Levi
“Hold still, please.”
Trying not to upset the person working with sharp objects hovering around me, I stood in place; my only option was to glare.
What I wanted was to step off the platform, move toward Dom, and smack him upside the head.
Instead, I was left to play grumpy mannequin while the smirking jackass sat in the chair.
“Yeah, hold still,” Dom said, reaching under his shirt to scratch his stomach.
I might have considered it uncouth, but.
..it had the effect of flashing his stomach, and there wasn’t a lot I could do in the face of that.
The bastard had always been well built; puberty had been far kinder to him than to most people.
It was a sort of cosmic crime that he had only grown hotter since.
It was also an injustice that he was the one man who could take me so completely out of my element that I lacked my normal coping mechanisms to resist him.
“You wouldn’t want to ruin their hard work, would you? ”
“There are several things I wish to say right now,” I said in a measured voice, though I let my hard glare convey the tone I really wanted to use. “But I think I might reserve those for later.”
“Oh, I bet,” he said with a grin, now rubbing his stomach.
It was the height of casual, or at least seemed like it, and perfectly innocent as he waited for my fitting to finish.
I wasn’t fooled in the slightest, however, especially when he decided to back it up by spreading his legs.
He was wearing jeans, as usual, so it wasn’t like he was making a total display of himself.
On the other hand, the way he was sitting stretched the denim so tightly it hugged his thighs.
.. among other things. As a final nail in the coffin, Dom had decided that because I’d expressed how much I enjoyed the sight of a man, especially him, in a jockstrap, he was wearing them all the time, so he was also wearing underwear that shoved everything forward.
I was getting an eyeful of his exceptionally prominent groin while he flashed his stomach, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
I was only thankful the shop attendant hadn’t noticed, or that they were too well-trained to show it.
This wasn’t the first time he’d decided to play tease in public, on some random outing, but it was the first time he’d done it when I had a stranger hovering around me.
It was a delicate balance because if I stopped paying attention to him, he would escalate to the point where I would panic that someone else would see him.
On the other hand, if I paid too much attention, I would be the one making a display of myself to the poor man currently trying to fit me for several suits.
If I got noticeably hard while I had someone trying to measure and fit me, I was going to have to reconsider whether it was a good idea to kill Dom.
“You’re getting a little red. Is it hot in here?” Dom asked, his eyes going wide enough to show he was trying to look innocent, but I wasn’t buying it for a second.
“Is it warm?” the attendant asked, and it was just believable enough that I was pretty sure he had no idea what was going on. “I can turn the air conditioning up a little higher if you’d like.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said, because in no way, shape, or form was I going to admit what was going on in this room. “No problem, continue.”
“Just say the word,” the attendant promised me, flashing a perfectly professional smile that spoke of how long he had been doing this kind of work. It also hinted that perhaps I wasn’t as safe from him seeing what my...what Dom was doing either.
He always could get the best of you, even when you tried your hardest not to let him.
Yes, thank you, Mother-not-Mother, I wouldn’t have known that without your wonderful insight.
Your insight.
Honestly, it was probably well past time to consider if I was on the brink of losing my mind.
I was, after all, host to a voice I had crafted in a moment of loneliness and desperation.
Now, years later, it was still haunting me.
The lines between it being its own separate being and the product of my mind had blurred a long time ago, and I was starting to think perhaps I needed to figure out a way to get rid of it.
Uh-huh, because you absolutely haven’t used me as a sounding board for your thoughts and ideas. But sure, go right on ahead and tell yourself you’re crazy instead of using an alternative way of thinking.
There was nothing quite like being sassed by your own brain, that was for sure.
“Okay,” the attendant said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “That just about covers it. Stay right there while I get all this jotted down, and we can confirm the order.”
“Sure,” I said as the man flashed me a smile, and then gave Dom a sidelong glance that was as quick as it was knowing.
I continued to glare at Dom as the attendant left the room, feeling a slight twitch in my eye as he grinned back. When I heard the door shut, I grunted. “You are the world’s most frustrating and degenerate creature.”
“What?” Dom asked, trying to keep up the innocent act even though it was clearly overplayed, and it wasn’t like he’d think I’d believe it. “And hey, don’t get off that thing. He said not to move.”
“It’s a good thing too because I would be off this stage, ready to strangle you if I didn’t have to stay put,” I threatened, only to realize that was precisely what I shouldn’t have said.
He grinned. “I mean, it’s only been what...a few weeks? I guess that’s right for two former best friends turned...what are we?”
“Soon to be strangers,” I told him dryly, though I didn’t for a minute think he’d believe me or my threats.
We had come to learn in the past few weeks that I had a tough time resisting him whenever he turned on his.
..charm. For fifteen years, I’d convinced myself I was immune to the sort of inexorable pull some people held over others through the gifts of good sex and good looks.
That belief had come crashing down in record time, and it was all his fault.
He, for instance, knew damn well I had been paying attention to what he was doing during the fitting.
He knew it was getting on my nerves, but not for a moment did he consider easing off.
Just like he also knew that, as frustrated as I was, it was only because he had me so turned on that it was impossible to think clearly.
And no matter how frustrated I got, there would be no real negative consequences for him.
He’d trapped me, and we both knew it; the difference was that it irritated me to no end, and he absolutely loved to abuse it.
“Oh,” he said, putting on a frown. “Have you been having...dirty thoughts?”
“You have been making a spectacle of yourself, and you know it,” I hissed in a low voice. “Hell, the poor man who’s just trying to do his job noticed too. Could you please try to behave when people are around?”
“That guy gave me the once over from the lust circle of hell,” Dom said with a laugh. “You didn’t notice it because you were too busy rattling off the list of things you wanted. But he was stripping me in his head, and he’d probably let me strip him in one of these rooms.”
I frowned. “I never took you to be so egotistical to get a thrill from something like this.”
“It’s not egotistical to like it when people find you attractive,” he said with a shrug. “And it is nice.”
“I tell you you’re attractive all the time.”
“Good God, are you—”
“Don’t even say it.”
“You are,” he said, eyes going wide and his smile growing even wider. I was never going to live this one down; I could feel it. “You’re jealous because the little twink looked at me and wondered what a slice of this cake would taste like.”
“That is the most juvenile way you could have phrased it.”
“Yeah, I know. I was just trying to get on your nerves, which, uh...worked.”
“Yes,” I said sarcastically. “Imagine that. You’re capable of getting on my nerves. Never mind that you have always been capable of that, and you’ve not only honed your skills, but thoroughly enjoyed the process.”
“There is that,” he said with a smile. “But deep down, you love it.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t try to get on my nerves while we’re in public.”
“Mmm, you love that too.”
“You are impossible.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Incorrigible even.”
“That’s still not you telling me I’m wrong, just saying.”
He was wrong, and he wasn’t, but it was the latter that I refused to admit.
Yes, perhaps I did enjoy the fact that he was willing to act like he was a couple of steps away from whipping his dick out to tease me.
Then again, he’d already done that once on a different shopping trip.
I never thought I would see a dick while trying to pick groceries, but there it was while I was browsing, sticking out of his pants.
The horror that shot through me had almost been as strong as the arousal.
Dom had thought the look on my face had been the funniest thing in existence while he tucked himself away.
I was left wondering whether we were about to get kicked out of the store, and what he had been thinking to be that hard in the grocery store.
It had been his goal to shock me and turn me on, both of which he had managed in spades, and I wasn’t proud to admit that I had then let him have his way with me in his truck in a parking lot after we’d left.
I was not going to do that this time, though, and I turned away from him as I heard footsteps approaching. The worst thing I could do when Dom was trying to get a reaction out of me was to give him exactly what he wanted.