When I pass through the door, I murmur quietly to him, “Just brace yourself. I don’t know who Dana’s friend is, but Dana herself is a barrel of fireworks, and the pair of them might literally try to devour you whole. Like, you’re probably on the menu to them.”
Stefan quirks an eyebrow. “Could you maybe make that sound a skosh less sexy? Then I might take your warning seriously.”
I shoot him a look. “Really? Sexy? After last night when I massaged your butthole with my tongue for the third time this week?”
His face straightens up at once. “Ryan …” he mumbles under his breath in warning.
“I’m just warming it up.” I bite my lip. “Y’know, for when I get the real thing in it.”
“Your cock’s going nowhere near my ass.”
“You say that now.”
“And I mean it,” he states, his words as hard as hammers.
Fuck, I love when he gets that face and talks like that. It’s going to make the reward of actually having sex with him all that much more sweet. “On that note, let’s go have some dinner with a couple women who want our nuts.”
“I’m putting you over my knee when we get back,” he warns me, his voice still hard and low. “And you’re not getting off of it until you’re red as a cherry and begging me to stop.”
I shoot his own words back at him. “Uh … could you perhaps make that sound a skosh less sexy? Then I might take your warning seriously.”
He growls at me.
I chuckle, shake my head, then lead the way.
The pair of us find the pair of them in the far corner of the restaurant by a bunch of windows that look out onto the street. Dana’s eyes light up as she waves her hands to draw us over to their table, which is a tall, circular one with tall chairs to match. Dana’s friend is like a carbon copy of herself: sexy and striking with a wild mane of brown hair and tiny heart-shaped lips. She has about a tenth the vigor of Dana, however, which makes her come off downright meek in comparison.
“This is Angela,” Dana announces, presenting her friend. “And you must be Stefan Baker.”
“Just Stefan,” he tells her teasingly with a sexy wink and a lopsided smile.
Dana giggles—ugh—and then extends her hand, her mile-long red nails touching his palm first in the handshake. “It is lovely to finally meet you.”
“Well, according to you and my boy Ryan here, we’ve already met, though I was covered from neck to ass in beer. Apologies for that awful first impression.” He gives me a quick, hearty nudge, then extends a hand over the table to Angela. “Nice to meet you too, Angela.”
She nods, squeaks out a word that none of us hear, and takes his hand, shaking it daintily before reclaiming her seat.
Stefan and I sit next to each other with the ladies on either side of us. After a bit of small talk—where Dana explains what she does in the front office, Angela reveals she knits sweaters and rainbow-colored scarves, and Stefan asks them a question or two about their respective interests—we are approached by a waiter with a man-bun who’s missing a front tooth to offer us menus and semi-cloudy glasses of water. The menus stick together, but we manage to inspect them long enough to make our orders and then wonder whether we ought to wash our hands after touching them before we get our meals.
The last thing on Dana’s mind is the stickiness of the menus, judging from the frequency of her lip-licking and the way her eyes drink in the sight of Stefan. Angela, sweet and quiet, just sips her water and listens, her big brown eyes staring at Stefan, too. After some time, our meals are served, and Dana and I each get our margaritas that we ordered, courtesy of me. I didn’t forget.
“Tell me about how you two met,” Dana suggests, stirring her margarita with a straw as her eyes flit back and forth between us.
“Little League.” Stefan turns his eyes to me as he answers, the hint of a smile on his lips. “We played ball together. Both made the high school team.”
“Mmm. Ryan told me that part. Bet you two made a cute pair of ballplayers,” Dana murmurs, then throws me a little wink.
I smile because I’m polite.
Or there are ants in my pants and I’m trying not to scream.
“Yeah, totally adorable,” agrees Stefan, then throws an arm around my neck and pulls me into half a headlock, which I swiftly dodge, giving him a shove and stifling a laugh. “Hell, we were so ‘cute’ together that people even thought we were a couple.”
My head snaps to him at once.
“Really?” asks Dana, lifting her brows with amusement.
“Yep.” Stefan smirks and shoots me a look. “Apparently they all even talked about us behind our backs.”