CHAPTER 4
Ross
Conditions. Of course, there has to be fucking conditions on this.
Ross couldn’t even believe he’d just agreed to make out with Alix. She was practically a little sister to him. He’d babysat her so many damn times growing up, or at least, looked out for her because Chance couldn’t, that it felt totally wrong. Just like taking her to her prom would have been wrong. Just like taking her v-card would have been wrong. She was smoking some seriously bad shit the night she’d asked him that. Even if he knew for a fact that she didn’t smoke anything at all.
Alix was a good girl. She didn’t smoke. Didn’t do drugs of any kind. Barely even drank. She never went to parties in high school. She got straight A’s. He had no idea what in the ever-living hell had gone through her mind when she came to him and wanted to know if he’d be her prom date, oh, and also, if he’d give her a side serving of cock after. Not that she’d asked like that. She’d been much more tasteful and classy, as per usual.
Still.
He was flattered. He’d tried to decline politely. He’d tried to make things right. He’d tried, for once in his life, to be a gentleman. That had blown up in his face. For the past four years, Alix made it obvious that she hated him. She’d never acted like that before.
She’d been, honestly, a pretty cool chick growing up. Not half as annoying as he and Chance told her she was.
Honestly, she was too damn smart and too damn beautiful for her own good. Standing there with her hands on her hips, defining her narrow waist, her long dark hair tossed over one slender shoulder, she looked like a goddess about to wage war on his ass. Her dark honey eyes told a different story. Her face was heart shaped with high cheekbones and a sharp jawline, full lips, and a petite nose. Her features were striking, but it was her eyes that made people stop and stare at her when she wasn’t looking. They wanted a second glance of those honey gold orbs.
Framed by thick lashes, huge and round, and a strange yellowy gold, they were otherworldly. Some people would call them hazel. Those people were douchebags who had zero imagination.
“Conditions,” he repeated.
“Conditions?” she mouthed.
“Conditions. Though it’s pretty hard to have a serious conversation with you when you’re soaking wet.” He refused to tack on and delicious, because that would give her the wrong idea.
He’d never actually seen her as edible before. She’d been this brainy chick who was off limits growing up. Not only was she way younger, he’d spent so many years hauling her ass out of scrapes and keeping her safe, helping her with homework, blah, blah, blah, that he’d never thought of anything else. She was like an annoying puppy that everyone couldn’t help but love no matter how much it whined and complained for attention.
Either the four years she’d been gone had changed his mind or he’d hit his head really, really hard.
Okay, so Alix had grown up a little. She’d sprouted fuller curves while she was off at college, or maybe it was just that her clothes were plastered skintight against her killer body. A body that could make even the oldest fogy spring a hard-on.
Thinking of grandpas and boners at the same time was gross, so he turned his attention back to the throbbing pain in his head and tried to force himself to come up with a way to get out of his current predicament.
“We write it down,” he started off, because yeah, written shit was key. “As a contract that we both have to honor.”
Alix’s perfectly waxed or threaded, some version of manicured- brow shot up. “Why? That’s stupid.”
“Because honestly, I don’t think that just making out will be enough for you.”
She shot him a glare that would slay him straight through the chest, if looks could actually kill. It was the stabby kind of look. Her eyes narrowed after and she stared at him through the closed lidded slits.
“You’re mighty high on yourself. Wasn’t that how you just about drowned?”
“Not at all. I would blame faulty memory for that one. That and picking the wrong date. Did you see her? She dressed to match me. I swear, I didn’t know anything about that.”
Alix’s eye roll told him that she had indeed, noticed his date. Her lips thinned out and he’d seen jealousy and outright desire in the eyes of enough women that he recognized the flash in Alix’s instantly.
“Conditions,” she reminded him. “Don’t get off track.”
“First condition.” His brain worked overtime. “You have to agree to drop this whole stupid thing where you try and evade me at all costs. It’s weird for our parents. They’re good friends. Our families were always close. You refusing to do dinners at my parents’ house or be around at your house when I come over is just ridiculous.”