For Authentication Purposes (3 page)

“I hate you,” I told him with as much passion as I had in my body. “How dare you look at my private stuff and judge me? You don’t even know me,
Wardo.
So leave me alone.”

He let out a low whistle and leaned in so that he could breathe next to my ear. “You are a dirty girl, huh?”

“Shut up.” My face was on fire.

Warner leaned back and settled against the table, knees open and eyes raking me over. “Too bad you can’t write sex for shit.”

I flipped him off and grabbed the rest of my things to leave, not even caring that the class wasn’t over yet. In essence, he had confirmed my greatest fear. And I wasn’t about to let him see me cry.

Wardo

It had always fascinated me that Dawn Sims came rushing into my life at the age she did. My mom, Tammy, was such a free spirit and had been telling me all about the difference between love and lust; fascination and desire. We had easy, extensive conversations about sex. About urges and needs.

And then Sims came walking through the door and it was like everything my mom had told me suddenly clicked into place. It’s not like as soon as I saw Dawn my world stopped and music started playing in the background. It was more like a rush to my system. My blood was flowing fucking
everywhere
. And I just
wanted
her.

Fourteen years old.

She made it lift. Tent my pants. She made my zipper hurt, if you know what I’m saying.

Everything about her was compatible to me. Every inch of her skin. Her long brown hair. Her light green eyes. It lined up perfectly to what my mom had been talking about. So it confused the shit out of me that Dawn didn’t feel the same way, too.

I’d watched my mom float from relationship to relationship for years, and never once did I ever see her look at anyone the way that I looked at Dawn. Not once. That was the biggest reason her relationship with Saul Jones, Candace’s dad, didn’t last very long. Tammy liked him enough. She just didn’t love him.

It was frustrating, having the object of my desire sitting so close to me in school. But she was always running away, like she was better than me. But I don’t give up that fast. No. Not when it’s something I’m passionate about. It’s my Achilles.
 

At the same time, I get bored way too easy, which was why I decided to take night classes to begin with.

Imagine my surprise when she came walking through that lab door on the first day.

Dawn Sims. I had been there on her very first day of school in our town. I had watched her grow from an awkward teen who got boobs a little later than the rest of our grade, to this curvy almost-woman who wanted boys that never even glanced her way. I’d been there when the other girls were making fun of her having a mustache in middle school. I’d also been very,
very
grateful to her mother when she was introduced to waxing her lip and shaving her legs. All the while, I was on the sidelines, making mental notes of how her bunny teeth shifted inward when she got her braces, or her hair grew four inches longer. I felt like I’d known her my entire life.

Even when she went in the opposite direction during high school, I still knew her. She pretended that we didn’t, but I saw the way she’d glance at me once before scurrying down the hall to wherever she was going next.
 

In this class she was always staring at her damn laptop, which I assumed she kept all her lab notes on. I missed last week’s lab. All I wanted to do was see if I could e-mail the document to myself before she got back from the bathroom.
 

Instead, I was greeted with the greatest gift in my entire life: porn written by The Bunny. Well, what
she
considered porn, anyway.

The gods of smut were smiling down on me, and I was giving them a dirty high-five.

My life would never be the same.

Dawn

After a sleepless night, thanks to that asshole Wardo, I arrived at work and put up with a day of Frank battling an epic case of sharts from Hell. When Blair finally showed up, I ran out of there as fast as I could. Stressing the whole way there, I had made it just in time to find that my first class of the night had been canceled.
 

Last minute canceled classes were most likely a lot like surprise butt sex. Painful and shocking. It left you with a headache and a pain in the ass.

Not that I would know.

Trudging back to my broke-ass rusted blue Honda, I was cursing under my breath and threatening castration of my English professor when the smell of a cigarette caused me to pause with my keys in my hand.

Warner Green was sitting on the roof of my vehicle. Smoking like a freight train. And was he . . . yeah. The douche was sitting all crisscross-applesauce in his jeans and leather jacket.

“Get off my car before I file a restraining order,” I called out. The wind had started to pick up, and my hair was blowing in my eyes, causing me to swat at it every three seconds as I attempted to give him a bitch-face so powerful that his nuts fell out of his jeans like shriveled up raisins.

“Your hostility is just confirming my suspicions, you know.” He was taunting me, flicking his cigarette butt down to the ground below. It caught in a gust of wind and darted by his knee, making him lean back a little too fast. I snorted as he lost his balance and went shoulders first onto the trunk of my car.

He moaned and rolled to his side, popping up again and brushing his leather jacket off with a look of amusement on his face.

I rolled my eyes and shoved my hair behind my ears as I attempted to unlock the driver’s side door. “What suspicions are you talking about, you asshole?”

He laughed and jumped off the trunk of my car, sending it bouncing in the process. “You have another class tonight, right?” he asked, sniffling a little from the cold air as it hit his nose, wiping his sleeve over his top lip, and rocking up on his toes as he waited for my answer.

My face must have betrayed my irritation because he took a small step back. “How do you know my schedule?” I gave him a single raised eyebrow much like the one he’d sported for almost a decade.

Warner made a face, shrugging and looking across the parking lot to avoid my gaze. “Let’s not get into specifics. You have another class. I know. You know. Let’s leave it at that.”

My eyebrow stayed right where it was.

He sighed and cleared his throat, reaching for another cigarette. Turning to light it, he exhaled a long steady stream of white smoke from his nose while he re-pocketed his lighter. “I’ve been thinking about your shitty story.”

“Go to hell.”

“No, I’m not lying.” He laughed and took another drag, exhaling slow and long, letting the white tendrils curl upward toward his hairline. “Your story is beyond awful.” The last word came out in a cough of laughter. “It might be the worst I’ve ever read. And Candace used to read that shit with Fabio on the cover, so I know bad when I see it. Yours is a whole new level of terrible. Whole. New. Level.”

My patience was already wearing thin. “I’m not kidding when I say that I can kill you and bury your body in a place that no one will ever find you. I have connections.”

Warner stepped in front of me and held his hands up to stop me from walking forward. There was an evil glint in his eyes as he took one long drag from the stick. Flicking the remaining butt onto the pavement he grinned with his head bent forward. “You’re a virgin, right?”

“Oh, fuck off,” I yelled and pushed him aside with my forearm, stomping away from him to get back inside the building. I wanted to get as far away from the idiot as possible. I needed to find a more populated place where I could get lost and he couldn’t find me.

Except most people were in class. Shit.

His cold hand wrapped around my wrist and he twirled me back toward him, landing my chest flush with his. I gasped as his face lowered to just above my own. “Listen, Bunny. I
know.
 Just admit that you’ve never had cock and we can get on with this.”

I snorted in a very unladylike way, watching the bitter wind wrap my hair around his head and ears as I stared into his eyes. “Sorry, Wardo. I lost my V-card in college to Matthew Jackson. So you’re about two years too late. Give or take.”

He blinked in surprise. “The Mathlete from high school? That Matthew?”

I nodded and pursed my lips. “The very same.”

Warner exhaled long and soft as his curious eyes held mine. “How was it?”

“In. Out. Back of a car. Just how I wanted it.” I shrugged.

He shook his head. “See? That right there. That’s the problem. You’ve never been properly fucked.”

My eyes bugged out of my head. “Say what?”

With a sigh, he raised my arms so they were bent at the elbow and hovering in front of my face. “Your story sucks because it’s false. No one wants to read that shit because it’s not real. Hell, it’s not even much of a fantasy. You have nothing to go off of. The best advice a writer can have is to write what they know. And you know jack shit about sex.”

My mouth dropped open.

He leaned forward and smirked. “Am I right?”

I believe my awesome response was, “Hehhhhhh.”

Warner laughed again, releasing my arms and taking a step back. “Why are you writing this, anyway? Did you lose a bet?”

“I’ll have you know that I do this in my free time and people like it. Other people are telling me every single day that I should write a book. Every. Single. Day. So that’s why. Okay? Because these readers and writers say that I’m good enough that they would buy my ‘shitty romance,’ as you so delicately call it!”
 

My voice had reached dog-only-hearing status and I clamped my hands over my mouth, mortified. Sliding my eyes from left to right, I checked to see if anyone else had heard me lose my mind.

I guess not.

Taking a step back, he tsked, shaking his head from side to side. “You pretty much write really sucky porn. You know that, right?”

I gave him the stink-eye.

“No, I’m being honest. If you’re as good as you say you are then women will be getting off on your words. Wet panties. Vibrators handy. Husbands confused about why they want to be tied up or spanked all of a sudden. Not that you write that, from what I’ve seen. You’re writing historical fap fiction.” He
smirked
at me. “They’re going to know you’re a fraud from the get-go, Bunny. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, they will devour you like a pack of hungry wolves.”

“My smut is fine,” I whispered without conviction.

Was he right?

Could I not finish my chapter because I was being a fraud?

“No. Your porn is bad. You suck at it. I’m sorry, but no one talks like that. Ripping bodices. Love buttons. Pink pebbled peaks and shit? They’re nipples, for God’s sake. Nipples.” His fingers pressed into my cheeks, and he made my lips poke out like a duck. “Say it. Nip - ples.”

Squirming away from his touch, I pushed him as far from my body as possible. “It’s romantic. Women love it.”

His laugh was hollow. “You’ve read so much of it, you’re brainwashed.” Stepping closer, he dropped his voice to a whisper and pressed his lips to my ear. “Did you even come with Mathlete Matt?”

I shoved him away and pressed my back against the brick wall of the building we had reached during our conversation. “It was more convenience than anything.”

“Like a business arrangement?” Warner pressed his lips together to stop his guffaw.

Rolling my eyes, I sighed and pressed my head to the wall behind me. “It was convenient. Needed to be done. Happened. End of story.”

There was a long pause as he considered my answer, looking up into the dark sky with contemplation etched in his smooth features. After what seemed like forever, he met my gaze once again. “You have no damn idea what it’s like to have a man inside you.” He stepped closer, and I held my breath as his palms came to rest on my sides. His voice dropped to a low rumble as his nose moved my hair away from my ear and he leaned in to whisper. “If you want to succeed with your novel”—his fingers twitched and pressed into my tender flesh—“you need to experience what you want to write about. How it feels to have a man use his hands . . .” Another twitch of his fingers. “His mouth.” A light brush of his lips against my cheek. “His cock inside you . . .” He stepped closer, and my eyes squeezed closed as the front of his jeans brushed against my own zipper.

I gasped when I felt his hands lower to the belt loop of my pants.

“I can help you, Bunny Dawn.” His breath was warm in my ear, and I pressed my lips together to stop myself from moaning as he pushed in closer to me, squishing my breasts against his chest until they almost flattened. “Do you want to know what it feels like to really, truly come?”

My chest rose and fell in a rush of fear and excitement.

“Do you want to know what it’s like to be so wet that you feel like you could die if you don’t get fucked right away?”

Without any thought, my hands gripped his leather jacket and pulled him closer. “Let me guess. You’re offering your services?”

His chuckle caused the hair on my arms to stand up. “Anything to help you obtain your dreams of being a real”—he exhaled in my ear—“honest to God”—his tongue darted out once and made me gasp—“writer.”