“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there!” my best friend, Scheva, announces as she closes the door behind her and stands in the entryway, shivering and looking around expectantly. “What did I miss?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I mutter, helping her remove her coat as my mother pushes in between Sam and I to get to her.

  “Scheva! I haven’t seen you in ages! How are you dear? You look too skinny. Have you been eating? Noel, why aren’t you making her eat?” she asks, giving Scheva a quick hug.

  Scheva laughs and we share a knowing look as my mom fusses over her. Scheva Oliver was my closest friend in high school, and even though we didn’t talk that often when I moved away to Seattle, we picked right back up where we left off when I decided to stay here a month ago. When I called her as soon as I left Margie’s house and told her what happened, she met me at the closest bar, like any good friend does.

  I give her and Sam a quick introduction and watch as her eyes zero right in on Alex, still hiding behind my father.

  “Sorry, Bev, I was too busy having your daughter explain how the hooker business works tonight to eat. Very fascinating,” she explains, her eyes never leaving Alex.

  “Scheva, this is Sam’s friend Alex. Alex, Scheva,” I announce.

  “How’s it hanging?” she asks him with a smirk.

  “High and hard and to the left,” he immediately replies.

  Aunt Bobbie’s hand quickly flies back into the air. “I CONCUR!”

  After a few minutes of arguing with Scheva, my mother finally gives up trying to stuff her full of leftovers, dragging my father and Aunt Bobbie down the hall and into the kitchen to give the four of us some privacy. Her not-so-subtle hand gestures for my benefit, pointing between Alex and Scheva along with a thumbs up meant she thought I needed to play matchmaker between my friend and Sam’s.

  Scheva had spent the last few hours complaining about how there were no good men left in this town, in between my complaints about interviewing to be a pimp. It could be a good idea, but I’ll never tell my mother that. At least it got her mind off of my issues for the time being. Maybe I can convince Scheva to snuggle up to Alex and find out what’s going on in Sam’s head. Having a little insider information would stop me from making a complete ass out of myself and saying or doing something stupid. Like flat-out asking Sam if he thinks we’re really engaged.

  Chapter 4

  Limp Noodle

  Sam

  “Mmmmmmfffffffshrk!”

  I chuckle between Noel’s legs when I hear her curse, muffled by the pillow she has tightly pressed over her face. Spreading her wider with my thumbs, I dip my head back down and swipe my tongue through her, moaning softly when the taste of her coats my mouth.

  I’m never leaving her again. Even if I have to hide her under my bunk during training, she’s coming with me from now on. Four days without her pussy is four days too many.

  “Move the pillow so I can hear you,” I mutter, blowing a little hot air against her swollen clit, which makes her hips buck closer to my mouth.

  “NO!” she whisper-yells, pulling the pillow back just far enough to get that word out, before shoving it right back against her.

  Her thighs squeeze my shoulders tightly and her ankles lock together behind my back when I start circling my thumb around her clit.

  “Your parents are fast asleep and I can hear their sound machine from down here,” I whisper back, twisting my hand so I can slowly slip my middle finger inside of her while my thumb continues with its torture. “They’ve got that thing so loud that the house could explode and they wouldn’t even notice.”

  I should feel guilty that I’m taking advantage of Bev and Reggie’s daughter right down the hall where they’re passed out, but I’m not. We are grown-ass adults, and if Noel refuses to live with me and her mother continues telling me I have to spend the night so she can make me breakfast in the morning, this is going to keep happening. I’d much prefer being in my own home, alone with Noel so I can hear her scream my name, but after watching Alex and Scheva shamelessly flirt with one another for a few hours followed by Scheva offering to give Alex a ride to his hotel, there was no way I wanted to wait another thirty minutes for Noel to give me a ride back to my house before I got her naked.

  Pumping my finger gently in and out of her, I move my thumb to the side and replace it with my tongue, using just the tip to flick back and forth over her clit. My dick is so hard as I lie on my stomach between her legs that I’m pretty sure it’s two seconds away from poking a hole in the mattress. It took every ounce of strength I possessed not to slam myself inside of her as soon as I got her naked and on the bed in her room. She’d been distracted and irritated all evening since she got home from her interview, and as much as I was dying to fuck her, I wanted her to feel good first. I wanted to take all of her tension away and get her stop thinking about the disastrous interview that put another kink in my plans of convincing her to move in with me.

  Even if she still doesn’t have a job, I’m hoping a nice, mind-blowing orgasm will relax her enough for me to hand her the box and ask her to move in with me again. I know it’s not the romantic, candle-lit way I told Alex I wanted it to be, but it’s better than just throwing it out there casually. I don’t care what Alex says, it’s sweet and thoughtful that I put it in a little ring box, and she’ll love it.

  “You taste like heaven,” I murmur, adding a second finger to the first, fucking them deeper and harder inside of her tight, wet pussy.

  Sucking her clit into my mouth, I savor her taste and wonder how it’s possible to become addicted to something in such a short amount of time.

  “Mmmmmfffffmm! Shhhhhhmmffffshhk!”

  Noel’s voice behind the pillow gets louder the harder I suck and the faster I thrust my fingers into her, until a few seconds later, I feel her clit pulse beneath my tongue and her hips jerk forward, suspended in the air against my mouth. Holding my fingers still inside of her, I feel her pussy tighten and throb around them as she comes and I glance up to see that she now has both arms securing the pillow to her face and I wonder how in the fuck she’s able to breathe. I love making Noel come. I love feeling Noel come. I love hearing her come even more, and this shit of keeping quiet so we don’t wake her parents is getting old.

  Pulling my fingers out of her slowly, I give her pussy one last lick with the flat of my tongue before quickly sliding up her body between her legs. Removing the pillow from her face, I toss it to the ground as her hands clutch onto my hair and she pulls my lips to hers. Her legs tighten around my hips and her hands slide out of my hair to claw and scratch their way down my back, silently begging me to hurry up and get inside of her. Her tongue tangles with mine as soon as our lips touch and her whimper of need vibrates through our mouths, making my dick twitch and my hips jerk forward.

  “I’ve been dreaming about this for four days. I jerked-off so many times to thoughts of fucking you that I’m surprised my dick didn’t fall off,” I confess in a whisper against her lips, breaking our kiss just long enough to voice how much I want her, in case she couldn’t tell by the rock-hard dick poking into her thigh.

  Locking my elbows so I can hover above her while gazing down at her flushed face and fiery-red hair spread out on the bed above her, I realign my hips and push them forward, prolonging the moment by sliding my cock through her wetness.

  “It’s not allowed to fall off. I need that to live,” Noel groans, arching her back and squeezing her eyes closed as I balance on one hand and grab my cock with the other, skimming the rigid head back and forth over her clit. The more I stroke myself against her, the wetter she becomes, and my willpower of not coming too quickly is severely tested when I glance down between our bodies and see the head of my cock glistening from her.

  “You know, when your parents went to bed, your mom told me she left some fun stuff for us to use in your nightstand dra-”

  “Don’t even THINK about finishing that sentence!” Noel warns me with her
eyes still tightly closed and her head thrown back on the mattress. “Anything my mother might have left in that drawer has probably been used by her and my father and is so old it needs jumper cables to get started. Stop talking and keep moving that sexy ass.”

  Bringing up her parents when my dick is a centimeter from her pussy probably wasn’t the wisest decision in hindsight, considering now all I can think about is her father holding a giant dildo and attempting to start it with a pull-cord, like a lawnmower. Noel mentioned sex toys earlier when she was explaining the mess of her job interview to be a pimp and I got excited. Then Bev had pulled me aside when Alex and Scheva were leaving and hinted that she’d snuck some into Noel’s nightstand, and I was so horny for Noel, I didn’t stop to think about the repercussions of such a thing. I heard “sex toys” and pictured Noel’s hot pussy and my one-track mind couldn’t process anything else. Actually saying the words aloud is where I went wrong, clearly, and the ramification is my dick dying a slow, embarrassing death when it is just seconds away from the Promised Land.

  “Your sexy ass is not moving,” Noel complains softly, her head coming up from the mattress to peer down between us where my own eyes are currently gaping in horror at my limp dick refusing to cooperate.

  “It’s broken. I think I broke it,” I mumble, frantically trying to shake my dick back to life with my hand still wrapped around it.

  “See? This is what happens when you bring up my mother during sex! Have you learned nothing in the last month?” Noel scolds, shaking her head at me.

  “This wouldn’t happen if you would just move in with me already! Stop being so fucking stubborn!” I fire back, now smacking my dead dick against Noel’s pussy until it sounds like I’m repeatedly flinging spaghetti noodles at the wall to see if it’s cooked all the way.

  In between the wet, smacking sounds, I hear Noel gasp and she shoves against my shoulders with the palm of her hands, scrambling out from under me until she is off the bed and standing next to it in all her naked, pissed-off glory.

  Look at her tits and how fucking hot she is. LOOK AT THEM and stop thinking about Reggie trying to start a weed whacker dildo!

  “I’m not being stubborn, I’m being smart! I can’t live with you if I’m not making my own money, I told you that!”

  Dropping my dick and realizing I not only killed it, but also killed the mood, I push myself to the floor until I’m standing opposite Noel as we stare each other down with the mattress separating us.

  “And I told you that’s bullshit! I don’t care if you have a job or not, why won’t you just let me take care of you?”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of. I just need to pull my own weight and not let you handle everything. Is that too much to ask?”

  “It’s too much to ask when we can only have sex if you have a pillow over your mouth, after ten PM, and everyone pretends like I got here really early for breakfast the next morning instead of spending the night so your father doesn’t pull a shotgun on me!” I whisper loudly, pissed that we can’t even have a normal fight like a normal couple and have to keep our voices down so we don’t wake her mom and dad.

  It’s like being in high school all over again and I don’t like it. There’s a reason why people grow up, become adults, and buy their own homes – so they can have loud, crazy, uninterrupted sex. I’m sure there are other reasons, but my deflated dick is doing all my thinking for me right now and I can’t think of them.

  “If you hate it so much, why are you here?!” She hisses, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration.

  “Right now, I have no fucking clue!”

  Snatching my jeans from the floor by my feet and yanking my shirt off the foot of the bed, I dress quickly and angrily, turning my back on Noel and stomping across the room when I’m finished. Jerking the door open, I come face-to-face with Bev and hear a loud, shocked squeak come from Noel as she quickly dives her naked body to the floor on the other side of the bed.

  “Just got up to get a drink of water and didn’t hear any noises or anything in here. Wanted to make sure you two were still alive.” Bev sighs, looking up and down at my fully-dressed state.

  “Mother! Shut up and go back to bed!” Noel yells from the floor across the room.

  “Is it too much to ask to be woken up with slamming and shouting and things breaking?!” Bev leans to the side and yells over my shoulder before moving back to look up at me. “It’s like you didn’t even hear me when I told you about the nightstand drawer. You’re letting a perfectly good Thirsty Thursday go to waste.”

  I have no idea what is happening right now and I don’t care. I’m pissed, sexually frustrated, and I’m starting to wonder if Noel really loves me or if I pushed her into this relationship before she was ready. It’s not a good feeling to have, and I just want to get out of this house of horrors and get my head on straight. Thank God Noel took me to the airport the other day and brought my car back here or I’d be forced to asked Bev to drive me home. That’s a half-hour car ride I’m sure I’d never survive.

  Moving around Noel’s mother, I head down the hall and don’t even bother stopping when Reggie sticks his head out of his and Bev’s bedroom and glares at me.

  “Don’t worry, the seal on your daughter’s yogurt is still intact, and your wife bent my spoon so badly I might have to buy a new one,” I mutter, my bare feet pounding against the steps as I angrily stomp down them, getting more pissed off as I go that Noel isn’t even attempting to stop me from leaving.

  “What the devil is he talking about?” I hear Reggie whisper down the hall to Bev. “Is he on drugs?”

  If only the military didn’t frown on drug usage. I could use some pretty good mind-erasers right about now. So much for planning to be all romantic and sweet and trying again to ask Noel to live with me. Since my dick decided to hang an “Out of Order” sign on its shaft, I guess having our first fight was next on the list of Things That Could Fuck Up This Night.

  Chapter 5

  Bullshit

  Noel

  “So, in review, Sam hates me and wants to break up,” I finish with a sigh after spending the last five minutes rapidly word-vomiting everything that had happened last night to Scheva.

  She convinced me to drive into Cleveland and meet her for lunch after I woke her up at five this morning, still unable to sleep after Sam left, and she couldn’t understand what I was saying in between all the nose-blowing and sniffling.

  “He doesn’t hate you, and he doesn’t want to break up,” she contends with a shake of her head, pushing her long, poker-straight blonde hair over her shoulder and grabbing our server’s arm when she hustles by our table.

  “Two shots of Tito’s vodka, straight up. And hurry.”

  The waitress nods and rushes over to the bar while I throw Scheva a questioning glance. “Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”

  “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” my best friend replies with a shrug, pushing her empty salad bowl to the edge of the table. “Pretend we’re in Australia. It’s probably five there.”

  “It’s actually four in the morning there.”

  Our waitress returns quickly with our shots, which leads me to believe my red and splotchy face does not look “totally normal” or “fine” like Scheva told me when I’d first sat down.

  “Math is dumb. Shut up and take your shot before I punch you and really give you something to cry about,” she threatens, bringing the glass to her mouth and tossing it back like a champ before slamming it right back to the table.

  My vision blurs with a new wave of tears while I push my shot around in front of me.

  “Since when are you such a girl when it comes to relationships? In almost twenty years, I have never seen you cry over some guy.”

  Wrapping my hands around the drink, I down the shot in the hopes that the burn will make me stop crying in public.

  “Sam isn’t just some guy. He’s THE guy, and I fucked it up,” I complain sadly, setting my empty glass down,
resting my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands.

  “You didn’t fuck anything up. You sent the poor guy home with blue balls… he was probably just grumpy.”

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a hundred percent forthcoming about what happened last night.

  “His balls weren’t actually blue when the fight started,” I disclose sheepishly, avoiding eye contact. “Let’s just say they were more the color of death. My mother killed his penis.”

  Scheva holds her hand up in the air and shakes her head. “I’m gonna stop you right there before I throw up perfectly good vodka. I really don’t want to know what your mother and Sam’s testicles were doing anywhere near each other, but this just proves the point I’ve been making for the last month. MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR PARENT’S HOME!”

  I glance around at the other patrons nervously, hoping none of them heard her. Scheva glances over to one old lady giving us the stink-eye and smiles politely. “Trying to have sex with your hot boyfriend when you’re right down the hall from Mom and Dad is a total buzzkill. Am I right, or am I right?”

  The poor older woman gasps in shock and quickly looks away.

  “Was that necessary?” I whisper.

  “Is it necessary for you to live with Mommy and Daddy when you have a sexy beast begging you to move in with him?” she retorts.

  “I told you, I don’t want-”

  “To take advantage of him,” she finishes, cutting me off. “Blah, blah, blah. My name is Noel, and I’m so full of bullshit, it’s spewing out of my mouth and stinking up the joint.”

  I wince in disgust, but she doesn’t stop.

  “I get it, I do. You’re an independent woman and you don’t want to loaf off of your brand new boyfriend, because you’ve never accepted help from anyone in your life before and you’re not about to start now,” she rationalizes. “But if you’re serious, and this guy is really THE guy, it shouldn’t matter. Guys like to be all big and bad and Alpha, beating their chests and roaring while they take care of their women. You’re basically telling him he’s a pussy who isn’t man enough to take care of the woman he loves.”