Chapter 7
OLI
Please let Mom be making something edible. The second I pushed open the front door, I knew we were safe. The mouthwatering fatty scent of bacon and cheese danced through the air and made me check for drool.
Behind me, KC moaned, a sound that sent goose bumps racing down my spine. Would it be wrong for me to lie on the floor and spread my legs for him? I was hooked and needed to hear that low note again. Now.
My cheeks burned as I tossed my sketchbook on an end table.
KC was sweet, nothing like that asshole Ren. Would he even take advantage of the situation if I threw myself at him? Heat rushed to my cheeks. I bet Ren would.
There was a hint of curiosity in KC’s expression when he glanced at me as I stopped in the middle of the living room to spin with my hands out.
“The place isn’t much. There’s this, the kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom.” I tried not to feel embarrassed as I faced him because this was a big step up from all the other slums we’d lived in. It was difficult not to feel prickly, though, when I knew he’d grown up in a mansion by comparison.
“It’s nice.” If he was lying and secretly thought I was beneath him, nothing on his face gave it away.
He patted my back, and I wasn’t ready for the sensation of his hand on me.
Heat twisted up in my gut and my dick felt as if he’d stroked it.
My lungs wouldn’t suck in a full breath. He might as well have punched me.
Shit, what Ren had done to me felt every bit as good as this. I bit the inside of my cheek.
“W-we painted when we moved in. And we also replaced a few bricks in the fireplace. Mom always has a fire going during the winter. She loves it.” I couldn’t meet his gaze as I rambled, and instead, I scuffed the toe of my sneaker on the spotless hardwood floor.
The green couch and armchair matched the soft natural colors of the room.
The walls were an orangey-yellow that reminded me of a sunset, the trim a sand-speckled red.
There was no TV because Mom preferred to read when she had downtime.
Mom loved this place and kept it nice. I tried to help, but I was always busy.
“Hello? Do I hear people? Come out to the kitchen!” Mom called cheerfully.
KC headed in the direction of her voice, and I jolted into action, following him. God, his ass was tantalizing. I felt high as his bouncing glutes cast a spell on me.
“Oh! Hello!” Mom walking closer with her hand out tore my attention away from KC’s award-worthy butt.
She looked nice tonight, with a blue apron thrown over the mauve skirt suit she’d worn to the office.
Her wavy brown hair with a streak of gray at the front brushed her shoulders, not a strand out of place.
I loved that she wasn’t wearing a uniform.
She’d gotten a job manning the front desk at our local assistance office two years ago, which had been amazing for us.
She’d finally been able to rent a house.
For my entire childhood, she’d worked an endless stream of retail jobs, which never seemed to have steady hours or cash.
“Hi! I’m KC.” They both grinned, two extroverts extroverting at each other and enjoying the heck out of it.
“Darlene! Call me Darla.”
“I, uh, asked him to stay for dinner, Mom. Hope that’s okay.”
Her eyes widened, then took on a mischievous sparkle that instantly had me on alert.
“Great! I’m making bacon mac and cheese from scratch, and I only do it about twice a year, so you’re in luck.” She rested her other hand on KC’s much bigger one, essentially trapping him.
“Mom . . . .”
She smiled at me, but that only made me more suspicious of what was about to come out of her mouth. “So, are you the KC that Oli talks about all the time?”
My heart leapt to the back of my throat and my brain fizzled, about as useful as a wet firework.
My feet became rooted to the spot. It was like watching a speeding train headed directly toward me while my foot was caught in the tracks.
I waved at her, trying to tell her to stop.
She didn’t seem to notice, but KC sure did.
“That depends.” KC cut me an amused glance. “What does he say about me?”
“Oh, only that you walk on w—”
“My art!” I grabbed Mom’s hands and ripped them away from KC’s, replacing them with mine. My heart beat so hard I was sure they could both hear it. “You wanted to see something I drew. I have some stuff I cleaned up that you can look at. In my room. Out the archway, down the hall to the right.”
“Oli!” Mom laughed and swatted my arm.
“No, I wanted to hear what you’ve been saying about me.” KC smirked and crossed his arms. Guess the asshole jock in him was finally rearing its head. I didn’t think it existed before this second. He did enjoy torturing other people.
“All good things!” Mom chirped.
I was terrified she would start talking again, so I got behind KC and literally pushed him toward the archway. He fought me for half a second, which left me going nowhere, before he abruptly started walking with a chuckle.
My mouth went dry as the panic receded, and I had to snatch my hands away from his crazily defined lats or risk running them down to his rounded ass. He grinned over his shoulder at me.
“Keep going to the end of the hall.”
We were almost in my room when Mom stuck her head around the archway to smirk at us. “Dinner’s in half an hour. That’s plenty of time to get to know each other.”
My gut twisted in horror as I slammed my bedroom door shut, blocking our view of her. “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”
KC snickered and rested his hands on his hips, which of course drew my attention to his beautifully defined obliques. His stupid skintight T-shirt seemed designed to highlight those muscles. My tongue wanted to roll out of my mouth like in one of those old cartoons.
“So, you talk to your mom about me?” His eyebrow ticked upward.
“I work with Barber and see you sometimes, and sometimes he talks about you. You’re in the rotation of topics, but it makes sense, don’t you think? I do.” I rubbed the back of my neck, wincing at my clammy skin.
He took a step closer and tilted his head. “How come you’re blushing? It looks good, by the way.”
“It stops me from spontaneously combusting. If I didn’t blush, I’d die.”
He snorted.
For a few spiraling, awful seconds, I felt like I was going to float away when the scent of his deodorant and whatever woodsy cologne he’d sprayed on after his shower teased my nose. How did he smell so good?
“Were you actually going to show me some of your artwork or were you just trying to get me away from your mom and all the intriguing things she has to say about me?” He glanced at the door like he might go back out there, and my heart tried to break free of my body, hammering away at my ribs.
“Why would I need to do that?” I meant to sound stern, but my voice was breathy. Kill me now.
“Why wouldn’t you need to do that?” He waggled his eyebrows.
In a panic, I scanned my room for a safe sketchbook to share because there was no way I could actually answer that question. I snatched a black spiral-topped pad off my desk and thrust it at him.
“What’s in here?” he asked, then lifted the cover.
“Some finalized artwork.”
He hummed and flipped pages. “This is really good.”
Sighing, I flopped on my bed and bounced there, immediately transported to the hell I’d been in when I’d shown that work to PD.
“Really good.” He smiled at me, and I rubbed my hands on the comforter, equal parts wanting to hug him and snatch the pad away. He was so nice all the time and I never knew what to do with it.
“PD says some people don’t do art that translates well into tattoos.
He says he can tell just by looking at my stuff I wouldn’t do well tattooing.
Something about how it’s clear I had to fix my final product a bunch of times.
And I like to use a drawing tablet, which I thought was useful because it would teach me to have a light touch with the needle pen, but he said it was too easy to change things digitally. Ink is forever.”
“PD sounds old,” KC said with an eye roll.
“I don’t know about that. But it doesn’t matter because he’s the one I gotta convince to let me apprentice at his shop.” I rubbed my hands on my jeans and nervously watched KC flip through the pad.
His eyes widened, and I groaned. “That’s the book with the guys in it, isn’t it?”
His lips quirked into a smile. “Lots of beefcake.”
Energy surged through me and I hopped to my feet, only to come to a stop near his elbow.
He was looking at a muscled man with blond hair and blue eyes in an old-fashioned sailor’s uniform.
The man’s shirt was slung over his shoulder.
I’d given him obliques that matched the ones peeking at me from under KC’s shirt. God, what would they feel like?
“So.” He flipped to another page.
“Huh?”
He elbowed me lightly. “Why the thirst-trap guys?”
“Oh!” I scrubbed my cheeks with my palms, but they still burned. “People get tattoos of hot women all the time. Why not men?”
“Good point. So, you enjoy stuff like this?” KC stopped and pointed at a drawing of a lumberjack with his red-and-black plaid shirt open and an axe slung over his shoulder.
Now that I was looking at him, he was a few details away from being KC’s clone.
Fuck. I bit my bottom lip. “Or like this?” He flipped the page and a willowy male elf, half stripped out of his gauzy purple robes, smoldered at us from the page.
Around that time, I realized the front of KC’s jeans were a tent for the hefty pole hiding beneath them. Oh wow.
My voice wouldn’t work and my tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth as I simply flipped the page back to the redheaded lumberjack.
He nodded seriously.
“What do you like?” My voice barely scraped past my lips.
KC stared at me, and I froze, lost in the full fire of his direct attention. “Lots of things.”
“All men?”
“Only men.” The pad trembled, then KC blindly tossed it onto my desk.