‘Yeah, you know, the white stuff that comes in jugs.’
‘I think you’ll find it comes from cows.’
‘Stop fucking with me,’ I reply, earning myself a frown from the trucker looking type who reaches into the chiller for an iced coffee. ‘Sorry,’ I mouth, earning more of the man’s censure as I suddenly become aware of Ben’s follow-up statement.
‘I’d love to fuck with you.’
My whole body clenches, his words expanding and exploding inside me, taking me by surprise.
‘Because it’s your default mode,’ I reply, still flustered and not really paying one hundred percent attention to what’s coming out of my mouth. ‘You’ve been fucking with me my whole life.’ Yes, that has to be it because the alternative is—
‘Nell.’ My name sounds like a cross between a smile and a sigh. ‘Not even you’re that oblivious.’
I clear my throat. ‘So you’re not lactose intolerant or a celiac?’ I sort of squeak.
‘See you when you get home, Nell. We can finish playing doctors and nurses then.’ The line goes dead.
Holy guacamole. Should I buy some? No. I shove the milk back onto the shelf, abandon my basket, and almost forget to pay for my gas before taking myself off to the nearest coffee shop and injecting my body with caffeine and a non-stalepain au chocolatein order to think this through.
~*~
He’s just fucking with me, I tell myself as I pull up at the house.This is his grown-up version of torment.And even if it isn’t, and he does have some base kind of sexual interest in me, it wouldn’t work. Am I supposed to screw him and not tell Mel? Because I couldn’t. She’s my friend, and I couldn’t keep it from her.Even if I wanted to.And I know she guess she wouldn’t be the least bit happy to hear I’d broken my sexual drought with her kid brother.
Weird.That’s what it would be. Weird, weird, weird.
But not as weird, or as shocking, to almost walk into the kitchen to find Ben in his bare feet loading the washing machine. While that’s not really weird in and of itself, something compels me to stay silent rather than announce my arrival. Call it some kind of sixth sense, or call it weird, but I find myself rolling my lips inward as he reaches behind his head and grasps the cotton before dragging it over his head. It’s such a masculine movement, one I can’t ever recall having seen in the flesh before. An action like this I would’ve remembered as some kind of visceral muscle memory given the way my body reacts. All the tingles. And speaking of flesh, Ben is cut. Seriously cut. I know his job must require a high level of physical fitness, but his body seems more than a well-honed machine. Seriously, I’m not sure it’s an overstatement to say he appears god-like. The morning sunlight bathes him in a golden glow, kissing the blond streaks in his hair. But it’s not his hair I’m looking at right now. I’m staring at deltoids that would put 80s shoulder pads to shame and obliques I could physically hook with a finger, along with every glorious muscle in between. I’ve looked at a lot of bodies, tended to a lot of bodies, and not just female ones, but I’ve never seen someone as fit as him.
It’s a musculature that explains how that ass fills his jeans. I’m guessing he does a lot of squats because,that ass. And as he balls his T-shirt to shove it into the washing machine, I think someone must be smiling down on me because something tells me I’m about to get a closer glimpse.
I wonder if he wears boxers or briefsor ...
Ho-ly mother of God!
He whips off his shorts to reveal a preference of neither, and as he bends to scoop them from the floor, I get more than a look at the taut cheeks of his ass, but I also get a flash of the goods. That is—wow—just huge!
‘Stop!’ I call out, whipping around to face the hall behind me. ‘Oh my God,’ I mutter, ‘what kind of person gets undressed in the kitchen?’ The grocery bag I was holding has dropped to the floor, the fruit I bought rolling around my feet.
‘Do you have a rule against nakedness in the kitchen?’ comes Ben’s unconcerned and smug—yes, smug—sounding answer.
‘If you’d worked six months in the emergency department, you know what I’m talking about.’
‘Except I’m not frying bacon for bacon butties or boiling water to make a cuppa. I’m not dicing with any kind of burn. I’m doing laundry. And what about you, Nell? What were you doing?’
There’s a note of something in his tone, something that makes my stomach roil though not through fear or embarrassment.
He knows.
And he sounds as though he doesn’t mind.. .
‘I brought groceries,’ I answer softly. That sounds like the Penny version ofI carried a watermelon.I don’t know about Baby, but I think it might be prudent for someone to putmein the corner. Preferably with a big dunce cone on my head.
‘And what else were you doing?’
‘I was... ’ I swallow deeply, not quite understanding why I feel compelled to answer honestly. Maybe it’s the throaty timbre of his voice that makes the truth so compelling.Or maybe it’s that ass. ‘I-I was watching you.’
‘Turn around, Nell.’
A tiny thrill washes through me. Is it wrong to feel compelled at his rasping direction? Wrong to be turned on?
