Cassie: Fuck, Thatcher. That’s like telling me not to breathe or eat nachos. I just can’t stop doing any of it.
I shook my head and smiled. I’d have to remember to pick up nachos on the way home tonight.
Me: Just…I was just thinking about how vulnerable a woman can be in the city.
Cassie: I carry a switchblade between my tits.
Me: Now, I know that’s not true. It’d never stay put.
Cassie: Actually, my tits are pretty hospitable.
Me: I fucking bet they are. Are they going to offer me a drink later? ;)
Cassie: Gross. And don’t ever use a wink emoji again. Text messages are the only place I know I can escape your fucking wink.
Me: Is that an official rule?
Cassie: YES. Consider it #56.
Me: So you accept #55?
Cassie: Sure. I’ve always wanted to pepper spray somebody anyway.
Me: Jesus. Don’t just go spraying random people.
Cassie: They won’t be completely random. Just people that piss me off.
Me: Fuck. The Mace is just gonna get you in even more trouble, isn’t it?
Cassie: Only time will tell, Thatcher.
Only when someone bumped me from behind did I remember I wasn’t alone with her. All the sounds of the city came back immediately, finally penetrating the barrier her witty comebacks had formed around me. After getting back from Vegas and her parents’ house a couple of days ago, it was starting to happen all the time.
I shook my head and dropped my phone back into the front pocket of my slacks before stepping up to the door of Wes’s building and holding it open for a woman on her way out. Hair slicked back in a sleek ponytail and wearing skintight head to knee black, she smiled up at me from under her lashes and did a spin as she stepped past me so she could keep eye contact.
On more than one occasion that kind of move had led to dinner and horizontal dancing, but today, all I cared to exchange was a friendly smile. She raised a brow as if to ask me if I was sure, but it didn’t slow her down. All in one move, she kept up her momentum, circling right back to her path and catwalking directly away from me.
I didn’t even wait to watch her go.
“Hey, Mr. Kelly,” one of the security guards greeted me. I wasn’t at Mavericks headquarters a ton, but I’d definitely been there before, and Sam and I had a running commentary on Yankees baseball.
“Hey, Sam. You see the game two nights ago?”
“Nah, man. I had to work the night shift at my other job. I heard Rodriguez nailed that shit in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, though. Saved our asses.”
I just nodded as I strolled past him, past the elevators, and straight to the stairwell door.
The Mavericks were only on the fourth floor, so I didn’t mind making the climb in my suit. And with the amount that I’d been sitting around my apartment with Cassie and eating, I needed to get in a little exercise.
The receptionist’s head jerked up as I pushed open the stairwell door into the entry in front of the Mavericks offices, but the surprise on her face melted into a smile when she saw it was me.
She looked at me like she knew the dimensions of my cock, but I’d always been careful to keep that shit separate. I never slept with anyone my circle of friends worked with. I flirted with them, which was probably what had Susie’s toothy smile making a bid to eat up her entire face, but I never actually messed around.
“Susie,” I greeted as I approached her desk with a smile.
Her porcelain cheeks flushed pink. “Hi, Mr. Kelly.”
“I’ve got a meeting with Wes.”
She nodded as though she already knew, but she signaled me to wait one minute with her forefinger. Punching a couple of numbers into the phone that I assumed connected her to Wes’s assistant, she checked to see if I could go back.
We exchanged a few words while I waited, and I moved my eyes around the office rather than keeping them on her. The old candid player photos were more interesting than Susie anyway. Don’t get me wrong; she was pretty in the conventional way, soft features and golden-blond hair, but she didn’t even register on my dick’s radar.
Apparently, he only gave feedback to supercell women now, the kind that fucking lit up your world with lightning-like surprises and thunderous opinions—the ones whose looks were ominous and their bite was just as bad as their bark. The kind of women who weren’t a kind of women at all, but instead, a woman all their own. The kind of woman who wasn’t just a woman because she was fucking Cassie.
She was a dozen things at once, and I couldn’t fucking get a single one out of my head.