Callie, Unwrapped

By Amy Jo Cousins

The best presents are the ones you unwrap early...

Callie isn't sure just how kinky anyone can get on a Tuesday before Christmas, but she's willing to find out. That is, assuming this first drink at a pool hall with her ex, Gabe, and his girl, Kate, doesn't send anyone screaming from the bar. Newly divorced after years of sleep-walking through occasional sex, she's hoping to find her way back to the fiery confidence of her youth, when she saw what, or who, she wanted and grabbed it with both hands. It's a Callie she barely remembers and that Gabe is convinced is buried somewhere deep inside her still.

But when bystanders speculate about the trio, and Gabe and Kate make surprising demands that she be an active participant in this threesome, and not simply their plaything, Callie discovers that letting herself be sexually confident again is harder than she imagined. She'll need to bare both her body and her heart to find out if she can still reach fearlessly for adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Jo Cousins
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311932396

Amy Jo Cousins

A.J. Cousins knows one thing for sure: the people who read and write romance novels are the smartest, funniest, kindest, and most optimistic souls on the planet and finding a place in this community has been like coming home. She lives in Chicago, where she writes contemporary romance, tweets more than she ought, and sometimes runs way too far. She loves her boy and the Cubs, who taught her that being awesome doesn't necessarily have anything to do with winning. Please visit her online!

Book preview

Chapter

One

This is like being on a blind date. Except there are two

of

them

.

And I’ve already

fucked

one

.

The Rack Room, Callie instructed the cabbie as she slid across the cracked vinyl seat, digging in her black bag to find the lip gloss she knew was buried somewhere beneath her netbook.

Shit. What a day to get stuck presenting the PowerPoint slideshow from hell. But it wasn’t as if she could have stopped in the middle of the monthly performance review session and announced to the room, Excuse me, but I've arranged a potential threesome with my ex and a woman I've never met, so can we wrap this up by five, please?

The long rectangular tube materialized beneath her fingertips and she dragged it out, realizing at the same time that she'd forgotten to buckle up. As she shoved the metal tongue into the buckle, she unscrewed the lip gloss cap one-handed. Running behind always left her jittery with stress. She cursed her lateness, the backed-up traffic on Clark Street, the ridiculous fact that the only evening all three of them had been available at the same time was the Tuesday before Christmas.

How kinky can anyone get on a Tuesday?

She pictured what they planned on doing that night. The three of them—assuming this introductory drink at the pool hall didn't send anyone screaming out of

the

bar

.

Pretty fucking kinky.

The low-level tension that had hovered in the background of her body all day roared to the fore at the thought of Gabe and his friend and what she hoped to find waiting for her at the bar tonight. Her stomach dipped as if the cab had just driven over a small rollercoaster hill at speed. Heat swept from her face to her chest, to the hot, wet space between her legs, where it flared in a moment of interest that had her crossing her thighs and bouncing her leg as the storefronts passed by so, so slowly.

Day after day of teasing and explicit emails had passed between her and Gabe, leading up to this night. She'd never been so frigging glad to have kept in contact with an old boyfriend, despite John's disapproval over the years of their marriage. Although Gabe had been more than just another boyfriend, of course.

Fuck John. Fuck John. Or rather, fuck Gabe. And Kate. Let's definitely not forget about

fucking

Kate

.

The cab stopped short and she braced herself with a stiff arm to the plexiglass panel in front of her. Taking advantage of the brief halt in their forward motion, she slicked a little burgundy shine on her mouth and then licked her lips to see what it tasted like. She wondered what Kate's mouth—the mouth of this woman she had never met but might soon be naked in bed with—would

taste

like

.

She squeezed her inner thigh muscles together, pulsing pressure on her crotch, and knew she was getting wetter.

Wet. She'd been wet when she woke up this morning, swollen and hot from the dreams she'd been sinking into at night for

a

week

.

Wetter. The hours had ticked by with agonizing slowness. She'd swallowed cool water from the short, round glass that fit so pleasingly into the palm of her hand. Swallowed and felt it trickle down her throat, and kept thinking about what might happen tonight.

Her underwear was slick against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

She'd opted against her usual black tights this morning, even though the cold autumn air was sharp on her bare legs when she'd stepped outside the office for lunch, the wind pouring off the icy grayness of the river. In her mind she'd pictured someone running light fingertips up the soft inside of her thigh, a hand sliding beneath her black wrap skirt, a wrist pushing the overlapping edges of jersey fabric insistently apart as the hand pushed higher.

Whose hand? Whose voice whispering in her ear, I can feel how wet you are, as a thumb flicked against the crotch of her underwear?

Picturing this, teasing herself by scraping a fingernail against the crease of her pussy under plain black cotton bikinis, she'd stuffed the tights back in the dresser drawer and pulled out deep red knee socks instead, zipping up her black boots over them so just a thin band of red showed at the top. Something about that combo felt ultra-sexy. She was pretty sure it was a mash-up of flappers rolling their stockings and the Scarlet Letter. A sort of literary cocktail of risk-taking and sluttiness.

Those thin slashes of red were the only color on her, besides the slick of cherry wine gloss on her lips. Black boots, black wrap skirt, and the long-sleeved skinny black top with the stand-up collar that cradled the back of her neck. The deep, thin vee of her shirt plunged narrowly between her breasts, framing a delicate silver chain with one smoky quartz teardrop that rested on her sternum. Even her hair was dark at the moment, changeable though it was based on her whims in any given week. A dark chocolate brown that slid past her shoulders in easy waves and highlighted her eyes with blunt cut bangs.

She’d chosen the rich color the week before, and wondered if they would

like

it

.

Almost there. The taxi jerked forward a few feet and then halted again, the driver cursing at someone and eyeing Callie in the rearview mirror between bursts of profanity.

The mirror in the compact she dug out next showed a flush in her cheeks that looked almost unnatural. Her eyes, a blue-gray that a pretentiously poetic lover had once referred to as 'stormy,' were fever bright, crinkling up at the corners as she pressed her lips together and tried not to grin like a lunatic.

The carved wooden sign marking the pool hall was visible up ahead. She held her wallet in her hand, ready to pay, and suddenly found herself almost sick with nerves.

What am I doing? It's a Tuesday, for Christ's sake. This is going to be the most awkward, cringe-inducing bad date ever. I’m not this person

any

more

.

Her mouth was dry and her pulse accelerating. She tried to breathe slowly, deeply, from her belly, to remember the delicious curl of heat and anticipation that had been building in her these last few weeks.

She remembered Gabe, held a picture of him in her mind. Dark hair, loosely curly and a little too long. Wide, high cheekbones under serious eyes, the corners of his mouth always threatening to turn up as if he were hiding a grin. He had a face that looked like it should always be leaning against something, slightly tilted and resting on his hand or

a

wall

.

Gabe, who wouldn’t let anyone belong to him and him alone. Whom she had eventually gotten drunk enough to get his story. Why he held on to friends forever but wouldn’t hold any one person too close. She’d ended up crying herself because she could relate; everyone knew a betrayal that broke their heart. Most people healed. Gabe

never

had

.

Her eyes focused on the present again. The cab driver was staring at her, eyebrows raised expectantly. She realized he'd asked her a question, and guessed at the answer.

No, I can pay cash. She folded a twenty into fourths and dropped it in the little spring-loaded drawer that snapped closed when she let go. Keep the change.

People walked by on the sidewalk outside her backseat window, clumping up in a small crowd at the edge of the sidewalk as they waited for the light to change. This was a busy neighborhood. The cab had pulled over past the Rack Room in the empty space of the bus stop in order to avoid blocking traffic, a politeness during rush hour that meant no one was honking at them to move, move, c'mon, get out of the

goddamn

way

.

She rested her fingers on the handle of the door and took a deep breath.

She’d been wandering through rooms that echoed now that half the furniture was missing after her divorce. Gabe had answered her What’ve you been up to? email without even knowing that she was talking to herself in her empty rooms with the late November sunlight streaming across the honey-yellow floors. He answered and she curled her ankles around the wooden legs of the dining room chair and pressed her ass into the hard seat beneath her, staring at the small screen of her netbook. Gabe’s words sat blunt on a white screen.

I remember when you used to kiss anyone in the bar who caught your eye, male or female. We all watched you and wanted to

be

next

.

Eleven years. Eleven years of reining herself in, of stopping first to think, Is this too slutty? Of avoiding touching anywhere on John's body that wasn't societally sanctioned, and never looking at anyone else and wondering what it would be like to touch them. She'd censored her own thoughts, her own imagination, to avoid the pain of realizing that she'd made a bad, bad choice.

Now she couldn't remember how to be natural anymore.

She pictured those last black words on a white screen.

I have a friend. I think you should come meet us, come meet her, and we'll see what we

all

like

.

Of course they weren't the last words. Weren't the last words at all, when three people with lives and jobs and previous engagements attempted to overlap their free time in