10. Gage
CHAPTER 10
Gage
S uddenly, the door is brusquely pulled open from the inside, and I’m left with my fist in mid-air.
The scolding words die a quick death in my throat as my breath catches and my heart starts to work double time.
My eyes widen in recognition, and, for a moment, I can’t believe what I’m seeing, and my wish to reprimand just fizzles away.
First of all, my Aerosmith-obsessed, rude next-door neighbor is definitely not a he as I thought but a she .
Second of all –and most important of all– I’m staring at a woman that’s been keeping me awake for three fucking nights, and possibly four, if we consider that she also must have been responsible for keeping me from sleeping on Friday before I even met her when she decided it would be fine and dandy to blast Pink over and over and over again in the middle of the night.
It appears that I’ve finally caught a break because my Aerosmith-obsessed, rude next-door neighbor is none other than my mystery baby doll.
Piper.
No way would I mistake her for another. It’s her all right and just as beautiful as I remembered.
I feel a smile pull at my lips as the shock starts to wear off.
Seventy-two hours spent vainly looking for her everywhere and all this time she was living a door down from me!
I don’t know what to say, except that this kind of kismet stuff isn’t supposed to happen in real life, right?
And yet here I am, and here she is, and if it weren’t for her penchant for Aerosmith, who knows how long it would have taken us to meet since I’m at my apartment only for an hour or two after I awake and then not at all until well past nine p.m.
I go over her features slowly, feeling my body respond in all the ways it did when I first saw her.
My stare lingers more than it should over her creamy thighs, left bare by the hot pink sinfully short culottes she’s wearing, and then move upward to the soft pink material of the tank stretched tight over her magnificent tits.
My God, she’s even tinier and curvier from up close!
I think the nickname that came into my mind straight from my heart is perfect for her: she’s such a baby doll!
She definitely packs a punch from those plump lips of hers down to her tiny little toes painted pastel purple. All 5’2’’ feet of her do.
And the things her scent is doing to me?
How is she managing to make me feel this horny and dizzy at the same time when, only thirty seconds ago, I was all the way to pissed the fuck off?
Rebuking is the furthest thing from my mind now. I don’t want to scream at her, not even a little. Presently, I feel more like bending her over the nearest surface and making her scream.
She smells like strawberry and mint. Sweet and fresh at the same time. I didn’t know you could combine such different fragrance notes in the same so cock-achingly entrancing essence!
What the fuck did she do? Roll in make-men-stupid perfume?
If someone had asked me –before I lost my mind three days ago– if I had a type when it came to women, I would have said I like them tall, so I don’t dwarf them too much with my big frame, but since seeing this little doll, my mind and body have been singing an entirely different tune.
Apparently, before seeing her, I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about because if I have a type, it's her, and for some reason, I fucking love the idea that she's so tiny and precious that I can tower over her by more than a foot. It makes me want to pick her up and hold her tight. It brings protective instincts I didn't even know I possessed to the front.
Her white-blonde halo of sleek hair with the ends dyed light purple is up in a cheeky ponytail, her even more incredible than I believed light gray eyes glint from behind a pair of completely clear over-sized round glasses in a mixture of peeved anger at my attitude and what looks like recognition all meshed up with attraction.
It can’t be, though.
She didn’t see me when I spotted her on Monday when she… I don’t know, fucking zapped me or something. I’m sure of that.
So where does she know me from?
The way she’s staring at my chest makes me think she’s barely holding herself back from jumping me and climbing me like a tree!
The pull between us is undeniable and huge. I don’t know what to call it, but it does my heart and ehm… other parts of me good to know I’m not feeling this hellish need on my lonesome.
At least this way, when I pick her up and kiss the shit out of her in about sixty seconds, she won’t think I’m insane, and hopefully, she’ll kiss me back instead of slapping the crap out of me and kicking my ass, which I’m pretty sure was her original plan when she first opened this door.
She takes a step toward me, her eyes big and unsure.
I want to tell her there's no need to hold back, but that's when she opens her mouth and says something, or rather calls me something, that gives me pause.
Mr. Hot Stuff… Next door.
“What did you just call me, Piper?” I ask her, my smile growing bigger.
Her eyes widen the second she realizes she has spoken out loud, I guess, and her expression changes to a vulnerability that, for some reason, I find very fetching.
“I… hum…” she mumbles.
Then, just as fast as it appeared, the soft, exposed look on her face goes away and is replaced by a mutinous glower that makes her look like an angry kitten.
I start to ask her what the matter is now when she takes a long breath and begins to scold me, going on a tirade that takes me aback and, at the same time, does something not exactly unpleasant to me.
With the little brainpower I have left, considering that all my blood is flowing south, I can only formulate a single thought: I am so much in trouble right now.