Scored (V-Card Diaries 1)

But after Whitney says, “Okay, then maybe we can talk. Hope you feel better soon,” and disappears into the elevator, I don’t text Evie to cancel.

In fact, I’m still standing in my doorway when Evie steps out of the elevator a few minutes later and starts toward me in a black mini dress with white stripes down the sides that clings to her curves. Paired with white-and-red rose-printed Vans on her feet and simple star earrings in her ears, she shouldn’t reduce me to a puddle of lust, but…she does.

I’m still trying to pull myself together when she says, “Sorry I’m late. I got busy drawing and lost track of time.” She stops in front of me, a mixture of uncertainty and flirtation in her tone as she adds, “I was drawing your hand and it turned out really sexy. If you’re good, I might show it to you later.”

“And if I find myself unable to be good?” I ask, my voice husky for reasons that have nothing to do with my fake coughing fit. “Because this dress…”

She smiles. “Better than overalls, right?”

“So much better.” I push the door open behind me. “You ready for this?”

She swallows before letting out a soft laugh. “As ready as I’ll ever be, but there’s one thing we should discuss first.” She takes a bracing breath and takes my hand. “Come on. Best if we talk about this inside where no one can hear you scream. Or me scream, when you say there’s no way you’re going to indulge my insanity.”

“All right,” I say, pulling her inside and shutting the door, already knowing I’m going to say yes, no matter how insane her request.

Her hand feels that good in mine.

Looking back later, I’ll see this as the first warning sign of trouble. But at the moment all I feel is happy to see her and even happier to finally have her all to myself.

Chapter 19

Evie

This should feel weird.

I’m here for a booty call.

Or booty call practice, anyway.

I have never done either of those things, Ian and I have spent very little time together one-on-one and none of that has been while we were naked, and despite all my big talk about not needing sex lessons…I might actually need sex lessons.

I’m a good kisser and decent at flirting, but I’ve never given a man a blow job. I almost did once, for Vince’s birthday, but I chickened out at the last minute. It just didn’t feel right to get down on my knees and put his penis in my mouth when I’d never even seen it before that night. We were still making out a lot at that point but always with our clothes on. Vince had said he was happy to take things slow, and I was naïve enough to believe him.

And now, here I am, facing the sexiest man alive across his coffee table with very little idea what to do with him. In addition to the no-blow-job factor, I can also count the number of hand jobs I’ve given on…

Well, one hand.

Vince was so unimpressed with my technique that on one occasion he fell asleep in the middle of my sweaty-palmed attempts to make him feel good. He said it was his fault for staying up late at a concert the night before and skipping his afternoon coffee, but it took my ego a long time to recover from that one.

By the time it had, Vince wasn’t kissing me nearly as much anymore. If I had to guess, I’m betting that was around when he started dating his fiancée. And even with another woman taking the edge off behind the scenes, Vince still found my sexy-time efforts so unsatisfactory that he started cutting our kissing sessions short and heading home instead of spending the night on the couch so we could grab breakfast the next morning the way he did when we started dating.

Any one of those things should be enough to have me shaking in my tennis shoes right now, but shockingly, I’m not nervous.

At least, not about the intimate stuff.

My other request is a source of anxiety but hopefully Ian won’t think I’m crazy. Or not too crazy.

“What’s on your mind, Feisty?” he asks, using that nickname I can’t decide if I love or hate. Before recently, I wouldn’t have described myself as “feisty,” but obviously that’s changing or I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.

“Right before I left Studio, Derrick showed up. He mentioned something about swinging by your place to talk. I convinced him not to,” I say, when Ian’s eyes widen, “but it was a close call. And then, I’m pretty sure I saw Whitney heading into the subway station as I was on my way out. Does she live in the area?”

He exhales. “No, she doesn’t. But she was here a few minutes ago. She stopped to get her things, but I managed to put her off until next week. I knew if she was still around when you showed up, any chance of keeping this under wraps would be over.”