Off Chance (Off 5)

Flynn bursts out laughing. "That it is."

"I would never offer that to them though, unless you were on board. It's my sexy body you'd be giving up for a while."

Flynn stops walking and turns to me. Taking both of my hands in his, he looks at me with such adulation, that my heart skips a beat. "Rowan... you are the kindest, most wonderful woman on the face of the earth. I'm so proud to be your husband. If you want to do this for them, you have my full support."

Tears well up in my eyes--damn hormones--and I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him. "You've always given me devotion and support... from the day we first met. How many women can say that?"

"None," he says with a laugh. "They broke the mold with me."

"That they did," I agree.

Flynn gathers me in and kisses me... deeply. It sends a thrill straight through my body and I feel the baby's foot start a mad beating rhythm in response. I kiss him back, pouring all of my love and desire into it.

Pulling back, Flynn says, "Damn, woman. How about I go into the bathroom with you and we have monkey sex in a stall?"

I put my hands on his chest and playfully push him away. "Ewww. That's gross."

Turning to the bathroom, I throw over my shoulder. "I'm going to pee... alone."

"I'll be waiting for you... right here," he says, his eyes penetrating me.

"You're always there for me," I tell him.

"Always."

If you enjoyed Off Chance as much as I enjoyed writing it, it would mean a lot for you to give me a review on Amazon.

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THE THRILL OF IT

by Lauren Blakely

Releasing November 21, 2013

A new adult story of Love. Sex. Addiction. Manipulation. Blackmail. And Power...

Some say love can be an addiction. Others say it's the thing that makes life worth living.

Let me tell you everything I know about love...

Love isn't patient, love isn't kind. Love is a game, a chase. A thrill. Love is wild and war-like, and every man and woman must fight for themselves.

At least that's how it was for me.

A high-priced virgin call girl by the time I started college, I was addicted to love and to sex.

Even though I've never had either.

I controlled love, played it, and held the world in the palm of my hands.

Then I fell down from those highs, and I'm being blackmailed for all my mistakes, forced to keep secrets from everyone, except the only guy I don't regret.

Trey.

****

With all the other women, I knew what they were. They were temporary.

They were pills, they were bottles, they took away all the pain, and numbed the awful memories that wore away at my ragged, wasted heart.

Until I met Harley.

She's the only girl I ever missed when she walked away. But now she's back in my life, every day, and there are no guarantees for us, especially since I don't know how to tell her my secrets. What happened to my family.

All I know is she's the closest I've ever come to something real, and I want to feel every second of it.

Chapter One

Harley

I'm a sex addict and a virgin.

I know everything about sex and I've never done it, though I came close last night.

I know nothing about love.

I know men.

I can size up a guy in seconds. If he wants my sweet and innocent side, or my sophisticated persona, or if he just wants me to shut up and nod while he talks about his day, because some just want to talk. I know how he'll like it, how he'll want it, and I know by the end of the hour or two if he'll request me again.

But those days are behind me.

The past is the past.

This is now.

That's what I have to believe as I walk into a church in Chelsea off Ninth Avenue to repent. It's a fading white church, rather plain looking, unmarked by flying buttresses or soaring angels. The white brick is streaked with gray from soot and dirt and New York itself breezing by over the years. There's a requisite steeple on top, unassuming, but still there pointing to the sky, and a small plaque outside the doors that declares its non-denominational-ness. Every flavor of fucked-up is welcome.

On Mondays, you can find the alcoholics. On Tuesdays the former drug abusers. On Wednesdays this place is home to those trying to kick the gambling habit. And tonight? I will spend the next hour with people like me, who are addicted to love and sex, sex and love.

Some to both. Some to only one.

I know both in ways I never wanted to. But in ways I still long for too.

That's the problem.

I am nineteen years old and I have kissed twenty-one guys, which amounts to three guys per year since my first kiss at age thirteen. I kept a running list of their first names and how they rated. They were all ones or zeroes. Even so, all those names on the list are all the reasons why I'm pushing open these wooden doors, the brown paint cracked and peeling.

Fitting. I am cracked and brittle too, hardened by all the things I saw, and mostly all the things I heard over the years.

I spot the first sign and I stop in my tracks. The blocky letters wallop me with the reality that now I belong to a club I never wanted to be in.

On a sheet of white paper the words SLAA-College have been written in all caps with a big blue marker.

How embarrassing. As if anyone can't figure out what the acronym means. But still, I follow the arrows on the sign pointing to the stairwell, then down the musty wooden steps that creak at every footfall as they announce my descent to the basement. More signs are plastered to the flimsy brown plywall, more arrows directing me through the dark hallway, around the corner, then past another bend, deep into the bowels of the church.

My insides are comprised of knots tightening in and wrenching around themselves, pinching all my internal organs.

I wish, I wish, I wish that I weren't going here.

But yet, I have to.

I took the fall and that brought me here.

I run my fingers across the fabric of my red shirt that's touching my shoulder, tender today after my new tattoo. My reminder of who I was. But even so, the reminder on my skin is not even to quell the nerves. They snake through me, setting up camp in every cell of my body, wending through me as I follow the arrows, and enter a standard-issue Sunday School room with thinning brown industrial carpet. Earlier in the week this room was probably teeming with cutesy blue wooden chairs adorned with drawn angels, clouds and fluffy bunnies. Now it's filled with cold, hard, folding metal chairs for addicts. The walls are bare, except for a few inspirational posters -- "Hang in There" with the kitten dangling from a branch, "Perseverance" with a man climbing a snow-capped mountain, and "Patience" with a lone woman standing at the edge of a cold beach in the winter.

I'm five minutes early and there's one other person in the room. A thin woman with pink hair cut in a stick-straight bob rises and greets me.

"Hi. I'm Joanne. Welcome to the SLAA meeting," she says, pronouncing the name of the group like slaw.

"Layla," I mumble, not sure how words are even coming out of my mouth as I give her a fake name. There is no way I'd use my real name here. Besides, Layla is the name that brought me here. Layla is my other name. Layla is the other me.

I shake Joanne's hand. It feels smooth, and she smells like lavender. Maybe she just put on lotion.

"Coffee?" She smiles brightly at me, as if coffee is the answer to every addict's deepest desires. Because it's the only acceptable drug.

I am a junkie. I take what I can get.

I nod, barely able to speak. I sit in one of the chairs, as Joanne pours coffee from a pot into a chipped ceramic mug with the slogan When in Doubt, Don't.

Great. If only I'd had a collection of mugs embl

azoned with Keep it Simple and Just for Today, maybe I've never have slid down that slippery slope into Layla.

"I'm so glad you're here, Layla." Joanne adds, flashing me another happy grin. "Do you knit?"

Crap.

Do I have to make small talk with her? With anyone?

She gestures to her canvas bag, spilling over with yarn and steely blue knitting needles and what looks to be the start of a maroon scarf.

"I'm not very crafty," I say and leave it at that, as she talks about the scarf she is working on, and how she's going to pair it with a matching sweater, and I simply smile at her without showing any teeth.

There. I'm keeping it simple.

I'd rather go mute for this meeting because my mouth feels like cotton and my head is a pinball machine and the last thing I want to do right now is talk about how my life has spun out of control.

Except for last night. Because there is one guy who didn't make it on my list. One guy who never felt like a list. The guy from last night who inked my shoulder, and kissed my body, and who gave me something I've never felt before - touch without agenda. A true and real want. He didn't want anything more from me than me. It was such a foreign feeling, but such a wondrous one.

I'll never see him again.

Soon the room starts to fill and I keep my head down, doing everything I can not to meet their eyes. I don't want to know what other addicts look like. I don't want to know if they look like me. I stare at my shoes, my Mary Janes, the black buckle shiny because it's always shiny because that's what made me top of the line. I was the whole package - the shoes, the plaid skirt, the white blouse, the beyond-innocent look on my face.

I hate that I miss that me.

I miss her terribly.

Even after last night, and all that it could have become, all the ways it was different from the past, I still miss me when I was Layla.

The circle of chairs has been filled in with guys and girls and as I scan their faces all I see are their secrets.

Then my blood goes both hot and cold when I see him. The guy from last night with the scar across his right cheek.