With her hard up against me, my arms automatically encircling her to keep her safe. Now I’m wondering who’ll keep her safe from me. My body hasn’t responded to a woman like this in years, five-and-a-half, to be exact.
It’s a memory that has me dropping her like she’s hot and her coming close to falling back down the hole in the hallway.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” This time I’m more careful about how I hold her. Tight enough she doesn’t fall, loose enough my cock isn’t going all 4th of July on me.
While my smile is supposed to put her at her ease, there’s nothing relaxed about her response. She’s staring at me like she could eat me, or is it she wants me to eat her? My gaze drops of its own volition, and damn, I like what I see. I always was a sucker for thighs plump enough to suck me in and swallow me whole.
To keep some control over my body, I instead focus on her face. I don’t need a complication as gorgeous as this in my life, if only for Zoe’s sake. Even with my best efforts, we’d lived in seven different apartments and had a flurry of caregivers by the time she was four.
Then mom retired and eked out enough to put down a deposit on a home of her own. It had been an enormous relief when she’d suggested Zoe go live with her. If it weren’t for the size of the duplex, I’d be living with them. As it was, I’d had to close-in the back porch to create a small bedroom for Zoe.
Not only had moving in with my mom given the kid some much-needed stability, it had also made it possible for me to get a better-paying job.
It’s one I definitely can’t afford to lose by getting myself involved with the client, which is what this woman will be if we take the job. Ethan is adamant we don’t mess with any homeowners, having fired guys for this in the past.
The last thing I want to do is mess with my current set-up. With me helping mom with the rent and utilities, my life needs to be steady as she goes for a couple more years, at least.
Only once I have the woman safely across the porch and down onto the front path, do I speak again. Meanwhile, she doesn’t appear capable.
“When I stopped out front,” I take time to check the address on the ratty slip of paper I’ve retrieved from the back pocket of my jeans, “I thought it must be a mistake.”
If I’ve expected this to clear some of the confusion on her face, I’m out of luck. If anything, she now appears more confused than ever.
“But what are you doing here? I didn’t call you. I hadn’t even heard of Lucky Break Construction until this morning.” She quiets for a second, before muttering, “Alice, why that…”
Without completing this sentiment, she instead looks up at me. “Well, if you’re here, I guess you may as well make yourself useful.” She then gestures toward the house with a sweep of her arm.
Another glance in her direction, and I decide it’s better for my peace of mind if I focus on the house. “What are your plans for the dum… place?”
Now she’s staring at me in the same way as I’ve been looking at the house. “She’s not a dump!” The woman bristles in indignation before continuing. “A lick of paint and she’ll be gorgeous by the time I’m done with her. She just needs a little love.”
Rather than annoy me, as would usually be the case, all I want to do is laugh. “Lady, I could love this pile of… I could love her every which way but Sunday and she wouldn’t have a hope.”
It’s not until I’ve said the words that it hits me that this is exactly what I want to do, only not to the house. I take another look at the scrap of paper, but to Lily Finnegan, the dump’s proud, if obstinate, owner.
The large breath she takes is telling, although I hold my hand up to stop the arguments in their tracks, before extending it to shake hers. “Tyler Vance. Is there another way in so I can get a proper look at the place?”
I don’t dare tell her that this is so I can confirm we should condemn the place rather than flip it.
I know there’s a shortage of properties in Coogan’s Break. But whoever sold her this pile of crap should have known better than to offload it to what I’m now guessing is a novice flipper.
As I follow the woman down an overgrown path at the side of the house, I’m having difficulty keeping my eyes up. Lily’s ass has a magnetic quality to it. Those are cheeks a man could hang onto when he took his fill. The sway of her hips also has a hypnotic quality to it.
She couldn’t be more different to Jade, my late wife, if she tried, and yet my body, okay, my cock, doesn’t care in the least. Damn it, if the woman has this effect on me when she’s wearing ill-fitting overalls, how would it be if she was naked? In my mind’s eye, she’s only covered by the waist-length, jet-black curls that tumble riotously down her back.
I haven’t given this idea the attention it deserves when my boot catches the edge of a long-forgotten garden ornament hidden in the knee-high weeds.
Maybe if I hadn’t been following her so closely, I wouldn’t have taken her out when I fell. It could have been worse though, with my reflexes always cat-like despite my size.
A twist of my hips on the way down, and rather than land on top of her, we reverse positions, with me breaking her fall. The only disappointment is that she’s facing away from me. This disappointment doesn’t last beyond her grinding that peach of an ass into my groin as she attempts to stand.
With the way this is playing out, by the time she’s erect, I will be, too.
THREE
LILY
As I struggle to get to my feet, there’s no missing the tool poking me in the ass. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the guy was wearing a tool belt. Well, he is but only the one mother nature gave him, with my body responding to the current challenge, as it never did with my ex.
