Worst Way

Chapter Five

Natalie's POV:

Focusing on work today has been harder than it had in a very long time. Not because the work that I was doing wasn't holding my attention, but because I had a lunch date today. A lunch date with arguably the hottest man in all of Alabama, maybe even all of the United States. To say I was nervous was putting it mildly because I couldn't remember the last time I felt this antsy. I knew that the feelings I was having had everything to do with who the date was with and not the simple fact that it was a date. And if all of that wasn't tripping me up enough, the fact that Riley had called it a date was messing with my head in more ways than I even thought possible.

All morning, two questions had been popping into my mind– 1) Did that mean that he was looking for this date to have a happy ending? And 2) Or had his referring to it as a date simply been a slip of the tongue? – and each time they did, I wasn't any closer to finding out if I was just overthinking things or if they were things that I seriously needed to worry about. And honestly, I don't know which option I would rather it be. Part of me wouldn't mind seeing if all the rumors I had heard over the years about his passion in the sheets were really true but the other part of me –the one that had been burned one too many times and had let a man's magical dick force me to make some asinine decisions more than a few times– was doing its best to remind me that climbing into bed with him would be a mistake of epic proportions. Add to that the fact that it had been literal years –three to be exact– since I'd let myself enjoy the company of a man and well, I was as equal parts nervous, anxious, curious, and terrified about what this date could mean for me and for the future.

That curiosity then led into thoughts of how he was going to smell as he sat across from me as he ate his lunch. Thoughts of how the muscles in his arms would bunch as he lifted his burger to his lips and took a bite. Thoughts of how his tongue would dart out over his lips as he licked a dribble of ketchup at the corner of his mouth. But I have to admit, that last thought was dangerous to my sanity because as soon as I'd had that thought earlier, it had been all I could think about. And let me say, it wasn't ketchup that my mind was picturing him licking off his lips; oh no, it was something much more erotic than a condiment and involved him burying his face between my thighs.

Needing something to take my mind off of those inappropriate thoughts before I was forced to relieve the sexual tension that I could feel building, I shoved the dirty thoughts to the back of my mind and turned on some music, picking a spotify playlist that was filled with Brantley Gilbert, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, and a few others; basically a Georgia boys playlist filled with country music that I knew every word to and thought that i would be safe listening to since Riley was an Alabama boy and not a Georgia one.

But that thought was short lived since it didn't take long before Riley's voice began to float from the wireless speaker on my workstation. If I was one of those that believed in signs and the universe intervening in your life, I would have taken the song as just that. But since I didn't believe in that type of thing, I just took it as a sick joke from whomever had created the playlist.

That didn't mean that I could bring myself to change the playlist though. Oh no! Instead, I let it play, and one Riley song turned into two, then three, and so on; all of them songs that I knew and had listened to more than a few times over the years. But then songs that I didn't know, ones that I had never heard began to play, showing me that there was more to Riley and his music than the stuff that gets played on the radio these days. I'd always thought that he had more of a classical feel to his music –something that I personally loved– and it made him stand out from the other guys in the industry, but hearing these songs, it was even more evident that he was in a league of his own when it came to his music.