Streams and Schemes

by Rebecca Kinkade

This book is dedicated to anyone who fucks as a coping mechanism. You do you. Keep coping your brains out.

“Don’t touch her. If you put your hands on her one more time, I’ll rip them off and then sue you for getting blood on my suit. Am I fucking clear?”

Never date a lawyer, even if he makes every part of your body yearn in unprecedented, unholy ways.

If I’m dying tonight, I’m perfectly content to die fucking the one person I swore I would avoid.

That’s what I should say to him, but I don’t. In fact, I don’t say anything at all. Instead, I lunge forward and kiss him. I kiss him like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.

But tonight, for once, that steeliness is nowhere to be found. She’s smiling at me. And she’s so unbelievably beautiful.

Damn. If I had known getting this girl would require Spanish fluency and regular cardio, I would have started training months ago.

I knew you were a camgirl. I knew, I watched, and I’m willing to bet I’m your best customer.”

“I only got to have you for fifteen minutes, but fuck, woman, I know you keep the best shit to yourself.”

Women bleed every month and literally grow babies in our bodies. There’s no reason we can’t fight like Kodiak bears and fuck like Valkyries.

My best friend Dalton was born exactly thirty-nine weeks after Bill Clinton was re-elected. That’s how we figured out who his parents voted for.”

The cursor blinks…or was it—was that a wink? Does this contract want me to close my laptop and enjoy myself on a Saturday night for once?

Every butterfly in the continental United States could migrate into this bar right now, and they still would have nothing on the flutters in my stomach.

There’s something about a woman five years younger than me calling me a good boy that has me torn between finding enough rope to wrangle the moon for her or using that same rope to bind her and prove I’m neither good nor a boy.

“I have no doubt in my mind that I’m going to fall madly in love with you.”

But that’s the thing about kismet: If it wants you to fuck, you best believe you’ll be fucking. And who am I to deny fate?

Tonight, it’s not Aurora Amada onscreen. It’s Valeria Fuentes. And I am so gone for her.

Less than a minute later, Dalton and Everett are standing on the side of the road with their luggage, and I can’t believe I just left two guys whose trust funds could buy a small European principality on Highway 50. While I watch them grow smaller in the rearview mirror, two thoughts cross my mind: Number one: Dalton and Everett are, far and away, the best friends a guy could ask for. Number two: I really should have at least left them in a Cracker Barrel parking lot or something.

“I fucking love you,” he interjects. He reaches out and his hands rest on my cheeks, holding our gazes together. “I mean it. I’m so in love with you, Valeria Fuentes.”

I am hopelessly in love with Lander Dawson—and it’s wonderful.