Chapter 16
They’re breasts, not rabid wolverines
Gage
It was a hell of a lot harder to avoid the woman living over my office than I thought it would be.
Every time I drove by, my gaze was pulled to the second floor, where colorful curtains fluttered during the day and string lights glowed at night. When I was in my office, I was being brutally and unfairly reminded of her existence with every creak and footstep from above.
Then there was the endless stream of people knocking on her door.
I had no idea who half of them were or what they were doing.
Their visits rarely lasted long, and according to my building security cameras, most of them arrived empty-handed and left carrying something.
I didn’t want to get involved, but as her landlord, I felt it was within my rights to discuss safety measures with her.
Which I would do as soon as I’d avoided her long enough that I wasn’t worried I’d feel compelled to kiss her.
First kisses were calculated, choreographed. They were delivered at the right time to maximize the romance of the moment. They were memorable, meaningful. Yet I’d stood on my own front porch and nearly kissed the hell out of Zoey just because she’d locked eyes with me.
I was a man with self-control, damn it. It should be easy to not kiss someone. There were plenty of women I currently wasn’t kissing. Zoey Moody shouldn’t be an exception.
I jogged into the vestibule outside my office and paused long enough to brush the sawdust off my jeans.
I was in desperate need of a shower before my meeting in an hour, but first I wanted to review the LLC agreement Declan had drafted before my afternoon appointment.
Work with my brothers had run over the time I’d allotted, and I was running behind.
I’d have to make it up by either skipping lunch or eating it in the shower, I decided.
I stomped my boots one last time and pushed open the door to my office. Declan was at his computer, staring off into space and typing at an alarming rate. A pair of sparkly stilettos caught the sun from their perch on the corner of his desk.
“What are those?” I asked, accepting the messages he handed over, still typing one-handed.
“Shoes.”
“I can see that. What are they doing there?”
“Zoey asked me to keep them here until the person she sold them to comes to pay for them.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The irritation that had been building all day spiked to the surface. “The office is not a thrift shop.”
“She brought me tea,” Declan said, a hint of defensiveness in his usual monotone.
“We are a law office, not an indoor yard sale,” I insisted. A telltale thud sounded from the second floor. “And if she’s here, then she should be responsible for getting herself murdered by selling shit to strangers on the internet. Not my employee.”
“Would you like me to relay the message in a formal letter?” Declan offered as I stomped into my office.
“Yeah. Sure,” I said.
“You have a meeting in fifty-eight minutes,” Declan called after me.
I closed the door at a reasonable volume, mostly to prove to myself that, despite the fact that I was annoyed, I was still in control of my impulses.
I had just settled behind my desk and opened the folder when I heard another thump followed by a muffled screech.
Visions of Zoey leaving her window open and Goose flying in to take a look around assailed me.
Was an indoor bald eagle attack unlikely?
Yes. But anything was possible where Zoey was concerned.
“Shit.” I threw my pen down and exited my office.
“Fifty-seven minutes,” Declan reported as I snagged the shoes off his desk.
“Thank you, Declan,” I said dryly. “I’ll be back in time.”
I stormed up the stairs to the second floor and had just raised my fist to pound on Zoey’s door when I heard a loud moan coming from inside. She was either hurt or having sex. And I didn’t want to walk in on one of those situations.
I paused and listened. “I’m going to die like this,” I heard her say before there was another thump.
I rapped my knuckles on the door. “Zoey? You okay?”
There was a pause and then a morose, “No.”
“Do you need help?”
There was another long pause. “Yes. Please.”
There was a note of hysteria in her voice that had my adrenaline pumping. “What’s wrong? Open the door.”
“You’re about to see something you’re not ready for,” she warned.
If she let a bald eagle into her apartment, I was going to be fucking pissed.
“I think I can handle it,” I assured her.
Her laugh was humorless. “We’ll see.”
“Let me in, Zoey.”
“Ugh. Fine. It’s unlocked.”
I pushed open the door. “We need to have a conversation about locking—”
The rest of the sentence, along with my breath, abandoned me. The blood flow to my brain made an abrupt U-turn and headed straight to my cock.
Zoey stood in the middle of the living room with her arms suspended over her head. Her curls were exploding out of a high ponytail. Her cheeks were flushed. Something that looked suspiciously like a sports bra was rolled up and banded tightly above her breasts. Her bare breasts.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“My sentiments exactly. A little help here? I feel like I’m being strangled by an anaconda, and I’m not proud to admit it, but I’m really starting to panic.”
Pep and Frank Bishop had raised good men if not full-time gentlemen, but the pivot to avert my gaze and close the door was at least three seconds slower than it should have been.
“What do you need?” I asked the door as visions of her perfect breasts seared themselves into my brain permanently.
“I need you to make me a sandwich. What the hell do you think I need? Get me out of this thing before I die!” she screeched.
“Calm the hell down.”
“Are you saying that to me or the door? They’re breasts, Gage. Not rabid wolverines.”
“Yeah, Zoey. The evidence strongly suggests they’re breasts,” I said, still facing the door, willing my instantaneous hard-on to also calm the hell down.
“Oh my God. Please stop pretending to be a gentleman and get me out of this thing! I’m suffocating!”
I sucked in a shallow breath and turned to face her.
Yep. She was still topless, and I was never going to recover.
She was built like a goddess. Her full, teardrop-shaped breasts were on display like some art exhibit by a master. My cock was harder than the marble a sculptor would have chosen to immortalize her in.
“Help,” she said in a whimper as her arms dangled above her head. “I’m too sweaty. I can’t get it off.”
I took matters into my own hands and turned her around so I wasn’t facing the most perfect set of tits I’d ever seen in my life.
“Where’s the clasp?” I said gruffly as I felt along the band over her shoulder blades. It had been rolled over on itself half a dozen times.
“There isn’t one. It’s one of those pull-on things, which I will never wear again. It wasn’t very supportive anyway. Too much jiggling.”
“Stop. Talking,” I begged through gritted teeth.
“Start working.”
I pressed my thumbs against her back and tried to slide them under the twisted band, but it was too tight.
“Hold still,” I ordered.
I slid my hands around to her sides and tried to get under the band at her armpits.
She let out a panicked giggle and jumped. Her legging-clad ass came into direct contact with my throbbing dick, and we both froze.
“Uh, I’m ticklish,” she whispered.
“Yeah. Got that,” I said as my vision started to go dark. One wiggle, one too-deep breath, and I was going to humiliate myself by coming in my jeans.
“If I weren’t panicking about being strangled by my sports bra, I’d be flattered,” she said finally. “It feels pretty impressive.”
“Zoey, I need you to stop talking about your tits and my cock now.”
“Sorry. Shutting up now,” she promised.
I tried again to get my fingertips under the band, but it wasn’t working. The twisted material was too tight. “Listen, I kinda have to get…in there. Do you want me to call—”
“Oh my God, Gage. You’ve touched tits before, haven’t you? I don’t care if you have to motorboat me. Just get me out of this thing!” Her voice pitched into hysteria territory.
“Can you please stop saying things like motorboat and tits? I’m trying to be a gentleman here, but you’re not making it fucking easy.”
On a frustrated groan, Zoey spun around to face me. She grabbed my hands and slapped them on her breasts. “There. Welcome to second base. Can we focus now?”
I stood there, rooted to the spot, cupping her full breasts. Her skin was slick with sweat, and her nipples pebbled against my palms.
My hands squeezed reflexively, and I would have apologized, but I wasn’t even remotely sorry. Zoey’s breath was coming in pants, making her breasts rise. My breath was nonexistent, something I didn’t realize until I started to see black dots.
I dipped my forehead to hers. “You’re killing me, Disaster.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s about to be a double homicide, seeing as how this bra is murdering me,” she hissed shakily.
“Fuck,” I muttered. It took every brain cell I could muster to concentrate, but by sliding my hands up and over the breasts I would spend the rest of my life fantasizing about, I managed to get my thumbs under the band above her sternum. I gave it a tug, then a harder one.
“Ow,” she whimpered.
“Sorry,” I said, ceasing my ministrations.
“Okay. What if I, like, bounce?” she offered.
“Bounce?” Was this some kind of cosmic joke? Was I being punished for some past indiscretion? I couldn’t think of a worse idea.
Apparently Zoey thought I didn’t understand what the word meant, because she demonstrated by bouncing up and down, making her tits jiggle.
Some kind of uncontrollable biological impulse in me clamped my hands down on her breasts.
My mouth watered. My cock flexed behind my zipper, demanding to be set free.
She was trying to kill me. That was the only possible explanation that made any sense to my blood-starved brain. “No bouncing,” I rasped.