Groupie (Juked Book 2) Read online

  I take a deep breath and drop my head, hands clenched. I’m not sure how much more I can listen to.

  “In the middle of it, I remember kind of sobering up. You know how that happens? It’s like you have a rush of sobriety? Well, I had that right in the middle of it. I looked around the room, knowing I should be mortified by what I was doing, but I realized… it was turning me on even more.”

  My head snaps up at this comment.

  “I know. I was just as shocked as you are. I had never realized how much I enjoyed the voyeuristic part of sex until that moment. I liked it. So I tried different things. Became more free. No one was judging the things that were going on because everyone was doing them. Things sort of spiraled from there.”

  I take a deep breath, trying to process what she’s telling me.

  “What?” she asks. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Do you think I’m filthy now?”

  I shake my head but don’t make eye contact. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about you this last week. I’ve thought about the things I’ve seen. I’ve thought about the things I know. And I realized something important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “None of it matters to me.” Her eyes widen. “I mean… wait… it matters because I still work with those guys. But as far as how I feel about you, it doesn’t matter at all.”

  “How do you feel about me?” she whispers.

  I take her hand in mine and play with her fingers. “I think you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You’re funny and smart. You’re witty. You have this amazing confidence. You never say a bad word about anyone. You love sports, which is an amazing find in a woman.” She smiles widely at that. “And yes, you’re beautiful. So fucking gorgeous. But even if you didn’t have an attractive outside, I like your inside so much, I don’t think I would even care.” I take a deep breath. “But here’s the thing.”

  I pause and place our hands in my lap as I get ready to be even more brutally honest. “I really, really want us to be together. More than I’ve wanted almost anything in my life. But I can’t do… that.” She crinkles her brow in question. “I can’t know you’re with my teammates while we’re dating. I can’t know you’re taking your clothes off for them or, or doing those race things. I can’t….”

  “You need monogamy,” she interjects.

  “Yes,” I breathe. “You say you like all those things, but I can’t be with you if that’s what you want. And that’s not about you. You have a right to do whatever you want with your body. But I have a right to do what I want with my emotions, and sex is too important, too special to me. I can’t share you.”

  She straddles the bench and cups my face in her hands. “I need to clear something up. I like sex. No, that’s not right. I love sex. But sex isn’t who I am. It’s just something I do. I’ve been young and single the last several years and have been enjoying myself. But don’t misunderstand; monogamy is a must in my relationships. If I’m dating someone, I am completely faithful to him, and I expect him to be completely faithful to me.”

  I look at her lips. Leaning in, I kiss her. She opens, and I slide my tongue inside, tasting her. There’s a hint of cranberry tonight. We get to know each other’s kisses, and I feel everything shift back into place. Tonight was a glitch. A significant one, but just a glitch.

  Pulling away finally, I rest my forehead on hers. “Tiffany?”

  “Hm?”

  “I don’t want you to see other people.”

  A grin breaks out, and she pulls back to look at me. “I don’t want you to see other people, either.”

  “I want us to keep dating and getting to know each other.”

  She nods.

  “So, no more parties?”

  She twists her mouth in thought. “I can’t guarantee no more parties. They are my friends, after all. But no more sex there of any kind. No stripping, no races, no circle jerks—”

  “Circle jerks?”

  She waves me off. “My point is, for as long as we are together, the only one who gets so see, touch, taste this body is you. And I’m sorry about tonight,” she adds. “If I had known you still wanted to see me, I never would have done it. I really did think you were done with me, so I was having a good time.”

  “That was my fault,” I say playing with her chestnut locks. I can’t help but notice how soft her hair is. “For future reference, if I ever freak out like that again, it’s about me, not you. Don’t ever assume I’m angry with you.”

  “It was hard not to assume since I didn’t hear from you for a week.” She tucks a stray hair behind her ear, facing front again.

  “Daniel didn’t text you?”

  A confused look crosses her face. “Daniel? No. Why?”

  “Son of a bitch,” I say. Park benches aren’t the most comfortable things to sit on, and I wriggle to relieve the pressure on my butt. “I asked him to text you. My phone broke the first day we were on the road. It got stepped on or something while it was in my bag. I wasn’t able to get a new one until today, and I lost all my contacts. He said he’d let you know. Asshole probably forgot, with all his Quincy drama.”

  “When are they not having drama?” she asks with a giggle.

  “Hopefully not for much longer. Christian and I busted his ass a few times on the road. I think he’s finally getting his head on straight and working it out.”

  “What was there to work out? I thought he liked her?”

  “Who knows? Family issues, daddy issues, money issues… we all have them.”

  I stand up and pull her up with me. I like how close she is to me. “Why don’t I take you home? It’s almost three.”

  “So, um, this may be presumptuous of me, but… uh… would you like to spend the night?” she asks. Her big brown eyes peek through her long lashes. She’s so damn sexy, it hurts.

  I clear my throat. “I’m tempted, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Oh,” she says, and I feel her pull away. I grasp her hand tighter before she can get away completely. “I guess it’s still too soon since… earlier.”

  I chuckle. “That has nothing to do with it. And I would love to, but I can’t trust my self-control when I’m around you.”

  “Why is that such a bad thing?”

  I smile, knowing after all the times of leaving me speechless, I’m about to do the same with her. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just not a thing I want to do yet.” I stop to look straight at her. “I hope this doesn’t change anything between us, but…” I pause, more for effect than anything. “I’m a virgin.”

  The look on her face says it all. Her mouth drops open. Then shuts. Her cheeks turn red. I try not to laugh at her reaction.

  “A-A virgin. You?” she shutters.

  I wrap an arm around her shoulders to guide her back to the car. “Come on. I’ll answer any questions you have on the drive home.”

  I didn’t ask him any questions on the ride home. I was worn out from the emotions of the night, and in all truthfulness, maybe I was stunned by his admission, as well.

  He held my hand the entire drive, then he walked me to my door, where he kissed me passionately before leaving me on the doorstep wanting more.

  That he has never been with a woman is intriguing. I also find it really sexy, which is a surprise. The idea that no woman knows what he feels like, the faces and noises he makes—it’s very, very exciting. I want to know why he’s still a virgin, but it’s taken me a couple of days to come up with questions.

  “Have you ever had a blow job?” I ask as we walk hand in hand through the local bookstore.

  He glares at me. “Geez, can you say that a little louder? I don’t think everyone heard you.”

  I give him a flirty smile. “No one was listening. There’s almost no one around. Although I’m sure if they knew how virtuous you are, they would be trying to eavesdrop.”

  He rolls his eyes playfully. “So this is where we’re going to have the conversation.”

&nb
sp; “I can’t think of a better place.” We aimlessly wander toward the children’s section. Since we’re in no real hurry to be anywhere, we veer off to the small coffee kiosk first. “Um… I’ll have a large, iced, skinny vanilla soy latte,” I tell the barista, who writes my order on the cup.

  “Do you want whipped cream on top?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “And I’ll have a large ice water.”

  I look at him with an incredulous expression. “Ice water? Who gets ice water instead of coffee at a fancy kiosk?”

  He looks at me with a smile. “Have you ever had it?” I shake my head. “It’s triple filtered. The best water you can get. I’d pay as much for it as you do for your latte, but luckily for me, they give it away for free.”

  Rowen pays for my drink, and we move down the counter to wait. He puts his arm around me, finally whispering the answer to my question in my ear. “Yes, I’ve had a blow job. A few of them, actually.”

  “Hm.” I intertwine our fingers. “Have you ever gone down on a woman?”

  “Once.”

  “Only once?”

  “It was my college girlfriend. We broke up before I could do it again.”

  “So it wasn’t because you didn’t like it.”

  “Nope. It just didn’t work out, and I haven’t been in a relationship since.”

  I clear my throat. “So what did you think of that one time?”

  He looks at me with lust in his gaze. “I loved it.”

  I suck in a breath and try to calm my hormones. He chuckles, knowing he just turned me on.

  The barista places our drinks on the counter, interrupting the moment. We take them and continue to the kids’ section. “How long did you two date?” I ask, taking a sip of my latte.

  “About a year, I guess. Her name was Ali. She was a nice girl.” He sips his ice water and takes my hand in his.

  “If she was such a nice girl,” I tease, “how come it didn’t work out?”

  He quirks an eyebrow at me. “Are you jealous?”

  “Trying to get a feel for where it all went wrong,” I say coyly.

  “She started out at Southern Michigan, like I did. But a few months after we got together, she transferred to nursing school. There was nothing dramatic about it. We drifted apart and realized it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “That is rather anti-climactic,” I agree as we squeeze past a woman who is standing in the middle of the aisle, reading the back of a book. The cover is black and features a picture of a man holding a soccer ball. “Hm. Looks like some interesting reading material,” I say.

  Rowen glances over and chuckles. “You think the cover is hot.”

  “I think soccer players are hot.”

  “You better clarify that statement.”

  I smirk. “What I mean is I find one redheaded soccer player very sexy.”

  “That’s better.”

  “But seriously, I don’t get it.” I pause at the end of a bookshelf, not feeling comfortable having this conversation in the kids’ section. “You’re kind, sensitive, respectful to just about everyone. With the way you look at me and the fact that you’ve had a girlfriend, it’s a pretty safe assumption you’re not gay.” He snorts a laugh. “You’re easy on the eyes, and with as much exercise as you get, you’re pretty smoking hot. I don’t get how you’re twenty-three-years old and have never gotten laid.”

  “I’ve always been a people-watcher.” He finishes his water and tosses the cup in a nearby trashcan. “Even from the time I was a kid. I saw the way my parents looked at each other. I’ve seen the lust at times, but I’ve also seen how much love and respect they have for each other.

  “I always assumed the looks and subtle touches went together, because that’s how they always were. When I got to high school and saw the way my friends looked at girls, I assumed it was the same thing.”

  I smile, thinking back to my high school boyfriend. “Ah, young love. There’s nothing like it.” I lean against a bookshelf.

  “As we got older, and my friends started losing their virginity, I noticed a subtle shift.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but after the couples crossed that line, the guys looked at the girls differently. For a while, they still had that starry-eyed love look, but it was gradually replaced with lust. And the girls, the looks were really different for them. More than once, I saw laughter used as a cover up for embarrassment when they realized their boyfriend wasn’t as close-mouthed about their private moment as they thought. Some of the most confident girls became self-conscious. I saw way too many tears from those same girls, some of them my best friends, when they realized they’d shared something so private with someone who didn’t love them.” He shakes his head “I realized I didn’t want to be responsible for making anyone feel that way. I didn’t want to cause that kind of pain. So I decided, until I was mature enough to know exactly how to treat someone, I would just keep it in my pants.”

  “Wow. I can’t believe you could see all that in the faces of teenage girls. I was a teenage girl, and I didn’t even notice unless someone started crying.”

  “You know I’m an observer by nature, so it shouldn’t be that hard to believe.”

  “That explains your high school years, but that was a long time ago. You’re mature enough now, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sure that’s debatable,” he says with a smile. “At this point, I feel like I’ve waited so long, my thoughts about sex have changed.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve seen too many friends over the years who can’t stay faithful to their girlfriends or wives. And I have to wonder, because I don’t know for sure and I have no idea how you would even test the theory, how much of their inability to be faithful is because they got love and lust mixed up at a young age and now they can’t tell the difference?”

  His comment makes me pause and think about myself. Have I used sex as a substitute for love? Have I gotten love and lust mixed up? Is that even possible? I’d never thought of sex that way before, and while I’m not ashamed of myself, this is definitely a different spin on the idea.

  “I want to be faithful to my wife someday. I don’t want images of other women in my brain while I’m making love to my wife. I want to know that the only person I’ve ever felt from the inside out, the only person whose eyes I’ve looked into in the throes of passion, in the most intimate moment two people can share…. I want to know the person I have all that with is the one I love more than anyone or anything else in the world, forever.”

  My brain shorts out. That may be the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life

  He looks at me sheepishly. “Yer making me nervous,” he whispers. “Shit. Now my accent is starting to come out.”

  “I… I don’t think I’ve ever been more turned on,” I say honestly.

  “Really?”

  “The way you described the intimacy of sex. I think maybe… maybe some of us have lost sight of that.”

  He turns towards me quickly, a look of horror on his face. “Ohmygod, Tiffany. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. Oh shite.” He tugs his beanie down over his ears and rubs his face. “I’m not judging you for anything ye’ve done. I was trying to answer you honestly about why I haven’t done, well, almost anything.”

  I put my hand on his forearm. “Rowen. Stop. I don’t mean me specifically. I mean as a society, maybe we’ve lost sight of some of that.” A look of relief crosses his face. “You didn’t make me feel bad about anything. I like listening to your opinions and ideas. They’re insightful”

  “You really think my reasons for staying ‘pure’,” he says, making quotation marks, “are sexy?”

  I laugh. “That’s the most important part of this conversation to you, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shut up.” I bump him with my hip. “Let’s stop talking about this now and go find a gift for a one-year-old.” I push off the bookshelf and walk towards the kid
s’ section, a smile stretched across my face.

  There are rows and rows of colorful books. And I am overwhelmed. Whose bright idea was it to go to a bookstore to find a birthday present for a toddler?

  Oh, right. Mine.

  Quincy seems like the kind of mom who would appreciate the idea of an educational present for her son. And then there’s the ice water at the coffee kiosk here, which you can’t get anywhere else, so I’ll just push through my frustration.

  A cover with a bright picture of a baby in a swing catches my eye. I pick it up and thumb through it.

  “Hey, babe, what do you think of this?” I show it to Tiffany.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s called Peanut’s Wish.” I flip through a few of the pages. “It’s about a baby who can’t wait to be born or, I don’t know. It sounds weird when I say that. It looks cute though.”

  “Let me see.” She takes it out of my hand. “Aw, this is really cute.” She giggles and reads aloud, “He started moving down. At first he moved slowly but then he moved fast. What a great ride down the slide! It was fun!”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “That was apparently Peanut’s version of being born.”

  “Really?” I take the book back. “I’m gonna guess that’s not the way his mom remembers it.”

  She reshelves the book. “That’s actually a really sweet book. And if Chance was older, I’d buy it right now. But he’s turning one.”

  “So?” I follow her as she goes to another shelf.

  “So right now he’s going to do two things with books… eat them and tear the pages. We’d better get some board books.”

  We spend the next several minutes looking at books that were obviously written for babies. Most of them have only one picture on the page and are a quarter the size of a regular book.

  “Shit.” I say. “I can’t believe it costs ten bucks for a book that only has six pages. I can get a two-hundred-page paperback at the grocery store for the same price.”