Page 6 of Praised
In hindsight, I should have expected it. A leopard can’t change its spots or however the saying goes.
But Cody had always been really good with his tongue, whether he used it for telling me lies or eating my ass until I forgot my own name. Unfortunately, the latter made me forget the former and, well…
“Rosey!” My friend Drake shouted my name. “You need a shot!”
I threw an exhausted glance at him because he’d been the one with the horrible idea of dragging me out to a sex club that looked like it was going to send me straight to hell just for stepping over the threshold. Rapture was in Pasadena, tucked inside an old church and nestled against a grove of trees, and while I loved the idea, the timing was less than ideal. I wanted to drown my sorrows in ice cream and baked goods, not tequila and the sounds of other people getting off.
Not that I hated the sound of other people getting off. I was, in fact, a fan of anyone and everyone getting off. Myself included. I liked to hear it, hear about it, even see it if the situation allowed. Cody said that made me a voyeur, but I’d never thought that seriously about it. He must have, though, because he made sure I got an eyeful when I walked in on him with that lying, cheating, tongue of his shoved up his roommate’s asshole.
I always had a weird feeling about their relationship, but I’d listened to his assurances and believed him for months. The worst part was, I was sure they’d been sleeping together the whole time. Probably from before Cody and I even got involved, and that was just embarrassing. My imagination ran rampant, thinking of the two of them jacking each other off after Cody and I had been together, or who knew what they got up to.
Fuck.
I needed to go get tested.
Again.
“I don’t need a shot,” I told him, but he had already left me. I watched his shock of dyed pink hair disappear as he made his way through the crowd and toward the bar.
Taking advantage of his momentary absence, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and scrolled down to my text messages, finding at least half a dozen apologies from Cody sitting unread. With a sigh, I tapped the icon next to his name, a picture of us both, our heads angled together, on our very first date when he’d taken me to the Santa Monica pier.
Cody: It’s not what you’re thinking, Rose.
Cody: Adam and I are just friends.
Cody: I love you.
Cody: The thing with Adam isn’t anything serious. It’s just fun. I thought maybe one day we could all play around.
Cody: He thinks you’re really hot, and he’s not wrong.
Cody: Please give me another chance, sugar. I’m sorry.
He wasn’t sorry, though.
Rather, he was only sorry because he’d gotten caught. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have let me walk out and stew in my anger for three hours before finding the balls to reach out to me. I’d ignored him for a day, then caved in and responded, but everything he’d said had been a whole lot of the same. A lot of nothing.
I’d caught them together four days earlier, and I knew sooner or later I was going to have to get over my wounded ego and talk to him in a meaningful way because my favorite lingerie was still at his house and a matching La Perla set wasn’t something I was willing to walk away from without a fight. I just needed to let my emotions—and my sex drive—calm down.
Because for as much as I didn’t want to date a fuck boy, I did want to date a boy who fucked. Or a man would probably be better. I liked to play, I liked to have sex, and more than that, I liked to get off. I liked to getotherpeople off. It wasn’t even a self-esteem issue or anything like that either. I knew I was good-looking and I knew I was a catch. I honestly just liked fucking, and I liked people who liked to fuck.
I liked people who liked to fuck me, more specifically.
Not people who liked to fuck everyone.
But, unfortunately, they were often one and the same.
Maybe it would be good to take a break for a little while, let everything after Cody settle and then hit the ground running to see if I could find myself another man who could live up to my borderline insatiable sex drive.
“Shots!” Drake shouted in my ear, returning with two whipped cream-topped shot glasses.
“We’re too old for this shit,” I reminded him, tossing back the Blow Job before he could insist that I did it the traditional way with no hands. When I swallowed and used the back of my hand to swipe the residual whipped cream off the corner of my mouth, his glare was proof enough that I’d foiled his plan.
“You’re just getting boring.”
Drake made quite the show of tangling his fingers behind his back before taking the shot glass between his lips and throwing the whole thing back.
“Would a boring friend bring you to a place like this?” he asked.
