He opens the door for me then climbs behind the wheel. It’s warmer inside, but I rub my hands together and blow into them anyway.
“What is it?” I insist. “Come on, I’m freezing. And your floozies are probably dying after two minutes without you now.”
“They’ll be fine,” he cockily assures as he looks at me, his lips tilted, his dimple still showing.
“What is it?” I ask again. “I’m seriously starving and you’re interrupting my dinner, Roth.”
“I’m interrupting?” He laughs richly at that. “You, sending a little present to me, was not interrupting?” He pulls out what takes me a moment to discern are a pair of red lace panties.
“Those aren’t mine.”
He looks at them closely.
“Those damn panties aren’t mine. God, you’re disgusting!” I laugh.
“These aren’t yours?” He studies them again, then grins and stares at me. “I figured you for a red lace kind of girl.”
“Never.”
He opens the glove compartment, which has a shit-ton more panties.
“God, you’re disgusting, Tahoe!”
He shuts it after tucking the red panties in there, and he is wickedly sexy and shameless about it.
“What’s your kind then?” he asks, reaching out to my backrest and leaning forward into my seat a little bit.
“What?” His hand on the back of my seat makes me start for a second.
“Your kind? Men can tell a whole lot about a woman based on her underwear.” He nods knowingly.
“You totally flatter yourselves. You only think it says a lot but all they hint at is the mood we’re in.”
“Really.”
“Umm, yep. Really.” I nod knowingly too.
“So what mood are you in?” His voice drops a little bit as he looks down at me.
“I’m hungry,” I say flatly, aware of my stomach rumbling.
“Hunger is not a mood.”
“Right now it’s a state of being. I’m super hungry and I get moody when I’m hungry.” I glare at the glove compartment. “Now what woman on Earth would want to add her panties to that pile? Huh?”
“Someone fun and naughty,” he says.
I meet his gaze, and he meets mine back, so very blue and so very taunting.
I pull my eyes away and stare out the window, feeling a little bit provoked. It’s nothing unusual, really, but tonight it feels worse, I can hardly stand it.
The night is cold; winter is coming to Chicago already. The windows are fogging up with our body heat. He alone is hot enough to fog any window; his body feels like a furnace. I can feel the warmth he emanates all the way to my seat and it takes effort not to draw closer.
I’m feeling reckless, crazy reckless. Determined to show him that I can be wild, fun, and unpredictable too. Fucker.
I turn my body so that he can’t see, then reach beneath my skirt and slowly start to ease off my panties.
He’s narrowing his eyes and smiling in disbelief, and I toss him a mischievous smirk as I ball them up and toss them into the glove compartment.
“Did you just take your panties off for me, you wicked girl?” he croons.
I nod slowly, inwardly feeling more disbelief than he. “If you can figure out which ones are mine, I’ll give you an A-plus and a gold star,” I say, trying not to sound breathless as I reach out to pat his stubbled cheek three times. Then, without another word, I get out of the car.
As I close the door, I see him grab all of the panties before getting out and following me. He shuts the door and locks the car with a beep, and as we head back to the sidewalk, he throws all of the panties into the first huge trash can that we see with the exception of one pair, which he keeps tightly fisted in his hand.
“You just threw away your entire collection? You could have totally thrown out mine!”
“We’ll see.” A confident smirk graces his lips.
He guides me back inside and takes his seat at the bar, while I return to the table with my friends.
From across the room, I watch as he reaches one thick finger into the right pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out an inch of fabric.
Peeking out at me, I see the navy-blue stripes of my little sailor boy shorts.
It should be funny, I mean, I was just joking around. Instead, all the dormant feelings and longing this man stirs in me are heightened as I think about him possessing something as personal as my pair of panties. And when I think of the collection he already had, I want to hit him nearly as hard as I want to take his goddamned beastly handsome face and kiss him.
I’m relieved and a little guilty when I get a call from Trent. I pick up and cover my free ear so that I can hear him better.
“Still with your friend?” he asks.
“Rachel, yes. We’re having dinner.”
“Where at?”
I tell him the name of the café.
“I’ll stop by on my way home, pick you up?”
I glance at Tahoe and notice there’s a girl talking to him and a part of me wonders if she’s the one who slipped her red panties into his pocket—panties that he thought were mine.
“Sure,” I whisper.
When Trent arrives in a cab twenty minutes later, I introduce him, “Trent, this is Rachel. Rachel, Trent.”
“Trent, I’ve been back less than a couple of hours and I haven’t stopped hearing about you,” Rachel says warmly as she greets him.
I lead Trent to the bar to introduce him to Saint and tell them all that we’re leaving.
Tahoe, who’s talking to some blonde, watches Trent narrowly while Saint shakes his hand.