A Big Surprise for Valentine's Day Read online

  He swallowed. “How about this. I’ll give you my number, and if you decide you want to find out whether I actually need those condoms...” He glanced meaningfully at the box he’d put in her basket. “Send me a text, okay?”

  That would give her some time to think about it—give them both some time to think about it—and leave the ball in her court.

  He slid his hand over her neck, just above the neckline of her sweater, and to his satisfaction, she inhaled swiftly.

  “You should know that I don’t care about size,” she said. “I’m not going to be impressed just because you’re apparently bigger than average.”

  He shrugged. “I hear you.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, I believe you. I also believe that I have the skills to impress you.”

  Why was he so cocky right now? It wasn’t like him.

  Most men probably thought they were better than average at sex, and it stood to reason that many of the men who thought that actually sucked.

  But somehow, Sebastian was confident he could make Amber very happy in bed.

  “You know,” he said, “your ice cream’s going to melt if you keep standing there with your mouth hanging open. You want my number before you head to the checkout?”

  She held up her phone, and he entered in his number.

  Then he strolled toward the fish counter, whistling.

  It was only when he got there that he realized he didn’t need any fish.

  Chapter 2

  “Let me get this straight,” Gloria said. “Your parents are good friends with his parents, you’ve known him your whole life, and now you’re going to fuck him?”

  Amber sighed and had a sip of her beer. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  They were at The Tempest, a bar they’d taken to frequenting recently. The walls were covered with posters of every production of The Tempest that the Stratford Festival had put on.

  Amber worked in marketing for the Stratford Festival. It was basically her dream job.

  When she was younger, she’d dreamed of being on stage herself. Unfortunately, she couldn’t act. Or sing. Or dance. Or play an instrument. She had zero artistic talents whatsoever.

  “Look,” Gloria said, “I’m not going to tell you not to do this. You’ve had a long dry spell. But seriously think about it. I can’t imagine sleeping with my parents’ best friends’ son. Dude is an ass.”

  “Sebastian isn’t an ass,” Amber said, “which puts him ahead of most of my boyfriends.”

  “Until today, you hadn’t seen him in years. You don’t know that, and you don’t have a very good instinct for these things.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” Roxanne piped up from the corner, speaking for the first time in five minutes.

  Roxanne and Gloria were Amber’s closest friends, and in the mostly-white city of Stratford, the three of them stood out.

  Roxanne, a black woman with a quiet temperament, was an incredible dancer—she worked part-time at a dance studio. She lived in Waterloo, forty minutes away, where she and Amber had gone to university, but came to Stratford on a regular basis and crashed on Amber’s couch.

  Gloria—louder and brasher—was third-generation Chinese-Canadian, like Amber, though she wasn’t biracial. She currently had a pixie cut and was wearing black fishnets with a short black skirt, black sweater, and bold jewelry. She worked as a costume designer and was a wizard with a sewing machine.

  Yeah, Amber definitely couldn’t approach the talents of her friends, but that was okay.

  “He doesn’t have to be the greatest guy ever,” Amber said. “I’m just going to sleep with him, not fall in love.”

  Truth be told, she figured it would be pretty hard for her to fall in love now, after all her shitty experiences. One day, she’d try again, but at present, her “no dating” rule was firmly in place.

  A white dude in a trucker hat approached their table. It was clear who his eyes were on: Gloria. “You Japanese or Chinese?”

  “I’m Canadian, you punk,” Gloria said.

  “Hey. All I did was ask you a question. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Nah, I got a girlfriend.”

  The guy smirked.

  “And she owns a boxing gym, so I’d watch it if I were you.”

  The guy eventually returned to his table of dude-bros at the front of the bar.

  “Bet he has some kind of strange Asian fetish.” Gloria shook her head. “Probably thought I’d be sweet and submissive.”

  “Pretty sure you’re right,” Amber agreed.

  “I love being able to truthfully say that my girlfriend owns a boxing gym. I’ll keep saying it even after we break up.”

  Roxanne’s eyebrows drew together. “Are you having problems with Syd?”

  “Nah, but you never know. We’re coming up to the six-month mark, and my relationships never last more than six months.” Gloria gestured to Amber’s phone. “You got a picture of this guy of yours?”

  “He’s not my guy.”

  Gloria made a dismissive gesture.

  It took Amber a minute, but she found Sebastian’s profile on Facebook. There was a photo of him—unsmiling—with trees and a tent in the background.

  Gloria looked at it in horror.

  “What?” Amber said. “He’s decent looking, isn’t he?”

  “Tent,” Gloria whispered. “Camping. He likes...camping.”

  Roxanne shook with laughter.

  Amber laughed, too. Gloria enjoyed playing up her hatred of camping.

  Amber turned her gaze back to Sebastian’s profile picture, and suddenly, she imagined that mouth on her neck, where he’d touched her earlier.

  It would be crazy to date him. The thought of her parents and his parents finding out they were together...that was the definition of hell. But they wouldn’t actually be together, and Amber was sure Sebastian was sensible enough not to say anything.

  In fact, sleeping with Sebastian really was sensible. Safer than sleeping with a stranger.

  And sure, Amber didn’t care about size, but she couldn’t help being intrigued, plus she hadn’t felt chemistry like that with a guy in a while. She’d spent a disturbing amount of time thinking about Sebastian since she’d returned from the grocery store that afternoon, and he was certainly a better prospect then any of the guys in this bar.

  Amid all posters of The Tempest on the bar’s walls, there was a poster that was out of place: the Justin Bieber one.

  Stratford was, after all, his hometown.

  So Amber did whatever she, Gloria, or Roxanne did when they had a dilemma and were sitting around The Tempest with their drinks.

  She lifted her beer toward the poster and said, “Justin Bieber, what should I do?”

  But she was already pretty sure of what she wanted.

  * * *

  On Sunday evenings, Amber sometimes went to Mosquito Bay to have dinner with her family, but this morning, she’d decided that she wasn’t up for the hour-long drive and would prefer to spend the time doing other things.

  Her family, however, decided to take an impromptu road trip to visit her.

  At eleven o’clock that morning, her parents and grandparents barreled into her apartment.

  Amber’s mother, Rosemary, was white, and her father, Stuart, was Chinese. Her paternal grandparents lived in Mosquito Bay, a few streets over from their son.

  “Happy New Year!” Ah Ma said, giving Amber a hug. “You do anything exciting to celebrate?”

  “Just hung out at the bar with my friends.”

  “Did you dance with any guys?” Ah Ma gyrated her hips as best she could.

  “No.”

  “Did you kiss anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get drunk?”

  “Not very.”

  “Amber, I am disappointed in you! You are supposed to be living an exciting life!”

  Amber had been the wild child in high school, to the exasperation of her family. H
er brother Greg, eight years older than her, was the polar opposite of wild, which had set certain expectations for the rest of them. Nick’s wild years had come later, once he was in Toronto. Frankly, Amber didn’t think she’d been all that different from Zach in high school, but she was the baby of the family—and the only girl—and anything she did seemed to worry her family more. As a result, they’d received a censored version of her exploits in university, as well as her relationships.

  Now that she had a full-time job and lived on her own, they would sometimes ask her to tell them exciting stories, then be disappointed that she’d never been whisked away for a romantic weekend by a star hockey player—or whatever they expected.

  In fact, they’d become rather obsessed with her lack of love life lately.

  “I got you a scarf on Amazon.” Ah Yeh, her grandfather, held up a piece of cream fabric. “It is a Hamlet scarf.”

  Since she’d started working at the Stratford Festival, Ah Yeh had begun buying Shakespeare-related things for Amber. As a Christmas present this year, he’d gotten her salt and pepper shakers with Shakespeare’s face on them.

  “Thanks, Ah Yeh.” Amber wasn’t sure if a scarf with quotes from a Shakespearian tragedy would go with any of her outfits, but she’d make a point of wearing it at a family gathering this year.

  “I brought you some beef stew and butter tarts.” Mom handed her two containers.

  “I made you coconut lemon squares!” Ah Ma raised her hand in the air.

  “No, you did not,” Dad said. “If you’d tried to bake, you would have burned down the house.”

  “Wah, I am not that bad at baking!”

  “She didn’t start a fire the last time she tried to make them,” Ah Yeh said, “but she used salt instead of sugar. They were terrible.”

  “Then why don’t you make them?” Ah Ma retorted.

  “I did! You don’t remember?”

  “Hmph. You probably ate them all and didn’t leave any for your poor wife.”

  “You have a bad memory.”

  Her grandparents continued to bicker until they were all sitting around Amber’s small dining room table with cups of tea.

  An hour and a half later, her family was out the door, and Amber collapsed onto her couch. She enjoyed seeing her family, but she often felt like she needed a relaxing afternoon at the spa afterward. Alas, that wasn’t in her budget.

  However, she could think of another activity that was very good for stress relief.

  * * *

  Sebastian checked his phone. Still no text messages.

  Well, of course there weren’t any. If he’d gotten a text, his phone would have vibrated to tell him so, and his phone had never been more than a foot away from him for the past twenty hours.

  It was Sunday afternoon. Sebastian had made himself fried rice for lunch, and now he was relaxing with a mug of tea and a book on his recliner.

  At least, he was supposed to be relaxing, but he kept checking his damn phone every five minutes.

  Even when he wasn’t looking at his phone, he was having trouble concentrating on his book. He kept thinking about sliding his hands through Amber’s hair. Maybe pulling it a little, if she was into that. He would ask her what she liked.

  But it had been almost a day, and he was worried she wouldn’t contact him.

  And that was fair. They’d known each other since childhood, and it was a little awkward, he understood. He wouldn’t blame her if she decided against it.

  Still, he was hoping...

  Sebastian nearly jumped out of his chair when his phone finally vibrated.

  He couldn’t help feeling disappointed when he saw that it was his sister. He was about to put his phone back on the table, but then it vibrated again.

  Hi, it’s Amber. I’m interested. Are you free this afternoon?

  Chapter 3

  Amber considered changing into a more revealing top. But she didn’t want to make a big deal of this, so she left her sweater on, though she changed from her frayed pajama pants into a pair of jeans.

  Her phone rang. Sebastian was here.

  Her heart beat a little quickly as she buzzed him in. A minute later, he was standing inside her door, his large frame making her apartment seem small.

  Yeah, she definitely still wanted him. It hadn’t just been a quirk of her brain that had found him attractive yesterday.

  But although Amber had had a lot of sex before, and a decent amount of casual sex, it had never seemed quite as awkward as it did now.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Uh, hi.” She paused and glanced toward the bedroom. “Let’s lay down a few ground rules. This is just sex, and under no circumstances will our parents find out about it.”

  “Agreed.”

  This seemed so transactional.

  Shit, was it going to be too weird?

  He scratched his chin. “Is there anything in particular you like or don’t like? Any boundaries I shouldn’t cross?”

  She wouldn’t wear sexy lingerie for him, but she didn’t think he’d expect that anyway.

  “Off the top of my head, no,” she said. “I’ll let you know if anything comes up. Today, I think I’d like it rough.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just don’t leave any marks that I can’t easily cover with my clothes.”

  He padded over to her couch and sat down. “Come here.”

  Hesitantly, she walked over and sat on his lap, straddling him.

  He grabbed her ass firmly in his large hands, and she gasped. This was still a bit weird, but in a good way.

  He lifted up the bottom of her sweater and the T-shirt underneath and slowly dragged them up her body. She was acutely aware of the fabric sliding over her skin. He tossed her clothes on the floor, then placed his hand at the clasp of her bra. When she nodded, he threw that on the floor, too.

  His hands were all over her skin now, as were his lips and teeth and tongue, and the man was good with his mouth. As he was feasting on her, he kept one hand on her ass, the other arm on her back with his hand gripping her hair.

  “You okay?” he murmured, lifting his head to her ear.

  “Yeah. Just keep going.”

  An infuriating smirk touched his lips. He dove back down and latched onto her nipple, biting it lightly before soothing it with his tongue.

  She grabbed the bottom of his long-sleeved shirt. He separated from her just long enough to pull it over his head, and then he was lavishing attention on her other breast.

  She pressed herself against him, enjoying the incredible feel of his warm skin against hers. It had been so long. Too long. She’d craved this sort of contact, and...oh.

  There were multiple layers of clothing in the way and she couldn’t see it yet, but yes, she had the sense that he’d been telling the truth about needing Magnum condoms.

  She reached between them and undid his jeans with shaking hands. Why was she shaking? It wasn’t like she hadn’t done this many times before. He helped her slide off his jeans and boxers, and she rolled to the side to get a better look.

  He was long and thick, definitely a little bigger than anyone she’d been with before.

  And he would put that inside her.

  She squirmed, practically grinding herself against the couch.

  She had a momentary fear that he was too big and it wouldn’t fit, but she pushed that aside. A ridiculous thought. Of course it would fit.

  Sebastian unzipped her jeans and thrust his hand into her panties. She inhaled swiftly as his finger slid over her entrance.

  She watched his hand, inside her jeans, moving in and out of her, and then she looked at his body, all gloriously naked. She couldn’t decide what she wanted to look at more.

  The fact that this was Sebastian, whom she’d known her whole life, somehow made it filthier, in a very good way.

  He pulled off her jeans and underwear then returned to fingering her, getting a better angle than before. She squirmed against him in pleasure-filled agony and
reached for his cock.

  “Please,” she said.

  It was the first word either of them had uttered in a long time, and he didn’t say anything in response, just grabbed a condom out of his jeans and put it on. She positioned herself on all fours in front of him. When he rubbed the tip of his erection over her instead of thrusting inside, she pushed back against him in frustration.

  His chuckle, as he began to push into her, was low and—

  “Oh. You really are big,” she whispered. “Go slow.”

  The tip of him still inside her, he leaned over and kissed the side of her neck. His body surrounded hers, and it felt good, but when he started to push in deeper...

  “Ow.”

  Dammit, why wasn’t her body co-operating? She hadn’t had sex in eleven months, and she needed this. She craved it.

  Or maybe that was the problem: she wasn’t used to this.

  Sebastian pulled out. “Where’s the lube I tossed in your basket yesterday?”

  “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

  She jumped off the couch and walked toward her bedroom, glancing back to check that he was following her. He was, his ample erection encased in latex, bobbing between his legs. She threw herself onto the bed and opened her night table. The lube was right on top.

  She got down on her hands and knees again, heard Sebastian slick himself with lube, and then a lubed finger circled her entrance.

  The tip of his cock was next.

  “Ow.”

  She couldn’t believe this. It wasn’t going to fit.

  “Keep going,” she said, not ready to give up.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I know it’ll feel good soon.”

  He pushed in a little more but had trouble getting in any farther.

  When he pulled out, she rolled onto her back, mortified. She’d envisioned a hot, quick, and sweaty encounter, but it wasn’t going according to plan.

  “We don’t have to do that today. I don’t mind.” Sebastian glanced over at her bedside table, the drawer still open. “You have a nice collection of toys in here. We could try one?”

  Now she was even more embarrassed. He could see her sex toys. She had seven—did he find that excessive? His expression betrayed no judgment, though.