Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Houston closed his eyes and tried to keep his teeth from rattling as Josie roughhoused his head. He could feel her nervousness, her body hovering behind him out of touching distance, and he wanted her. The way he did every time he saw her.
“Finished,” she said in a breathless voice that completed the erection he’d been working on in his briefs.
Josie clearly was going to stick to the just-friends idiocy, but the idea wasn’t sitting well with him. Hot dreams were keeping him up at night and lustful thoughts plagued him all day.
So he turned and directed the spray of water right at her already slightly damp chest.
While she screamed and threw her hands out, he smiled. “Whoops. I forgot to let go of the water.”
Then a long second later, he actually removed his finger pressure from the nozzle and took in the view from the top.
Josie had fabulous breasts dry. Wet, they could make a grown man weep in gratitude.
And they were wet now, with a clinging white tank top sculpted and molded to them, her pink nipples straining against the fabric as she blinked in shock.
“That water’s cold!” she said.
“Obviously.” Houston took another long, leering look at her nipples.
Her arms crossed. “Quit staring at my chest.”
Maybe in about a hundred years, when he’d had his fill.
“I’m in my underwear and you’re in a soaking-wet shirt. Do we still have to be just friends?”
“Houston...” She chewed her lips and looked ready to cave in and tear her top off.
But then she gave him a pleading look. “It wasn’t right when we did it the first time, and it would be an even worse idea now.
I shouldn’t have suggested another night at all.
I’m sorry, but I just know it will be better if we try to be friends instead of more. ”
Better for who? He reached for her, but she held up her hand.
“I...I really don’t want to get hurt,” she added, heart in her eyes.
That hit him in the gut hard. “I don’t want to hurt you.” The last thing in the world he wanted to do was hurt pretty, sweet Josie, the only person he knew who could even make him think of smiling right now when his career was crumbling around him.
“I know.” She swallowed, her jaw twitching. “But I want more than you can give me.”
He knew what she was asking. He wanted to answer.
But the words hung in the air between them and the silence grew, and deep inside where it ached he wanted to tell her that he’d give her anything.
That he’d try this time, that he’d do whatever she wanted, and that they could walk that big humongous step past just sex into something deeper together.
But he couldn’t do that. Because he didn’t know how to let go, how to trust her not to spit on his words, how to give up control over himself and his life to someone else.
Everything else in his future was so uncertain, he couldn’t risk that, too. “I can only give you one day at a time.”
She nodded, but a little sigh managed to escape her lips. “I know.”
The selfish part of him wanted Josie to say it didn’t matter, one night at a time was enough for her, that the affair she’d suggested was what she wanted.
But she didn’t, and he felt like a total bastard. He kept saying he wouldn’t hurt her, but every time he spoke to her he did just that, depositing a little drop of hurt that was rapidly filling up into a bucketful of pain. She gave and he took, and he had nothing to give back to her but sex.
He was the one to look away as a sharp pain in his leg reminded him that he’d been standing too long. “Let me get you a dry shirt.”
Her fingers brushed across the damp front of her tank top. “Oh, thanks, but I’m fine. You should sit down.” Her soft fluttering hands came towards him, reaching for his head. “Is all the shampoo out of your hair? I can get it with a washcloth if it’s not.”
Anger surged through him. Why couldn’t she just accept that he was a prick and leave him alone? Why did she have to care about him? No other woman he knew would give a rat’s ass if the shampoo were out of his hair, but Josie did—and damn, she made it so hard to keep shoving her away.
“I’m fine. I’ll be right back with a shirt for you.” He turned sideways to move past her in the doorway, not wanting to touch her.
“I can get it,” she said, placing her hand on his chest to stop him. “Just tell me where to find a T-shirt.”
“I said I’ll get it,” he snapped at her. And confirmed to himself that he wasn’t good enough for her.
She deserved someone who wasn’t his father’s son.
Josie blinked and watched Houston head down the hall to his bedroom, leg stiff as he fought a limp. Uncertain what had just happened, she tried to tell herself that he didn’t want her help, that she had infringed on his independence. But it wasn’t anything more serious than that.
Because if it was, she didn’t know how to fix it.
Shivering in the air conditioning, her wet shirt clinging to her chest, she waited for Houston. And waited. Then wondered if he’d fallen down and was stuck on his bedroom floor like a tipped turtle, unwilling to ask for help.
Either that or he wanted her to take a hint and leave.
Or he’d fallen asleep.
Or was hurt and bleeding and dying of something that her medical brain told her didn’t exist but her heart was sure could be an actual possibility.
After another minute she went down the hall to his room and stopped short in the door. Oh, dear God. He was trying to take his damp underwear off.
Only the sticking wet cotton, the elastic waistband, and the use of only one hand had caused him a bit of a problem. The underwear had been rolled halfway down and now appeared to be stuck. Right across the middle of his very tight, very nice backside.
He must have heard her excited breathing. He glanced over his shoulder and cursed in a low, rude voice.
“Sorry,” she said, her face hotter than hell’s kitchen. “I wanted to see if you needed help, I didn’t realize...”
That she’d get a free show.
“You want to help?” he said in exasperation, throwing his hands up in the air, the stark white bandage of the one startling against his tanned chest. “Fine. I’d love some help right now.”
“What?” He wanted her to take his underwear off? Was he serious? She couldn’t possibly touch his butt without her body getting ideas.
And he hadn’t even turned around to face her yet. Who knew what she’d find on that side. Mercy.
“My underwear is wet, it’s stuck, as I’m sure you can see, since my ass is hanging out in front of you. Can you just pull them off for me?”
His shoulders were tense, eyes stormy, jaw rigid. There was no sexual intent on his face, and he looked too ticked off to try anything funny.
“Oh, okay, of course. I’d love to help you,” she said like he’d asked for help filling in a crossword, not prying off his black briefs.
He didn’t say anything. He just waited. And she took a small step forward. Then another. She reached out her hands, which shook, and cringed as they landed on his skin at the small of his back.
Gritting her teeth, she slid fingers down his cool flesh, left damp by the briefs, and tried not to think about the fact that she was touching Houston Hayes’s right butt cheek. Per Anatomy and Physiology it was really the gluteus maximus, and just another striated muscle.
Which didn’t explain her sudden urge to squeeze.
Reaching the waistband of his briefs she tugged hard, then panicked when nothing happened. “They’re stuck.”
“That’s the point, Josie.”
Of course it was. “So ...”
“I think you have to roll them back up, then take them down without rolling them because they’re sticking.”
If she looked up at him, she would die, so she kept her eyes glued to his back. She wasn’t really mechanically inclined, but she thought about his directions and decided they made sense, if she wanted to stick her hands in his pants to get them down. Which she didn’t.
She gave another tug. Nothing. Retreating, she unrolled them until they were back in place at his waist covering him snugly. Tapping a finger on her lip, she mulled over the problem, ignoring the hot ache pulling between her thighs and the traitorous tightening of her nipples.
“You giving up?”
“No, I’m just thinking.” Still in her damp shirt, she shivered, feeling the warmth radiate off his back inches in front of her.
She wanted to just lean forward, to close her eyes and fall against him, to tuck her hands inside his briefs and stroke them both to a place where nothing mattered but the pleasure they could share.
That’s not what she did, of course. Because she was reasonable and rational and clearly stupid. Who cared about tomorrow when there was tonight?
Well, she did, which was why she was going to remain professional about this.
There was only one way to get the briefs off and if she were at work with a patient, she wouldn’t even hesitate.
So this shouldn’t be any different. Taking a deep breath, she jammed her eyes shut and gripped the sides of his briefs, lifted them out a little, and pulled down towards his hips.
Her breast brushed his back as she yanked, bending at the knees, expecting to get them down to his thighs where she could drop her hold and run and let him deal with the rest.
Unfortunately, they were hooked on something and wouldn’t go down. She tugged a little harder and the resistance came from the front.
Oh, hell. They were caught there.
“Um ...” she whispered behind his shoulder. “We have a different problem this time.”
“Your fault.”
Here she was trying to help and he blamed her. “What did I do?”
“You exist. You move your little finger and I get hard.”
“Well.” Josie let go of him and moved around to face the problem head-on, holding really tight on to her fortitude, coaching herself to stay distant.
Like that was going to work.
Breathing hard, she lifted the front of the briefs and the tip of his erection sprang free, tapping her on the wrist.
“I’m so glad we’re becoming friends,” she said, mortified into speech, and terrified of attacking him. “I want to help you out like this, whenever you need me to, because that’s what friends are for.”
Houston was damn certain that he would never ask Christian or Dennis to pull down his wet underwear. That was not what friends do. What he and Josie were doing was reserved for sexual partners and why the hell she couldn’t see that was anybody’s guess.
It was his own damn fault for getting frustrated with both her and his Jockeys and asking for her help. Now he had a record-breaking boner and was losing his determination to respect her hands-off wishes.
She went down on her knees and any hope he had of speaking was shattered as he struggled not to swallow his own tongue. Josie’s quick short gasps hit his cool skin as she peeled his pants down inch by painful inch, mouth hovering in front of his cock.
“This way is much easier,” she said, her words rushing out and tickling the hairs on his thigh.
Air rushed between his legs as she freed him from the wet cotton, and his balls tightened, head aching. His body knew he was naked inches in front of a desirable woman and it was demanding attention.
So close, he was so close to her, and it wouldn’t take but a shift on his part.
A little lean forward and he could bump her with his cock, rest right against her moist lips and run his fingers through her wispy hair.
The thought just about killed him.
“Josie.” He grabbed her short hair, yanked her head back so she would have to look up at him.
“What?” Her nails dug into his thighs as she worked his briefs almost to his knees. Wide green eyes locked with his.
There were limits and he had reached his. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be friends.” He shook her head a little, frustration pulsing through his tortured body.
“Get out, Josie. And don’t come back, do you understand? Just do us both a favor and don’t come back.”