Chapter 28 - Nadia

We waited until the downpour changed to a light drizzle, then speed-walked the rest of the way home while holding hands. My hair was beginning to dry by the time we walked up the stone steps into the townhouse. Andy reached for the door.
“What, no kiss on the cheek?” I asked innocently.
He grinned. “I don’t want to get called a pervert again.”
“I take it back!”
It was too late; he’d opened the door and was going inside. I wondered just how serious he was about giving me a kiss on the cheek. I was riding high from our awesome date, and was tempted to do a lot more than just kiss. But Andy just wrapped me in a wet hug, then took my coat off.
“Next time, I’ll show you my pinball strategy.”
“Oh, is that a second date secret?”
He smiled. “Gotta keep the girls wanting more. Goodnight, Nadia.”
And then he went upstairs by himself.
I pulled off my heels and deposited them by the other shoes in the foyer, which gave me a view of the kitchen. I leaned around the corner to confirm it. “Braden?”
The handsome brunette was sitting at the dining room table on the other side of the kitchen, typing away on a laptop. “Hey Nadia.”
“Waiting up, huh?”
He frowned awkwardly. “Um, no?”
“My dad used to look exactly like that whenever I went on a date. He’d find an excuse to stay awake, whether it was cleaning the fireplace or rearranging the DVD shelf, but I knew the real reason.”
“My reason does involve you,” he admitted, twisting the laptop around. “I’ve been working on our backstory.”
“Backstory?”
“For when you meet my parents. Candy was right—I should’ve given you more information and prep time.” He gestured at the laptop. “So I have.”
I bent over the laptop, conscious that it gave him a juicy view of my cleavage. I scrolled the screen with my finger. There was a list of dates we had been on, with several paragraphs of information for each one. The time, where we went, what we talked about, how it ended. There was a predictable pattern of escalation with each one. A gentle kiss on date one, a longer kiss on date two, heavy petting on date three…
“I put out on date number four, huh?” I read the next line. “I guess the pasta at Del Rosso was a panty-dropper.”
“I was respectful of your boundaries up to that point,” Braden said with a grin. “But eventually you gave in.”
“Gotta put up a little fight.” I kept scrolling. “Dude, this goes on for six pages!”
Braden scowled at me. “I wanted to be thorough.”
“You swung hard to the other end of the spectrum.” I had a sneaking suspicion that this was just an excuse for him to wait up for me and Andy to get home, but I wasn’t going to call him on it. Truth be told, I was glad to have some sort of backstory to read. It was easier than ad-libbing our relationship when we met his parents. All it would take was one inconsistent answer and the plan would fail, as it had with Candy.
I sighed and said, “Want a nightcap? I need to unwind after running through the rain.”
While I made two drinks, Braden disappeared upstairs. He returned with a towel for my hair. I thanked him, wrapped my hair in the towel, and joined him at the table.
“I’ll email you a copy of the backstory,” he said after a long drink. “So you can start studying.”
“When do I read lines?” I asked, pretending like it was an audition. “How many other girls are up for the part?”
“The director has his eye on you for the role,” Braden said with a playful wink. “It’s yours to lose.”
I felt a silly grin slide onto my face. “So did you use a cheesy line to get me to bed on date four?”
“Who says it was a bed?” he smirked.
I remembered the night in the subway room, my legs wrapped around Braden while he fucked me against a work desk. Filling me completely…
“Touché,” I said.
“But yeah, I’ve got some lines that usually do the trick.”
“Let’s hear them.”
He shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. “I dunno. It’s weird saying them without context.”
“A good line,” I contended, “would work regardless of context.”
He considered that for a moment and then put his drink down. He leaned across the table toward me, maintaining intense eye-contact. I stared back at him, unable to look away from his gorgeous gaze.
“I look at a woman like this,” he said softly. Barely more than a whisper. “And then I say…”
A smile reached his eyes.
“How you doin’?”
I burst out laughing. “Dude! That’s Joey’s line from Friends!”
He leaned back in his chair. “Damnit. I was hoping you didn’t know.”
“So you’re not going to tell me your line?”
That mischievous little smile returned. “When I use a line on you, you’ll know it.”
I started to point out that he never used a line on me that night in the subway station. He’d just grabbed my hand and led me through the subway until we found a secluded spot. No words were necessary—both of us knew what the other wanted. The universal language of body chemistry.
Before I could say anything, Braden asked, “How was your date with Andy?”
“You know what? I had a great time,” I said. “Andy’s a lot of fun when you get him by himself.”
I gave him a brief overview of where we’d gone on the date, and what we’d done.
“Did he kiss you on the cheek at the end?”
I blinked. “Did he tell you he was going to?”
“No,” Braden replied, “but that’s his go-to move. Respectful, and leaves the girl wanting more.”
“Smart.”
I waited for Braden to point out that I didn’t answer the question, but he didn’t push the issue. Which was good, because I didn’t feel like kissing-and-telling. Somehow I knew Andy was the kind of guy who didn’t like to share every intimate detail with his friends.
“Andy is the sweetest guy I know,” Braden said while swirling the ice around in his drink. “He’s not always good about showing it, but it’s there. When he falls for a girl, he falls for a girl.”
“Are you saying he’s fallen for me already?”
“Not necessarily,” Braden said carefully. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if the door was halfway open.”
“It was one date. Let’s give it some more time before we declare that aspect of this whole four-person arrangement a success.”
“Fair enough,” Braden said. “What about the rest of the proposition? Dorian and Ryan?”
“Dorian’s great! He’s my new best friend, and it’s nice hanging out with a guy who wants the same thing.” I shook my head gently. “It’s tough to have guy friends without them developing feelings. Having our expectations out in the open ahead of time simplifies things. I can be myself without worrying that feelings will develop.”
“And Ryan?”
I hesitated. Did Braden know that Ryan and I had already slept together? Ryan seemed like the kind of guy who would bluntly tell everyone. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, so I should probably just tell him the truth.
But I felt weird as I tried to form the words to say so. Ryan and I slept together already, and it was fantastic. Saying so to Braden, who I’d had a steamy one-night stand with in the subway, was about as strange a situation as I could think of. My tongue refused to comply with my brain, and then the awkward silence was stretching between me and Braden.
“Ryan seems nice,” I finally said. “He has a lot of promise.”
Braden snickered. “That’s the most pleasant thing I’ve ever heard someone say about Ryan.”
“We’ll see how things go,” I said diplomatically. “I’ve only been here a few days.”
“Well, we’ve loved having you.” Ice shifted as he gestured with his drink. “I hope you feel at home here.”
I felt a tingle of excitement run up my spine. He’s loved having me here. The way I felt was a clear reminder that I still had a big old crush on Braden. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t decide if he had any feelings for me, or if our night together was just physical.
Fortunately, I’d had several beers tonight and the final nightcap pushed away the last bit of modesty I had.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“We slept together,” I said bluntly. “That night when you guys first suggested this whole arrangement. But since then, you’ve kept me at arm’s length. Was it just to prove to me that you were straight? Or…”
Or do you have actual feelings for me? Like I do for you?
He studied the grain of the table. The hesitation made my stomach sink. That was answer enough.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
“If you thought it was a mistake…”
“No!” he blurted out. His eyes met mine for an instant, then lowered back to the table. “It wasn’t a mistake. But I don’t… I don’t know what I want, Nadia.”
“Okay,” I said in a small voice. “I understand.”
Braden downed the rest of his drink and gave one firm nod. “I’ll send you my notes about our relationship history so you can study. We’ll probably have dinner with my parents in a week or two, after they get back from vacation in the Caribbean.”
“Oh, Caribbean. Fancy.”
“Yeah, they like to travel.”
I mimicked a snobby rich woman’s voice. “Oh my, they simply must summer in the Hamptons. The next time they want to visit, have them call my estate and we can arrange rooms for them. The east wing is under renovation right now—the damned historical society butting their nose in again!—but the west wing will have to suffice.”
Braden had to cover his mouth. “Yeah, uh… They actually do spend a week every summer on the south fork.”
I kept my snotty accent and said, “But of course they do! We prestigious families simply cannot go longer than three months without visiting the Hamptons. One must wash away the filth and grime of the city.”
Braden doubled over laughing, which knocked me out of my act until I was laughing just as hard. But his smile didn’t last much longer. “Okay, well, let me know if you need anything else, or want to make changes to what I’ve written.”
It was a pretty overt end to our discussion. “Yeah, okay. Night.”
“Night.”
His voice echoed in my head as I went upstairs: I don’t know what I want.
I wasn’t sure how to take that kind of answer. It wasn’t an outright rejection, but there wasn’t much good about it, either. If it were a friend who was telling me about it, I would have told them that he enjoyed the sex but didn’t really like them as more than a friend. That was the vibe I was receiving from him. But being honest with myself was a lot harder.
I was a jumble of emotions. I still had the emotional high of a wonderful first date with Andy, but now it was mixed with disappointment. And talking about that passionate night with Braden left me hungry for more than just the kiss Andy and I had shared…
When I reached the top floor of the townhouse, I saw that Ryan’s door was cracked open and a dim light was on. I paused outside our two doors, wondering…
“That’s real fuckin’ creepy, you know that?” Ryan said from within. “You need something, just come on in. No need to be weird about it.”
I opened the door and stepped inside. Ryan was in bed with his back propped up against the headboard, reading a magazine. He was wearing boxers and a black tank-top, and had one arm flexed up behind his head like a pillow.
“I bet you’re relieved to keep your job today.”
He barked a laugh. “Hell yeah I am. Didn’t see that coming. Guess I can thank the rest of you for that. You have a good time on your date?”
“I did, actually.”
“Don’t act so surprised. Andy’s a good guy. The best of us.”
I smiled. “Braden said the same thing, almost verbatim. If I didn’t know any better, you guys coordinated what to say to make him seem nicer than he is.”
Ryan arched an auburn eyebrow. “You just spent a night with him. Does it seem like Andy needs help looking nice?”
“Good point.” I nodded with my chin. “Whatcha reading?”
He held up the magazine. “Comic book. The original Amazing Spider-man from 1963. Well, a reprint of it. The original’s worth, like, a million bucks.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of adult reads comic books?”
Without missing a beat he confidently responded, “The kind who doesn’t give a fuck what other people think. Comic books are awesome.”
Confidence was attractive. Especially in a guy who was already hot and half-naked. Feeling tipsy and without inhibition, I held up three fingers.
“Never have I ever sat on my roommate’s face.”
He let the comic book slide down onto his chest. “You into that kind of thing?”
“Maybe. You gonna hold up three fingers and play the game?”
His eyes sparkled in the dim light from his bedside lamp. “How about we skip straight to the part where you smother that pretty cunt all over my face?”
I don’t remember closing the door or going to the bed, but Ryan was on his knees and pulling me toward him like I was a life preserver in rough seas. He practically ripped off my clothes, and then he fell back on the bed so I could straddle his face. His strong arms wrapped around my legs and gripped my ass, then held me down against his face like I was the meal he’d been starving for.
“Ohh,” I moaned as his tongue rolled up into my pussy. His nose pressed against my clit and his chin was up between my ass cheeks. I pushed down even harder. “That’s it. Right there.”
He moaned, which was a wonderful vibration all up in my lady-bits.
I smothered his face, taking my time as he licked in, and out, and all around my pussy, and soon I was arching my back and bucking against him like he was a mechanical bull I had to hold onto.