The Mix-Up (Southern Hearts Club #3) - Melanie Munton Page 0,44

sheet. “Hon, I think the more important question is, when was your last waxing?”

I attempt a reproachful look that doesn’t land because everyone at this table knows I can’t reproach anything.

She looks up from her sheet, grinning sheepishly. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You know you’re going to bang Ryder. Everyone at this table knows you’re going to bang Ryder. I’m just trying to look out for my soon-to-be-banged friend.”

“I disagree,” Quinn speaks up, just before swirling a sip of her semi-dry rosé around in her mouth.

“Lookee there,” I wave my hand at Quinn. “Jockey Robinson is on my side.”

“The most important question is, where are they going to shag first?” She raises her hand like she’s waiting for the teacher to call on her. “My vote is his desk, since he’s the boss and all. Symbolic, you know?”

Sloane shakes her head, sending her long raven hair swishing around her pale shoulders. “Nah. Do it at his place the first time. Easier escape route in case you need to bail.”

I think there’s a greater risk of the opposite happening. If I got Ryder on top of me—or beneath me or behind me—I might never want to leave.

“Helicopter sex is pretty killer,” Harper throws out. “But West might get squicked out if you lose your chopper cherry in his bird, so maybe not that.”

Would he be squicked out if he knew I diddled myself dirty in the back seat?

“Slow your roll, you cronies. I never said Yes to the Sex.”

Quinn stares off into space, nodding consideringly. “I’d watch that show.”

“So, I’m guessing Myles is out of the picture?” Sloane asks.

Quinn snorts. “If he doesn’t want to head-butt Ryder’s right hook again, I’d say he is.”

“That’s so hot.” This from Harper.

I try another sip of my ash wine. Maybe I just didn’t cleanse my palate enough before that first drink.

I gag.

Yeah, nope. It still tastes like it was poured from the Grinch’s sweaty socks before they crawled away from him.

“It was not hot,” I squeak on a hiccup. “It was barbaric and way too I drag you back to my cave and we mate for this girl.”

Sloane tosses me a really, you’re gonna play your girls like that? look. “Don’t even try to tell me that no part of you wanted to bump uglies with that hunk-a-dunk after watching him hit another guy for kissing you. You said yourself you practically climbed him like a spider monkey underneath that stairwell.”

“Last Christmas” by Wham! comes over the room’s speakers, sending my foot tapping against the leg of my bar-height chair.

“All right, I admit I’m a sucker for some displays of male aggression,” I confess. “But my judgment was clouded due to being seriously overdue.”

Harper drops her pen in shock. “You?”

“I will smack your cute button nose right off your face, Barbie,” I threaten.

The blonde witch giggles before picking up a glass of red from her flight and taking a sip. “I’m tasting some cherry.”

Sloane snatches it from her and drinks. “No, that’s definitely blackberry in there.”

Quinn snags it out of Sloane’s hand and lifts it to her mouth. “I don’t know what you two are drinking because all I’m getting is stale oak.”

Harper huffs. “We suck at this.”

“Would I be completely crazy to boink my boss?” I bluntly ask.

In response, I get:

“No.”

“Define boink.”

And, “Only if his dick is small.”

“Great, that helps.”

I gulp down more of my tobacco wine, noting that it tastes less like the bottom of a fire pit and more like cigar ambrosia now. A slight improvement.

“Okay, let me rephrase that. Would I be losing all my dignity if I boink my boss?”

This time, I get:

“Not all of it.”

“You mean you still have some?”

And, “Again, only if his dick is small.”

“Bunch of hoes,” I mutter before sucking down another mouthful of liquid charcoal while they turn into cackling banshees.

After Sloane catches her breath, her expression turns serious. “Has he honestly ever made you feel like you would?”

Thinking back on my entire relationship with Ryder—spanning from when we full-on detested each other, all the way up to the jealous, hate-crushing of the past few weeks—I have to say, “No. Never.”

The one thing Ryder has never done is disrespect me. Even since things started shifting between us, he’s never made me feel like I’d be compromising my integrity if things got more rough and tumble between us. He’s always treated me as his equal, his peer. And when we’ve been intimate, I’m just a woman to him. Not his subordinate, not his