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Twenty-Five
DELILAH
So far my ‘surprise’ had included a large cardboard tub of extra-butter popcorn, two bottles of wine, and a fistful of Galaxy bars all handed to me by Liam. I’d also been presented with a gloriously large, unimaginably soft throw blanket made of genuine cashmere, which I absolutely adored.
“This is really mine?” I gasped.
“Of course,” said Julius.
“But it must’ve cost a fortune!”
The two men looked at each other and shook their heads. “Not where we picked it up.”
I was on the couch, in my ‘comfy clothes’ as instructed. I had my tired legs tucked up beneath me. I was sitting on my feet.
“And now,” said Liam, “the grand finale.”
He reached behind his back and pulled out something small and rectangular and very familiar to me, only not too recently.
“A DVD?” I squinted. “You rented aDVD?”
“Of course not!” Liam exclaimed. “No one rents DVDs anymore, they buy them. And this isn’t a DVD, it’s a Blu-Ray copy.”
“A copy of what?” I asked.
“Only the best Schwarzenegger movie you’ve never laid eyes on,” he said proudly. “Predator!”
Liam’s expression went from excited to crestfallen as I curled my knees into my chest and giggled. It wasn’t the reaction he was going for.
“What?” he complained. “Not a good surprise?”
“I guess so,” I shrugged. “I mean it’s cool and all, but wouldn’t it be easier to just stream it from Amazon?”
“Stream it fromAmazon?” Liam gasped. He looked to Julius with a horrified expression. The other ranger only crossed his arms and shook his head.
“This isBlue-Ray,” he swore reverently. “The picture and sound are ten times sharper and better than anything we might—”
“Okay, okay,” I laughed. “Predator on Blue-Ray. With popcorn and candy and wine, plus a luxurious cashmere blanket from parts unknown.”
And two seriously hot guys in loose-fitting shorts and tight-fitting T-shirts.
“Alright, I’m sold!” I smiled back at them. Reaching down, I threw open my blanket and patted the couch cushions on either side of me. “Let’s do this.”
I was wearing a pair of cozy sweatpants that I’d cut the legs out of long ago. I’d cut them very high on the hip too, so they showed off an awful lot of thigh. I’d told myself I wore them to be comfortable but it occurred to me that my subconscious might have ulterior motives.
Likewise, the guys were similarly dressed to impress. Liam wore the kind of sleeveless black T-shirt where the arms were cut low on the sides. It showed off his incredible back and muscle-stacked ribcage as well as his powerful arms, while Julius had a threadbare shirt with so many holes in it I could count every one of his scrumptious abs.
None of this mattered so much a minute later, as they climbed beneath the blanket with me. The movie began playing the dreaded FBI warning. Dramatic music began playing as an alien spacecraft swooshed past, against the backdrop of outer space.
I snuggled in, munching on popcorn and trying to focus on the movie. For the first half-hour it wasn’t easy. With all the delicious exposed skin on either side of me I couldn’t help but steal glances whenever the blanket rode up. And there was another problem. A bigger one, that split my concentration even further:
Duncan.
God, I couldn’t get last night out of my mind! The whole thing had been so incredibly hot, so totally unlike anything I’d done before that it consumed just about every idle thought I had. I wished he hadn’t gone away so quickly. It made it difficult to gauge where he stood, and whether or not—
“Watch this,” Liam said, tapping me on the thigh beneath the blanket. His warm, calloused palm sent an instant shiver up my leg. “You’re gonna like this part.”
On screen, Arnold Schwarzenegger had finally finished plowing through the jungle with a giant machine gun. He threw a ridiculously giant knife hard enough to pin someone to a nearby pole, then uttered the phrase: ‘Stick around.’
