My eyes won’t stop moving to the fucking gorgeous woman sitting at the bar, and I need to get my shit together. I glance back at my date, who has not stopped talking since we got here. I said I was going to put myself out there again, and this is me really fucking trying.
There is nothing wrong with my date. Her hair is a pretty blonde that I could imagine fisting in my hand, and her pink lips would look amazing wrapped around my cock. The problem is, I’ve been here before. It feels like I’m not moving forward in my life anymore. I fuck the same kind of girl every Friday night, and then go to work every Monday morning with a hard cock. I never feel satisfied.
The redhead across the restaurant though, god, she could fucking satisfy me. Her red hair keeps catching my eye, making me glance over there more than I would like. Her head tips back with a laugh and the sound, even from far away, consumes my entire body. She’s talking to the bartender as if they are friends, and I shake my head, trying to return to reality.
My eyes finally find Claire’s again. She hasn’t stopped talking since I started dazing off, and I don’t blame her. I’m probably horrible company right now.
“Right?” she asks, blue eyes hopeful. She stares at me, waiting for my answer. I wish I knew what she was talking about, but I haven’t been listening to a single thing she has said.
“I’m sorry?” I ask, hopefully not sounding like a jackass. I don’t want to be rude to her, but if I’m being honest, I don’t even care what we are talking about. I’m sure she would be a perfect person for someone else, but tonight, she isn’t holding my interest at all. Maybe that makes me a dick, but I can’t help staring at the redhead at the bar. Something about her has gotten my attention in a way no one else has.
“I said that it would be good if we went to the Carlson event together, right?” she asks again, eyes filling with hope once more. I refrain a groan from leaking out of my mouth. My PR team is hosting an event in a few weeks, mostly to raise money so rich people can continue looking like the idols they aren’t. These are the kinds of events I’m supposed to bring a date to. Usually, I find a date a few weeks in advance to keep up the illusion that my life is a fucking gold mine.
Everyone expects that, because I’m big on social media and have enough money to buy anything my heart desires, I must be the happiest fucking guy alive, but I’m not. This life gets boring. It’s the same thing over and over and over again, and after a while, I can’t keep doing the same thing. I post the same pictures. I buy the same shit. I go out with the exact same women.
Something about the women across the restaurant though, feels different. She doesn’t give off the same energy everyone else around me does. She doesn’t seem like someone desperate for fame, like the rest of the people in my life. I glance over at her again, wishing she would look at me so I could see what color eyes she has.
“Uh—” I stutter, realizing I never answered Claire. Part of me wants to lie and tell her that it would be amazing to go with her to the Carlson event. Keeping up this facade would be easier than tearing it down, but part of me wants to challenge the world around me. Everyone expects me to date a supermodel who is from the same world that I am, but maybe I need to tell everyone to fuck off. Maybe, just this once, I should have a say in who I spend my time with.
“I don’t think so,” I finally answer, hesitating slightly. It feels unfamiliar coming out of my mouth. This is outside of the normal that has been surrounding my life for years, but at this point, I don’t know if I care. I’m sick of doing the exact same things all of the time. I need something different.
“What do you mean?” Claire asks, confused. I shuffle through my thoughts for a second, hoping to find something concrete. I don’t have any reason to dislike her, I just do. I need someone new and different, and I’ve been down this road a million times.
“I just don’t think we should go together,” I say, taking my wallet out of my pocket, finally done with this conversation. I was letting it go on longer than I wanted it to because that is what I do. I have been doing the easy thing for years. Going out with women who don’t challenge me. Doing work that doesn’t drive me. My entire life has been put on easy mode since I started on social media, and I’m sick of it.
I smack a couple of bills onto the table, leaving a hefty tip. I rise from my seat and Claire’s eyes widen with shock. She stares up at me, totally confused.
“What the fuck is going on here, Finn?” she asks, panic rising in her voice.
“I think this date should be over,” I state. “I had a good time and you are a wonderful person, but not the person for me,” I say as gracefully as I can. The problem is not her, it’s me. I shouldn’t have agreed to this date in the first place. I can feel the pressures of my life starting to weigh down on me, but I’ve been pushing it away for weeks, hoping the feeling would go away. Instead of continuing to push it away, I’m going to embrace it.
I turn around, not in the mood to look back anymore, and walk my way across the restaurant. I shouldn’t come from the table with Claire straight to the bar, but I can’t help myself. The idea of trying something new tonight fills me with a fire I didn’t know I needed. I thought my life had everything, but now I’m not so sure.
I find the redhead through a small sea of people. On my way over, for a moment, I lost sight of her. She isn’t looking at me. Instead, she is still talking to the bartender, making my blood run hot.
I shouldn’t be this interested in a stranger, but I can’t help myself. My body pulls toward her, hoping to get even a fraction of an inch closer. She has the room by the throat, forcing everyone to look her way. At least, she has me by the throat. I can’t stop staring at her.
I thank the universe when the seat next to her opens up as I arrive. I scoot into it quickly, feeling the heat from her skin crash into mine, making me feel warm. She glances my way, making my cock harden. I don’t usually have such a reaction from a look, but she seems to influence me like no other.
For a second, just a second, my confidence wavers. I don’t know what the right approach is with her. I don’t want to do this the wrong way and lose a chance with her. I’m used to the same kind of woman, and I know how to pick them up. This is uncharted territory for me, and it’s thrilling as much as it is terrifying.
My thoughts run dry when her voice carries itself across to me, making my body stiffen.
“Listen,” she says to the bartender, slurring just a little. “I’m just sick of these men walking around like they got something good in their pants, and then disappointing me every chance they get,” she says, eyes filled with humor as the bartender laughs with her. He shakes a tumbler while listening to her, before finally pouring the drink into a glass and walking it down to someone at the end of the bar.
My sight is caught by Claire exiting the building. I watch as she walks out the glass doors with her head down and for a moment, I feel bad. She doesn’t deserve this. She isn’t a bad person, she just isn’t my person.
I take a moment to glance at the firecracker sitting next to me, fully taking her in. The outfit she is wearing could bring me to my fucking knees. I mean that literally. Her shirt is black, complimenting her hair nicely, but low cut enough to make me have to resist staring at her chest. The shirt hugs her curves, making me salivate. I try my best to seem unaffected, but this is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life.
Her brown eyes meet mine, unexpectedly, and my breath leaves my body. The colors dance in her gaze, drawing me in and forcing me to give her all of my attention.
She has her elbow on top of the bar, from previously talking with her hands to the bartender, showing the soft curve of her side in a way that catches my attention, holding it for longer than I would like to admit. My eyes trail up and stop on the curve of her neck, making me wish I could feel her soft skin on the palm of my hand. What I would give to have my hands around her throat.
“Like you!” she exclaims, pointing at me suddenly. She has a wild look in her eyes, as if her point has been proven by my presence. I look behind me, making sure that she’s talking to me. She continues staring at me as if I am the one with the wild behavior.
“Me?” I ask when she refuses to say anymore. She just sits there staring at me, waiting for me to speak.
“Yes!” she shouts, loud enough for the room to hear but not loud enough to be annoying. I rear back slightly, unsure what she is talking about. Although I should be uneasy about the way she is speaking to me, it is just turning me on. I can’t get over how her hair looks when she is mad, as if it has literally caught on fire. Her face is red with annoyance, for a reason I’m still not sure of, but she looks fucking radiant. Her lips are curled into a tiny little snarl, making my cock twitch in my pants. She makes me react to her, even when she seems pissed.
“You got this sexy thing going,” she says, making my eyebrows raise at the boldness of her words. “But I absolutely doubt you know how to fuck,” she says, ruining the self-confidence she placed in me moments ago.
“I—I” I stumble over my words. No one has honestly ever talked to me like that. Part of it is insulting, I’m not going to lie. It doesn’t feel good, but a bigger part of it was riveting. Most women around me are around for my clout. I have a lot of followers on social media and usually, that means that people treat me like a king, even though I’m not that different from them. Always having to wonder about people’s intentions is exhausting, so this feels like a breath of fresh air, even if it is a little disrespectful.
“If you stutter, it means I’m right,” the firecracker says smugly, before finally turning away from me. I take a second to find my bearings before replying.
I know I’m not horrible in bed. All the women who tell the world about fucking me, have never complained. Though, I’ve never heard any upstanding reviews either. Usually, women care more about the fact that they fucked me than they do about how good it was. Sometimes I think that once my cock is inside them, they have checked off the box and are ready to leave.
“What’s your name?” I ask, trying to find my confidence again.
“Why?” she asks, turning to look at me again with a raised eyebrow and an uneasy expression.
“I don’t usually have such intimate conversations with people when I don’t even know their names,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel. I was looking for an in to talk to her, and this is as good as any. Especially after she said the word “fuck” and it made my pants get tight.
“Emma,” she finally states, looking me up and down, assessing me. I don’t know what she finds, but it seems to satisfy something inside of her because she holds her hand out for me to shake.
I take her hand willingly, thankful for the contact. Electricity shoots through me when I touch her, going straight down my spine to my dick, and I’m suddenly wishing and praying she would fix the hard-on that has been sitting in my pants since I noticed her across the room.
“Finn,” I say when she takes her hand out of my grasp.
“See, you even have a sexy name,” she says as if that proves her point even more.
“Does that add to the sexy thing I got going on then?” I ask flirtatiously, finally finding my footing in talking to her.
“Don’t be smug,” she replies with a roll of her eyes. God this woman makes me want to do things to her that they don’t even make porn about. “That wasn’t my point.” Her words shake my confidence again. I feel like I keep yo-yo-ing with her. One second I’m making ground, the next I’m back to feeling self-conscious.
“No one has ever asked me if I know how to fuck before,” I admit sheepishly, coming to terms with the fact that I may not be as good as I think. It feels like something so obvious, but I never even thought about it. It felt like these women and I had some sort of secret arrangement. They get to talk about me and I get laid. I hate to think about sex as transactional, but that’s how it felt. The idea makes my stomach turn sour, knowing that I haven’t even given any thought to my partner’s pleasure until now.
I flag down the bartender, who has been running around like a chicken with his head cut off ever since Emma stopped talking to him. I order a whiskey, hoping it will eat away at the embarrassment that is flooding me.
“It’s not really a common question,” Emma states. The bartender asks if she wants anything else, and she shakes her head. “I think that’s enough for me,” she admits dryly. I glance over at her, and the confidence she was sporting earlier has been replaced with something else, something I’m not sure of. She looks sad all of a sudden, almost shameful, and the energy changes in the room.
I understand the shame she is feeling. I’m feeling the same right about now. It feels like a bubble just burst around me. I thought my life was going well. I thought I was doing good in all areas of my life, but it feels like I have been sleeping. I have been sleeping through sex with these women because this is how it has been for years. I haven’t had to think about performance, because people haven’t cared about that. I push back the feeling of being used, not wanting to go there. I feel like I used them and they used me and it’s a whole clusterfuck of emotions and uncomfortable feelings. I don’t know if I want to deep-dive into that cesspool just yet.
“I’m sorry. I just had a shitty night. I’m sure you fuck just fine,” she states regretfully, leaning into me when she speaks. Her arm presses against mine, only for a second, but the touch leaves my body feeling cold when she leans away.
“I don’t know if I do actually,” I admit. I don’t want to come to terms with this, but it feels like something I need to do. I need to deal with this because what I have been doing isn’t right. Everyone is fine if I use them as a sex doll, as long as they get to tell people they fucked Finn Declan. Emma looks me up and down again, searching for answers that are sitting on my tongue. I try to pull the sour look off of my face, making my bad mood less obvious, but I can’t get my muscles to cooperate. It feels like I have been sleepwalking for years, and I just woke up.
“I got popular at eighteen, and I mean really popular. No one cares if I fuck them good, as long as they can sell the story to the gossip magazine the next day,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders, trying to explain the best I can. I sound sadder than I intended and I do my best to put the mask back on. I’m supposed to be happy. I have everything the world has to offer me, but I haven’t been happy in years. My life doesn’t even feel like my own anymore and it’s taken me this long to see that something isn’t right.
“That’s fucking sad,” Emma says, pulling me from my thoughts. I glance at her, and her eyes hold sympathy. I have been pushing away these feelings for years because I wasn’t sure if I even deserved sympathy. I didn’t think someone could ever feel bad for the rich guy with too much pussy, but Emma looks at me like my problems are real. Like what I am going through matters, and that has never happened before.
“It is what it is,” I say, downing my whiskey and staring at the table. I don’t give myself many moments to feel bad for myself, so I take this moment and I stew in it, because tomorrow, it will be back to PR meetings and fake smiles.
I search for some way out of this conversation. It feels too big right now. I need to focus back on her and move this into something lighter. Something that doesn’t make me feel like a failure of a man for the last twenty-six years.
“What’s your story then? What’s got you asking questions like that?” I mutter, hoping she will take the bait and turn the conversation back on her, but she doesn’t answer right away. She thinks hard, moving her mouth from side to side, as if chewing on the words before she opens up to me. “You have bad sex or something?” I finally ask. There has got to be a story there. Normal people don’t sit in bars tipsy, telling strangers they can’t fuck well.
“Oh my god, is it that obvious?” she asks, looking exhausted over the topic. “I fucked a dude legit twenty minutes ago, and I don’t even think he knew what a clit was,” she says, and I wince at her words. It feels like too much information and not enough at the exact same time.
“Hey, at least I know what a clit is,” I say, raising my glass in a toast.
“I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t mean you are good with it,” she says, rolling her eyes. The smile on her face gives it away though. She might be warming up to me.
“Touché,” I say, laughing, allowing silence to take over the conversation for a second. The longer we talk, the faster my hope of taking this woman home plummets. Starting the conversation by admitting that I may not know how to fuck might not have been my best strategy.
“Wait, you’re Finn Declan?” Emma asks, finally making the connection with wide eyes and an open mouth in the shape of an “O.” “Oh my god, of course you fucking are!” she exclaims, putting her hand on my arm as the connection registers on her face. I can feel her heat through my shirt and it lights me up inside. I stare at her mouth for a few beats too long, but I can’t stop imagining sliding my cock inside of those pretty lips. I push my dirty thoughts away, trying to get a handle on myself. I’ve never felt so out of control over my thoughts, but Emma brings something new out of me. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.” She removes her hand from my arm, shaking her head while the heat leaves my body, once again leaving me feeling cold.
This is usually the moment when someone asks for my autograph, if I will follow them on Instagram, or some other bullshit that I don’t want to do. I don’t mean to sound cocky, but it has happened so many times that I come to expect it at this point.
“You’re like a billionaire, aren’t you?” she asks, looking at me again with a new expression I can’t register. Her stare feels hot on my skin, but her question cools me back down instantly. Bingo. This is where she offers to fuck me because of who I am. I should have kept my mouth shut.
“More or less,” I say vaguely, hoping she doesn’t start screaming it for the whole restaurant. It wouldn’t be the first time that has happened and it probably won’t be the last.
The scoff that comes out of her mouth surprises me.
“What does that mean?” I ask, suddenly intrigued by her answer. This is not what usually happens to me. No one has ever disliked the amount of money sitting in my bank account. Usually, it is more of a reason to get me into bed.
“Nothing,” she says, a small smirk playing on her lips. She raises a glass of water to her lips, compliments of the bartender who keeps glancing over here to make sure she is okay. I appreciate him checking in, but it makes me curious to know who he is to her.
“What was that sound for then?” I ask, humor playing in my voice. I’m mostly joking, it shouldn’t matter what this stranger at a bar thinks about my life choices, but a teeny-tiny part of me is desperate to hear someone be fucking truthful for once in their lives. I have an insane lifestyle, being this level of celebrity. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but after years, I’m exhausted with trying to figure out who is telling the truth and who is lying straight to my face.
“I just mean—” she stops, shaking her head as if there is a war waging in there. I raise my eyebrows at her, hoping to finally get a response. “Eat the rich, ya know?” she says finally, shrugging as she takes another drink with a smile on her face. She says this as if the phrase means anything to me. Confusion seeps into my body, not knowing what the fuck she is talking about.
“Is that a sex thing?” I ask. She laughs at my comment, making me even more confused than I was before.
“No, it’s like—” she stops, moving her arms in a way that makes me believe she doesn’t quite know how to phrase it. “It’s just the idea that there shouldn’t be billionaires. You are sucking all the wealth out of the economy,” she says, laughing at my shocked face.
“So your phrase for that… is eat the rich?”
“Yeah,” she says matter-of-factly as if that makes all the sense in the world. I open my mouth to speak and close it, then do it all over again. Confusion seeps into my pores. Most people in my position, might get mad that they aren’t getting treated with the respect celebrities are used to, but I have been so desperate for someone to just be fucking honest that this is more refreshing than anything. I don’t even want to admit how much this is turning me on. Finally finding a woman who doesn’t fall at my feet feels like the thing my life has been missing for years.
“I have never met someone who is mad about my wealth,” I say, absolutely shocked even after moments to process what she said.
“I mean, I’m not mad about it,” she explains, her red hair moving with her as she talks. Her hair makes me think of fire because if I get too close to her, I could get fucking burned. The attraction that I feel for her, already, is unparalleled to anything I have felt before. “I just probably don’t want to fuck you now,” she says, with a shrug and a smirk.
“Oh, so you wanted to fuck me before, then?” I ask with a laugh, shocked and excited at her confession. She laughs at my words, sending chills down my spine. I’m relishing the reaction this woman gets out of me. I have never felt like this before.
“Like you said,” Emma mutters as she bats her eyelashes at me. “You don’t even think you are any good,” she says with mock innocence. Her lips get extra pouty when she talks like that and I feel my cock stir in my pants. It wants nothing more than to feel her lips around it, but it seems like the chances of that happening are slipping further and further out of my grasp.
“I mean, you’ll never know unless you find out,” I say, wishing she would take me up on the offer. She turns in her seat, facing me fully. She assesses me with her eyes, making me hungry for her. I watch as her eyes trail my body, leaving fire in their path. I do the same thing, taking in her whole body with my eyes, wishing I could do a lot more than just stare at her.
“I don’t usually get into bed with someone with the intention of being disappointed,” she says, voice hoarser than before, making me think that she’s turned on. That I’m turning her on. I don’t know much about women, but I know when they want to fuck. I smirk, knowing I have an influence on her, even if it is only half of the influence she has on me.
“I’m a very quick learner,” I say, placing my hand on her knee, which is only a few inches away from me since she turned her body. Her breath hitches and that gives me the go-ahead to move my hand, only slightly at first. I trail my fingers up her leg with the lightest touch I can muster, only an inch or two every second, giving her time to stop me if she wants. Giving her time to tell me this is a bad idea. She should tell me that I am playing with fire, but she doesn’t. Her eyes hold the fire inside of them, contained only for now.
