Lainey Green was one risk he hadn’t worked out yet. Everyone adored her. She was genuine, without any pretences that someone from her background should have and she was trying hard to fit into Severton and be part of the community. She was a nice person.
Which didn’t explain why he was currently spitting out coffee that had a special ingredient.Someone,namely his blonde, perfectly proportioned neighbour, had sneaked inside his kitchen, as she was want to do, and replaced his sugar with salt.
He tipped the rest of the should-be-nectar down the sink and thought for a moment. This war of attrition between them had been going on for a couple of months now. She’d do something to prank him – the more annoying had been when he’d found every single pair of the boots he kept in his tack room filled with sand, although that hadn’t been the worst. Revenge had been had; he’d let down her tyres – although it had been he who’d ended up fixing them; he’d bought her a surprise gift of a second dog, a rescue Dachshund that only had one eye; he’d gotten into her kitchen and stolen all of her teaspoons, a small, but irritating feat.
Today needed to be something spectacular. Something he’d been considering for some time. Something he’d once tried on his sister, Rayah, and it had worked beautifully. The effects hadn’t lasted too long either, just a couple of days.
With a lot of scrubbing.
Still thirsty, and definitely still grumpy, Jake opened up a cupboard that he rarely opened and pulled out a small bottle. It was perfectly green and would definitely be the perfect revenge for depriving him of his coffee.
Checking through the gate that separated them, he saw that Lainey was busy talking to Holly, her stable manager, which meant that he’d have a good fifteen minutes to rush into her bathroom, do what he needed, and get the hell out of there.
He knew she was scared of intruders, he’d sat there and listened to her tell him in her matter-of-fact way what had happened when she was a kid. That was why he’d had the security system installed, because as safe as Severton was, shit still happened. And he didn’t want her to be worried when she was lying in bed.
Not that he thought about her lying in bed. Or well, he tried not to. Or at least he limited it to once a day, and when he was in the shower.
Jake Maynard was well aware of his short-comings. He knew he’d slept around – a lot. He knew he was perceived as a joker who didn’t take anything as seriously as he should, but that was a front in case he messed up. He’d taken his uncle’s business which had been doing okay and within five years he’d tripled their income, broadening out his business and securing it from the external factors which could’ve seen them go into the red at any time. This year he had a music festival planned, nothing as big as Glastonbury – yet – but he’d managed to sign some decent sized bands and tickets had already sold out. The glamping pods he’d invested in last year were already booked through the season, meaning a steady source of income even into autumn, and more tourists coming to Severton. He’d started a small business federation, including owners in Severton and the seven other small towns that made up the locality, looking at how they could market the area to generate more income from the tourist industry each year. This made the restaurants boom, and therefore his farm, as local produce was still in vogue.
As much as he’d not exactly been a monk in previous years, this year and last had been fallow when it came to women. He hadn’t had as much time, and when he had, no one had piqued his interest. Which was why he figured Lainey Green had been spending too much time in his head. He needed a distraction which wasn’t her and the weird fantasy he’d been having about her wearing her riding boots and nothing else.
Because the builders had taken over the place, the back door was open, and no one questioned him entering. He’d been seen by the foreman often enough, and they knew him from his own renovations. He slipped upstairs to the bathroom that was next on Lainey’s list to have done. He knew she was putting off work starting because it would leave her without a functional bathroom for a couple of weeks or so, and although he’d offered her his, he got the feeling she wasn’t keen on accepting it.
She’d be even less keen on accepting it after this.
He pulled aside the shower curtain that was new, replacing the mildew covered one that had been there before, and started to fiddle with the shower head, tipping in the green food colouring that would spew out over Lainey as soon as she stood under it. He knew she ran the hot water in the sink first so the shower was warm as soon as she got in, which meant there wouldn’t be any wastage or warning.
Jake was almost too busy basking in his sense of accomplishment to hear the footsteps approach the bathroom. The door swung open and he glimpsed Lainey entering, a robe slung over her shoulders, the tie undone and the material left hanging.
Jake froze. He became an ice statue, only he wasn’t feeling very cold. In fact, he was starting to feel very, very hot.
Beneath the open robe, Lainey was naked.
Totally, utterly naked.
He watched, spellbound, as she slipped the robe off her shoulders, exposing smooth skin and toned muscle. Horse riding kept her slim, but she wasn’t skinny; she was toned and had curves in the right places, including breasts that were more than a handful, and that he’d very much like to hold. Kiss. Suck.
Shit.
He was hiding in her shower and he’d promised that he’d never sneak up on her.
He had to make himself known; she was going to find him anyway.
Crap. Crap. Fuck.
Stupidity took over and he started to strip, pulling off the sweats that probably needed to be thrown away and discarding the T-shirt. He was down to his underwear when he heard the gasp and then the half-scream.
Jake yanked back the shower curtain and tried to look surprised to see Lainey, standing in her bathtub semi-naked, his dick not getting the message that this was a covert operation cover up as it was now at half-mast.
Lainey’s arms automatically went to conceal her breasts and the tidy strip of hair between her legs. Jake knew he was staring, but so was she.
A stream of expletives exploded from her mouth.
“What the fucking fuck are you… Jake!”
Jake just about managed to stop himself from reverting to the eight-year-old version of him when he stripped naked at any point because he’d realised it distracted from whatever he was about to take the blame for and instead grinned.
“My shower broke, and I thought I’d take a quick one in yours.” His cock was not understanding that it needed to be anything but hard right now; Lainey’s tits that were escaping her arm seemed to be cutting off the blood supply to the part of his brain that controlled his dick, or maybe it was the now throbbing erection that was doing that.
