive sluttiness.
She nods. “Yep. Alright, babe, whatever you say.”
Time to change the subject. Next time, I am so not kissing and telling.
“So tonight, since you girls will be babysitting, we’re heading to dinner at Café Noir—”
She smacks both her hands on the wall behind her as if flabbergasted.
“What?”
“Mhm. We have some important information to debrief.”
“Oh, he’ll be debriefing all right,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.
“Madison, I swear sometimes you channel a seventh-grade boy.”
She grins, all perfectly straight white teeth behind glossy pink lips, as her phone buzzes. “Gotta go! Another DoorDash order.”
“Haven’t you straightened that out yet? And why do you look sort of… smug, instead of annoyed?”
“Smug,” she says over her shoulder while she heads to the front of the store. “No idea what you’re talking about, baby. I’m just doing business.”
The hell she is. The plot thickens.
“Who’s that delivery going to?”
“Oh, a local,” she says, waving her hands as if to dismiss me.
Something tells me I’m not the only one with some secrets around here.
I pull up my phone, and send him a text.
Me: Hey.
I get a response right away.
Miguel: Hey.
Me: So how would you describe the dress code for dinner tonight?
Miguel: What you’re wearing is perfect.
I look down at my neckline and remember how easily it gave way to his strong hands, how he orchestrated absolute magic by working his way around this little dress.
I think I tend to agree with him.
Chapter 14
Miguel
I somehow manage to focus the rest of the day even though I feel like it kills me.
I want to be over at that shop, perched on one of those stools, watching Sam do her thing. Flirting with her. Cornering her and stealing another kiss.
What’s come over me?
What the hell is going on here?
Of all the girls in Boston, of the thousands and thousands of eligible women in the city, I have to pick the one girl who my niece has latched onto, the one girl who owns the business that threatens mine?
But why does that all seem so… unimportant now?