Iris (The Wild Side)(8)

He was growing on me, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have his quirks.
He had a raw-boned, hungry look to him. He was tall and muscular, with tan skin and bright blue eyes. He kept his dark hair very close cut, his jaw perpetually shadowed.
He had the bad boy thing going, and not one qualm about playing it up to the nth degree.
We’d been bonding lately, because I found that his company was suddenly refreshing. I’d started coming to his house for a weekly coffee/vent session.
I could talk to him about things I couldn’t share with my other friends and associates. There was something very nice about having a buddy that didn’t tell you what a creep you were for sleeping with a younger woman.
On the contrary, he wanted to know the details, right down to her measurements.
“So let me get this straight,” he said, as we rehashed my messy love life, yet again. He just didn’t get it. I liked to think of it as an age gap. He saw no reason to want more from a woman than sex. “This hot young thing wants to do the nasty with you every which way, and you do, and then she leaves, and you have a problem with it.”
I rolled my eyes. We’d been over this part plenty. “Yes. I have a problem with it. I want to see her again, and I can’t find her.”
He whistled low, wiggling his brows. You could say a lot about him, but the guy did not take himself too seriously. It was a quality I was really starting to appreciate, as I made a concerted effort to take myself less seriously.
“She must be a piece of work,” he mused. “Is she hotter than Candy?”
I glanced around, not wanting to offend his assistant, the aggressive Candy.
I nodded. There was no question.
“That’s impressive. Candy’s a dime. I only hire dimes.”
This was a fact that was well known. He made it well known.
“Iris is in a league of her own. I’m not exaggerating.”
“No, I believe you. You’re an upfront kind of guy. Not one to stray from the facts, which is ironic, since you write fiction so well. So you meet this unbelievably hot woman, with very f*ckable tits, which is just great, I have to add, and she pursues you, f*cks your brains out, you f*ck her brains out, she disappears, and you’re stuck in this dilemma, like, what the f*ck did she see in me? Why’d she leave? Will she be back? And then she comes back, two months later, gives you a severe case of blue balls, says she loves you, and disappears again, for what, a few weeks now? That about cover it?”
“Yeah, I guess, if you want to oversimplify it. I knew it was all doomed, anyway, but it just feels so unfinished.”
“Doomed? Why doomed?”
“She is way out of my league. There’s never a kosher reason for a number gap like ours.”
He shook his head, giving me a look like he was my disappointed father.
He pointed at me. “You, my friend, have low self-esteem. Candy!” he called out loudly for his assistant.
She came sauntering in, pulling her Jessica Rabbit bit, red hair, red lips, crazy curves. Where the hell did he find these women? I’d met a few of his assistants, and they were all over the top, oozing sexuality like this.
“Yeah, babe? I was working on something.”
“Posting your cleavage on Instagram again is not working on something. You think I don’t know what you’re up to in there? You have three extra buttons undone, and my phone sends me updates when you’re slacking off.”
She smirked, totally shameless. “Good pic though, right?”
He shrugged. “They look better in person. Dair and I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
He pointed at me, grinning. “Be totally honest. Would you f*ck my friend here?”
She blinked a few times, then looked at me, giving me a disconcerting once over. “Yes,” she said, after a few beats. “Why, does he want to f*ck me?”
“No, my little nymphomaniac narcissist. This will blow your mind, but he doesn’t even follow you on Instagram. This is hypothetical. You can look up the definition for that later, but in the meantime, don’t interrupt, just stick to the—”
“Tyrant,” she muttered.
“That’s right. And you’re proving my point. Back to what I was saying. Why would you f*ck him?”
She went back to studying me. It was highly disconcerting. “Because he’s hot. Nice bod, I can tell. Clothes are a bit sloppy, but his jawline alone makes me wet.”
“Would you still f*ck him if I told you he was dead broke?”
She bit her lip, her eyes still raking over me. “Yes. I wouldn’t marry his broke ass, but I’d sure as hell f*ck him.”
He waved her off. “Thank you for your expert opinion. Carry on with something that hopefully resembles work this time.”
Candy sashayed out of the room, putting some extra sway into it, sending me a few smoldering, sidelong glances as she went.
“See that? She’s a dime and she’d f*ck you, even if you were broke. You need to get out of your own self-loathing head and give yourself an ounce of credit. You don’t get laid enough because you’re a hermit. If you went out more, chicks would be dropping their panties for you all over the place, even if they didn’t know you were loaded.”
“Yes, but—”
“Okay, now. Back to the mysterious Iris of the f*ckable tits. She was last seen coming back to find you in a public place, like a stalker, then she’s gone again, and you’re worried, again that was it. She’ll be back. She obviously enjoyed herself. It’s that simple.”
“But did you catch the part where she’s known who I was the whole time? She knew about my money, because she admitted that she’s been reading my books since she was a kid. She definitely wasn’t upfront about that before. And when she left the first time, two months ago, she acted deeply offended by the fact I assumed she knew I had money before I took her home the first time.”