“What makes you think that?”

“You ever just get a feeling in your gut?”

“Mostly after I eat these wings. I just call it gas.”

He laughed, and the sound made me melt inside. A part of me couldn’t believe I’d spoken about gas in front of him. The other half felt as if it was completely natural. What was it about this guy? Why did it feel so easy to be myself when I sat across from him?

Without asking, he reached across to grab one of my bone-in wings, and I smacked his hand.

“What are you doing?” I yelped in horror.

“I wanted to try a wing with the bone in.”

“Well, you should’ve ordered a bone-in wing. Honestly, I silently judged you when you ordered boneless wings. In my expert experience, they aren’t wings. They are big chicken nuggets.”

“You’re a professional wing eater?”

“Yes, and don’t mock it. I wear that title with pride.”

He held his hands up in defeat. “Okay, okay. Sorry. I never mean to offend a woman and her food.”

I sat back in my chair, smiling in pleasure that he knew when to let up. At least I thought he had. Right when I got too comfortable with his defeat, he leaned forward and swiped one of my wings from my basket. After waving it in the air with pride, he licked it as a way to indicate I wasn’t going to get it back.

“You’re a jerk,” I said, glaring his way with the death stare.

“A jerk you’re going to love soon enough.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“I wouldn’t dare. I’d end up choking on my chicken wing.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “At least eat it like a champ. Use my technique, and I swear to the heavens above if you leave any meat on that bone, I am coming for you.”

“But no pressure, right?” He laughed. Then he looked up at me. “Dare or dare?” he asked.

“Don’t you mean truth or dare?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to give you the chance to back out and choose truth. So, dare or dare?”

I snickered under my breath. “Hmm…I think I’ll go with dare.”

“All right. I dare you to hold eye contact with me as I strip this chicken wing.”

“You’re insane.”

“Yes, but you agreed to the dare, so here we are.”

He shimmied his Captain America pecs a bit before locking his stare with mine. Gosh, his eyes. The universe shouldn’t have ever created eyes like his. They had more power behind them than anyone should’ve ever possessed.

“I’m going to do it exactly like you did,” he warned.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

He started by standing the wing straight up on his napkin and then slowly, slowly, slowly pushing the meat down the bones to capture it all at the bottom. He then lifted the wing to his mouth and lapped up the buffalo sauce with his tongue before lowering it into the pool of ranch sitting in front of him. He brought it back up to his mouth, cocking an eyebrow with a wicked smirk that made my thighs quiver involuntarily. He parted his lips and slid the meat into his mouth, sucking it all off, his tongue licking the bones clean of any sauce that might’ve missed the initial entry into his mouth.

Then he placed the bones down and dipped his index finger fully into the container of ranch. Pulling it out, he allowed it to drip all over before he brought it to his mouth and sucked it slowly, sexually—and oh my goodness, I instantly became pregnant with twins.

All I wanted to do was look away and hide my schoolgirl blushing, but a dare was a dare, and I maintained that eye contact the whole time as he made my thighs quiver from eating a freaking chicken wing.

“You’re ridiculous,” I said, breaking our stare after he finished sucking the wing clean. I took a big gulp of my water, trying to cool my insides from the dramatics that had taken place.

He laughed. “I think you like that about me.”

It’s true. I like that about you.

I shifted in my seat, trying to take the conversation away from the oddly sexual yet not sexual situation that had occurred. “So…” My voice cracked. “Where’s our next stop?”

He grabbed a wet nap and started cleaning his hands. “Oh, it’s a good one—a great one, actually—and it’s one-hundred-percent solely for you.”

4

Connor

I had an unexplainable need to try to make people happy. Did I understand that a person’s happiness was their own responsibility? Yes. Did that ever stop me from trying to nudge people in the right direction of said happiness? Not at all.

I prided myself on being an overall happy-go-lucky guy. Sure, I wasn’t always in a good mood, and I had crappy days and nights—I was still human, after all—but at the end of the day, I knew my happiness was something to keep at the forefront of my life. If I felt myself slipping too far down the other road, I did things that made me feel good to find my footing.