Chapter 15 #2
I blink, trying to clear the rogue thought from my brain. But I can’t stop cataloging every dip and crease of muscle. Can’t help memorizing the exact rosy brown shade of his nipples. Nipples on a man are supposed to be pointless, but my sex-starved brain suddenly finds a million uses for them.
Nuzzling.
Kissing.
Licking.
Biting.
George, unaware of the porno happening in my mind, lays the shirt on the dry bed and heads into the bathroom. “Let me know when you’re decent.”
Never. That’s the answer. My brain is so filthy, I’ll never be decent again.
When he disappears behind the closed door, I drag in a ragged breath. The first one I’ve taken since the hot pilot stripped in front of me.
How dare he? How dare he do that, and look like that, and…and…tempt me?
Of course, it wasn’t an intentional temptation. He was matter-of-fact in every movement. I might as well be a fellow bro in the gym locker room.
Maybe he’ll pat me on the butt. Bros do that, right?
I shake my head, trying to get rid of the heated mush feel that’s overtaken the inside of my skull. With an eye on the bathroom door, I tug off my shirt and jeans. Then I pause, standing in nothing but my underwear, and contemplate the two paths before me.
Keep my bra and panties on.
Take my bra and panties off.
It’s the same conundrum and answer as before. The wetness from the bed seeped through my jeans, leaving my underwear damp. My bra has an underwire. If I plan to sleep tonight, I cannot wear either of them.
“Hell. Damn it to freaking hell,” I mutter as I shuck off both pieces and lunge for George’s T-shirt.
My only thought when I let the shirt drop over my head is Thank god it’s longer than my ass. Then it’s just a fuzzy white noise when I once again lose the ability to think, because my nose is jam-packed with an intoxicating scent.
All day I’m surrounded by the smells of a diner. I can identify an entire menu with my nose alone.
But this, I can’t place this.
All I know is that George’s shirt smells so good. This has to be a cologne. Some skillful concoction that sells for hundreds—no thousands—of dollars a bottle. Only rich people are able to smell this decadent.
I drag the collar to my nose and suck in a deep breath.
Another.
One more.
Oh god, I’m going to get high off George Bunsen’s T-shirt.
“Everything okay?” his deep voice asks from the other side of the bathroom door.
How long have I been here, hypnotized by his cologne? Does he wear this into business meetings to trick people into giving him all of their money?
If so, solid plan, my man.
Reluctantly, I let the fabric fall away from my face and scurry around the room to get my clothes hung by the heater.
“Covered!” I call out, tugging on the hem of the shirt to make sure it’s definitely falling past my bare butt. This is one of those expensive T-shirts that’s deceptively simple, but the material is thick enough to survive plenty of trips through the wash and shouldn’t reveal anything lewd.
Not that George would care. I’m the annoying low-class add-on to his best friend.
I’ve seen the girls Shawn dates. I met Tiffany.
Money gets you expensive skin care and regular facials that leave you with a perpetually healthy glow.
Clothes that accentuate every positive attribute of your figure. Hairdressers who…
Well, they may make magic as they charge you out the ass, but I’ll still choose Darla for that category. I have good hair, even if it’s a drenched, tangled mess right now.
All this to say, people in George’s tax bracket have the funds to perfect any natural attractiveness they were born with. He’s not about to be awed by my budget-store beauty.
Then George steps out of the bathroom and I remember that he has no shirt, and I am not immune to the charms of his chest. I avert my eyes and risk the bed, pulling back the covers to discover some thankfully clean-looking sheets.
Although I would not be willing to put them to a black light test.
When I get myself situated, sitting upright against the pillows, I realize George is still lingering in the bathroom doorway. He stands as if frozen, gaze fixed just past me, toward the window.
Not the window. The heater underneath it.
Where my bra and underwear hang beside my jeans and shirt.
“It was all wet,” I explain weakly, wondering if he’s disgusted, knowing I have nothing on under the shirt he lent me.
George swallows hard, turning all his focus on the bagged six-pack on the desk.
“Want one?” he asks without facing me.
“What kind did you get?” I should just say yes and down whatever alcohol he’s offering to help me get through the night in this dirty room with a guy who barely tolerates me. Especially when I told him I didn’t care.
Still…
Please don’t say IPA. Please not one of those hoppy monstrosities—
“Heineken.” George holds up the familiar green bottle to show me, and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Yes. Thank you.” I reach for it, but he doesn’t hand over the bottle immediately. Instead, he sets the top of it against the corner of the desk and hits the cap hard with the heel of his hand.
Opening the beer in a move as smooth as when a guy punches a jukebox and it starts to play a bop.
As George passes the beer my way, his gaze dips, then flies up to the ceiling, and I quickly examine myself to make sure the neck of his shirt hasn’t gaped open to reveal one of my boobs.
Nope. But the luxurious fabric is doing nothing to hide how hard my nipples are.
Heat rushes through my cheeks as I grab the beer and try to casually cross one arm over my chest.
He’ll just assume I’m cold, I reassure myself. He has no way of knowing that his ability to open a beer with his bare hands made my nipples stand at attention.
Besides, his nipples are out in the open, so he has no room to throw shade.
George opens another bottle using the same panty-melting move, then settles in the desk chair that doesn’t look stable enough to support his jacket, much less a full-grown man.
“Is that how cavemen opened their beer?” I ask before taking a deep gulp of mine.
The corner of George’s mouth twitches.
“Yeah. I haven’t evolved much.” He stares at the label of his drink like it’s the most fascinating thing in the room, then pulls out his phone.
See, nipples? He doesn’t even find you interesting. Relax, already!
“The weather system should pass around four a.m. it looks like.” He holds up his phone, app open to show the radar. “We can get up at first light and go.”
“Cool. Great. Sounds good.” I take a large swallow of my beer and shift my bare legs against the rough sheets. But I’ll take low thread count over wet fabric any day of the week.
“I’m sorry,” George offers. “For getting you stuck here.” He tilts the bottle up, and I watch his throat for each swallow. The way the muscles flex and relax has me shifting again.
“It’s fine,” I mutter. And I eye the bag of beer, knowing I’m going to want another with how fast I’m guzzling this one, but unsure if I can survive the way he opens them.
The silence in the room, broken only by the pounding of the rain and an occasional roll of thunder, is oppressive. Not one of those comfortable silences where we’ve made an unspoken, mutual agreement to simply exist in each other’s space. This is a tense, how-could-this-night-get-worse? silence.
“Should we watch TV?” I gesture with my beer toward the ancient technology, wishing I wasn’t too wired to fall asleep. Plus, it’s still kind of early in the evening, only the thick storm clouds darkening the world outside our window.
In answer, George reaches a long arm out and flips on the TV.
Static. On every channel.
So much for that.
After flipping through every option twice, George shuts it off.
The weighted silence is back, and I’m out of ideas. Gone is the levity from our dinner at the diner.
“I’ve got cell service…” He holds up his phone again. “We could stream something.”
Now this piques my interest. Mom, Marge, and I only have Net-flix, which isn’t a bad option. Plenty of awesome movies and shows. More than we could consume in a lifetime.
But it doesn’t have a particular show I’ve been dying to see.
“Which services do you have?” I lean forward eagerly, wanting to explore his phone. Not that he’d give me free rein to do that.
Or so I thought.
George swipes in his code, then he stands from his chair, crosses the room, and offers his device to me.
“Most.”
I carefully set down my beer on the bedside table and accept the gift.
That’s what it feels like, this free access to his phone.
I’d never be so carefree handing over mine.
I don’t even trust Darla to handle mine without supervision.
But not because she’d find anything incriminating—mainly because she’d text a guy I hooked up with, saying he’s bad at giving head.
She’d insist he’d be grateful for the feedback, which I doubt.
I fight off the urge to snoop and instead seek out the one app I really want. And there it is.
I tap the icon to open the app and squeak in excitement when it automatically logs in.
“We can watch Masters of the Air!” I grin up at him, naming the show that follows a flight crew on a Boeing B-17 during World War II. I’m not a war history buff, but any media showcasing airplanes has my attention.
George stares down at me, brows slowly lifting. “You want to?”
“Have you already seen it?”
He hesitates, then nods his head once.
My excitement dims. “Oh. I guess we can—”
“I want to watch it again.” He cuts me off. I can’t tell if he’s just being nice, but I want to see the B-17 Flying Fortress so badly that I don’t even care.
“Okay. How do you want to do this?”
George’s phone is a decent size, one of the newer models with a big screen. But it’s still a phone.
George pulls open the drawer on my bedside table, then checks his, coming out with a dusty Bible. He places the book on the bed near my thigh, then slips the phone from my hand and leans the device against the thick tome.
Is this blasphemous? Oh well. Mom never bothered taking me to church, so if there’s a hell, I’m probably far down the road to it anyway.
George scoops up his beer from the desk and returns to his side of the bed. I really wish this was a king-sized mattress, but it is solidly a double. With George’s broad shoulders, I’m not sure I’ll make it through the night without brushing up against him.
He pulls back the covers, and my eyes lock on his jeans. I can see the dampness in the fabric from when he heroically ran across the street to get us libations. The next words are out of my mouth before I think them through.
“You’re going to sleep in wet pants?”
George pauses, his hand grasping a pillow, his eyes fixed away from my face.
“Just…” Heat floods my cheeks again. Maybe I should have stayed dressed because the warmth coming off me from all this blushing would evaporate every drop of moisture in my vicinity. “I think it’ll be uncomfortable.”
He clears his throat. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
I pluck at his dry, delicious-smelling, soft-as-kittens T-shirt. “I’m plenty comfortable. If I didn’t already owe you so much, I’d probably steal this. It’s a really nice shirt.” I shrug and tap the screen of his phone back to life when it dims, doing my best to convey a nonchalance I do not feel.
“I meant because I’d be in my briefs,” George clarifies.
Oh. Duh.
I slap a hand over my eyes. “I won’t look. Go for it. Fair is fair, since you know I already stripped down.”
When I give a vague wave toward the heater, I could swear the temperature in the room changes. I shiver. After a breath, I hear George’s movement. Specifically, I catch the quick buzz of him undoing his zipper.
His jeans must be slack around his waist now. But they won’t fall all the way to the ground. The material is probably held up by his thick thighs. That rustling? It’s got to be him shimmying them down his legs.
I bite my bottom lip to hold back a groan, mortified that I’m trying to mentally undress George while he’s actively doing it just feet from me.
The mattress dips, and the air around me grows warmer.
“You can look now.”
I drop my hand and try not to be disappointed that his lower half is covered by the blankets. It’s just, I envisioned him in black briefs and want to know if I was right.
George, unaware of my inappropriate pondering, taps to start the first episode, then reclines against his pillow, his attention on the screen. I’m sure I won’t be able to stop thinking about how close the two of us are in this bed, both one piece of clothing away from naked.
But then a B-17 attempts to land in winds gusting at dangerous speeds, and I lose myself in the story.
As the credits roll for the first episode, I reach out and tap to start the next one without asking because I can’t risk him telling me no.
George doesn’t protest. No, he just slips out of the bed, revealing an unobstructed view of his shapely ass in red—RED—briefs, melts my brain by popping the caps off two more beers, and returns to my side.
He hands one drink to me, and I clutch the booze like a lifeline until I let the show pull me back in.
Around the fourth episode, the excitement of the day catches up with me, and my eyes droop, my body sinks into the mattress, and I lose track of the world.
When I wake up, however many hours later, light filters around the patchy curtains, and there’s a heavy weight on my stomach.
And it is definitely not a Bible.