Kiss Me Not (Kiss Me 1)

Mostly because I was thinking about her far too much for someone who wasn’t directly in front of me.

I also had absolutely no business thinking about her. She was my sister’s best friend, for the love of God. I needed the rest of me to get that damn memo, though, because it was seriously lagging right now.

My attraction to the feisty blonde librarian was a moot point. She and I could not and would not ever be together. We were like chalk and cheese, and I was ninety percent sure she didn’t even like me as a person.

There was no chance of kissing her, let alone anything else.

I was okay with that. Even though Halley was just about the only person I would entertain dating right now—

Wait, shit, no, that wasn’t right.

Someone like her.

Or maybe Halley herself, if it meant I got to pull back the layers of her life and find out what was wrong with her.

Something had to be wrong with her.

I fucking stood by that. Nobody, ever, could be as perfect as she appeared to be.

The curtain swung open, and Halley stormed in. Her hair flew around her head, framing it like a lion’s mane, and she shoved the curtain shut behind her with a shout of, “Shut your mouth, Lindsay!”

My lips tugged to one side. Ah. My friend Lindsay was outside again. I wasn’t surprised about that—when she’d come in here to kiss me last night, she’d whispered something in my ear that would have made a room full of gigolos blush.

Unfortunately for her, it hadn’t even made my cock twitch.

“What are you looking at?” Halley snapped, turning to me with a flick that made her hair go even wilder. “Do you want a picture?”

“Whoa, where did that come from?” I held up my hands. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“No, but you’re looking at me as though you’ve just seen a bunch of nudes and are figuring out how to exploit me.”

“That’s an interestingly accurate situation. Have you been there before?”

“Preston, fuck off.”

I got up and jumped off the stage. “Hey, what’s up?” I moved the ropes to the side and walked over to her.

It was against my better judgment, I won’t lie. Approaching an angry Halley was probably close to waving a red flag at an angry bull.

She huffed, turning, and hit me with a dark look. Her bright blue eyes were red hot, flaring with the annoyance she wasn’t bothering to hide at all. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Any woman who says that she’s fine is not fine.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Any woman who repeats that she’s fine is definitely not fine.”

“Any man who keeps harping on at a woman who’s said she’s fine is cruising for a bruising!”

“Feisty.” I grinned and put my hands in my pockets.

“Don’t, Preston.” She dropped her purse on the ground and fluffed her hands through her hair. “I have to switch on and pretend like I want to be here today when I don’t, all right? Just leave it.”

I looked at her for a moment as she pulled a mirror out of her purse, flipped it open, and checked her reflection. After a moment of looking, she pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse, too, and uncapped it.

She applied it expertly, painting her full lips in a scarlet red color that matched both her glasses and earrings today.

Don’t ask me how I knew that. I didn’t want to fucking address it right now.

Halley pressed her lips together before she put a folded up tissue between them, blotted her lipstick on it, then herself again in the mirror.

I would never understand women.

She stood up and tucked the tissue into her ass pocket. “Let’s do this. Joe! Let ‘em in!”

I paused as she flicked her hair over her shoulder and jumped up onto the stage, taking her stool and plastering a smile on her face like she hadn’t just been snapping at me.

The curtains swished, and I stepped up onto my side of the stage and sat on the stool. There was barely any room between us, but that didn’t stop me leaning back and saying, “I know you’re not fine.”

“Shut up, Preston.”

“We’re going to talk about this.”

“No, we aren’t!”

“We are.”

“We aren’t!”

She got the last word because the curtains opened fully and allowed in the people who’d been waiting outside. My line was a mix of young women and older ones, from twenty-somethings to at least seventy. Halley’s was more focused on the teens and the older guys, but there were a few men in there close to our age.

I ignored how my stomach flipped with annoyance.

She could kiss anyone she wanted, just like I could.

I had no claim to her.

That didn’t mean to say I had to like it.

The only way I’d get through this week would be if I actually got to kiss her so I’d stop thinking about it for ten minutes.