Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Josey
I could still taste Reg in my mouth and smell his lavender skin in my nose when we pulled alongside the curb at the next house on our list. I grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him over the center console so I could get another kiss.
Reg opened his mouth for me with the breathiest moan I’d ever heard, and it was enough to send all the blood in my body right between my legs.
With a tortured groan, I broke the kiss and dropped the side of my head against the passenger window.
“What do you think of this one?” I asked.
Reg reached into his lap and adjusted what looked like a substantial bulge, his stare flickering over my shoulder toward the sprawling white stucco house.
In my opinion, it was still too big for him, but I didn’t want to influence his decision-making unfairly.
He’d searched me out on the app for company and opinions.
But I supposed he hadn’t searched me out for some random car makeout sessions and the promise of an end-of-day fuck, but I had no issue delivering on those things.
“I think it’s too big,” he said, shoulders slumping. The earlier thrill of our kiss was already dying as he faced the reality of the rest of our afternoon.
“It looks good to me,” I murmured, staring directly at the erection growing behind his fly.
“What about the house, though?”
“Far too big,” I agreed. “Let me put in the next address.”
I typed the location of the next house into his nav.
It was only ten minutes away, and Reg didn’t want to be told to head back onto the freeway to get us there.
The third house was one exit away from the second, and we were at the curb in no time.
I thought that house had far more appeal with bougainvillea-covered lattice crawling up one of the walls, flanking a brick chimney that I wasn’t sure worked.
“This one is cute,” I said before he could ask.
And it was.
The property was well maintained, and the house looked like it had been built in the fifties. There were clearly some modern upgrades, but overall, the house was easily the best of the list.
“It is,” he agreed.
I put a heart emoji in my phone next to the address, ready to short list it to Claire.
“Ready to scope out the next one?” I asked, but before he could answer, my stomach gurgled on my behalf.
The corner of his mouth quirked up, and he huffed an amused breath out of his nose.
“Do you want to grab breakfast first?” he offered. “My treat.”
“Something small,” I agreed, well aware that I carried more meat around the middle than most men who had the bravery to set up profiles on H2H.
I’d never felt criticized for my weight on the app.
If anything, there was a new influx of younger men who found the whole “dad bod” thing really attractive.
Looking at myself in the mirror after a shower, I was rarely a fan of it, but I wasn’t so unhappy that I would do anything to change it.
“There’s a little deli a few blocks from here,” Reg said, throwing the car in park and shouldering open the door.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s nice out and we’ve got a house for Claire to show us later,” he said, already out of the car and standing to his full height—giving me an eye-level view of the cock I’d been thinking about sucking on earlier. “We can walk there and back in the same amount of time.”
Grinning, I hopped out of the car and joined Reg on the curb, grabbing his hand before I could talk myself out of it. His palm was warm, a little sweaty, but the stickiness of his fingers had me smiling at the connection.
“And if we walk, I can hold your hand,” I told him.
Reg blinked a couple of times, then looked up at me with a small smile on his face. “You could hold my hand in the car too.”
I gave him a squeeze and took a step away from the car. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Reg let out a squeaking sigh, then fell into step beside me.
We walked to the corner in a companionable silence, making a left turn, then a right turn and going one more block before coming to a stop in front of a little deli and coffee shop on the corner.
There was a sliding window cut out beside a chalkboard menu scrawled on the wood-planked wall.
A girl with curly pink hair stuck her head out the window, a plastic bag in hand.
“Sheila! Order for Sheila!”
Another woman—presumably Sheila—came to take the bag, leaving Reg and I alone again on the curb. With a soft breath, he leaned in close and rested his head against my shoulder. I went tense at first, shocked at the easy way he touched me, but quickly relaxed when he made no move to pull away.
“What do you like to eat for breakfast, Reg?” I asked him.
“Bagel sandwiches,” he answered. “But I never have time to make them myself.”
“You work that much?”
He shrugged, shoulder knocking into my bicep. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
“No friends?”
Reg sucked his tongue across the front of his teeth and cleared his throat, righting his posture and taking a step toward the window. He glanced at me over his shoulder and threw me a fake smile.
“They’ve got great salmon bagel sandwiches here. And the burritos are good too. What did you want to eat, Josey?”