Talk Flirty To Me (Cheap Thrills 4)

Carefully making my way down the steps, I stopped at the bottom to give my ankle a second to adjust. It wasn’t bad as in screaming my head off bad, but it wasn’t great as in skipping and hopping around great. Once it had settled down and the piercing pain was a bit easier I started off walking, once again upset that I couldn’t wear heels to work today. I’d been wearing heels and wedges for as long as I could remember because as the shortest of four kids I’d had to so that I didn’t get sat on. By that I mean literally sat on because my brothers never once failed to do it and say they hadn’t seen me there when I made a noise because they weighed a ton. I was also the shortest in my grade throughout the whole time I was at school and that’d sucked even more. I wasn’t even that short, it’s just that everyone else was so much taller. Unless it was flip flops, wearing flat shoes was a hell no for me.

I kept my eyes on the ground as I walked across the garage to where Hurst’s car was, making sure I didn’t step on anything or accidentally kick something. Flip flops in a garage wasn’t a smart thing to do, in fact it was a health and safety hazard, but I didn’t own any other flat shoes so I’d had to wear them. Seeing that they’d moved his car from the bay furthest away, I turned to walk out of the door to the lot and had to bite back the groan when I saw who Ren was talking to – Shane Perkins.

Shane was someone my sister had dated for all of three dates until she’d dumped him because he was a skeezy phlegm wad. Plus, she’d been eighteen and he’d been twenty-six at the time, so my dad hadn’t exactly been over the moon about it. I’d had the misfortune to be there when he’d collected her for the first two dates, and on the third date he’d told her he wanted a threesome with her and me. After that, every time I saw him, he found a way to make me feel uncomfortable and dirty so I avoided him as much as I could. Added onto that was the fact that he knew my cousin Effie and even though I loved her, she was a total wreck and hung out with the wrong crowd. Him being part of that crowd wasn’t a surprise, it was a disappointment. When Aura had dumped him, I swear I’d almost cried big, fat happy tears because I figured it meant I’d never have to see him again. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. He kept popping up in the weirdest places, and I could have sworn I’d seen him walking down a street near my house on the development this morning even though he didn’t live there.

Before I could say anything to Ren, Shane gave me a slow dirty look over and grinned when he saw my shoes. “Hey, sexy. If you go running in those, it’ll sound like what I’m gonna do to you later.”

Thinking about the noise my flip flops made when I walked and imagining it happening at a faster rate, it was obvious what he meant. I only just managed to hold onto the contents of my stomach for Ren’s sake and ignored him.

Ren, however, didn’t. “You want my fist in your face, Shane?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t wanna do her,” he laughed, throwing his arm in my direction. “Fuck, bet she’s tighter than…”

He didn’t say anything else because Jarrod had appeared out of nowhere and had him by the neck of his t-shirt. “You’ve been warned once by Ren and now you’ll be warned once by me – shut the fuck up. She doesn’t exist for you, you hear me?”

“She wants it, man. Did her sister and it was ok, but Katy? Fuck yeah.”

He was lying because Aura hadn’t let him do anything with her, not even when he tried to kiss her. But at the thought of him ‘doing’ me, nothing could have held back the gag that hit me as he said that, not one thing, and it was loud, too, and got all of their eyes on me. Covering my mouth with a hand and choking back the next one, I mumbled, “Sorry.”

“Go back to your office for a minute, honey, ok?” Ren called as he looked back at Shane. “We’ll be up in a bit.”

Not needing to be told twice, I carefully turned around and limped back from whence I came. Five minutes later, Ren walked in and sat down heavily in the chair in front of my desk.

“I fucking hate that guy,” he growled. “I’d call him a dick but that’s offensive to dicks.”