Moody Bastard

For a stunned moment, Sydney Morgan gazed at the wild panther of a man up on stage, and she wondered what in the world she was going to do with him now that she’d bought him.

“Did you win?” one of the ladies in the row before hers turned to ask.

Sydney sat there, her pallet trembling in her hand, still disbelieving that it was over and the whirlwind of testosterone and proud owner of a big black frown was actually hers for the evening.

“I think I did,” she said, expelling a nervous breath. Wow. This was the most exciting thing she’d been in since…ever.

“You know, they say he has a ring in his pecker! And that of course it’s huge…” one woman said.

“And that he can make you come with just his tongue in your mouth!”

Sydney’s nerves only went a little more ragged at that. But no matter how frightened she was over the possibility of having purchased too much male for the task at hand, she was at least pleased with the fact that she had won him.

Besides, for what Sydney needed, he was rather perfect, especially if you overlooked the fact that he was incredibly, disturbingly handsome.

He was tall. But Sydney didn’t like tall men. They made her feel small and made her crane her neck to look up at them.

He was also dark-haired. She didn’t like that at all. Dark-haired men intimidated her, and at this point in her life, she preferred light-haired men with kind eyes.

Black eyes? Also not her favorite. Too…she shuddered, unable to come up with a word.

The muscles on his body… She lifted her gaze to study him again, and her stomach clenched. How did one even get those kinds of muscles? He looked like a football player, not a linebacker, but a runner or a quarterback. She could trace each of his muscles with a pen; the square of his abs, his hard arms, his pectorals.

A tattoo curled around his bicep and slid, vine-like and dark, into his right chest, almost like a serpent curling around his right nipple. That alone made him look threatening, but when you added the glinting piercings on both of his nipples, and the scowl he’d been sending in Sydney’s direction, she should’ve been pissing in her pants.

Except that she already knew Damien Knight had a personality that rivaled battery acid; so she hadn’t expected any less from him.

In fact, if it weren’t for the word “asshole” which always seemed attached to him, Sydney had no doubt she would have had to go up to half a million for him.

So thank you, Damien, for being such a dickwad and sparing my savings for the service you will soon provide.

She drew in a deep breath, then expelled it, remembering Court Reynolds’s boyish, handsome face. He’d been her best friend since college, and Sydney had lately realized that she loved him. But she had no idea how to take their relationship to the next level, and Court, with his ADHD, was extremely socially awkward.

It was up to Sydney to make him realize he loved her, too. And yet to do that, she needed to seduce him, and unfortunately, she hadn’t a clue where to begin.

Brokenhearted since she was fifteen, she’d had no interest in men until…well, Court.

So why not acquire some experience from a man who was a total womanizer and would pose zero risk whatsoever to her feelings for Court? Plus, he’d made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

She figured that if she was going to take sex advice, she needed to dislike the man as much as possible to avoid any intimacy, and vice versa.

And she didn’t remember disliking someone so much in her entire lifetime as Damien Knight. The only thing tame about Damien was his name. Yes, the man put the ‘bad’ in bad boy but he especially put the ‘ass’ in asshole.

He probably didn’t even remember her, but she remembered every second of their previous, and often painful, encounters growing up. She especially remembered every one of his snide remarks about her hair.

Yep. Asshole.

He was still scowling at her.

And Sydney scowled right back.

“Congratulations!” a group of three young

women sidled over, gushing and tittering as Sydney stood. “Oh my god, he’s so delish, I could lick him up with a spoon. I love moody men, they get me going.”

Sydney smiled warmly and got her pallet, thanking God that she did not. She liked men that made her feel safe and secure and made her smile, like Court. But Damien and his obvious stamina in bed and overwhelming, in-your-face sexuality was an evil necessity in this case. Who else would know more about sex than one who practically breathed it, ate it, and slept with it?

Her heart speeded as she headed over to him.