“Really.” He reached up and grasped my leg, bringing the heel of my boot into his lap. If I were so inclined, I could have probably dug into his crotch, but I wasn’t that big of a bitch. At least not yet. “Does Brian know that? You were friendly.”
“I’m not going to fuck him,” I snapped. I tried to pull my foot away, but he held on tight. Then, just to be nasty, “Well, not again, at least.”
Darren tightened his grip further before he relaxed. He left my foot in his lap and ran his hands up the red leather of the boot along the length of my leg. They went to midthigh, ridiculously ostentatious things that I rarely wore, but adored almost more than anything I owned. Even though I couldn’t feel his fingers through the leather, the muscles in my thigh still jumped as he reached the inseam where the silver zipper lay. It only made it worse when I saw just how close his hands were to my dick. More good pain came from that.
“Have you fucked him before?” I asked, trying to get things back under control.
“No,” Darren said, pulling the zipper down slowly. He was careful not to let the zipper catch on the fishnets I wore underneath. Even though the music was loud and the people were loud, I thought it possible the sound of that zipper going down was the loudest thing of all. The bass from the electro-candy pop caused my skin to buzz and vibrate every time it hit and crawled up the walls. His fingers against the red leather, silver zipper, and black fishnets threatened to short out any rational thought I had. “I haven’t fucked him before.”
“Oh really,” I said, because when I was nervous, I was an asshole. “Suppose there’s a first time for everything.”
He snorted as he slid the boot off. “I don’t fuck everything that moves.”
“Almost,” I said. “And if you think about it, is there really that big of a difference?”
He slid the boot off and I bit back the groan when his fingers squeezed my ankle. “There’s a difference,” he said. Then, “He’s going to bid on me.”
“So I heard.” I watched as he carefully placed my foot on the floor before he reached up and took my other leg in hand, pulling the heel to his lap. “Lucky you.”
“And you can’t bid on Brian.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“You’re the MC,” he said, smiling wickedly. “You said it yourself. You’re there to host. Nothing else.”
“You don’t get to—” And then his hands found the other zipper, but there was intent this time, because the press of his fingers against my thigh wasn’t the faint scrape it’d been before. This was pressing harder into my thigh, like he was trying to get me to shut up. It shouldn’t have worked, because even though I was Sandy, there was always going to be a little Helena in me, and she refused to let anyone shut her up.
The problem was that it did work.
Because I was entranced by the weight of his hand. There was a persistent push to it now, my foot trapped between his thighs as he pressed them together, the grip he had on the back of my knee as he peeled the zipper down, fingers entwining in the fishnet, pulling at it, the smooth skin of my leg damp with sweat, and he grunted like he was punched in the stomach.
“I get to,” he said. “I get to because those are the rules. Do you remember?”
“I remember rule one,” I said hoarsely. “Where I said you didn’t get to touch me unless I invited you.”
“And you did,” he said, lip curling. “You asked for my help. Rule two. The first rule was stupid.”
He lifted my foot from between his thighs and, in one smooth motion, pulled the boot off and let it fall t
o the floor beside us.
I thought it strange that there were a few hundred people below us and none of them knew about the way he touched me.
He stared down at my foot in his hand, his thumb brushing along the side.
“Rule ten,” I said.
He laughed and finally, finally looked up at me. His eyes were dark and hooded, that familiar smirk on his face that I knew so well, that I sometimes despised and sometimes adored. I didn’t know which it was right now that I felt, because I thought it a very real possibility I was in shock. “That’s the one we don’t talk about,” he said, and his eyes darted down my chest, my nipples harder than they’d ever been. I felt his gaze crawl along my skin, goose bumps rising in the wake.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why,” he repeated.
“Why don’t we talk about it?”
He pushed my foot off his lap. He rocked back on his heels. “Stand up.”
“Darren.”