“Emphasis on little.”
“When it comes to you, Cassie, I’ll take what I can get.” He smiles like a hungry man about to feast. “Emphasis on take.”
“Did you need something or are you just trying to distract me from my tables?” I say, cocking my hip to the side and balancing the tray on it.
“Do I distract you?” He steps closer. I inhale the smell of him like a spell, a mix of cedar and citrus and something sweet taking over every cell in my body.
I exhale. “Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, but more breathlessly than I expected.
“Then pay attention to the orders,” he says. He takes three speared olives from the containers on the bar and puts one in each martini. “This is the easy part of the job.”
“Maybe that’s why I missed it,” I say. “I prefer doing things that are hard.” I let my gaze trickle down from his face, past his chest, pausing at his pelvis. When I look up at him again, his smile has gone from hungry man to starving, ready to devour the first thing he sees.
And he’s looking right at me.
He raises his eyebrows. “You’re walking a very thin line tonight, tiger.”
“You gonna cross it?” I say.
He leans toward me, his eyes narrowed but bright, even in the darkness of the bar. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
I stand on my tiptoes and tilt my mouth toward his. “Oh, I always finish,” I say as I turn to go deliver my drinks, my slow walk the complete opposite of the racing of my heart, like we’re playing a tense game of hide and seek.
And based on the way I can feel his eyes focused on the swivel of my hips, I don’t think I’d mind being caught.
RYDER
CH. 8
She’s swallowed up by the crowd as she turns away from me, but all I can think about is Cassie’s mouth swallowing my cock, her soft lips moving up and down my hard shaft as my hands comb through her long, blond hair, rub over her naked back, then across her ribcage, cupping her tits as my thumbs drift lightly across her hard nipples, making her moan and reach between her legs with her own hand to stroke her wet, pink *.
“You gonna hit that?” Cash says.
“What?”
From behind the bar, Cash points to my glass of whiskey, less than half gone. “You gonna finish it? Because if not,” he says, then takes the glass and throws it back in one gulp.
“You didn’t even let me answer,” I say.
“You’re too slow,” he says. “Better speed it up if you want to get to her first, too.”
“Get to who first?”
Cash laughs. “No need to play coy with me, Ryde. You were practically going down on Cassie with your eyeballs a second ago, and I want you to know, I’m in full support, dude. She’s hot. And smart. Maybe too smart for you.”
“You’ve got it all wrong. I was just instructing my new employee on the nuances of her job,” I say.
“While imagining her naked.”
I shake my head. “You need to get laid more,” I say. “I sense some pent-up projection.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Katie and I had sex in her car right before her shift started tonight, so I’m good. This is about you and your blue balls.”
“You and our waitress Katie?” I say.
Cash shrugs. “Yeah, it’s totally casual,” he says. “Like a stress-reliever thing for her. She’s pre-med at Emory.”
“How charitable of you.”
He smiles. “I do what I can to keep the staff happy,” he says. “But I know I can be hard to resist, so don’t worry. I’ll stay away from Cassie. Don’t know if I can say the same for everyone else.” He nods at the middle of the floor, where a couple of guys have stopped Cassie on her way to deliver the martinis. One of them puts his arm around her waist and she laughs and then shakes her head. When she walks away from them they don’t take their eyes off her ass.
Can’t blame them. She has a great ass. Great legs, too. Long, lean thighs that look like they were made to spread around my head. “Cassie’s an attractive woman,” I say. “I’m sure she’s used to attention from men.”
“So you admit you think she’s attractive.”
“Cassie’s attractive. Katie is attractive. This is a very popular bar,” I say. “There are a lot of attractive women here.”
“Amen to that,” he says, pouring me a shot of whiskey. He pushes it toward me. “On the house.”