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“Assholes might,” Alex pointed out.
“I’ll be okay. You go on. Enjoy your date. I must say, you make a darling couple.” Myrtle’s eyes flicked to Alex. “Lordy, I could just eat you up. If only I was fifty years younger.”
Muffy turned to Alex in time to see him wink. Myrtle tittered softly to herself, because heck yeah, Alex winking was enough to send hot flashes sweeping through Muffy. Her ovaries hurt a little, like she’d just been swiftly kicked there. Other places hurt too, but she was not going to think about how inappropriate it was that her nipples were peaked or that she was wet down there.
“Okay, well if you’re sure, you take care,” Muffy said softly. She had to force the words out past her suddenly sticky throat.
“I’m sure, honey. You take that nice man home with you and let him warm you up. It’s frigid out here.”
Muffy was pretty dang sure her face was the color of an angry sunburn. It sure felt like she’d passed out on the beach and got up eight hours later to find herself more lobster than human.
“I’ll look after her,” Alex promised.
His gloved hand searched for hers as he stepped forward. Muffy watched him intertwine their fingers and a streak of straight lust pooled low in her belly. Annnddd a little lower, if she was honest.
Myrtle winked. “She’s a good one, your fearless goddess. Don’t let her go.”
“I- I won’t,” Alex stammered.
They stood together, watching Myrtle amble off. She was pretty spry for an old woman and looked absolutely adorable in her huge puffer jacket.
When Alex turned to her, Muffy could barely meet his eyes. She hoped that he mistook the color in her cheeks for cold and not complete wantonness, because she couldn’t stop her mind from conjuring up a thousand ways Alex could warm her up.
His fingers squeezed hers. “Well? Should I make good on that promise? My place is kind of a hole in the wall, but I make a mean cup of hot chocolate.”
“I… uh…” Muffy glanced uselessly at her purse, where the full bag of birdseed remained.
“We can feed the birds first,” Alex suggested. “Get really good and cold before we leave. I promise I won’t hold you captive or tie you up or anything else creepy. It’s totally safe to come over.”
Muffy nearly groaned. She imagined Alex tying her up, to the bed, stripping off her clothes, and banishing the chill from her body. The thought was enough to cause a sweeping warmth to infuse every single limb. A shiver of straight-up desire rocketed up her spine while her belly did wild somersaults. She felt a little like she’d just been kicked in the cunny, as Myrtle so eloquently put it because the whole below the belt region was pretty damn achy and throbby.
“Uh- well- I…”
Am I crazy? How can I seriously be considering saying no to this? Besides the fact that Carla would undeniably drill her for every single detail, everything in her yearned to say yes. God, it had been a real dang long time since she felt special. In bed or out of it.
Muffy squared her back and looped her purse a little more firmly over her shoulder. She reached in after and produced the bag of bird seed. “Actually, it just so happens that I haven’t had a good cup of hot chocolate in years. So, I’ll take you up on that offer.”
Alex’s grin nearly undid her, and nope, she absolutely did not regret agreeing for even one second. It wasn’t like he was going to throw her in bed the second she got there. Unfortunately. They could be adults. She could accept a damn cup of hot chocolate. And that would just be that. Nothing more.
Or maybe they couldn’t be adults.
Muffy realized that Alex was insanely attractive- okay, she already knew that one- but also that she was incredibly hopeless. It shouldn’t have been nearly so exciting a revelation.
CHAPTER 12
Alex
It was at times like this, he was thankful that he’d had to fend for himself as a kid and learn to cook. He hadn’t wanted to survive only on macaroni and hot dogs forever, so he’d had to learn a thing or two in the kitchen.
Alex brought two steaming mugs of hot chocolate into the small living room of the apartment he’d rented for the month. The guilt crept up, cutting at him, but he swallowed hard, pushing the acrid taste of it back down into the blacker, asshole part of his soul.
“My secret recipe.”
He winked as he sat down on the old leather couch across from Muffy. The place had come fully furnished. It was a long-term rental, which could be rented by the week or the month. It had definitely seen better days and wasn’t at all homey, but it suited his purpose. At least the bed was decently clean, and he’d used his own sheets and comforter.
