The Stocking Was Hung(4)

“My mother won’t see it that way,” Noel sighs, swiveling on her barstool to face me. Her knee brushes against my thigh and just that small bit of contact makes my dick hard, I really need to get laid, but now my head and my dick are conflicted. Sex with just any woman won’t do. When Noel and I part ways, I have a strange feeling I’ll never be able to get her out of my mind. I want her under me, on top of me, moaning my name, and scratching her nails down my back. But that’s not all. And this is the confusing part. I could listen to her sexy, raspy voice for days, her smile is contagious and I find the corner of my mouth curling up automatically each time she laughs, and her smell…sweet mother of Christ. Each time she leans toward me, I inhale a deep breath like a f*cking creeper, just to hold that cinnamon and vanilla scent in for as long as possible. She smells like Christmas, which should annoy the f*ck out of me, but it doesn’t. I have no idea what the hell is happening. I’ve known this woman for all of thirty minutes and she’s already gotten under my skin.

Thankfully, she continues talking and gives me a second to get my dick and my brain under control before I do something stupid like ask her to forget her holiday plans and come home with me instead.

“Somehow, it will be my fault. My family will turn it around on me, and why shouldn’t they? I made Logan out to be such an amazing guy over the last twelve months, and I mean, he was amazing, just clueless,” she explains with a sigh, tearing her cocktail napkin into a pile of tiny pieces. “Just like every other relationship I’ve shit all over, this one won’t be any different, even if I was the one who ended it. They’ve never understood my abhorrence to marriage. They’ll figure out a way to twist it around because I wasn’t attentive enough, wasn’t romantic enough, wasn’t sexy enough…”

She whispers that last part, breaking our eye contact.

Leaning forward on my stool until I’m only inches away from Noel’s face, I stare at her until her eyes meet mine again. “I’m pretty sure there could never be an instance where you weren’t sexy enough.”

Her mouth parts in surprise, forcing my eyes to drop to her lips. Her full, red lips that she slowly runs the tip of her tongue across like she knows I’m sex starved and two seconds away from coming in my pants.

Just then, the tinny, annoying opening notes of the worst song in the history of the world breaks into our silent moment, making Noel laugh when I growl and shake my head in annoyance. Moving a safe distance away from her, I curse Dominic the mother f*cking donkey.

“What about your family?” Noel suddenly asks, her body still facing mine. She rests her elbow on the edge of the bar and sets her cheek in her palm while she waits for me to answer. “I’m sure they have a little crazy in them. Don’t make me be the only one giving it up.”

Smiling wickedly at her choice of words, I watch her cheeks flush in embarrassment.

“I mean, giving up the goods,” she quickly adds, making it impossible for me not to laugh. “Stop laughing, I heard it as soon as I said it. You know what I meant. Spill.”

I’d much rather talk about her giving up the goods, but whatever.

“Sorry to kill your dreams, but you win this round for crazy family because I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a family,” she responds.

“Not me,” I shrug. “I grew up in the system. Bounced around between foster homes until I was eighteen and joined the marines.”

I hate the look of pity on her face. This is why I keep to myself, and why I’m still wondering why the f*ck I sat down next to her thirty minutes ago and haven’t been able to walk away.

“Okay, but you have friends, right?” she asks softly.

“The men in my squadron in the Marines. They’re my friends.”

Noel scoffs and shakes her head at me. “They’re your co-workers. I’m talking about people you call in the middle of the night when you need bail money, or someone to hold back your hair after a night of heavy drinking when a guy ignores the words you’ve been saying for a year and shits all over your heart.”

One eyebrow goes up and I look at her questioningly.

“Figuratively speaking, of course,” she adds.

“I have a goldfish named Thor. But I don’t think he’d be very good at holding back my hair. And if he took a shit on my heart I’d just flush him down the toilet,” I inform her.

“A goldfish is a good start, I guess,” she shrugs. “You should probably work on something of the human persuasion that can actually talk back to you.”

“I’m never home, so what’s the point? I’ve done just fine by myself for thirty-five years,” I inform her. “Also, can a goldfish survive eighteen months without food?”

Noel mutters under her breath and I realize that sitting here riling her up is the most fun I’ve had in a very long time.

“Probably not,” she tells me. “You didn’t ask a neighbor or something to feed him? Wait, let me guess. You don’t have any neighbors either?”

A smile is my only answer and I laugh when she rolls her eyes at me.

“No neighbors. I live in the middle of nowhere on ten acres. My closest neighbors are the Amish, and they’d probably frown on my porn collection if I gave them a key to the house.”

Her mouth drops open once more and just like a few minutes ago, my eyes fly right to her lips, wondering if she’d be opposed to kissing a strange man she just met at the airport. And if not, I wonder if she’d be opposed to f*cking a strange man in the bathroom.