Make Me Sin (6 page)

I open my mouth to say no, but stop. The truth is, it happened just last week. Eric was horny, I was exhausted from a long day at work, and I didn’t want to have an awkward scene or make him feel like I didn’t want him, so I just . . . sort of . . .

“I see the answer is yes. And let me tell you this: when you fuck a man just to shut him up or spare his ego, that’s not mutual respect. That’s manipulation. In other words, it’s bullshit.”

My mouth closes with an audible snap. I motion to the bartender for another whiskey.

“Question two: Have you ever faked an orgasm?”

A telling flush creeps up my neck.
If that pretty waiter doesn’t get his skinny behind over here
right now
with my whiskey, I’m going to slap that beauty mark right off his face.

“Another yes.” A.J.’s voice grows softer. “And this is an even worse yes, because not only is it a manipulation, it’s a flat-out lie. A lie that maintains your control, so you don’t have to risk being honest by telling a man what really makes you feel good. You get to keep your safe little distance, feeling superior, while the poor stupid fuck who’s trying so hard to do everything right is pumping away in ignorance, thinking he’s with a woman who cares enough about him to show him her heart.”

My face is flaming. I can’t look at him. For some unthinkable reason, I feel as if I might cry.

“Question three—”

“Enough. You’ve made your point.” But he isn’t done with me yet.

“Question three: Have you ever had sex with a man you weren’t in love with?”

I turn my head slowly and meet his gaze. “Does that make me a slut?”

He shakes his head. “Not at all. In my opinion, a woman should be able to sleep with whoever she wants, whenever she wants, for any reason she wants, without having to explain or apologize. But your exact words were, ‘I do it in a context of caring and love.’ Which means, at the very least, every time you’ve had sex there was a real connection, real caring.”

His gaze, once again, becomes penetrating. “Which means you’ve never had a one-night stand. Or revenge sex. Or sex out of boredom, or when you’ve had too much to drink, or with a guy who liked you way more than you liked him and you needed the ego stroke. Right?”

I can’t answer. I don’t have to; he sees it all written plainly on my face.

“And you’re the one judging them,” he murmurs, effectively rendering me speechless.

The waiter arrives. He sets down my drink. “Can I get you anything else?”

Looking at me, A.J. says, “A side order of crow?”

The waiter, who by now realizes there’s something odd going on, giggles awkwardly, hesitating only a moment before saying brightly, “Well, let me know! I’ll leave you two alone.”

When he leaves, I’m left gagging on the dry, crusty rinds of my own hypocrisy.

I pretend the glass of whiskey is a crystal ball. I stare into it, hoping to divine a way to salvage my self-respect. Because A.J. is completely right; what I said was bullshit. Self-righteous bullshit, no less. I gather my courage and meet his gaze.

“You’re right about everything you just said. I owe you an apology.”

I can tell this staggers him, but he has the good grace to shrug it off with a simple nod.

“I still feel bad for prostitutes, though, no matter how much money they make. It can’t be . . . that can’t be an easy way to earn a living.”

After a long time he says, “No. It isn’t.”

I’m arrested by the unexpected melancholy in his voice. I stare at him in dawning wonder. “Oh my God.”

He looks up at me. “What?”

“You defend them! You not only defend them, you have empathy for them, too! And you think women who
aren’t
being paid for it should be able to sleep with whoever they want, without being slut-shamed!”

“Your point being?”

“You’re a
feminis
t
!”

He snorts. “And you’re drunk.”

He’s right. I’m definitely feeling dizzy. Still, I’m convinced I’ve glimpsed into the soul of the sad, beautiful Viking sitting across from me, and I want more. Unfortunately, at that moment, my cell phone rings.

It’s Eric. “Babe, where the hell are you?” he yells.

Wincing, I jerk my head away from the earpiece. “I’m fine, Eric. I stopped on the way home because I just needed . . . I just needed some space. I’ll be home later.”

“Stopped? Where?” I hear the panic in his voice.

“Just this bar—”

“You’re alone at a bar?” he shouts. There’s an alarming lack of trust resounding in his voice. “Jesus, Chloe, what are you thinking? Which bar? I’ll come get you!”

“Eric, please, calm down. It’s fine, I’m not alone. I’m with . . .” I raise my eyes to find A.J. gazing steadily at me. His jaw is rock hard. “I-I’m with a friend.”

There. I said it. I’m with a friend. A prostitute-loving, bipolar friend, who just this afternoon told me he had plenty of reasons to hate me.

I’ve gone completely off my rocker.

“What friend?”
Eric roars, so loudly I pull the phone even farther from my ear.

Which is when A.J. takes it from my hand.

“You have two seconds to calm your shit down, brother, before I make Chloe give me your address so I can come and calm it down for you.”

His voice is low and dangerous. A thrill of pure fear zings through me. On the other end of the line, there’s crackling silence, until Eric finds his tongue.

“Whoever you are, you just threatened an officer of the law. You’d better hope we don’t meet face to face.
Brother
.”

“I have a feeling we will,” says A.J., looking at me. He hangs up.

He sets my phone into my shaking hand. “Your boyfriend’s a cop?”

I nod.

His eyes are black. His mouth is set into a hard line, harder even than the muscles in his jaw. “He have a temper?”

“He’s never hit me, if that’s what you mean.”

He growls, “Plenty of ways to mistreat a woman that don’t involve putting your fists on her.”

My head is pounding. I decide this day has gone on long enough; it’s time to leave. I try to stand, but stagger as my foot catches on the leg of the stool I’ve been sitting on. A.J. is out of his seat, righting me with his hand under my elbow, faster than my eyes can track the movement.

“Easy, Princess.” He chuckles. “We don’t want you to fall and bang up that pretty face.”

I stare up at him. Though his face is shadowed beneath the hood of the sweatshirt, I can tell he’s wishing he could take that back. I’m not going to let him.

“You think I’m pretty?”

His lips thin. He looks away, motioning for the waiter to bring the check. He mutters, “Never said I didn’t.”

“Oh, right.” Tipsy, I laugh. “You only said you hated me. And that I was stuck-up. And frigid. By the way, I’d like to take this opportunity to correct you about something: I
would
know a dick if it hit me in the face. I can’t claim to ever have had that experience, but I can say with all confidence that if a dick suddenly flew out of nowhere and whacked me across the nose, I would
absolutely
know it was a dick.” I hiccup. “One thousand percent sure. The hairy balls alone would be a dead giveaway.”

Apparently deciding not to wait for the check, A.J. reaches into his pocket, produces his wallet, and throws a wad of cash on the table, all without releasing my arm. I’m impressed. I remind myself he must have perfected the art of handling women in various stages of inebriation. Picturing a chorus line of half-drunk prostitutes kicking their legs in the air as A.J. rushes to keep them all from falling, I giggle.

“How much did you have to drink before you got here?”

His voice is stern. He gazes down at me as if he’s very disappointed in my behavior. I sheepishly admit I had two or three glasses of red wine with dinner.

“So. Two or three glasses of wine, two glasses of champagne, and two glasses of whiskey. You’ve had at least six, possibly seven drinks in the past few hours. Four of them in the last thirty minutes. Two of
those
double whiskeys. That about right?”

I close one eye because the room has, just slightly, begun to spin. “I have many talents, Mr. Edwards, but I’m not all that great with math.” Another hiccup. “I’ll have to take your word on this one.”

“Let’s go, Princess.” Without waiting for a reply, A.J. half drags, half carries me to the door.

“Where are we going?” I cry, alarmed. I’m even more alarmed by what he says next.

“Home. You need to go to bed.”

A
.J.’s car is nothing like what I expected. Because it’s not a car. It’s a motorcycle. He informs me he doesn’t own a car.

Item number four thousand seven hundred eighty-two on the list of things normal people own that A.J. Edwards doesn’t.

“I can’t ride on that!” I stare at the ginormous black Harley parked in the back lot. It glitters with chrome and menace. Under the flickering fluorescent lamplight of the parking lot, it seems to leer at me.

One saving grace, at least: it’s stopped raining.

“Of course you can.” A.J. opens one of the leather side bags strapped to the back of the bike, produces a helmet that looks as if half of it is missing, and hands it to me. “Put this on.”

He mounts the bike and starts it with a brisk kick of his leg. It roars to life, exhaling fumes. I cough and fan a hand back and forth in front of my face. “I’ll die on that thing!” I shout over the racket. “Forget it! I’ll call a cab!”

He shoves the hoodie off his head, pulls his hair out of the elastic that’s been holding it in the messy man bun at the nape of his neck, and straps on a helmet, all while gazing calmly at me. “Chloe, get your ass on the back of my bike.”

The way my body responds to this command is ridiculous. Hormones I never knew I had start screaming gleefully through my veins, tossing confetti and blowing party horns. I bite my lip, hard, and stare at him.

This is dangerous territory.
A.J.
is dangerous territory. I should know better. I have common sense. I have a
boyfriend
. I have a deeply ingrained sense of loyalty to said boyfriend, even if we are in a fight.

A.J. has a deeply ingrained fondness for ladies of the evening.

He says my name again, softer this time. His eyes caress mine. Under their warm golden glow, I melt. “Fine. But if you kill me on this thing, it’s up to you to explain to my parents what happened. Good luck with that. My father will most likely disembowel you.”

“She’s not a
thing
.” Defending the honor of his motorbike, A.J. ignores the threat to his bodily unity. Perhaps he isn’t as fond of his bowels as most people are.

With zero elegance, I clamber onto the back of the motorcycle, clutching his shoulders for balance. They feel like boulders beneath my hands.

“She’s a custom V-Rod with a titanium chassis and a top speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour.”

It seems the alcohol has engaged my selective hearing because I glide right over that last piece of data as if it had never been spoken. No wonder they say ignorance is bliss. “How is a motorcycle a she?” I demand. “Wouldn’t they all be
hes
, if they’re supposed to be so macho and dangerous?”

“Helmet.”

I don my helmet, fumbling with the chin strap. When I’m finished and he appears satisfied with my efforts, A.J. asks, “You ever watch Jacques Cousteau?”

Hello, left field, I see the fly ball approaching.
“That might be the strangest segue I’ve ever heard.”

“Answer the question.”

I do this thing that’s part belly-deep burp, part hiccup. I’m convinced it’s the single most unattractive noise to ever exit my body. Horrified, I clap my hands over my mouth. A.J. looks amused. It’s a relief, but it shouldn’t be, considering I don’t care about his opinion. I recover my composure quickly, and answer. “Yes. My mother loved him. She used to watch reruns of his show all the time when I was growing up.”

He nods. “Mine, too.”

Whoa. He has a
mother
. The thought has never occurred to me. My fuzzy brain launches into a stumbling frenzy of related questions about siblings, family life, his youth and hobbies and education, until it exhausts itself and falls flat on its face, and I just stare at him, waiting. The process takes all of five seconds.

“There’s this thing that Jacques Cousteau used to say that always stuck with me. Put your arms around me.”

“Jacques Cousteau used to say ‘put your arms around me’?”

“No, Chloe. Put your arms around me. You have to hold on for the ride.” He waits for me to follow this simple direction.

“Oh! Gotcha.” With gargantuan effort, I marshal every ounce of faux disinterest at my disposal, and slide my arms around his shoulders. My hands don’t touch on the other side.
He’s bigger than my arm span.

This leaves me in an awkward predicament. I can lower my arms to his waist, which will allow me to grasp my hands together, but I run the risk of an embarrassing encounter with his crotch. Especially if, as he has said, and his shoe size and stature surely indicate, it’s huge.

He senses my hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

My voice comes out tiny. “I don’t think I’m doing it right.”

He takes my hands, and gently lowers them to his abdomen, locking my fingers together over a hard expanse of muscle that definitely isn’t his crotch. “Better?”

I sigh in relief.
“Best.”

He revs the throttle. The bike rattles and hums beneath us, itching to leap into motion.

I prompt, “So—Jacques Cousteau?”

“Right. He used to say that the most beautiful creatures are always the most dangerous.”

I recognize this saying. It’s one of Mr. Cousteau’s most famous. “No, what he actually said was, ‘Zee most beeyooteefool creetoors are also zee most dangeroos.
’
”

Hearing my terrible French accent, A.J. laughs, a second miracle for the night. Loving the sound of it, I grin.

“That he did, Chloe, that he did. So I figured, following his logic, every dangerous creature therefore has to be female, because females are the only creatures who are really beautiful. Compared to them, us guys are just a bunch of slobbering idiots.”

He looks at me over his shoulder. His smile is devastating. My heart skips a beat, then stalls out altogether.

Holy mother of all craps.

At the exact moment we pull out of the lot and zoom off into the night, I realize just how much trouble I’m in, and that, in more ways than one, it’s too late to jump off this ride.

Because, reckless fool that I’ve become, I want too badly to see where it’s going.