Spectacular Rascal: A Sexy Flirty Dirty Standalone Romance (2 page)

Old ladies. They aren’t what they used to be, that’s for damned sure.

And this sweaty streak is a lot less fun than the last time I went running naked with my Dasher club, when we were all so wasted that streaking across the Brooklyn Bridge sounded like a kick-ass idea. At least then it had been dark, I’d been drunk, and a cool breeze off the East River had kept the ball sweat to a minimum.

But streaking was the only way I could think of to distract the cop who was about to arrest my friends. Better for me to be charged with public indecency than for Bash and Penny to get hauled in for banging in the Prospect Park Lake.

I still can’t believe the two of them decided that fucking in public was a good idea. But I guess true love does crazy things to a person’s judgment. I wouldn’t know, personally. I’ve never been in that kind of love, but judging from what it’s done to my best friend and his usually sweet, levelheaded, keeps-her-panties-on-in-public assistant, it’s apparently some intense shit.

As I duck under low-hanging branches near the edge of the lake, aiming myself for the canoe rental station, I decide I’m just fine with remaining a bachelor for the foreseeable future. Scheming to get my best friend and his girl back together so the pair of them would stop moping and crying and killing the summer fun before it could even get started has used up my limited enthusiasm for romance.

Besides, I have a job starting tomorrow. A fake girlfriend who, in exchange for ten thousand dollars, I will pretend to be completely fucking devoted to for the next month. Bash has been too caught up in his full-time pity party to send over the complete file on the woman, but I know her name and occupation: Beth Jones, a lawyer who’s having a hard time convincing her creepy ex that their relationship is over for good.

My gut says Bash would be a better man for this job. He’s the smooth, successful businessman type who looks like he should be dating a lawyer, but Beth asked for me. She took one look at the pictures in my “Spectacular Rascal” dossier—don’t judge me, Bash chose the name; sometimes he’s too damned cute for his own good—and insisted I was the guy she needed.

Apparently she wants a man who’s “a little bit dangerous.”

Of course, in reality, my danger factor is only skin-deep. I’m covered in tattoos, have a full beard that accentuates my “don’t fuck with me” face, and am currently risking arrest for a friend, but I’m not dangerous, not even a little bit. I’ve never hit a man who didn’t throw the first punch, never made a risky decision out of anger, and never spanked a woman who hasn’t begged me to show her pretty ass who’s boss.

I like my sex hot, primal, and as dirty as I can get it, prefer being on top in most situations, and refuse to be fucked with by anyone or anything. But when it comes to the things that really matter, I’m harmless. I literally have “Do no harm,” tattooed on my left forearm, right next to the devil dancing in the pale moonlight I had inked at my first pro convention. I don’t hurt innocent people, I don’t incite conflict, and I don’t work my personal shit out in my relationships. I save that for the weight room.

That’s where I go to purge my demons and regain my focus. And yes, I’m ripped, and I have to stretch out for a good twenty minutes after I lift to maintain full range of motion. I’m not saying I don’t have my issues, just that I deal with them in a sane, healthy, muscle-mass-increasing way.

I’m thankful for that muscle mass as I jump into an empty canoe, setting the captain and his crew free to slap against my thigh as I grab the oar and haul ass toward the center of the lake.

“Dude, you have to pay for that!” the skinny kid in the Parks Department T-shirt manning the rental station shouts after me. But his tone is more bored than outraged. Apparently the fact that I’m naked isn’t enough to outweigh the fact that he’s stuck working outside without so much as an umbrella to shield his greasy, teenage head from the sun.

“I’ll pay when I bring it back, man. I promise,” I call, glancing over my shoulder, breathing easier as I see the red-faced cop and his air horn still a good two hundred feet away.

Resisting the urge to shoot the officer a shit-eating grin—no need to rub salt in the wound, or give the man a reason to call for backup if he hasn’t already—I duck my chin and pull hard, sending the slim canoe skimming fast across the water. Within minutes, I’ve made my way back around the curve in the shoreline, into the secluded cove that was the scene of Bash and Penny’s crime of passion.

Literally.

Penny’s skirt had covered the most pertinent parts of the equation, but there was no doubt what they were up to when Officer Red Face and I appeared on the scene. I suppose some guys would get off on that sort of thing, but I’m not much of a voyeur, especially when it comes to watching my best friend and a sweetheart with a goofy streak a mile wide get it on. Penny’s like a little sister to me, and I would pay good money to get the sight of her girl-next-door face twisted in ecstasy out of my head.

As I drag the canoe onto the grassy bank and swiftly pull on the clothes I stashed behind a tree near the water’s edge, I allow my thoughts to drift back through my own personal sex-ventures, looking for something to banish Penny mid-orgasm from my memory bank. I’ve had an excellent start to the summer season of fun, sexy, no-strings-attached hook-ups, and spent time with some very beautiful, very up-for-anything women, who have provided me with ample erotic inspiration.

But for some reason my brain skips over all that sizzling, prime spank-bank fodder I’ve collected lately and makes a beeline for a night eleven years ago—college graduation. It was my last run with the Pennsylvania University Dashers, the night I handed over the torch as head dasher and came way too close to taking Polka Dot Panties’s virginity on a pile of leaves.

I’d never slept with a virgin, not even when I was one myself, and had no intention of getting into deep emotional waters like that with any girl, let alone Panties, one of my best friends and a girl I knew only by her Dasher name.

We all went by nicknames—the raunchier the better—on the trail.

Polka Dot Panties started her freshman year as Mary, as in the Virgin Mary, the way all the newbies to the run hard, drink harder Dasher lifestyle do. Later, after a sprint through the rain that rendered her hot pink running shorts transparent, she became Polka Dot Panties. I was Curved for Her Pleasure, for exactly the reason you might imagine.

She called me Curve. I called her Panties, PDP, or sometimes, just…Red.

Red for that silky red hair that fell all the way to her ass, for the lipstick she wore to Saturday night bonfires after our grueling afternoon runs. Red for the pen she used to write the notes we exchanged, and the color she made me see every time she gave me shit for laying an easy trail or not including enough switchbacks or whatever fault she found with my work as “fox.”

The fox (the head dasher) lays the trail, and the hounds (all the other runners) dash after it, following the top-secret markings of our club, fighting to find the true trail and be the first across the finish line. From the day of her first run, Red was a force to be reckoned with. By her sophomore year, she came first in every single race, leaving no question as to who should fill my shoes when I graduated, though the honor of head dasher is usually given to a senior.

That last night I was supposed to hand over the fox binder, the trail marking tools, and the windbreaker with “Polka Dot Panties, Here to Fuck You Up” monogrammed on the back that I’d had made for her as my way of saying “thanks for busting my ass and being one of my best friends.” I wasn’t supposed to smoke a joint with her, or pull her into my arms to dance in the dark, or kiss her until her sweet, fearless taste was permanently imprinted on my tongue.

And I certainly wasn’t supposed to slide my hand down the front of her panties and feel how wet she was for me.

Wet and hot and so ready that she rocks into my hand with this sexy as fuck moan and begs me to be her first. Begs me to take her, right there, on the ground in the leaves or up against a tree, wherever I want so long as I don’t stop until I’ve taken care of her pesky virginity once and for all.

“I don’t care if this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be,” she says, fingers tangling in my hair. “I want you. And I trust you. And there’s no one else in the world that I want to do this with.” Her breath feathers across my lips, making me ache for another taste of her. “Please, Curve. Be with me. Now. Tonight. Before you go away.”

“I’m not up for this, Panties. I can’t.” I groan as she finds the ridge of my erection, rubbing me through the thin fabric of my running shorts.

“You feel up for it.” Her fingers wrap around the swollen head of my cock and squeeze. Her touch is lightning in a bottle, potential energy as dangerous as it is seductive.

This is so fucking wrong. Red is a friend and only a friend.

But damn, I want more than my fingers in her hot little pussy. I want her under me, squirming as I show her just how up for fucking her I am. But she wouldn’t lie about being a virgin. Or anything else. Panties is a hardcore truth teller. If she says this is her first time, it is.

Which means if I fuck her, I’m going to hurt her. I’m on the larger size of above average, and I come by my nickname honestly. When I’m hard, my cock curves back to point at my own navel—perfect for hitting the G-spot in a girl who’s been around the block, but definitely not a Starter Dick.

Still, it’s not the physical pain I would cause that I’m most worried about.

Red holds her cards close to her chest and plays it tough, but she has her share of issues. She’s got an insensitive, selfish prick for a father, never knew her mother, and is dealing with a host of other stuff she keeps bottled up and under pressure. She’s hardcore, but she’s also more vulnerable than she lets on, and not the most emotionally steady person.

Having her first lover be a one-night stand isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to help her get any steadier. And I don’t want to throw her off her game. I like Red.

Maybe even more than like her, I realize, my heart twisting in my chest as she begins to unravel in my arms, succumbing to the slow steady pressure of my fingers gliding over her clit.

“Oh, God,” she says, voice catching as she trembles against me. “I’ve never… Oh God, I can’t, I’m going to fall.”

“No you’re not.” I wrap my free arm around her waist and hold on tight. “I’ve got you. Now come for me. I want to feel you come, Red. I want you all over my fingers, beautiful.”

Her breath rushes out, and a second later she’s calling my name as she goes, but it’s not my real name. She doesn’t know my name is Aidan, and I have no idea what her real-life friends call her.

We’re so close, and share a hundred inside jokes, but we’re not close enough for this. Not as close as I would want to be if I was going to be the man making love to her for the first time.

And she deserves someone to make love to her, not just fuck her virginity away. She deserves someone she can trust with her heart and her body and her tightly guarded secrets, but I’m on my way out of the country tomorrow. Even if I wanted to, even if I was ready for something as intense as what I suspect I could have with Red, I can’t be her someone.

With a pang of regret felt keenly in my heart, my gut, and my furiously aching balls, I realize that I can’t let this go any further. No matter how hot Red is tonight, or how desperately I want to give her everything she’s asking for.

CHAPTER TWO

I emerge from the memory with a shudder…and a hard-on that won’t quit.

It seriously won’t. Twenty minutes later, after walking the opposite way around the lake to avoid any officers of the law lingering in the area, I’m still fighting a stiffy. As I pay the grouchy kid for the canoe rental and a little extra for fetching it from the cove, I conceal the situation with my T-shirt and then head toward the subway, feeling strangely shitty, considering I’ve done my good deed for the day.

Bash and Penny are back together, my best friend is out of his despair hole, and no one has been charged with a crime.

At least I don’t think they have.

To be sure, I tug my phone free and shoot Bash a text—

All good with you two? No arrests made?

After a moment Bash texts back.
No, we’re in the clear and already back at Penny’s place. How about you?

All clear. Though it was touch and go for a while there.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure I haven’t acquired a tail. But the most menacing thing on the sidewalk behind me is a girl with a Long Island accent talking too loudly on her cell. Hopefully, if any cops show up, they’ll arrest her for refusing to text like a decent human being, and leave me the hell alone.

I bet.
Bash texts back.
Penny wants me to tell you thank you, by the way. She’s says you’ve got balls.

Ha. Ha. Very funny.

Not really. Don’t ever get naked in front of my girlfriend again.

I smirk.
Why? Worried she might see something she likes?
I watch the bubbles dotting my screen, anticipating a smartass response, but Bash surprises me.

Not even a little bit. Penny is mine. I’m hers. And I’m probably the happiest bastard in New York right now, so…thanks. Seriously. I owe you one. A big one.

Hmm, a big one, huh? I wonder how big…
Does this mean you’ll take over with Beth tomorrow? I know she wanted me to handle her intervention, but I don’t date lawyers, man. We’ll look ridiculous together. She’d be better off with a Magnificent Bastard.