Recklessly (5 page)

“Where’d you go to high school?” Wes asked, disappointed in himself for diverting his own thoughts, but it was for the sake of his throbbing dick. He’d survive though; no one had ever died of an erection.

Thank God (he hoped).

Lana peeled her burrito open and plucked out a chunk of meat and cheese. “Went to public school for a year then I got accepted to Mooreland Ratford, it’s a college prep school…and home of the
Wolverines
,” she said.

“L.A. native?”

“I was born here, but my parents are from Upstate…” She trailed off when Wes reached over and flicked a tiny bit of food away from her lips. God, they were soft. He had been unable to break his stare away from them as she talked. “Thank you…Upstate New York, as I was saying. I grew up here in Westchester, and now I live in Marina Del Rey with three old friends. Those guys I was playing pool with.” Lana paused to take a sip from her water bottle. “You know, the ones you were serially killing with your glances. So, how many other tattooed blondies did your mother raise? Is there a third one somewhere?”

“Nope. Just me and Abel. We grew up on the North Shore of Oahu and we moved to L.A. permanently after we both got some really good surfing sponsorships, but we lived in Bali for a while a few years ago.”

“You surf together, I’m guessing you live together…you guys do
everything
together?” she said with a hint of a suggestive tone, pulling her gaze toward him slowly.

“He
is
my hetero life partner, but not
everything,
perv. I don’t even like to be in the house when he’s doing that.” Wes bumped her with his shoulder. “I just killed your twins in a threesome porno fantasy, huh?”

Lana giggled with just barely a flush of color in her cheeks. “Completely. That would be totally gross in actuality.”

“What about you? Give me the rest of the rundown.”

Lana tore off a small section of her burrito and shoved it into her mouth. “Let’s see…one brother…James. He lives on the East Coast, and we’re really close. He’s only a few years older, but he already has a wife and two kids, and I can barely decide between a side salad and French fries most days. Um, a few years ago, I gave college two tries—once in San Diego and then in Oregon—before quitting for good after sophomore year, and then blowing through most of the college fund my parents created for me at birth. I salvaged a little bit to live on for a while. Now, I split my time as a server at
Vices Hollywood
and teaching Bar
Method to Bel-Air housewives.”

Wes’ eyebrows came together in confusion. “
Bar Method?
I’m assuming you aren’t showing them how to drink liquor all day—I mean, I could do that for free and I would—so I have no idea what that is…”

Lana laughed. “It’s a kind of fitness mixed with some elements of ballet. I teach a class, and I make house calls too.” Well, that explained her legs. And God bless her for wanting to give them to other women. “Let’s go back in,” she said as she stood up, shaking her hips to echoing salsa music from the taco truck. There was that tone again, the one that made him almost forget that he had to be up in a few hours. He nodded and went to toss their plates, and he slowed his walk back to watch her dancing alone to the taco truck’s upbeat music, like she was the only one out there.

When he reached her, she twirled around him a few times before she slung his arm over her shoulders, and she hugged his torso all the way into the bar, straight to the jukebox. It was a modernized version with a screen that flashed a digital flipbook of the available songs.

“Pick.” He plucked a ten from his pocket and handed it to her.

“You want me to go get change?” He shook his head. “Do you know how many songs this is worth? You’re pretty trusting, Wes. You don’t even know my music tastes,” she said as she slid it into the slot.

“I just doubt anything about you could be bad enough for me to dislike.” Wes shifted his gaze from the illuminated screen to Lana’s face, which was partially obscured now that she had let her dark brown hair loose over her shoulders. 

She squeezed his arm. “Much better than your parking lot line. In fact, all of you is better right now. ”

Hooking his arm around her neck, Wes pressed his lips to her ear. “Girl, you haven’t seen better yet.”
Better
would be his performance with her on her back. But he always tempered his come-ons and sexual assertiveness by taking cues from whichever woman he was with. Wes never understood domineering and aggressive guys. They always felt like they needed to convince women to sleep with them, whereas he just played it cool because they always figured it out on their own later, anyway.

She stayed silent but her dimple indented as her finger hovered over an album cover, before she reached around and placed her hand over his eyes. “Don’t look…since you’re so trusting.” He heard the jukebox beep several times, and then she spun him and led him out to the dance floor. As the chords of the intro to the first song played, Wes smiled, recognizing it as The Cure’s “Lovesong.” Definitely in his top ten best, and he had pegged her for a pop enthusiast. He nodded, impressed.

Lana locked her fingers behind his neck, and he held her at the hips. He had always thought dancing like this was for proms and old people—he preferred an ass against his crotch—but holding her this way was nice, too. And he really liked seeing her smile at him. “Wait until you hear the rest…
Deuce
. Why do they call you that, anyway? Is it because you’re Mr. Second Place? That’s what else they call you these days, too, right? You know, you’re lucky you even got that final wave in Bali last year.” Lana’s expression became a playful frown, but there was truth under it. She was pissed.

“Ouch…ouuuuuch.” Wes cringed as she giggled. For the past two years, he’d been the first loser at nearly every major surfing contest he’d participated in. The prize money was still great, but he had obviously earned a reputation. “Your Googling skills are astounding,” he added with amused sarcasm. He was never wary of people taking an interest in his professional endeavors. Some of the guys he knew worried that people who cared about what they did for a living only wanted to know them because of it, but Wes welcomed the attention. Who cared why they were there? He was the gatekeeper to their ability to indulge in his lifestyle, anyway.

“Almost as good as your surfing,” she teased with a soft smile, “Wesley Elliott, free surfer extraordinaire, and sometime contest participant, who rides for Team Lava Energy Drink.” Her smile withered into a disapproving frown
.
“And the fact remains that you waited too long that day at Padang Padang. The good waves were already sporadic. You probably wanted some major moment of glory, huh? And you sabotaged yourself. You should’ve won the contest, Wes.

“
Rookie
Josh Wilden should not be the reigning Ridley Pro Bali champion right now.
You
should be. He lucked out in a crazy way. He’s going to be an amazing surfer someday, but
you’re
one
now.
You’re both good at wave selection, but his barrel riding is iffy and inconsistent. You make that shit look effortless, which is why I don’t understand…what?”

He must have been giving her a look. “Jesus, girl, you’re worse than the magazines and bloggers.”

“I spent that entire contest yelling at the live stream—I must’ve aged like five years that day—and I was pissed all weekend afterward.”

“No, you’re right…it was my ego. I was so sure I’d get one last big wave and kill it, you know, so I waited. I wanted
that
shot
on someone’s camera, one I knew people would be talking about all year. And I blew it. So, now, I’m going back to basics, training harder—like tomorrow, I have a very early session with my trainer—and eating a shitload of humble pie with my sponsors right now.” The bottom line was that Wes had earned a pretty deep five-figures annually the last few years in a flailing industry, and a surf trick he had accidentally invented had more than six hundred thousand views on YouTube; so, his ego had made his head big enough to blind him.

“Why do they call you Deuce then?”

“I guess I’ve been coming in second my whole life,” Wes said, laughing flatly with a wink. “Abel started that. He was born, like, three minutes before me. It sort of stuck with the rest of the surf team. Sucks now, though, given my recent surfing accomplishments. So, you follow surfing? How come you didn’t say anything?” How much hotter could this woman get? Wait. Naked. Naked and riding him
while discussing surfing
was probably much hotter.

“I didn’t want to seem like a stalker once I figured out who you were.” She shrugged and pursed her lips. “I used to follow surfing a lot more before though.” She got quiet as they rolled through two songs from Aerosmith and Johnny Cash. When the more recent, pop tunes started—Justin Timberlake, P!nk and Maroon 5—she
finally
turned her back to him, and Wes grabbed her hips when she re-linked her hands at the back of his neck. His heart rate dove into a rhythm that rivaled the songs, as a fever rose in him from the way her butt rocked against the front of his jeans. And he knew she could feel his hard-on. Fucking friction. But, really, just her ass in its sheer amazingness.

“How am I doing?” she asked, tipping her head back to his shoulder.

The music or the dancing, he wondered, but he was pleased in both instances, especially the second. “Just…fine...” Wes lilted right against her ear before he buried his face in her hair. She smelled of peach shampoo, but also the inebriating way women smelled that made him imagine tasting them instead. He drew his hands down her arms, his fingertips soaking up the heat her skin emitted, and then he traced the shape of her torso until his palms were on her hips again. Lana speared her fingers through his hair and closed her fist around the strands. From above, he caught a glimpse of her face—eyes closed, lips slightly parted, and completely lost in the music.

R.E.M. and Van Morrison played next, and then Radiohead, her penultimate selection she promised, when they were facing one another again. They held each other differently this time, more intimately. Her elbows were resting on his shoulders with her curved arms around his neck, and her face nuzzling right at the base. And when Al Green started playing, the last of her songs, he could no longer ignore the urge to drop his mouth to the crook of her neck; though, he disregarded how badly he wanted to let his tongue drift along the curves of her shoulder and collarbone. Until he felt her fingers pressing into his back and then the tiniest movement of her head, allowing him more access.

He swept her hair to her other shoulder, and Lana’s low moan was all the more encouragement he needed. Wes planted his lips deep into her skin and traveled up to just below her ear. He tapped soft kisses at the spot, listening to the rate of her breaths increase as she pushed his face against her. Neither of them paused to see if they were drawing the crowd’s attention, but Wes already knew
he
leaned toward exhibitionism, but he was surprised at how carefree
she
was about being in the middle of a room doing this. He was surprised…and completely turned on.

Cradling her face, her dark locks quickly ensnared his fingers, and her hands climbed his back beneath his shirt, the touch electrifying his skin. Lana released staggered whimpers when Wes’ mouth touched hers, and she responded with a harder press of her lips when his tongue snaked between them. She mirrored every flick of his tongue, movement of his mouth and sharp intake of breath.

The more of her mouth he tasted, the intensity of how much
more
of her he wanted to savor grew. With a hand to the small of her back, Wes mashed her chest to his and killed the tiny space still left between them as her nails sank just slightly into the base of his spine. When she slid her palm to the front of his torso, he groaned and she held her hand where his abs contracted. He severed the kiss only to take hold of her waist and guide her backward until they were in a darkened corner of the bar. With her back on the wall, Lana stepped onto the front of his shoes on her tiptoes, and he narrowed his eyes as he pressed himself against her.

“Girl, do you know what I had to do to get these one-of-a-kind, custom Nikes?”

She shrugged. “Did it involve
that
…?” Her gaze shifted to the sliver of darkness between their bodies.

“What?” Then he smiled when he realized their hips were touching. And his perpetual erection tonight was drilling right into her pelvis. “Oh.” He kept his grin so she would know he wasn’t embarrassed that she could feel him. “I use it for other things. Things I like a lot more than shoes…”

“You know…a guy as cocky as you, is usually overcompensating for something…” Lana slid her lip out from between her teeth. She ran her thumb just south of his bellybutton, and the area below his belt warmed beneath the surface of his skin.

“Maybe…” Wes leaned in, getting close to her ear. “…But that ain’t it…”

Deeper interest struck her features in the silence, but she pulled him back to the dance floor, even though someone else was now commanding the jukebox. They danced for a few more songs until her phone beeped and then she pressed out a quick text.

“Damn. I didn’t realize how late it was…” she said with a frown as she took a glance at her cell. “I guess I’ve been having too good of a time to notice.”

“Me too.”

“So…is this where it ends tonight?”

Wes pecked a soft kiss on her lips, his fingers trailing down the space between her collarbone and cleavage. “You tell me, Lana.”

“Well, I can’t wait ‘til Tuesday.”

“I know. Me too.”

“No,” Lana said, pulling his ear to her lips, “I mean,
don’t
make me wait ‘til Tuesday.”

There was a men’s employee bathroom behind the bar upstairs on the second floor of
Vices,
and since only downstairs was officially open tonight, they had the place to themselves. Wes was certain that someone had seen them dip down under the chain blocking the steps and creep up, but Lana didn’t seem concerned as she shut the main restroom door when she returned from the women’s one. He could still hear the music, which was good, in case things got loud in there.