Chapter Text
It starts as all bad decisions do, made under the strobing lights and bone-deep bass of a pretentious nightclub. She came in on a whim and now regrets it, situated at the bar and nursing a cocktail a stranger from across the venue bought her half an hour ago.
Truthfully, she would have happily entertained the pretty thing, but the stranger clearly was waiting for her to make the next move. And that is not how Jenevelle Hallowleaf operates. The would-be petitioner balked and disappeared onto the dance floor when Jen didn’t immediately join her at her booth. It’s for the best; meekness is not what Jen is looking for tonight.
So here she sits, dreadfully bored and barely buzzed, the music so loud that she can barely think. So much for finding some delightful trouble on this Valentine’s Day.
Jenevelle is about to chalk the evening up to a failed experiment and trek back to her flat alone when some clumsy brute tumbles onto the seat next to her. They nearly smack her with their meaty arm, but luckily she flinches at the right moment, avoiding what was sure to be a bloodied nose.
She frowns, cutting her eyes over to observe her new, unwanted neighbor.
“Watch your flailing,” she ices.
He looks like he has marbles thrashing about in his skull as an excuse for brains as he blinks owlishly at her. He sets down a single, long stemmed rose and scratches the back of his head apologetically.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, yelling over the club’s obnoxious sound system. “Tripped over my feet.”
Jenevelle’s eyes rake up and down his form, from the broad shoulders stretching the ridiculous blush pink quarter zip sweater he’s wearing, to the thigh-hugging dark wash jeans.
Disgustingly festive without a lick of fashion sense. She notes the rose on the bar.
“You look like you just came from ruining some poor thing’s Valentine’s Day,” she says.
Jenevelle offhandedly muses too late that maybe she shouldn’t antagonize a random man at the club on the biggest rejection holiday of the year.
But her seat mate laughs despite her rude prodding. “It’s every bit as cliché as you imagine,” he replies. “I was encouraged by a friend to be spontaneous, so I arranged a date on one of those apps. We were supposed to meet here an hour ago. Guess she found a better offer on the most romantic day of the year.”
Jenevelle scrunches her nose. “She was probably scared back home by that shade of pink you’re wearing.”
The man chuckles nervously. “Yes, well, whatever the reason, I’ve been stood up. I’ll have to tell Karlach that the experiment failed, predictably.”
Experiment. Jenevelle hums. “Well that makes two of us.”
Pink Sweater presents her with her the long stemmed rose. “Surely no one would slight you. I don’t think anyone could recover from a fumble of that magnitude.”
His eyes are golden, sincere, even as he’s spouting vapid flattery.
Jenevelle snorts, but takes the fragrant flower, twirling it carefully between her fingers to avoid the thorns. “An adorable attempt at flirting to salvage your evening, Pinky, and I’m sure you practiced that line ever so diligently in the mirror, but I think my interest in entertaining some stray at the club has passed just now.”
“It’s Tav, actually,” he corrects, the lighting in the club giving the illusion of a light flush on his cheeks. “And I don’t blame you. Strays are more trouble than they’re worth.”
“I’m Jenevelle. You definitely give an aura of trouble, Tav.”
“Usually the opposite is my problem lately, so I’m told.”
The opposite of trouble is precisely what she needs. Something about this Tav is intriguing, Jen decides. Before she can probe him on anything further, the bartender finally notices that they have a new arrival and rushes over to get his order.
“Hey, sweetheart,” they flatter him as bartenders always do. “What’ll it be?”
Tav looks to Jenevelle pointedly. She balks for a moment, then realizes he’s left the decision of his drink up to her. A thousand factors spring to mind as to why he shouldn’t have a stranger do this—price, preference—but then she sees a delightful opportunity to prod at him further.
“Wine,” she answers confidently. “A bottle of the best rosé you have, preferably.”
Tav’s brows raise, but he doesn’t speak in protest.
“I have just the thing for you. Be right back with two glasses,” the bartender answers, catching on impressively quick.
“Good taste,” is all Tav says, surprisingly unbothered that Jen has just billed him for expensive wine in this horrid club ten minutes after meeting him.
Like she clocked him earlier, intriguing.
Jenevelle is practically done with her second glass of the rosé while Tav has hardly touched his at all. She feels floaty and it’s loosened her tongue to the point that she’s been able to ascertain that he is ever so much fun to tease.
“Mm. Did a non-drinker really invite his online hookup to a nightclub?” she prods. “Perhaps a bookclub would have been more your speed instead.”
Tav traces the petals of the rose he gifted her, forgotten by her as soon as the bottle arrived. “Not an unfair statement.”
“Then you meet a replacement and gift them a hand-me-down flower,” she continues. The rosé is clearly going straight to her head.
Tav, for the first time, looks like he absorbs her ribbing. He chews his lip. “You’re right. I should have just went home… I think—”
“—I think,” Jenevelle interrupts, trying to break through the haze of the wine. “That you owe me a dance to make up for this colossal waste of my time.”
She belatedly realizes that surely the top shelf wine he bought her made up for that four times over at least, but she isn’t overmuch concerned with the details.
Tav’s throat bobs. “You’re kind of mean.”
“And you rather look like the type who enjoys that.”
He looks the picture of utter shock, but stands anyway and offers his hand. She takes it, letting herself be dragged away from the bar. His hand is surprisingly smooth and comfortable, not hot and clammy like the paws usually prodding at her in clubs like this.
Contradictory to what she said about him being a waste of her time, Tav is proving to be a passable distraction. Intriguing, if nothing else.
He finds an empty pocket in a secluded corner of the club and begins doing some peculiar footwork at a respectable distance.
Jenevelle leans close to his ear to whisper over the pulsing music that has the sea of faceless bodies writhing around them like waves upon the sea. “We’re adults in a sweaty nightclub, not teens at a school dance. Move like it.”
Tav’s lips fall open until he resembles a gasping fish, but collects himself under her demanding glare after a tick. Hands settle on her waist and pull her close, close enough where she can soak up his body heat. She picks up on the subtle scent of whatever woodsy cologne he doused himself in while getting ready for his doomed night out.
The house music thumping is mid tempo, and he sways his hips, bracketing Jenevelle’s left thigh. She looks up at him, wearing his ridiculous pink sweater, and has to admit that he’s not bad to look at. He’s considering her so intently in turn that the club lights and sounds seem much less abrasive when measured against the fury of noise in her head.
Jenevelle breaks eye contact, focuses on his worn, artisan leather shoes shuffling around the hardwood floors. Despite her goading, she struggles to decide what to do with her hands.
She ultimately splays them out across his stomach, curling her fingers into the downy fabric of his sweater. Tav suddenly stills and Jenevelle wonders if she’s crossed a line.
She peeks up at him again to find him fixated on something far away.
Jenevelle tugs ruefully at his clothes. “If you aren’t interested, then leave me so I can find someone who is.”
“That looks suspiciously like my date,” he says, barely audible. “At that booth in the left corner over there.”
Before she can react, Tav uses his hold on her waist to turn her in the opposite direction. He’s flush against her like velcro to make the change look like part of their dance to an outsider, but only one hand finds its way back to the curve of her hips. The other brushes her jaw, directing her to look towards the far left corner of the club.
Her breath definitely doesn’t catch as she follows the eyeline he’s set up for her. The lighting on the dance floor is dim and too colorful to make anything out, but the far booth is under a thick beam of white light.
The person seated there looks docile, pretty. Jen can feel the tickle of his chin against her temple as he looks on with her, the warmth of his front against her backside.
“Do you suppose it was a case of being late or missing each other in this godsawful place?” she wonders aloud.
“Hard to say. Neither of us bothered to message the other to find out.”
Tav seems fixated on the booth and the one who sits upon it, and she finds it irksome. Was she not his type? Has he not been participating in their back and forth flirting?
Jenevelle tests the waters, stretching up and looping her arms back, then around his neck. She gifts Tav the smallest roll of her hips, and she feels it more than hears it—a sharp inhale.
“Do you want to leave me here and go reunite with your sweet little date?” she needles him.
Tav’s fingers press into her hip. “Hells no,” he croaks near her ear.
Jenevelle isn’t sure if it’s the atmosphere or the wine fuzzing her brain, or the fact that she hasn’t been touched properly in weeks, but there’s something heady about having her suspicions confirmed. Tav was into this, into her.
This is where the aforementioned bad decision springs from her lips.
“My apartment is just a few blocks away,” she hints.
Tav’s firm hand halts the sway of her hips against him. “Are you feeling unwell?”
Jen feels like she could scream. She peels herself away and clamps her hand around his forearm, tugging him abruptly to the exit of the club.
Once outside in the sobering nip of late winter, the reprieve from headache inducing lights and house music enables Jenevelle to think more clearly. She lets Tav’s arm go and whips around to face him.
“I hope it’s not the wine. If it didn’t sit well with you, you didn’t have to humor me by—” he babbles, but she wastes no time interrupting.
“I’m inviting you back to my place for sex,” she snips. “Not to coddle me because of a stomach ache.”
Tav’s eyes bug, and she notices on the well-lit sidewalk that they’re a rich amber. “Are you sure? You’ve had a few—.”
“I don’t share my bed when I’m drunk; I’m not stupid. And you barely had anything, so I’ll ask you one last time—are you coming home with me? It’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.”
“Yes,” Tav answers quickly, eagerly.
The urgency makes Jen preen, satisfied that he wants her too. It had been unmistakable from the way his body responded to her while painted against hers on the dance floor. The air of desire had been thick. But there is something heady about getting confirmation.
“Good. Shall we?”
It’s almost comical, the way Tav frantically begins rooting around in his pockets for his keys. “Wait here, I’ll go bring my car around,” he says hurriedly.
Jenevelle huffs. “I live three blocks away and I hardly know you. I’d much rather walk, if it’s all the same to you.”
The rattle of keys stops. “So I’m harmless enough for you to take to bed, but you won’t take a ride from me?”
Jenevelle grimaces at the implication. “As cute as some may find the subtle slut-shaming to be, I can assure you it’s discouraging me from riding anything of yours.”
Tav flounders under the streetlights. “I didn’t mean to—” then, he suddenly abandons the excuse, saying instead, “—You’re right. That was a shitty thing to say. I’m sorry.”
Jenevelle clicks her tongue. It seems tonight is to be full of surprises. “Smart boy. Surely I’m worth a little walk in the cold?”
Tav doesn’t say anything, but the way his pupils swallow the bourbon-colored irises that border them betrays his answer.
Jenevelle locks the door of her flat after the walk home turned silent when her conquest for the evening realized she wasn’t interested in small talk. Tav glances around at her home, and it somehow makes her feel like he’s peeking at her diary.
“Cozy place,” he remarks.
She rolls her eyes. “Your constant questions and small talk can stop, you know. I’ve already promised you a lay.”
“That’s not—” he barely gets to speak at all before Jenevelle groans in frustration and pushes him roughly against the opposite wall.
She pulls him down by his collar and kisses him abruptly. She truthfully meant to set no kissing as a hard boundary, but clearly Tav can’t be trusted with an unoccupied mouth, given his penchant to run it. Luckily, he’s decent enough with his lips to make up for it.
Tav’s hands slip around her thighs and haul her up, and he unknowingly stokes a flame of raw want in her. She wraps her legs around his middle and breaks the kiss for air, and he pants against the column of her throat.
“Hall. Last door on the left,” she grits out.
Tav doesn’t need clarification, and carries her immediately to the bedroom. Jenevelle can admit inwardly that she’s always found it hot when a partner can carry her around. Perhaps this stranger can provide after all.
Tav stops his trek to suck a bruise into her neck that he’s had his nose buried into this whole time. Jenevelle digs her nails into his shoulders from where her arms are wrapped around them, warning.
“No marks,” she demands. “Just take me to bed.”
Tav ceases his assault on the stretch of skin and kisses it softly. Jenevelle hates the fact that she doesn’t feel the urge to retch as he obediently carries them to her desired destination.
He climbs onto her bed and sets her onto the edge for just a moment as he reaches back and slides her shoes off her feet. He then quickly kicks off his own and presses Jenevelle into the center of her mattress.
She silently thanks the hook-up gods that he at least doesn’t instantly flop on top of her and smother. Instead, he rolls them both onto their sides and slides his thigh between her legs, busying himself with trailing his lips lazily from her collar to her cheek.
She’s clearly opened up Pandora’s box by initiating kissing.
Jenevelle makes the first move, sliding her hands beneath that pink sweater to enjoy the span of warm skin beneath her fingers. He feels sturdy, toned, but not obnoxiously so. He lets out the most adorable little gasp near her ear at being touched.
“You’re good at this,” he rasps. Flattery, surely, but she takes the compliment anyway.
“I am, but I haven’t done anything yet. You must be quite pent up.”
“You’re mean.”
It’s a repeated insult that carries no weight, as he almost sounds in awe as he says it. Jenevelle rolls back onto her knees and starts loosing the buttons of her top, enjoying the sight of Tav peeling off the infamous pink sweater and tossing it onto her bedroom floor.
He lounges back against the headboard, eyes dark as she bares her naked chest to him. She climbs onto his lap and Tav wastes no time dragging his tongue up the trail between her breasts.
Jenevelle’s eyes slip shut and she can’t stop the mortifying moan his mouth’s attentions coax from her.
“You’re so pretty,” she hears him say, giving the kisses a break to knead her breasts in both of his big palms. “Was obvious even at the club.”
More flattery, but this time it sends white hot blood rushing south. Good. Want, she can handle.
“And you’d be cuter if we kept that mouth of yours busy,” she says haughtily, opening her eyes and leveling him with a glare so she can enjoy his reaction to her challenge.
Tav just laughs. “That I know to be true.”
Jenevelle must be imagining it, but his agreement settles strangely in the air around them in spite of his humor about it. But before she can analyze it too closely, she’s lifted by her hips just enough for Tav to slide down from the head of the bed until her hips are hovering over his face.
He’s flush, amber eyes quietly asking a question. Jenevelle hikes up her skirt.
“Go ahead, then,” she purrs.
Tav hugs her thighs and settles her exactly where he wants her. She can’t see his face anymore for her clothes, but feels his tongue tentatively lap at her through her panties.
It’s involuntary the way her hips jolt against him as the pleasure lances through her with a near violence that surprises her.
“Hells,” she pants. Tav just holds tighter, but one arm frees itself to slip beneath her underwear while his tongue abuses the seam of her sex from over the fabric.
She shivers as his hand travels from the leg to trace the arc of her pubic mound. She’s already wet; a marriage of herself and Tav’s slick tongue working her over.
Jenevelle bites her lip, lest she give him the satisfaction of knowing that the way his thumb rubs her poor little clit makes her moan.
She reaches back, not wanting to be the only one being teased to the heavens and hells. Her grappling pays off when she finds his fly, even moreso when she encloses her hand around the obvious tent in his pants.
“You’re already this hard?” Jenevelle asks, but it’s more a taunt than a question.
The man beneath her whimpers, sucking harshly at her sex through her wet, silk-spun panties. Jenevelle stifles another hiss.
“S’your fault,” he rumbles, stroking along the seam of her lips with his thumb. slow and firm. There’s no way he can’t feel how slick she is.
Her brain knows she has to be responsible, but another part of her is aching to rip of her panties so he can eat her out properly. It feels like it’s been forever since anyone has touched her like this, and it’s making her heart thrum and blood pound between her legs. It’s dangerous.
Jenevelle squeezes him ruefully through the denim. “Enough foreplay. I think you’re more than ready for me.”
Regrettably, she slides off his face and opens the drawer of her nightstand to dig through it. She snatches a condom from a brand new box and busies herself with shimmying out of her skirt and ruined panties.
Jenevelle had no clue what she was looking for before going out tonight, but, admittedly, this doe eyed man from the club was the very last thing. Luckily she’d prepared for any manner of bed partner.
She looks to Tav after nearly forgetting him there in her musings. He’s wrestled his way out of his jeans and pitched them off the side of her bed. He lays back on her pillows, legs spread, in only a pair of grey and blue striped briefs. The outline of his cock stretching them deliciously.
She drinks in the sight of him, all broad shoulders and square hips, lips plumped from rutting against her sex. His eyes are hooded and it’s plain that he’s appreciating her naked form.
Jenevelle is tempted to have him lay back and touch himself, to watch how he would bring himself off were he alone, but her center throbs impatiently for more than mere voyeurism. She tosses the condom on his lap.
Tav snaps out of his lust trance and looks down at the square of plastic dumbly.
“Oh…” he says belatedly, like she’s passed him a twelve sided puzzle cube instead of the most common method for safe sex.
Jenevelle huffs. “Gods, don’t tell me I’ve brought home some knuckle-dragging brute who is ideologically opposed to wearing these? … Or are you allergic to latex? I do have alternative—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” he answers quickly. “Just wanted to stretch you on my fingers a little more before that.”
A bolt of pure arousal makes Jenevelle discreetly squeeze her legs together. She scowls at Tav in an attempt to play it off.
“I’m more than wet enough to take you,” she counters, then purses her lips shut as she realizes what she’s admitted.
Before he has the chance to bask in any self satisfaction, Jenevelle climbs back on top of him and tugs on the waistband of his briefs impatiently. Tav takes the hint and helps her shuck them down his thick thighs, his length slapping heavily against his belly.
She hesitates for the first time since they’ve begun. Looking at him resting patiently against her dark purple sheets, she’s reminded of how long it’s been since she’s taken anyone’s cock.
Tav shifts under her measuring gaze. “Everything alright? We can—”
Jenevelle shakes off the nerves and plucks the condom from where it fell onto the bed, tearing the packet open. Before her bedmate can ask any more inane questions, she quickly rolls the sheath down his dick.
Tav’s answering sigh is breathy and drawn out. Jenevelle grips him by the base in one hand, stroking him firmly from root to tip with the other.
“Are you ready, is the more apt question,” she husks.
“Fuck me,” he curses, voice reedy.
She knows it isn’t an actual request, but it makes her head inflate with the courage she needs. Jenevelle obliges him smugly, settles over his lap, then sinks down. She holds her breath on the inhale as Tav’s hands clamp around her hips and she carefully splits herself on his cock.
She is woefully out of practice, but the slight ache is a languorously pleasurable one. True to what she told him, she was more than slick enough to provide for a smooth descent.
Jenevelle hears a thin whimper that breaks her concentration. She pops her eyes back open to look at Tav, and finds him watching her intently as she takes him all the way, sitting heavily onto his lap.
His fingers dig into her skin and he’s adorably flush from his ears to his chest. She expects something filthy to come from his lips, some insipid remark about how tight she is or a question that prods for a compliment on how good he makes her feel.
Jenevelle gets neither. Tav, the ass, just smiles at her like she isn’t currently warming his cock. It almost makes her want to kiss him without the goal of keeping him quiet, so she begins moving her hips to occupy her more ridiculous instincts.
Tav’s smile fades as she begins to ride him properly. He resumes his campaign of lavishing attention on her breasts, lips kissing the swell of them and traveling all over until his tongue flicks over her stiff left nipple.
Jenevelle’s fingers thread through his wavy hair for purchase as his the cool air on her saliva damp skin makes her shiver down the path of her spine, all the way to the apex of her thighs. Her other hand has a white knuckle grip on the bedpost behind Tav’s head to keep herself steady as she swivels her hips on his lap.
Tav’s cock is a bones deep pressure each time it punches in and out of her. At her preferred pace. His teeth worry the tender mound of her breast and she clenches around him involuntarily. His mouth stops his ministrations to moan into her skin.
Jenevelle revels in the fact that she’s found his weakness.
She rocks herself slowly, relishing the slide as her cunt grips his length greedily and her inner muscles milk the dick she’s painstakingly riding.
Tav gently hitches his hips to meet her, panting into her collarbone.
“Oh? Do you like that?” she asks with faux innocence.
He releases her hips to cling to her middle, impossibly tight. “I’m so—I think I’m gonna—”
Jenevelle gives him no quarter, continuing to take her own pleasure, ignoring how he mutters and shakes beneath her. She purposely constricts around him again in the clutch of her wet insides as she nearly rises completely off his cock, basking in the raw sensation of in, out, in, out.
She hasn’t been laid like this since S—
Someone else. She rides him with abandon to bury the thought, glad there are no mirrors in her bedroom to reflect how wanton a cheap club fuck has made her.
Tav curses and rolls his hips up to meet her on the downstroke, hard, then holds her there. He comes unexpectedly, with a moan that sounds like it was beat out of him, filling her up as every drop is caught by the condom.
Everything stops. Tav doesn’t touch her, doesn’t ask if she’s satisfied. In fact, his arms loose their death grip around her mid section to bracket on either side of him. He certainly makes no move to get her off now that he’s had his. He does nothing.
He slumps limply onto her dark purple, satin pillows, sweat slicked, thick chest heaving, and Jenvelle hates how sexy she finds this selfish oaf in the aftershocks of his orgasm before she could so much as flirt with the ascent of her own peak.
Tav’s amber eyes flutter open to watch Jenevelle, watery with a tenderness she hasn’t seen in a partner in a while, and certainly never in a stray tryst. It makes her angry.
He probably doesn’t even realize that she hasn’t finished, the ass. Quick shot fool. She’s waiting for him to pull out and ask her some lizard brain question like ‘How was it for you?’
Not having the stomach for it, she readies herself to give him a lecture.
“I hope you know—” she starts.
But she doesn’t get to finish her berating.
Tav smoothly rolls her onto the mattress while still inside, and resumes plying her with his cock, slowly and firmly. Push and pull.
All the pressure that had built up from before steadily returns. Gods, she supposes she shouldn’t complain about being taken care of, but how in the hells is he still this hard?
He slips out and she takes ahold of him, feeding the tip back inside of her, watching with rapt attention the way his length spreads her.
Tav collapses onto his forearms planted on either side of her head. He kisses along her jaw.
“M’sorry I came fast. Never been, aahhh, fucked like this,” he whispers near her ear.
A savage lurch of pleasure bellows between her legs as his cock hits that spot with infuriating precision. Jenevelle had been unable to find it properly while riding him and here this bumbling lout is, finding it like he has a treasure map to it.
She shudders and wraps her legs snugly around his waist. Fingers trail along her abdomen until his rough thumb reacquaints itself with her clit once again.
Jenevelle hisses as the crescendoing bliss of Tav’s dick dragging against her tight walls stacks atop that delivered by his now constant teasing of her swollen button on every push home.
“Wish I could’ve had this on my tongue,” he babbles, kissing the shell of her ear while gingerly plucking her clit between two clumsy fingers that are somehow nearly the best she’s ever had. “Made you come like this.”
For all her inner chastising of Tav’s fast finish, her own orgasm rips through her before she realizes she’s there.
Jenevelle cries out, nails digging into Tav’s sides, eyes burning from the sensitivity of her hole wringing out his cock in time with her heartbeat.
Mercifully, (or cruelly, depending upon the moment you ask Jenevelle) he withdraws from her carefully and rolls onto his side. His hand wet with her spend, he traces calm lines along her lower abdomen as she tries to get her body to relax after such a rigorous coupling.
In her coasting down, she hardly notices him slipping off the soiled condom then tying it off. He leans over the side of her bed, rummaging through his pile of clothes.
Jenevelle reckons that Tav is getting his things together to leave until he pulls a white handkerchief from his jeans pocket before tossing them away again.
He cleans the mess between her legs, more sedate after she jolts in surprise, still tender. He wraps up the used condom in it once done and pitches it into the rubbish bin near her nightstand.
Jenevelle means to say something—anything— to him, but her post-orgasm brain can’t seem to wrangle a single word. The fatigue of their successful rutting mixed with the lethargy from her lost alcohol buzz from earlier finally hits her.
She thinks she hears Tav asking if she needs anything, but even he’s so still and soft spoken that she hardly pays him heed. It feels equally likely that it was more dream than reality.
The weight of sleep settles over her soon after.
Jenevelle hears the sound of morning rush hour traffic outside her apartment before even opening her eyes. She stretches, muscles satisfyingly sore for reasons she can’t immediately recall until her fingers brush something solid, warm, in bed next to her.
She’s thrust into consciousness by a nagging thought. It’s confirmed when she rubs her eyes open to see a man snoring softly on the opposite side of her bed next to her. They’re sharing her comforter.
Pink Sweater from the club. The one she brought home last night. She blinks the sleep haze from her mind. Tad, was it? No… Tav? Gods, she hopes she didn’t sleep with someone named Tad.
Jenevelle glares daggers at his prone form, then reaches over to wake her phone on her bedside table so she can see the time. 7:24. Shit. She’d expected him to slip out long before morning to prevent any awkwardness. No such luck.
She shifts from laying on her back to her right side so she can face him. The movement must disturb him, because he stirs, lashes fluttering until they open.
This man has the nerve to smile sleepily at her.
“Mm, g’mornin’,” he mumbles, rolling over to mirror her.
Jenevelle huffs. “If you say so.”
Tav, as she’s now certain she remembers he’s called, stops smiling. “… Um… Sleep well?”
“Not really,” she snarks. “Not used to sharing my bed.”
She watches his throat move as he swallows hard.
But he recovers quickly, wiggling closer to her.
“There’s this place downtown,” he says. “The best breakfast in the city. You have got to let me take you there to try their Monte Cristo.”
Is he serious?
“I don’t have to do anything of the sort,” she replies curtly, hoping he takes the hint without her having to spell it out for him.
He doesn’t.
“They have more than sandwiches,” he amends quickly. “Eggs, flapjacks, whatever you like. A full English too, obviously.”
“I’d rather not.”
She watches Tav flounder, and she’d almost feel bad if she wasn’t so irked by him.
“Or I could make you something here, if you like,” he offers instead. “I’m not a great cook but I’m told I throw together a decent omelette.”
“Make your club fucks breakfast regularly enough to get an opinion, do you?”
Tav turns beet red. “N-no, I didn’t mean—”
Jenevelle groans, patience exhausted. She doesn’t care how handsome or good with tongue and cock he was, nothing is worth this display.
“I don’t want to go to breakfast with you, and I certainly don’t want you making it in my kitchen,” she snaps, and Tav’s hopefulness is wiped clean in real time. “Quite frankly, I’m trying to figure why you’re still here at all.”
Tav’s mouth hangs open, and against her will, Jenevelle is forced to remember the way those lips left an invisible trail all over her body last night.
He tries to explain by blabbering, “You fell asleep and I wasn’t sure how to lock up behind my—”
Jenevelle lets him talk, but is really not enjoying this encounter being drug out so far beyond its limits.
He stops when he realizes that she is unmoved by anything he’s saying.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, kicking off the blankets. “Let me just—”
Tav doesn’t finish his thought, just hops from her bed without another word, naked as the day he was born, and scuttles about the room for his clothes. Jenevelle idly appreciates his lines and carefully sculpted form, and most of all the fact that he’s leaving. He slips back into his briefs and those thigh hugging jeans, pulls on that blush pink monstrosity, then steps into his shoes.
While he’s doing that, she finds a large, faded t-shirt from one of her drawers and dresses in that so she isn’t seeing Tav off in the nude. He hurries from her bedroom and down the hall, but hesitates at the door as she catches up. Jenevelle pushes the worn out collar back up to cover her bared right shoulder, waiting on Tav expectantly.
His eyes dart about the room, looking anywhere but at her. She isn’t sure whether to be glad that he’s finally taken the hint, or think him so spineless that he cannot even muster a normal farewell.
Tav nods at her awkwardly, and Jenevelle supposes that’s the closest to it that he can manage. She has no reply, and he finally turns from her and wrests the door open.
He damn near runs from her apartment in a dash to the stairwell where he practically bowls over a frazzled Nocturne on her way up. Jenevelle waits patiently on her friend to make her way down the hall.
“Hells,” Nocturne mutters as Jenevelle steps aside to let the other woman in. “That’s the second delivery person you’ve chewed out this week. They bring you the Wickams’ coffee and bagel order by mistake again?”
Jenevelle shakes her head as Nocturne comes through and hangs her coat on the rack by the door as she shuts it. “No, not this time.”
“Well, whoever it was meant for, you sure rattled him.”
Jenevelle sighs. “He wasn’t delivering anything. He’s just a guy I met last night.”
She hates the way her best friend looks at her, in that calculating, code cracking way. Then Nocturne’s face shifts as understanding clicks into place.
“Jen, I thought you told me you were staying in.”
“I changed my mind.”
“I would have come over.”
“I know, but I didn’t exactly invite him here for snacks and movies like I would have you.”
Nocturne crosses her den and flops onto the sofa. “Jen, I know things with your parents have been hard, but—”
Jenevelle’s defenses rise, building high enough that she doesn’t even allow herself think about what Nocturne is trying to get at.
“It’s not about that,” she asserts. “I went out on a whim for Valentine’s Day and found someone to blow off a little steam with, that’s all.”
Nocturne is quiet for a moment as Jenevelle sits down beside her. “I just want you to be careful.”
“I am, obviously.”
Her friend hums. “So, he was subpar in bed and you let him have it, is that it? The man looked like someone kicked his puppy.”
Jenevelle barks out a rueful laugh. “Not exactly. I just figured he would have left before morning, and he hadn’t, then he had the nerve to prattle on about getting breakfast together. So I told him to bugger off, and that’s exactly what he did.”
It’s a truthful enough version of events to tell Nocturne. The fact that Jenevelle’s ensuing climax had been the most intense in recent memory is an unnecessary detail. Nocturne tends to read too much into things.
“Harsh, Jen.”
Jenevelle just shrugs. “Saturday mornings are always our time together.”
“If you wanted to go to breakfast with him, I would have understood.”
The idea is so ludicrous, it’s migraine inducing, and she doesn’t even have the excuse of over drinking last night. “I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. I brought him home, had perfectly adequate sex with him, and now he’s left. Simple as that.”
Surely even Nocturne can’t inflate her imagination based off that uninspired description.
“Seems like he didn’t see it that way, going off what you’re describing,” Nocturne notes.
Jenevelle waves her concern away dismissively. Tav clearly had been trying to prove something to himself with his invitation, mostly likely a scheme to fluff his own ego, but that has nothing to do with her. “However he sees it doesn’t really matter.”
Nocturne’s eyes soften, giving her a once over. “He wasn’t… untoward, was he? Because—”
Jenevelle snorts, tucking her legs beneath her, trying to get comfy. “Please. You said it yourself; he ran out of here like someone kicked his puppy. And I barely said a word to him. I’ve never slept someone so docile and spineless, honestly.”
Docile until he was railing her into the mattress, anyway, but that’s neither here nor there.
Nocturne nods, accepting her answer. “Good. Certainly not your usual type, but at least he’s gone now. You’ll never have to see him again.”
Jenevelle glances towards the door, remembering the look on Tav’s face before he’d bolted from her apartment. She promptly shoves the thought away. She barely knew his name, didn’t care to ask for his number. She had a quick, convenient lay and now they are going back to their own lives. Anything else is a complication. She can’t do complicated right now.
“So not my type,” she agrees woodenly. ”Couldn’t get him out of here fast enough.”
Nocturne throws her arm over the back of the sofa. “As long as you’re happy and safe, you know I’ll always support you no matter what, Jen.”
Jenevelle’s heart swells. She leans over and gives her best friend a peck on the cheek. “I know, and I’m grateful. So why don’t you order us breakfast and you can tell me about all the drama at the non profit this week.”
“Gods, so much of it, too. You want the usual?”
“You know I’ll never say no to a veggie omelette,” Jenevelle replies.
“Then I’ll make the call and you can go freshen up.”
Nocturne’s words make her recall the disaster her room is. She and Tav’s sweaty tumble on her sheets; her favorite pair of panties ruined, and the rest of her outfit strewn about the floor.
“Sounds good,” Jenevelle replies, licking her suddenly parched lips.
“Jen, are you sure you’re fine? You’re awfully red.”
Jenevelle reigns in her nerves and gets up calmly from her seat. “I’m peachy,” she assures her friend. “It’s just laundry day.”
Nocturne scrunches her brows, puzzled, but says nothing as she digs her phone out of her bag to dial out for their food.
Jenevelle takes the opportunity to rush to her bedroom. She strips her sheets and throws all evidence from her encounter with Tav last night into the wash basket, then does a mental checklist to ensure she isn’t missing anything. She hazily recalls the embroidered handkerchief he discarded into the bin after cleaning them up and peeks into the otherwise empty wastebasket at the rumpled length of silk, debating.
It doesn’t look like the sort of thing meant to be tossed out, even if dirty. It looks expensive, fragile. Something she should put in with delicates, like her designer panties she’s just rescued from the floor that she has to clean a batch of anyway.
Jenevelle pulls a face as she plucks it carefully from the neatly tied off condom it’s wrapped around, and adds it to the wash pile on a whim. No sense in not finding a practical use for it if it comes clean, she justifies.
She might as well get to keep something from the strangest Valentine’s Day she’s ever had. Like Nocturne said, it’s not like she’ll ever see Tav again.
And she lost out on at least half a bottle of top shelf wine when she rushed from the club without it last night. This is simply breaking even.