"All right, well how about we compromise?" I suggested.
Jimmy laughed unkindly. "Right. You, compromise."
"Hey, I compromise a lot." I could have gone on but I shut my mouth right on time.
He sat back down, leaning back in his seat, and studied me.
"Do tell, Dex, what is your compromise?"
I exchanged a quick look with Perry to make sure we were on the right track before I said, "Give us one more chance."
"No."
"Just hear me out. Give us one more chance. We"ll pay for the whole thing out of our own pocket." Perry stiffened beside me at that. "We"ll arrange everything. We"ll shoot the episode and we"ll get that sponsor. If the sponsor doesn"t come on board, then we quit. We"re done."
I could feel Perry"s eyes on me. I knew she was going to flip out over the whole paying for it thing. She had no money anymore, not really. Jimmy had been her only source of income and it was a s.h.i.tty income at that. But I had money, money from my inheritance, money I"d been smart with over the years, and I"d take care of everything for her. If she"d let me.
Jimmy pursed his lips then said, "This sounds promising, Dex. But I have to think about it."
I groaned, exasperated. "Why? It"s all on my head here, I"ll carry the whole thing. What do you have to lose?"
He gave me a pointed look. "A lot. Even if it does work out and la di da we have an episode, and the sponsors come on board, how are you going to keep it up? The two of you together are trouble."
I heard Perry snort from beside me but kept my eyes on Jimmy.
He went on. "You understand me? There"s no guarantee what we"ll get from you in the future. Unless the format changes in some way."
"Look..."
"Dex, I said I"ll think about it. Give me twenty-four hours or less to let it stew. Then I"ll come back to you."
d.a.m.n. Somehow he was still calling all the shots. I hated having a boss.
He dismissed us with a tired wave, and Perry and I left the office just as my man Seb was coming in.
"Dex," Seb said. "Dude, it"s been like forever."
I did one of those bro hugs with him: hand clasp, slap on back, no eye contact.
"Seb, you have no concept of time," I told him. He was quite the stoner but his brain-dead antics kept me entertained during the whole Perry and I debacle.
"Maybe time has no concept of me," he said, tapping his head where his disheveled ponytail was coming loose. It was only then that he noticed Perry. "Hey...Perry, right?"
"Yes. Hi, Seb," she said with a smirk on her face.
"Cool. Well I better go in and see what Jimbo wants."
"You have a meeting too?" I asked. Seb had a show with my friend Dean called Gamers, where they just basically acted like f.u.c.ktards and played video games. It was pretty popular, considering, but maybe not as lucrative as I thought.
He shrugged. "I guess so. Hey, I"ll see you tonight, right?"
I frowned. "What"s tonight?"
"Nothing, just me and Dean feel like getting s.h.i.tfaced. I let Rebecca know too. We"ll be at the Spelling Bee.""
The Spelling Bee was one of those divey on purpose type bars that served overpriced drinks over on 2, not too far from the apartment. I wished him luck and told him we"d hopefully see him there. To be honest, I felt like getting a little loose tonight and even more than that, I felt like showing Perry off.
"Do you feel like going out tonight?" I asked her as we got in the elevator.
"I"m up for anything."
"Oh really?"
I whipped around and pulled out the elevator"s STOP b.u.t.ton. The elevator lurched then went still.
"What are you doing?" she screeched, wild-eyed.
"Nothing you need to worry about, baby," I told her, placing both hands on either side of her head and kissing her hard, hard enough that she was flattened against the wall. We didn"t discuss it, but we naturally played our relationship cool in front of Jimmy. Now I was making up for lost time.
I bit her lower lip, pulling it between my teeth. She moaned and I smiled.
"You ever had s.e.x in an elevator?" I asked, taking my mouth to her sweet neck and alternating between wet licks and fierce sucks. I didn"t care if she ended up with a million hickeys. The more the better.
"No."
"Anywhere in public?"
"Does a Canadian national park count?" she whispered, sounding both turned on and uneasy.
"No, it doesn"t," I murmured, my hands cupping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Sounds like something we have to fix, doesn"t it?"
"Isn"t this illegal?"
I pulled away and looked at her. "Elevator malfunction. Living it up while I"m going down."
She smiled and then arched her back to give me more access to her fantastic b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "You can"t use Aerosmith as an excuse."
"I can do anything I want," I grunted, pressing my erection into her hip.
"My goodness," she exclaimed at the pressure.
I grinned, my hands folding down her bra and rolling her nipples between my fingers.
"I told you. I"m always hard for you, I"m just good at hiding it. Which, actually, isn"t easy when your d.i.c.k is the size of your leg."
She laughed and lowered my head to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, my mouth yearning, searching.
"h.e.l.lo?" a voice said from behind me.
Startled, I turned around, expecting someone to be in the elevator with us. I was probably expecting it to be inhuman as well.
But the voice repeated, "h.e.l.lo? Are you okay? Is this car two? I have reports you have stopped."
s.h.i.t. It was security on the speaker. In some elevators, pulling out the stop b.u.t.ton just stops the elevator. I guess in this one it alerted security. c.o.c.kblockers!
I sighed and looked up, just now becoming aware of the camera in the corner of the elevator. I gave it a wave.
"We"re fine. False alarm."
"That"s what I thought. We"re starting the car again," the voice said.
The elevator groaned and began to move. I quickly reached over and pulled up the neck of Perry"s shirt just as the car stopped and the doors opened. We both smiled innocently at the two business men who came in. The younger one smirked at me. Oh, he knew. Guys always knew when another guy was trying to get elevator tail.
"Maybe later," I whispered into her ear, my hand going down to her a.s.s for a discrete feel. Now that I had that gorgeous booty in my possession, I was going to take full advantage of it.
She shifted away from me but that only made me smile. Perry was a funny little thing. She could be outstandingly h.o.r.n.y in private (and who could blame her, I mean aside from being with me, the poor girl had only slept with some college chump and the douchenugget, he-who-shall-not-be-named), but in public she was still so unsure of herself, of her body, of me. It was going to take me some time to marry the two sides of her together, but d.a.m.n, I was going to make her my s.e.x queen whether she liked it or not. And f.u.c.k, she was going to like it.
CHAPTER FOUR.
Aside from the elevator incident, which did lead to more bedroom antics back at the apartment, Perry did feel like going out. I was almost giddy at the prospect of taking her out with my friends. Well, giddy was a pretty girly term, but I did catch myself singing into my comb while I was grooming myself in the bathroom. But I was singing to Dillinger Escape Plan, which negated all girlyness. It"s true, look it up.
Perry wore a simple, long black tank top, a.s.s-tight jeans, and looked absolutely beautiful, no surprise there. Every moment I was around her I was absolutely floored by her. Maybe that"s what every guy in love says, but what really got me, what always got me, was that she didn"t see it herself. No, she wasn"t as thin as a lot of women, she didn"t eat only raw foods or do drugs or workout every day. But just because she wasn"t toned on every part of her body didn"t mean I wasn"t hard 24/7. I"d slept with all sorts of women, big, small, fat, skinny. It didn"t really matter. If I found a woman attractive, then I found her attractive, and sticking her in a box didn"t matter. Women are women are women and they all have parts I love.
And Perry, well she was just perfect for me. She had curves, curves that melted into my hands, into my skin, more than other women I"d been with. Her body molded to mine, soft, sensual, nurturing. It sounded archaic, but she just oozed fertility, and with that fertility came a power that she had no idea about. She looked at herself and hated what she saw, and I was going to do my best to show her that she was beyond beautiful to me. And aside from hers, my opinion was the only one that should matter. Not what other women thought or other men thought and definitely not what Cosmo thought.
Sir Mix-A-Lot and I had a lot of things in common.
"You look stunning," I said as she slipped on her boots in the hallway.
She blushed. "Really, Dex."
"Hey," I said, my voice deepening. I grabbed the house keys off the kitchen table and stopped right in front of her. "I warned you once about learning to accept a compliment. You better start accepting mine."
She swung her thick, shiny hair off her shoulders and rivaled any shampoo commercial. "Sorry. I"m just not used to all the compliments like you are."
I smiled. "Kiddo, I rarely get compliments. So I just decide to compliment myself instead. You should try it sometime."
It only took us about ten minutes to find the bar on 2 avenue. It was a Thursday night but Thursday was the new Friday and all that bulls.h.i.t, and the place looked like it was going to get really busy soon. Luckily it was only 7PM for us and we beat most of the crowd.
Everyone was already there, and by everyone I meant Seb, Dean, Rebecca, and a young Asian couple I didn"t recognize. Judging from their nerd shirts that said PWND and I Love Commander Shepard, I a.s.sumed they were friends of Seb and Dean.
Rebecca clapped her hands together excitedly as we approached them. They managed to snag a booth near the front of the bar, and judging by Rebecca"s over-excitedness and the range of drinks in front of them, it looked like they"d been sitting there and drinking for quite some time. I didn"t go out all that often, but when I did, things got pretty messy. I made a mental note to try and behave myself, but I couldn"t promise anything. I hoped Perry wouldn"t mind getting groped by Drunk Dex.
We squeezed in the booth with Perry on the outside (I didn"t want her to next to Seb since he also got a bit "a.s.s and t.i.t ogly" when he got drunk), and Rebecca ordered another pitcher while Dean introduced us to his friends Janet and Justin.
"So, it"s nice to see you two here together," Dean said with a smile, looking between the two of us. I placed my elbows on the table and stared at him curiously. Dean was one of my good friends, if not the best. It didn"t mean we braided each other"s hair and had sleepovers, but he knew me pretty d.a.m.n well. He was also a bit of a smarta.s.s, so I couldn"t figure out if he knew something about Perry and I or not. I eyed Rebecca who seemed preoccupied with her beer. No martinis and fancy drinks for her tonight-the world must have been ending.
"Uh huh," I said, while Dean continued to grin at us and adjust his gla.s.ses. "Nice to see you too, Dean."
He looked at Perry directly. "How are you liking your new roommate?"
She shrugged and put on a face. "He"s alright, I guess."
Dean laughed. "I couldn"t imagine living with Dex. I think he"d drive me nuts. No offense, man."
"None taken. It"s not like I could live with a guy who plays Halo until four in the morning. I"d feel guilty for being the only guy in the house that gets laid."
"Oh, like you"re getting laid now," Seb interjected with a lazy laugh. "Didn"t you and Jenn break up?"
I felt Perry stiffen up beside me, and I glared at Seb while I kicked him in the ankle. "Very astute, Seb. Have you even been conscious for the last couple of months?" I asked snidely.
"Ow, dude," he exclaimed, leaning over to rub his leg. "I can"t pay attention to all the gossip."
I rolled my eyes. Seb had been there with me while I tried to get over Jenn, when I started to turn over a new leaf. f.u.c.khead.
I shot Perry a quick glance to see how she was faring. She was sitting there quietly, her eyes sweeping the bar as if she was looking for someone.
"You okay, kiddo?" I whispered.
It took her a few seconds to bring her attention back over to me. "Yeah, I"m fine," she said in a small voice. "Just thought I saw something."
"A ghost?"
Seb snorted from beside me and I kicked him again. Meanwhile, Justin and Janet looked puzzled at the sincerity of my question. I sometimes forgot that seeing ghosts and hunting them for a YouTube show wasn"t the most natural thing in the world.
Perry shook her head and shot me a tight smile. Maybe all of these questions were bothering her. I wanted to tell Seb that I was getting laid, and by the woman next to me, but I wasn"t sure how she"d feel about that. And I didn"t want to rock the boat.
"So," Dean said again, "I hope Dex has been putting the sock on the door when he brings a lady home."
Good f.u.c.king G.o.d!
"Dean, shut the f.u.c.k up," I snarled at him, and it barely erased the smile from his face. He knew how in love with Perry I was, and now I definitely knew that he knew about Perry and I; he was just trying to be a legitimate s.h.i.tburger.
"Actually, we haven"t worked out that system yet," Perry said smoothly. "Dex is more fond of leaving the door open. Scares the poor dog half to death."
Well, she was certainly handling the awkwardness with ease. I reached under the table and squeezed her knee, smiling at her. She smiled back, but still a little timid. This wouldn"t do.
"Do you wanna do a shot with me?" I asked her.
She nodded enthusiastically. We got out of the booth and made our way through the crowd that was growing larger by the minute.
Once at the bar, while we waited for the bartender to notice us, I put my arm around her waist and pulled her to me. I kissed her long and hard, not caring who saw it.