Page 9 of Working For Her Curves

My pulse is hammering but I don’t drop my eyes. “It is if you’d like it to be.”

“What time?” His voice has dropped half a register and the heat spreads up my neck and across my chest and I’m flushing everywhere.

“Seven. But I’m not sure if Maggie will come with me or meet me there. If she says she’s going to meet me, she’s always late.”

“So you might be there alone.” He says it like he already knows the answer.

My core clenches so hard that I lose my next breath. “I usually arrive places early. There’s a difference.”

“Uh-huh.” He holds my gaze and a slow smile spreads across his lips and I swear my core is going to explode if he keeps looking at me like this. “Yes. I’ll come.”

CHAPTER 5

MARTY

Noah is mid-sentence when the door opens and Poppy Briggs walks into the Foundry in a pale blue summer dress.

My brain freezes.

The neckline cuts a V between her collarbones and follows the curve of her tits, and the fabric skims her waist and hips the way her work shirts do, except there’s nothing between this dress and her skin. I grip my beer hard enough that my knuckles ache. Her shoulders are bare and freckled, and her dark hair is loose and falling past her shoulders. She’s laughing at whatever the woman next to her just said, head tipped back, the whole line of her throat exposed. My cock strains against my jeans, and right now, she’s the only person in this place that matters. Days of watching her across the records trailer, of her voice in my head after I leave the site, and none of it prepared me for the way the sight of her in that dress makes everything else in the room stop mattering. She hasn’t even seen me yet.

“…right, so—” Noah stops and shoves my shoulder. “Dude. Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere.” My eyes are still on her. The dress moves when she moves, and I’m helpless, watching the fabric follow her hips and fighting the surge of caveman in me that wants to drag her out of here and peel that dress off her, and then keep her in my bed all night long and then some.

“You’re not blinking.” He follows my sightline. “Oh. Shit, man. I get why you’re ignoring me. Is that Dale’s granddaughter?”

She’s heading for the bar, and I watch her go, every step. “Yeah.”

“She’s fucking hot.” He leans forward, grinning so wide that I can see his fillings. “Go talk to her. Or I will.”

“Don’t even think about it,” I growl. I like Noah, but not enough to forgive him if he tries picking up Poppy.

Poppy leans against the bar rail to order, and the back of her dress rides up her thighs. All I can think about is her thighs over my shoulders while I eat her pussy until she’s moaning my name and coming on my tongue.

Then a guy steps up next to her.

Polo shirt. Clean haircut. He leans close to her ear and says something. She tilts her head, and something hot and ugly tears through my chest so fast that I’m already off the stool before I’ve decided to stand.

I cut through the crowd. The jukebox is playing something I can’t hear because my pulse is drowning it out. The only plan I have is to get Poppy away from the douchebag wearing a damn polo shirt. Only douchebags wear polo shirts.

“Poppy.”

She turns. Her eyes hit mine, and the smile that breaks across her face is a fucking knockout. Her gaze travels down my throat, my chest, and I feel every inch of it. I shove my hands in my pockets, try to hide how badly they’re shaking. She makes me so nervous and turned on that it’s a struggle to keep control.

“Hey.” She takes a sip of her drink, casual, smiling like she’s pleased. “Glad you made it. This is my friend Maggie,” she says, nodding to the woman on the other side of her.

“Hey. I’m Marty.”

“Maggie,” she says, clearly checking me out. Good friend.

“Said I would,” I say, turning back to Poppy. Up close, the dress is worse. The freckles on her collarbones are close enough to count and her skin is flushed underneath the neckline and I want to put my mouth on her skin and work my way down until she has her legs over my shoulders.

“Did you come over here to tell me that, or is there a work emergency?” She smiles, her voice teasing and light.

“The intake logs,” I blurt out, then immediately hate myself. When did I lose the ability to talk to a pretty woman? “Wanted to ask you about the intake logs.”

“The intake logs.” She tilts her head back and laughs. “At a bar.”