AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 7 - Ben
Laurel was way too much for me. The roller coaster didn’t begin to describe it. First completely setting me up to think she was interested in me, only to try to get me to let her do her ridiculous jump. When she slammed out of here I was almost ready to let her find her own way down the mountain. Of course I couldn’t do that to someone with a sprained ankle, though I admit I took my time finding the car keys.
I would have said it served her right when I found her soaked and shivering under a tree and, when she had the nerve to sass me after I went out in the torrent to rescue her, I almost pulled a U-turn and left her ass.
Now she was curled up next to me on the couch. How this happened, I wasn’t exactly sure. It might have had something to do with the look in her eyes when she burst in on me while I was changing out of my wet clothes. I knew that look, there was no faking such a look of appreciation. Pure, hungry lust, more accurately. I didn’t mind it. It sure did validate all the time I spent in the gym lately. Seeing her swallowed up by my robe with her hair hanging in damp curls around her shoulders combined with her very obvious interest made me forgive her. Okay, if not forgive her, I decided to give her another chance. The fact I wanted to slide the robe off her shoulders and kiss my way down her neck had nothing to do with it.
Not even five minutes later, she was refusing my offer to replace her bandage with a dry one. I knew it would be at least twenty more minutes until her clothes were dry and was too tired to see what fireworks might have set off if I pushed the issue. Let her be a brat with a soggy bandage in peace. Then she was following me and asking for a do-over, and cracking up at my lame dick jokes. It had to be done, and I liked seeing her get heated thinking about mine. Which, unfortunately, was a double-edged sword because then I got heated thinking about her enjoying it. And I would make sure she did.
Next thing I knew she was leaning across me, her breasts about to spill out of the loosened robe, supposedly to pick up her abandoned wine glass. I tried to remind myself why she abandoned it, the reason she was in the robe, and why I had already decided having anything else to do with her was a bad idea.
I tried acting cold, but she sat down inches away from me and gave me a look that would have had me kissing her, my hands spreading the folds of her robe to explore her, if she was anyone else. Well, I had invited her to sit while she waited for her clothes. I didn’t know why she had to test what was left of my sanity by sitting so close I could practically feel her breath on my skin. Maybe I just wanted to feel her breath on my skin.
“Can I have some of that blanket?” she asked huskily.
The sanity test failed. I tugged the blanket over her shoulder and she snuggled up close to me with a sigh. My cock was instantly hard, and I tilted away from her.Bad idea, bad idea,I reminded myself.
“I love the sound of the rain,” she said. I did too, and had to fight putting my arm around her and pulling her even closer. When I didn’t answer, she looked up at me with a small, shy smile. “This is the last second chance, I promise.”
There it was, a whisper of warm breath against my neck. Holy hell. She kept looking up at me, all dewy lips and big eyes. I turned back to the window, watching rain lash the glass. What was I thinking a second ago? Something about a bad idea?
“I don’t get you at all, Laurel,” I said.
She made a grumbling sound I found dangerously adorable and stuck out her lower lip. I wanted to lean over and nibble on it, lick it. I looked away.
“I guess you could say I stay in the moment,” she said. “Sometimes that’s good, sometimes…”
When she trailed off I looked down at her again. My brain was not convinced I needed to get on this particular train, but every other part of me was raring to go. Her lips looked so inviting, and I wondered if she had the right idea about life. There was no use in trying to control every little thing, because your carefully laid plans could topple at any time.
“Sometimes it’s … what?” I asked quietly.
She tipped up her chin. “Sometimes it’s very, very good.”
Maybe my brother Eli knew what he was doing, burying his own grief with a string of one night stands. After all, he was getting his work done. His magazines were thriving. I’d never know unless I tried. I made the decision, right or wrong, to live in the moment. When I leaned down to kiss her, a pounding on the front door made her jump away as if she’d been electrified.
“Oh, shit, I forgot about him.” She slithered out from under the blanket, the absence of her warm body close to mine making me feel colder than the chilly room.
“Forgot about who?” I asked as she ran for the front door.
I followed her to find an angry man dripping on the tiles. He was around my height with shaggy, surf bum blond hair. His red face and tense posture were enough to put me on my guard but the fact he was yelling at Laurel really put me on edge.
“I can’t believe you came up here with this asshole in the first place,” he shouted, reaching for her arm. “And why the hell are you in a bathrobe?”
I got between them, not about to let him grab her. “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked in my most reasonable voice.
“It’s fine,” Laurel muttered softly behind me. She said that way too much when she was avoiding something. And this time it wasn’t fine. No one was going to yell at her like that when I was around.
The guy tried to shove past me. “Mind your own business.” He paused and looked down and I realized he was holding his phone in front of him. “This is the asshole who ruined Laurel’s jump,” he said, as if he was narrating for an audience.
Oh hell, he couldn’t have been live streaming, could he? Another glance down at his phone as if he was gaining courage from it, told me he probably was.
“He invited me for dinner, that’s all,” Laurel said in an appeasing tone. Why was she trying to appease this Neanderthal? It didn’t appease him because he tried to grab her again.
“You had dinner with him?” he shouted.
“I loaned him twenty bucks and he was paying me back.” She looked at me apologetically.
“Wow,” he said loudly. “He already cost us money ruining your stunt and then had the nerve to borrow from you?” He forced a fake laugh.
