I tried to look innocent.
“I can’t remember, does that mean that you get to pick a prize, too?”
“Ha!
You’re full of it.
You know the rules.
There’s always a loser, which means I owe you two, you owe me one.”
I threw my arms up.
“Oh fine.
How about we cancel out each other for one?
Win, win for both of us.”
“Hell no.
We already covered that.
Quit backpedaling, and let’s negotiate.
I’ll go first.
Mine is easy.
You sing that Alpa Chino song for me.
Here and now.
Let’s hear it.”
I covered my face with my hands.
“I’m not doing that,” I told him.
He was closer when he spoke.
“And I get to record it.
I want to use it as my ringtone.”
“Oh Lord.
That’s messed up.”
I started giggling when he scooped me clean out of my chair, carrying me back to the couch with him.
He perched me on his lap sideways, tilting my chin up with his finger, his eyes so warm they left their permanent brand on me.
“I won’t hold back on you, if you make me do this,” I warned him, reaching up to touch a beloved dimple.
“Promises, promises.
Start singing, sweetheart.
And sing it sexy.”
I did sing it for him, but it was the opposite of sexy.
I couldn’t stop giggling for the entire stupid song.
And he hadn’t been joking, he really did record it, though I doubted he’d be able to hear me singing on the playback, we were both laughing so hard.
“Okay, okay, your turn.
Hit me with your best shot.”
“Only one appropriate prize comes to mind.
You’re going to owe me a dick pic.”
He hooted with laughter, spilling me out of his lap and onto the couch, and standing up.
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”
His hands went to his fly.
I slapped his arm.
“I’m not finished.
Not just any dick pic.
I’m going to text you, it could happen at any time, and no matter when it does happen, you have to run somewhere private, take a dick pic, and send it to me.”
“That’s evil.
What if I’m in the middle of a show?”
He sat down again, pulling me back onto his lap.
“This will count for both of my wins, both of my prizes, so even if you’re in the middle of a show, you have to do it.
You’ll get a ten-minute window.
And your face has to be in the photo.
And there has to be something in the picture to timestamp it.”
“You are one diabolical woman, but I suppose I have to do it.
You were a good sport about that song.”
His finger was tilting my chin up again, his warm smiling eyes making their mark on me.
Again.
I wished he would stop doing both.
One was distracting, the other riveting.
More weapons in his endless arsenal.
“What am I going to do with you?” I asked him, voice breathless, lungs breathless.
He took the air right out of me.
And the fight.
“It boggles the mind,” he said with a smile, though his hoarse voice contradicted the playful line.
He ran his nose along my jaw, breathing on me.
“We’re friends, right?
This is going well, don’t you think?”
The man was demented.
“By what criteria are we judging it?
If going well means we’ve both lost our ever-loving minds, then yes, I guess it’s going well?!
If we’re basing it on us being just friends, we’re failing epically.”
He pulled back from me and grinned, just looking tickled by my answer, the stubborn man.
“Don’t be so salty.
We’re getting along great, and we’re having so much fun.
Tell me you didn’t miss this.
I dare you.”
That I couldn’t do, unless I became a much better liar in the next five seconds, and as for the dare, psh, I wasn’t falling for it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We ate bacon wrapped jalapeño poppers, and then, because he harassed me into doing it, I gave him a tour of my house.
I’d forgotten that I’d let the neighbor’s orange tabby in earlier, but I remembered as I was showing him my small home office, and we found him, passed out on his back, sleeping under my desk.
Tristan, who loved all cuddly creatures, went for him with a smile, picking up the cat, and stroking it without even seeming to disturb the animals limp sleep.
Magic hands and all that.
He looked up at me, cat cradled in his arms like a baby.
“What’s its name?”
My mind went blank.
It was over all the time, but I just called it kitty, and thought of it as the orange tabby.
I improvised.
“I call him Ginger, on account of the orange hair.”
He laughed, and sent me an odd look.
“Um, Danika, this cat is a girl.
How on earth do you not know that you have a girl cat?”
I chewed my lip, not wanting to tell him.
It was embarrassing, but oh well.
“It’s the neighbor’s cat.
I just let it hang out here when I’m around.”
He set Ginger down, laughing so hard that he stayed doubled over.
“Oh my God!
You stole your neighbor’s cat?”
I was defensive.
“Borrowed.
And she has, like, thirty cats.
I doubt she even misses her.
I travel too much to get any of my own pets.”
He just kept laughing.
After a while, I was laughing with him.
Even I could see that it was funny as hell, and that was with the joke at my expense.
“See, this is why it’s handy to have a man,” he finally said, moving to sprawl out in the chair behind my desk.
He looked ridiculous in it, it was so small, and he was the opposite.
In fact, the whole room suddenly looked as small as a closet, with his larger than life presence dominating it.
“I’m not following,” I said wryly.
“Well, I’ll just throw this out there.
Crazy cat lady next door is single, right?”
I nodded.
“What, you think the cats scared all the men off?
“She’s not single because she has thirty cats.
The one happened after the other, I guarantee it.
And if she had a man, he would have stopped the crazy cat train after, like, four, five tops.
So you see, men can be handy to have around.”
He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, sending me into peals of helpless laughter.
“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” I gasped.
“Are you getting at something in particular?”
“Yes.
You should let me live with you.
I know you love pets, and I’ll stifle the crazy cat urges before they even start.
And I cook.”
I shook my head at him, still smiling, as I backed out of the room.
“You’re impossible,” I called out to him, as I moved down the hall, towards the next stop in the tour.
I didn’t even have to look, I could
feel
his presence behind me.
My mouth twisted as I showed him my room.
I hadn’t cleaned it, hadn’t made my bed.
I wasn’t messy, but it was messy tonight, due to all of the wardrobe changes and the masturbation session.
His eyes were glued to the bed from the second he stepped in the room.
I looked with him and knew instantly what had him transfixed.
They were cheap cotton sheets, but the wonderful thing about cotton was that, if you abused it with enough washing it got really, really soft.
And I loved those sheets.
I’d been using them for years.
Just how many years, I refused to think about.
I had other sheets, nice sheets, much nicer sets, in fact, than these, but those were only used when I laundered the good stuff.
Unfortunately, the cheap ones were also distinctive sheets, white and patterned with bleached out yellow rosebuds.
I’d known when he said he was coming over that we’d end up here at some point.
Why hadn’t I changed the sheets?
And of course, he’d noticed right away, the overly observant bastard.
“I remember these,” he said, reverence in his tone.
He moved right to the bed, running his hands over the fabric, bending down to bury his face in it.
“We were on these the first time we…” he trailed off.
“I know.”
I sighed.
I should have put the sheets away.
Now he was going to want to talk about things that I wasn’t ready to talk about.
“Come here,” he said huskily.
I shook my head, but he wasn’t looking at me, his cheek pressed to one of the yellow rose pillowcases.
“Come here,” he said again.
Biting my lip, I went to him.
Slowly but firmly, he pulled me down to lie beside him, both of us on our backs, the sides of our arms touching.
“Remember these sheets?”
I swallowed.
“Of course I do.
They’re
my
sheets.”
“Remember the first time we made love?”
I shouldn’t have indulged him in this, I knew it, but my mouth refused to listen to my brain.
“I remember being on top, and it pissed you off.”
He smiled, rolling on his side to look at me.
His eyes were so soft that my whole body went soft with them.
“I remember that.
God, you were riding me so good, and I knew that you were just trying to drive me wild, but even knowing it, it fucking worked.
Best fucking ride of my life.”
I blushed and started smiling.
I couldn’t help it.
And I also couldn’t help asking, “Yeah?”
“Up to that point.
You weren’t done blowing my mind, though, and you know it, because the next time was even better.”
“We put these things through their paces.”
He tensed suddenly.
“Have you been using these the whole time we’ve been apart?”
I knew what he was asking.
“Only when I was by myself.”
I’d kept the sheets faithful to Tristan.
Bully for me.
We were so freaking screwed up.
So freaking
screwed
.
His hand moved to my stomach, stroking with a light touch through my thin shirt.
“I love these sheets.
I’m going to steal them from you when you’re not looking, or, you know, when you are.”
I laughed.
“They wouldn’t even fit your bed.
They only fit a queen.”
“I don’t care.
I’ll use them like a blanket.”
I laughed harder, then stopped abruptly as he moved to loom over me.
I stared up at him, wondering when I had lost this fight.
It was likely before it had even begun.
No wonder Andrew had never stood a chance.
No wonder no one had.
Who could compete with this beautiful, larger than life specimen of a man?
He didn’t make a move on me, or at least, not in the way I was expecting.
Instead of bending down to me, he lifted the hem of my shirt, exposing my belly, and then pulling my shorts down enough to unearth my skin, from my navel down to my pelvis.
Several long, jagged scars marred the skin there.
They’d faded more than I had ever hoped for, but still, they were impossible to miss.
He ran his fingers over each one, his expression going very blank, but not as blank as mine was.
“Will you tell me what these are?”
I wasn’t happy to talk about this, but I was anxious to get it over with.
“They’re nothing.
Completely superficial,” I lied.
Not remotely superficial.
Just the opposite.